The news that Jared Kushner and his wife, Ivanka Trump, are house hunting in Washington, D.C., makes it all but certain that Kushner will have some sort of advisory role—official or unofficial, depending on the stringency of federal anti-nepotism laws—in his father-in-law's incoming administration.
That kind of role won't be anything new, of course. By all accounts, Kushner was Trump's de facto campaign manager and behind-the-scenes confidante during the tumultuous election season, and he continues to wield influence throughout the equally shaky transition process.
What else can we expect from this 35-year-old political parvenu, real estate developer, and newspaper owner, now that he has stepped into a position of power more vast than he ever could have imagined before Trump announced his candidacy by gliding down a gilded escalator in Manhattan? Kushner's stewardship of The New York Observer, the small but influential weekly newspaper he purchased in 2006 for a reported $10 million, gives some insight.
Here's a look at how his tenure at the publication may help explain aspects of Trump's unusual march to the White House.
KUSHNER IS COMFORTABLE WITH TUMULTUOUS LEADERSHIP
At the Observer, Kushner has overseen six editors in 10 years. When Kushner hired Ken Kurson, a journalist, Republican operative, and close family friend, in 2013, the paper saw its sixth editor in chief in just seven years. From the late Peter Kaplan, who stepped down amid looming staff cuts in 2009, to Tom McGeveran to Kyle Pope to Elizabeth Spiers to Aaron Gell and on to Kurson (whose four year run is the second-longest in the paper's history, after Kaplan) the Observer's masthead has been in flux pretty much continuously since Kushner took over.
Matthew Kassel has written for The New York Times Magazine and The Wall Street Journal.
