Kushner’s memoir a mix of ‘ spin, absolution and self-aggrandizement’

DAN COLEMAN: Judging by the plethora of negative reviews he has received, writing a memoir is another item for which Trump’s former Middle East envoy is unskilled.

From its title alone, Jared Kushner’s new memoir, Breaking History: A White House Memoir, raises questions: Is history broken? Does it require breaking? And, if so, is Jared Kushner the man for the job?

Kushner is, of course, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, an Orthodox Jew, husband to Ivanka, and former big macher (“senior advisor”) in the Trump White House. Scion, like Trump himself, of a wealthy family of questionable ethics, Kushner has been characterised as one who, in baseball parlance, was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple.

Since he first joined the Trump administration, Kushner has attracted a horde of detractors who generally agree that not only wasn't he the man for this job, he wasn't the man for any job.

Sean Illing, writing in Vox, is typical among them. He describes “Kushner’s portfolio of [White House] duties as the stuff of legend — overseeing the US-Mexico border wall, ending the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, solving the opioid crisis, managing the nation’s medical stockpile amid the coronavirus crisis, overhauling the Republican Party platform, and on and on. It would be an impressive list of responsibilities — were it not for the fact that Kushner is manifestly unskilled and unsuited to take on any one of them.”

Judging by the plethora of negative reviews he has received, writing a memoir is another item for which Kushner is unskilled and unsuited.

Perhaps the most damaging of these is Dwight Garner’s review in the New York Times which described Breaking History as “earnest and soulless — Kushner looks like a mannequin, and he writes like one.” Slate characterised it as the worst of the Trump administration memoirs, of which there are many, and “pretty dull”.

The Telegraph was  more forgiving, writing that Kushner “might come across as a moral vacuum – but his memoir of the Trump administration is a fascinating read”. Apparently, if you’re prone to rubbernecking as you pass multi-car accidents, Breaking History could be the book for you.

The pithiest summation comes from the Guardian, which finds that Breaking History “sits at the intersection of spin, absolution and self-aggrandizement”.

Political history is inevitably a contested sphere and political memoirs are invariably an effort to write that history in one’s own favour. Even Barack Obama’s widely praised White House memoir, A Promised Land, was described by Vox as one that “defends – and critiques his legacy”. While Kushner has plenty to defend, critique is largely missing in a work to which Garner attributed a “thoroughgoing lack of self-awareness”.

PJ Grisar, writing for the Forward, called Breaking History “a hefty airbrush of history.” As Garner put it, “once someone has happily worked alongside one of the most flagrant and systematic and powerful liars in this country’s history, how can anyone be expected to believe a word they say?”

Garner’s verdict should serve to dampen the expectations of anyone hoping that Breaking History will provide credible insight into Trump’s policy toward the Middle East, whether around the Abraham Accords, moving the US embassy, West Bank annexation, or Trump’s “Path to Prosperity” Peace Plan.

Kushner cannot tell the story of his engagement with those issues without also describing the role, not only of Trump, but also of Netanyahu, Abbas, Israeli ambassador to the US Ron Dermer, and US ambassador to Israel David Friedman, all of whom have their own perspectives (Friedman’s memoir, Sledgehammer, was released earlier this year).

Kushner says that Trump was so agitated by Netanyahu’s annexation plan that he considered endorsing Gantz or allowing sanctions to pass in the UN. According to Kushner, Trump was reluctant to proceed with the Peace Plan without Abbas’ buy-in.

Appearing on Fox News, Kushner said that Trump told him, “I’m glad somebody wrote a book that’s really going to talk about what actually happened in the room.” Others, like Friedman, may not be so pleased.

Kushner claims that Friedman “went rogue” and told Netanyahu that the US would support Israel’s unilateral annexation of parts of the West Bank, a view that  Friedman rejected when he told Times of Israel, “the accusation that I was running my own agenda with Netanyahu — it’s 100% false, 100% false”.

Kushner describes Trump as second-guessing his decision to move the US embassy to Jerusalem due to Netanyahu’s less than enthusiastic reaction. But, according to Haaretz, Netanyahu’s office said that the Israeli PM “had asked Donald Trump to move the embassy several times and expressed great appreciation for this decision".

It will take a professional historian with the resources to access government archives in multiple nations to unravel such claims, all of which appear conspicuously self-serving and any of which might shade the truth.

In the meantime, one could do worse than consult Israeli journalist Barak Ravid’s Trump’s Peace: The Abraham Accords and the Reshaping of the Middle East (available only in Hebrew). Seemingly the antithesis of Breaking History, it was described by the Guardian as “a blockbuster of a book … a well-paced and engrossing read.”

Commenting on Abbas, Trump told Ravid “We spent a lot of time together, talking about many things. And it was almost like a father. I mean, he was so nice, couldn’t have been nicer.” This is not exactly Kushner’s position, for whom, according to PJ Grisar, practically the only one accused of antisemitism [in Breaking History] is Mahmoud Abbas.

Meanwhile, there are delightful nuggets of spin and absolution sprinkled throughout Breaking History. Is Trump a racist? No, the President’s remarks were taken out of context. Was the White House chaotic? No, Trump “wanted to disrupt the ways of the past and change the world.”

Was there a problem with the nepotism of Kushner’s appointment? No, it gave Kushner an advantage in dealing with political dynasties like the Saudis.

The repugnant revelations of the Access Hollywood tape should be forgiven, as should Sudan for abetting al-Qaeda and Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) for his role in the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. Haaretz describes Breaking History as “whitewashing MBS”.

"While this situation was terrible,” Kushner writes, “I couldn’t ignore the fact that the reforms that MBS was implementing were having a positive impact on millions of people in the kingdom.” This conclusion might have been abetted by Kushner receiving a US$2 billion investment from a fund headed by MBS six months after leaving the White House.

Australians looking forward to a future Scott Morrison memoir, one full of “spin, absolution and self-aggrandizement,” might, for the time being, have to make do with Kushner’s benighted effort which, at the risk of beating a dead horse, has been characterised as “an anaesthesia-free colonoscopy” (Vanity Fair) and “complete dogshit” (Vice).

Photo: Photo: Jared Kushner watches as President Trump signs an order recognising Golan Heights as Israeli territory, in front of Benjamin Netanyahu and Ambassador David Friedman, March, 2019 (Michael Reynolds/EPA)