Jared Kushner was diagnosed with thyroid cancer while he was working in his father-in-law's administration, he reveals in his upcoming memoir, Breaking History: A White House Memoir.
“On the morning that I traveled to Texas to attend the opening of a Louis Vuitton factory, White House physician Sean Conley pulled me into the medical cabin on Air Force One,” Kushner writes, according to an excerpt of Breaking History provided to The New York Times. “‘Your test results came back from Walter Reed,’ he said. ‘It looks like you have cancer. We need to schedule a surgery right away.’”
The cancer was detected in October 2019, and surgery was scheduled for November 2019. "We scheduled the operation for the Friday before Thanksgiving,” he wrote. “That way, I would miss the least amount of time in the office. My absence might even go unnoticed. That’s how I wanted it," he wrote. Kushner notes that he asked Dr. Conley not to share the diagnosis with his wife, Ivanka, or his father-in-law, Donald Trump.
Kushner did eventually share his health news with his wife, and Mick Mulvaney, who was the White House chief of staff at the time, as well as two other aides to Trump. Per the Times, Kushner's "illness was one of the few pieces of information that did not leak out of one of the leakiest White Houses in modern memory."
Kushner writes that at the time, he tried to stay focused on work, and not to think about the surgery. "When I did think about it, I reminded myself that it was in the hands of God and the doctors, and that whatever happened was out of my control. At moments, I caught myself wondering whether I would need extensive treatment."
Though Kushner never told Trump about the diagnosis or the surgery, the president still found out.
According to Kushner, the day before the surgery, Trump told him, "I’m the president, I know everything. I understand that you want to keep these things quiet. I like to keep things like this to myself as well. You’ll be just fine. Don’t worry about anything with work. We have everything covered here."
In the memoir, Kushner also shares that the cancer was caught "early" and a "substantial part" of his thyroid was removed.
Emily Burack (she/her) is the Senior News Editor for Town & Country, where she covers entertainment, culture, the royals, and a range of other subjects. Before joining T&C, she was the deputy managing editor at Hey Alma, a Jewish culture site. Follow her @emburack on Twitter and Instagram.
