There have been some memorably scathing New York Times reviews over the decades. Drama critic John Mason Brown began his review of Tallulah Bankhead’s ill-fated 1937 performance as the Egyptian temptress in Antony and Cleopatra with this classic put down: “Tallulah Bankhead barged down the Nile last night as Cleopatra — and sank.”
Now you can add to that list book critic Dwight Garner’s scathingreview of Jared Kushner’s tell-nothing White House memoir “Breaking History,”
You might wonder what publisher would actually do a book deal with Jared? The answer: Broadside Books, a conservative imprint of HarperCollins. Jared fits right in with the imprint’s stable of writers, including Charlie Kirk, Ben Shapiro, Tomi Lahren and Dinesh D’Souza.
The publisher’s blurb reads: “Jared Kushner was one of the most consequential presidential advisers in modern history. For the first time, he recounts what happened behind closed doors during the Trump presidency. … Breaking History provides the most honest, nuanced, and definitive understanding of a presidency that will be studied for generations.”
Well, Garner certainly didn’t see the memoir that way in the first major review of Jared’s 492-page magnum opus.
It doesn’t take long for Garner to hit full stride. He notes that the book’s contents reflect Jared’s “thoroughgoing lack of self-awareness.” Kushner believed foreign dignitaries prized him as the “fresh ideas guy, the starting point guard, the dimpled go-getter” at the White House.
But instead Jared didn’t realize that “he was in over his head, unable to curb his avarice, a cocky young real estate heir who happened to unwrap a lot of Big Macs beside his father-in-law, the erratic and misinformed and similarly mercenary leader of the free world.”
And then Garner really lowers the boom on Jared:
“Breaking History” is an earnest and soulless — Kushner looks like a mannequin, and he writes like one — and peculiarly selective appraisal of Donald J. Trump’s term in office. Kushner almost entirely ignores the chaos, the alienation of allies, the breaking of laws and norms, the flirtations with dictators, the comprehensive loss of America’s moral leadership, and so on, ad infinitum, to speak about his boyish tinkering (the “mechanic”) with issues he was interested in.
“This book is like a tour of a once majestic 18th-century wooden house, now burned to its foundations, that focuses solely on, and rejoices in, what’s left amid the ashes: the two singed bathtubs, the gravel driveway and the mailbox. Kushner’s fealty to Trump remains absolute. Reading this book reminded me of watching a cat lick a dog’s eye goo.”
Here are some other note-worthy comments by Garner about Jared’s memoir:
— “The tone is college admissions essay.”
— “Every political cliche gets a fresh shampooing.”
— “Kushner, poignantly, repeatedly beats his own drum. He recalls every drop of praise he’s ever received; he brings these home and he leaves them on the doorstep.”
Now the book does include details about Jared’s wooing of Ivanka Trump — how they broke up briefly because she wasn’t Jewish (she would later convert), and how Rupert Murdoch and his then-wife Wendi reunited them on Rupert’s yacht off the coast of France.
At the White House, Garner notes, that Jared was able to use his proximity to his father-in-law to win out over his rivals — adviser Steve Bannon, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, White House chiefs of staff Reince Priebus and John Kelly, and White House counsel Don McGahn. They either left or got dismissed for trying to exclude Jared from meetings he thought he should attend.
As regards being denied security clearance, Kushner dismisses it as much ado about nothing, Garner wrote.
So maybe “one of the most consequential presidential advisers in modern history” could at least recount what happened behind closed doors in the days leading up to the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Nothing to learn here. Garner observes that “the book ends with Kushner suggesting he was unaware of the events of Jan. 6 until late in the day” and “mostly sidesteps talking about spurious claims of election fraud.”
Garner concludes his review by writing:
“What a queasy-making book to have in your hands. 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?”
Ouch!