Donald Trump’s Shabbat shambles
SOME OF US President Donald Trump’s more extreme orders and conversations have come on Shabbat because his more moderate Orthodox son-in-law Jared Kushner has not been around to advise him, according to reports in the US press.
Mr Trump’s travel ban on citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries was signed late on a Friday, reportedly minutes before Shabbat came in, when Mr Kushner was not available.
The day afterwards, on Saturday, Mr Trump had an incendiary telephone conversation with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, berating him for asking whether the US was still prepared to take in 1,250 refugees from an Australian detention centre.
Meanwhile, the previous week, just after his inauguration ceremony, Mr Trump spent Friday and Saturday settling scores over reports that the size of the crowd was smaller than at Barack Obama’s event, and on Saturday ordered his press secretary Sean Spicer to deliver “alternative facts” about the level of attendance. An unidentified source told Vanity Fair about Mr Kushner’s failure to influence Mr Trump: “He wasn’t rolling calls on Saturday when this happened. To me, that’s not a coincidence.” The source also said Mr Kushner was “f***ing furious” at his father-in-law for tweeting about a proposed wall between Mexico and the US.
These rows have reportedly left far-right former media boss Steve Bannon as the man with the most influence on Mr Trump, who, it is said, trusts him more than any other adviser.
Mr Kushner is not only reported to be a moderating influence on Mr Trump, but has sought to help the President build bridges with other heads of state and business leaders — albeit with mixed success.
In the row following Mr Trump’s statements about the Mexico wall, the Mexican President cancelled a meeting that Mr Kushner had helped arrange.
The 36-year-old, who has been credited with devising the Trump campaign’s digital operations, reportedly brokered a meeting between Mr Trump and Rupert Murdoch and facilitated a gathering of America’s top technology CEOs at Trump Tower last month.
Meanwhile, Jared’s wife, Ivanka, was reported to have been courted by China this week after she was seen shaking the hand of the Chinese Ambassador Cui Tiankai before leaving the Chinese Embassy in a black SUV.
Ivanka later posted a video of her daughter, Arabella, singing a song in Mandarin, and other footage emerged of Ms Trump listening to traditional music, admiring crafts and playing with puppets at the embassy. Chinese state-run newspaper the Global Times said Ms Trump helped balance her father’s “harsh posture” and the appearance “could be invigorating to the Chi
na-US relationship.”