Millions of dollars worth of damage. An unending news cycle of destruction and mayhem. Destruction, arrests, and chaos. That was the scene on January 6 when rioters demanding Trump be awarded the presidency he didn’t win swarmed the nation’s capital.
What were Trump’s daughter and her husband doing while America watched the Capitol that day? It turns out they were finalizing plans for a swanky dinner party to be held on the 7th, extending invitations and completely ignoring what was going on around them.
That’s according to a new excerpt from Jon Karl’s upcoming book Betrayal, and it’s just one of the many bombshells that have dropped since Karl started on his book tour.
Karl writes that during Jared and Ivanka’s party, the topic of the Capitol riot never came up. That’s a staggering statement of privilege, especially considering those in attendance were among the leaders and thinkers who would be trying to map the future of the United States through policy.
Instead, they were discussing the creation of a new think tank meant to draw moderate Democrats away from the kind of economic thinking their party has begun to embrace since the pandemic exposed the fragility of the free-market state.
Remarkably, there was no mention of the fact that a mob had just stormed the Capitol days earlier, ransacking the offices of Democratic leaders and trying to prevent the certification of Joe Biden’s election victory. There was no mention whatsoever—whatsoever—by Jared and Ivanka or any of their guests—of January 6.
But how could they bring themselves to think about trying to change people’s minds while the people who voted for their boss were throwing chairs [1] at the police and tweeting about how they’d never go to prison [2] because they were white?
In fact, Kushner was avoiding the president himself, according to Karl. He told the ABC reporter, “We’ll just get in a fight if I go over there.”
Maybe not one quite as bad as the riot, though, Jared.