Donald just about clinched the nomination in early May, winning the Indiana primary. Ted Cruz, one of the last Republican men standing by that point, bowed out that evening. Donald rode those escalators once again down into that mauve marble lobby to give a victory speech. Melania stood to his left, Ivanka and Jared, Eric and Lara, Don Jr. and Vanessa to his right, all closed-mouth smiles and shine.
“I want to start by, as always, thanking my family.” Donald leaned into the microphone his campaign had set up on a makeshift stage in front of a cheering crowd in his red baseball hats. “My wife, my kids. They’re not kids anymore, but as far as I’m concerned, they’re kids. They’ll always be my kids,” he joked. “It’s a beautiful thing to watch and it’s a beautiful thing to behold and we’re going to make America great again.”
He singled out his son-in-law, praising him for the work he had done to get him to that point. “Honestly, Jared is a very successful real estate person, but I actually think he likes politics more than he likes real estate,” he told the audience, sending Ivanka into a laughing fit. “But he’s very good at politics.”
A few days later Ohio governor John Kasich dropped out of the race, making him the sixteenth opponent Donald had put a pin in. As the presumptive nominee, he would soon start receiving intelligence briefings on national security matters and immediately shift to a general election plan. Life beyond the primaries smacked the Trumps in the face. There was a level of planning and organization that the tiny Trump team of novices could not themselves begin to fathom, but they had enough sense and outside advice to start making incremental plans on specific, necessary next steps. That’s when Donald put another load on Jared’s shoulders. He asked him to come up with a blueprint for a transition team, though Jared himself would not be involved with transition activities should his father-in-law win in November. Jared, campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, and senior adviser Paul Manafort started pulling together ideas for who could join the team and what the priorities should be.
Donald set his mind on New Jersey governor Chris Christie as the guy he wanted to lead the transition. Sure, Christie had been critical of Donald when he ran his own bid for the presidency, but he was among the first former opponents to endorse him in February. The complicating factor was that Jared, assigned to lead the charge here, despised the guy. Christie had put Jared’s father behind bars a little more than a decade earlier, after all, and kept him there for twenty-eight days longer than the Kushner family expected. The simmering tension was no secret, and Donald was sensitive to it, particularly because he knew Ivanka would be sensitive to it as well. But it was Donald’s campaign, and at least in this instance, no one could talk him out of it.
By May 9 Donald had already made the offer to Christie. He asked the governor to come to his office on the twenty-sixth floor of Trump Tower, where Donald did most of his campaign work when he was in New York, amid a crush of sports memorabilia—Tom Brady’s Super Bowl helmet, Mike Tyson’s belt, Shaquille O’Neal’s size 22 black and white basketball sneaker. A photo of Donald’s father Fred shared the desk with stacks of paper, framed magazine covers bearing his likeness lined the walls, and the red leather armless chair he’d sat in as the host of The Apprentice was tucked into the room’s far end. Corey Lewandowski came, too, and they began to hammer out the parameters of how the transition would work and what notes they wanted to hit in a press release announcing his appointment.
Jared joined them, too, and he tried to pump the brakes. “Well, we don’t have to rush this,” he chimed in. “Let’s take our time with this.”
Lewandowski interrupted him. Actually, they did have to rush this. The White House had already asked for the name of a transition head, and it was sure to come up at the meeting scheduled in a few weeks. They needed to decide this and get it out there already. Donald agreed with him. What was the point in waiting, anyway? The choice was made. Let’s get on with it.
Unlike Charlie Kushner, whose temper flashed and burned a whole room down in an instant, Jared simmered. The angrier he got, the quieter he became. So when he opened his mouth to respond, he was at little more than a whisper. It was rare for him to talk about his father’s stint in prison so openly, but on this day Jared unleashed. What came out was an impassioned monologue that went on so long that his father-in-law ultimately had to interrupt him. “It’s unfair,” Jared said. “He took advantage of my family members for his own ambition, and you don’t understand what he did to us.”
Christie, no shrinking violet, either, boiled in his seat. Before he could open his mouth, though, Donald jumped to his defense. “The guy was just doing his job. If you were there, you would have done the same thing,” he told his son-in-law. “You really should be mad at your own family here. They are the ones who turned over all that information to Chris.” Jared’s real problem, he added, was that he hadn’t known Donald at the time of his father’s trial; Donald and Christie were such good friends that things would have turned out differently. Christie would have taken it easier on his friend’s family. “No, no, no,” Christie interrupted. “I like you a lot, but I assure you it would not have been any different.”
“No, no, no,” Donald retorted. “It would have been different.” Donald then suggested that Jared, Charlie, Donald, and Christie go out to dinner together, to clear the air. Jared suggested that that might not be the best idea.
“Jared, you and I have talked about this,” Donald said soothingly. “Chris is the guy.”
“Fine,” Jared told him. “If that’s your decision, that’s your decision.” He turned around and walked out. Soon after, Lewandowski asked to be excused, too.
That afternoon the campaign sent out the release announcing Christie’s appointment. “Governor Christie is an extremely knowledgeable and loyal person with the tools and resources to put together an unparalleled Transition Team, one that will be prepared to take over the White House when we win in November. I am grateful to Governor Christie for his contributions to this movement,” Donald said in a statement.
ONCE THE decision was made, Donald and Jared called Charlie Kushner to let him know about Christie officially heading the transition, both asking for his blessing and making sure that it would not irreparably damage the in-laws’ relationship. It was a move out of respect and necessity, and one made with a great deal of anxiety. Charlie’s temper was a thing of legend in the tristate area. He would rip into anybody anywhere, burning his victims’ eardrums with the volume of his bellow.
Charlie played it cool when Donald called to let him know about the transition choice. He listened patiently to what his machatunim had to say. He took a breath. “Listen,” he said into the phone. “The most important thing is that you win and that you are prepared.” To those who heard the phone call, or how Donald and Jared recounted it, Charlie seemed genuinely magnanimous. Helpful and kind, even. The private father-son follow-up conversation went differently. Those close to the family recalled that Charlie told Jared they could let Christie do his thing now. This would get taken care of down the road. And indeed, six months later, just days after the election, Christie got canned from his gig, after months of working without pay, traveling to the transition offices in Washington every Wednesday, planning for the day when he would be able to execute on all the preparation he and his team had built up. Many believed the decision in large part stemmed from Jared, which they believed had been his plan from the get-go.
THE FIRST conversation between Jared and Christie about the transition role was not a walk in the park. It allayed no concerns over their ability to play nice as they worked to build one of the most complex, consuming, technical, and hugely vital aspects of a general election campaign, and prepare for a potential thereafter. So they talked it out. Don. Jr. was away from Trump Tower for the day they were due to meet during the summer of 2016, leaving his office on the twenty-fifth floor open. Jared asked Christie to meet him there. Across a round table, he admitted that he had not handled their last interaction as well as he had hoped to. He had reflected on it, he said, and come to the conclusion that the