Trump sought to fire Kushner before failed 2020 campaign, book claims

Former US president Donald Trump agreed to fire his son-in-law Jared Kushner and replace him with far-right provocateur Steven Bannon, according to a new book written by former Trump aide Peter Navarro, The Guardian reported Saturday.

Navarro cites a June 25, 2020, entry in his own diary which said a meeting took place between Bannon and major campaign donors.

“Bannon and the donors “want[ed] Kushner and Brad Parscale [the campaign manager] out the door,” the entry apparently read.

“Don Jr [and his girlfriend] Kimberly Guilfoyle feel the same way. This could be really interesting. It could also be our last chance for victory,” Navarro wrote.

Bannon successfully managed Trump’s 2016 campaign but left the White House in 2017 amid power struggles.

Bannon, 68, was indicted last week after he misappropriated $15 million donated for the purposes of building a wall between the US and Mexico.

In his upcoming book entitled “Taking Back Trump’s America: Why We Lost the White House and How We’ll Win It Back,” Navarro — who himself is set to stand trial in November after he refused to comply with the January 6 investigations, and faces up to two years in prison — said Bannon remained an influence on Trump even after he left the administration.

Navarro admits that he had “trepidations” about replacing Kushner with Bannon for fear of angering the then-president, but decided to nonetheless support the plan.

Navarro proceeded to set up a meeting between Trump and one of the anti-Kushner donors, where Trump “readily agreed… that Jared had to be replaced with Steve.”

Despite Trump’s acceptance of the proposal, Navarro said the plan ultimately failed after Trump refused to deliver the bad news to Kushner himself, citing the family relationship.

The book claims Trump was concerned about “family troubles if [he] himself had to deliver the bad news to … the father of his grandchildren,” instead asking a major party donor, Bernie Marcus, to deliver the news.

When Marcus made the call, Kushner apparently responded that “things were fine with the campaign, there was no way he was stepping down and, in effect, Bernie Marcus and his big moneybags could go pound sand.”

Navarro concluded, “And the rest is a catastrophic strategic failure.”

Less than five months later, Trump lost the US presidential election to Joe Biden.

The Guardian said that Navarro’s book levels significant criticism at the former US president, even dedicating six pages to explaining “why a president who is supposed to be one of the greatest assessors of talent … would make such bad personnel choices across so many White House and cabinet-level positions.”

Navarro, who is considered a Trump loyalist, was clearly far less enamored with Kushner, titling one chapter of his book “Both Nepotism and Excrement Roll Downhill.”

According to the book, Kushner began to lose support among Trump’s aides and confidants after he appeared on Fox News in April 2020 declaring that the pandemic would be over before the summer.

Navarro writes, “In being so wrong…Kushner woke up” big donors who until then believed “Kushner and the Trump campaign would, at some point, get its ship together.”

Kushner also released a book this year, entitled “Breaking History — A White House Memoir,” detailing his experience as a senior adviser to Trump.

Navarro’s book will be published later this month.