Amid all of the headlines that Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner may be the moderate—or even Democratic—forces behind the scenes in the Trump administration, John Oliver has a lengthy look at why that’s not such a comforting thought.
Always seen but almost never heard, Donald Trump’s daughter and son-in-law have White House jobs and are already having an influence on him: they’re shaping his policies and they’re working on bigger projects. Once you look at what little we know about them—their public images are much calmer and more collected than the president’s, whose outbursts are often never more than a tweet away—the façade starts to crack.
Ivanka lies just as easily as her father on things that can be quickly debunked, admits that she won’t correct an inaccurate assumption if it benefits her, and tends to benefit from what people project on her. Kushner, on the other hand, is in charge of several administration initiatives but has yet to show he is qualified for a single one—and he was barely qualified for the roles he held prior to the White House.
Oliver might spend nearly 23 minutes on Trump and Kushner, but he denies that he’s eviscerating them. But that’s simply because he doesn’t know enough about them to do so.
“I don’t know enough about them to eviscerate them, just as you don’t know enough about them to justify putting any real hopes in them,” Oliver said. “Because it is dangerous to think of them as a moderating influence, as reassuring as that may feel, because believe me—and it gives me no pleasure to say this—if they are the reason you are sleeping at night, you should probably still be awake.”