A slate of new books about President Donald Trump and his final year in the White House has revealed some of the inner workings of the West Wing. Michael Bender's book "Frankly, We Did Win This Election," recalls Kushner's problems with the former campaign manager.
According to Bender, Kushner wasn't paying much attention to Trump's campaign when he was running.
"But this time he wanted his hands on the levers of the reelection bid," said the book. "Jared started laying groundwork in the early days of the new administration to box out Kellyanne, Corey, Bossie, and anyone else whom Trump might suddenly decide to put in charge. Jared described his role to others as protecting Trump from 'overconfident idiots.'"
Kushner understood that Trump would make decisions at the moment and not give any long-term rational thought to anything.
"Jared was concerned that management style left him vulnerable to brash promoters, especially on television," Bender wrote.
"You get to run one more time," Jared had told Trump. "So just let me know what you want to do. This is your campaign, but I'm not going to let you hire any idiots."
At one point, Trump looked around the West Wing and discovered that most of his 2016 staff was gone.
"Derek Lyons, his staff secretary, had worked for Jeb Bush, not Trump, during the primary. Mark Meadows, who was effectively chief of staff but who wouldn't formally be given the role for another month, was a late supporter," Bender wrote. "Jared had kept Corey mostly out of the White House, and always seemed to forget to invite Kellyanne to the political meetings."
At another point in Bender's book, he explained that all of Trump's chiefs of staff worked to keep the president's biggest "enablers" out of his office. He wrote that it was the classification for "troublemakers" who would whisper in Trump's ear and ultimately destroy any efforts around policy or plans. But every Trump insider had a different person or group of people they didn't trust.
"It was a surreal, kaleidoscopic corner of Trump World where the colors and shapes often remained the same but the exact scene depended on who looked through the eyepiece," wrote Bender. "For Brad, this demographic included two of his 2016 predecessors, Corey and Kellyanne. For Jared, it was Corey, Bannon, and Kellyanne. For Bannon, it was Jared and Ivanka."
"Frankly, We Did Win This Election" is on sale now and Raw Story has some of the excerpts here.
