Jared Kushner’s Attempts To Prove Trump Isn’t Racist Are Not Being Well-Received


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You don’t hear a lot from Jared Kushner, senior advisor to President Donald J. Trump and also his son-in-law. Perhaps there’s a reason for that: Just about any time he speaks, he gets dunked on. Recently the husband of Ivanka Trump agreed to an interview for Axios on HBO, in which his attempts to disprove allegations that his boss and father-in-law is racist weren’t terrible convincing.

This clip, part of a longer interview that also didn’t go that well, found host Jonathan Swan asking him point blank direct questions, such as, “Have you ever seen [Trump] say or do anything that you would describe as racist or bigoted?”

“No, absolutely not,” Kushner replied. “You can’t not be a racist for 69 years and then run for president and be a racist.”

True, except Trump has been accused of racist acts going back to the 1970s, when he allegedly denied housing to black tenants. Brown didn’t bring that up, though. Instead, he went straight for his very public, very enthusiastic “birtherism,” in which he spent a long time trying to prove the man who would become his predecessor, Barack Obama, wasn’t born in America.

When Brown asked him if birtherism was itself racist, Kushner verbally squirmed, saying, “I wasn’t really involved in that,” and then offering repeated variations on the same.

Watching Brown grill Kushner was greatly enjoyed by certain factions of Twitter.

https://twitter.com/shaunking/status/1135352545063460866

https://twitter.com/aliamjadrizvi/status/1135390589745340418

Speaking of Trump’s alleged racism:

https://twitter.com/NaveedAJamali/status/1135382206619144193

Others simply made light of Kushner, perhaps in an attempt to distract themselves from the fact that he’s in such a high position of power.

https://twitter.com/AWolfeful/status/1135338063423401985

https://twitter.com/CoreyAtad/status/1135357260899790848

https://twitter.com/mattyglesias/status/1135358449020264449

Others were busy casting the inevitable Trump White House movie.

Kushner also said other things, including defending the administration’s treatment of refugees and questioning whether Palestinians could govern themselves. Those were also not met kindly.

https://twitter.com/QasimRashid/status/1135349624649240576