Last week, as the roiling Russia scandal seized the White House, Donald Trump found himself, somewhat surprisingly, without two of his closest advisers. On Wednesday, as the latest plot points of the Donnygate saga emerged, Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump descended upon Sun Valley for Allen & Co.’s annual confluence of the political-technology-media-finance firmament—the so-called summer camp for billionaires—that included Mark Zuckerberg, Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, and Tim Cook. There, they blended in, in the traditional shades-and-name tags look. Kushner enjoyed a discussion led by Tom Brokaw, entitled “A Country Divided,” and complimented the legendary newsman afterward, according to a veteran attendee of the conference, who was present. Kushner was also seen carrying around a copy of Nike founder Phil Knight’s new book, Shoe Dog, after Knight spoke at his own panel.
In some ways, the second First Couple’s appearance at the conference wasn’t entirely a surprise. Kushner and Trump have been known to consort with such eminences on account of their years as aspiring power brokers in New York. (Ivanka, for instance, was a trustee for Rupert Murdoch’s daughters.) But their presence during the peak of the Russia scandal surprised some attendees. “The circumstances did stun everybody, that they showed up,” this veteran conference attendee told me. This person added that the couple immediately “found sanctuary in the Murdoch-wing of attendees,” referring to Rupert; his son Lachlan; and News Corp. chief executive Robert Thomson.
As much as their attendance got tongues wagging in Sun Valley, their decision to skip town for a billionaire get-together as the West Wing raged ignited flames within the White House. Some aides are “furious” with their decision to attend, according to two people familiar with the reaction. “The optics couldn’t be worse,” one explained.
Kushner, after all, now finds himself at the center of the Russia fiasco. He will spend Monday behind closed doors with the Senate Intelligence Committee as part of the panel’s expansive probe into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia. The committee has sought to meet with Kushner, once a high-ranking figure on Donald Trump’s campaign, and now a senior adviser to the president, since a string of reports about various meetings he attended with Russian officials first surfaced in March. During the transition period, Kushner met with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak at Trump Tower, as well as Sergey Gorkov, chairman of the state-owned Vnesheconombank, which has ties to the Kremlin. Kushner was also present at the now infamous June 2016 meeting arranged partly by Donald Trump Jr. in search of dirt on Hillary Clinton. (Kushner’s attorney, Abbe Lowell, said in a statement that Kushner “has been and is prepared to voluntarily cooperate and provide whatever information he has on the investigations to Congress.” He added that his client “will continue to cooperate.”)
Billionaires confabs may be familiar territory for the Kushners; Senate investigations, however, are less so. Yet, through it all, the Kushner-Trumps have a preternatural skill with optics. After Kushner took over his family’s real-estate empire at the age of 25, he purchased 666 Fifth Avenue, a property, which, at the time, was the most expensive price paid for a single building in the United States. (Alas, the real-estate bubble burst shortly after the sale, and the Kushners were forced to sell the majority of the building. They are still seeking a way to finance the massive debt payments that will soon come due.) Not long after, he purchased The New York Observer, a weekly newspaper that he believed would put him squarely at the center of Manhattan’s elite. Ivanka Trump, on the other hand, built a mini fashion empire upon her name, started marketing to working women, and starred alongside her father in their reality show, The Apprentice, to promote it all. Her instagram account is a veritable tab of the events she participates in at the White House and a rose-colored lens through which she wants her followers to view her life as a mother/adviser/daughter/real-ish person.
During their brief time in Washington, they have been equally cognizant of the power of perception in politics. As I have noted previously, the Trump-Kushners have near-perfect timing when it comes to getting out of town when trouble strikes. Their jaunt to Sun Valley in the midst of the Don Jr. glare comes after they skipped off to Aspen when the House’s first attempt to pass health-care reform fell apart. Last August, as Trump’s campaign teetered, they yachted around Croatia with David Geffen and Wendi Deng, Murdoch’s ex-wife.
Perhaps this partly explains why the couple recently decided not to attend Google’s annual exclusive retreat, known as “The Camp,” next week in Sicily. Informally, the Trump-Kushners were invited to attend the event, according to three people familiar with the situation. In the past, the typically hush-hush four-year-old gathering has brought Lloyd Blankfein, George Lucas, Elon Musk, Pharrell Williams, Malala Yousafzai, Travis Kalanick, and Queen Rania of Jordan to the Mediterranean to take in panels, wine tastings, dinner performances by Alicia Keyes, and fireworks. The couple, who both hold senior jobs in their father’s West Wing, declined the invitation, two people confirmed. One person familiar with the situation said that the decision not to attend came in the last couple weeks. Kushner’s closed-door meetings with the Senate committee happens to be scheduled around the time of the event, which also may have presented a roadblock.
For all their attention to optics, though, the couple has occasionally appeared tone deaf. Shortly before their seemingly ill-timed Sun Valley retreat, Ivanka caught a tremendous amount of heat for briefly taking her father’s seat at the G20 alongside world leaders. This could be a symptom of the couple’s remarkable ability to compartmentalize—honed by years of having to separate various portions of their familial lives in order to get on with their professional ambitions. It could also be that the couple has yet to fully grasp that the darker side of this embattled White House will stick to them, even if they only publicly attach themselves to its less controversial initiatives.
As one person at Sun Valley explained, Ivanka’s glad-handing wasn’t always welcomed. A very senior corporate executive was departing a crowded room, the Sun Valley veteran said, when all of a sudden, he saw Ivanka greet this person in a loud, ceremonial way. The executive looked over his shoulder to see who she was talking to, when he realized that she was actually saying a very warm hello to him. “He said, ‘she was talking to me like that and I didn’t even know her.’”
