Thought one Trump as president was bad enough? Watch out, because now Ivanka thinks she’ll be next!

YOUNG, attractive and wholesomelooking with their little children running around at their feet, White House ‘First Daughter’ Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner were seen by Trump opponents as the acceptable face of the presidency.

Trump’s self-proclaimed feminist daughter, 37, and her mild-mannered husband, 38, would, it was hoped, exercise a moderating influence on her bombastic father’s worst impulses.

When it became clear the fashion industry entrepreneur and multi-millionaire property developer would both have key roles in the Trump administration, many in Washington raised a silent cheer.

Not everyone whispering into the president’s ear would be a swivel-eyed white nationalist lunatic.

Gloss

Now the gloss has come off the couple dubbed ‘Javanka’ with a new book – Kushner, Inc. – that portrays them as what one insider called a ‘toxic mix of arrogance and ignorance’. To that, the book says, can be added an insatiable lust for power that has ‘caused havoc all over the world’ thanks to their huge sway over the Trump administration.

Far from reining in Mr Trump, the pair – who both hold unofficial, unpaid but clearly hugely powerful White House posts – have encouraged his excesses, the book claims.

Ivanka Trump is so arrogant, in fact, says Vicky Ward, author of Kushner, Inc., she believes she may one day be president, too.

According to the book, Gary Cohn, once a key Trump official as director of the National Economic Council, has told people Ivanka believes her father’s tumultuous reign is ‘the beginning of a great American dynasty’. Her husband is equally deluded, according to the book.

Dubbed the ‘Secretary of Everything’ by colleagues due to his meddling in pretty much every area of government, he and his wife live in what one of Ward’s sources describes as a ‘reality distortion field’ created by the huge wealth of their respective families.

Ivanka was mocked by White House staff as ‘Habi’ – ‘home of all bad ideas’, claims Ward, who clearly had no trouble finding members of the Trump administration, past and present, ready to stick the knife in.

None appears to have any time for the overbearing and widely loathed couple. The view is that, just like Mr Trump, the Kushners were fixated by image rather than substance, and showed an alarming lack of interest in the details of government policy.

White House insiders believe Kushner – whose property tycoon father, Charles, was once jailed for tax evasion and illegal political campaign contributions – was responsible for the controversial decision to close White House visitor logs in April 2017, ending a tradition that let outsiders scrutinise who the president was talking to. Sources told the author that Kushner ‘didn’t want his frenetic networking exposed’.

One friend is reportedly Saudi crown prince Mohammad bin Salman – the leader accused of direct responsibility for the savage murder of the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at a Saudi consulate in Turkey.

Kushner, who was appointed an envoy to the Middle East, has particularly infuriated diplomats because of his insistence on interfering in US policy across the world.

Both former secretary of state Rex Tillerson (one of many officials Kushner has outlasted) and Gary Cohn accused Kushner of mixing personal interests with US policy, according to the book.

Mr Tillerson blamed Kushner for the president’s sudden decision to endorse a controversial blockade and diplomatic clampdown on Qatar by old foe Saudi Arabia and its allies in 2017. The US has thousands of servicemen stationed at Qatar’s airbase and the then secretary of state bluntly told Kushner his ‘interference had endangered the US’, an unnamed Tillerson aide tells Vicky Ward.

Mr Tillerson only later discovered that Kushner’s family had courted the Qataris for financial help but had been turned down.

Beleaguered

Meanwhile, the new book claims Mr Cohn, former head of bank Goldman Sachs, gave out to Kushner in January 2017 after it emerged the latter had dined with executives from Anbang, a Chinese financial corporation thinking of investing in a beleaguered Manhattan skyscraper – owned by the Kushner family. Mr Cohn and other colleagues felt Kushner wasn’t that bothered if it looked like he was trying to enrich himself or his family. Ivanka Trump also unsubtly put her oar into US foreign policy during phone calls between her father and foreign leaders, according to the book.

Kushner, Inc. relies heavily on anonymous sources, and a spokesman for Kushner’s lawyer dismissed the book as ‘fiction’, adding: ‘Correcting everything wrong would take too long and be pointless.’ The White House has also called the book ‘fiction’, saying it is ‘based on shady anonymous sources and false information instead of all the incredible work Jared and Ivanka are doing for the country’.

However, these latest claims will only hasten the fall from grace of a couple increasingly accused of being utterly brazen in their determination to use the presidency to advance themselves. The couple earned at least $80million in outside income during their first year as unpaid advisers to the president. Both have stepped back from the day-to-day running of their businesses but maintain large stakes in them.

Scrutiny

Kushner is having a bad week. His academic history and his place at Harvard University have attracted unflattering scrutiny following a national scandal over the ability of rich parents to buy their children places at top US academic institutions.

Kushner was admitted to Harvard soon after his father Charles donated $2.5million to the university.

A family spokesman insisted there was no link between the donation and Jared’s admission.

The book suggests he and his wife are alarmingly clueless, claiming visitors to their home say they have few books and ‘zero intellectual curiosity’.

Ward says various insiders told her with dismay how Ivanka would wander into the Oval Office, ‘often with a child in tow’, and talk to Trump in a singsong voice. The book claims: ‘He’d call her “baby” or pat her on the bottom. He sometimes stopped what he was doing to ogle her when she left the room. “Doesn’t she look great?” he would say to others in the room.’

One of her sources found the relationship ‘sickening’.

But, as Trump’s former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon concedes, at least she tries to protect her father. Which means ‘Javanka’ will no doubt outlast their many White House foes.