How Powerful Is Jared Kushner? Ivanka Trump's Husband Driving White House Foreign Policy For President

The news cycle seemed to circle around one question last week: Is Steve Bannon really in charge at the White House? The New York Times editorial board asked last Monday if the president’s chief strategist was “President Bannon,” and a Saturday Night Live sketch portrayed Bannon as the Grim Reaper, pulling President Donald Trump’s strings in the Oval Office to create chaos.

But Bannon may not be the only White House official with a disproportionate amount of power in the executive branch. Jared Kushner, Trump’s senior advisor and son-in-law, has quite a bit of clout on foreign policy — a “shadow secretary of state,” according to a report Thursday night from the Washington Post.

Kushner has almost no foreign policy experience, but he, perhaps more than anyone else, has the president’s ear on diplomacy. The 36-year-old husband of Ivanka Trump has much more experience in real estate and publishing. But, as an Orthodox Jew whose family has allegedly contributed money to West Bank settlements, one of Kushner’s top goals is to negotiate a peace deal in the Middle East.

“Everyone is trying to get to know Jared Kushner,” said one ambassador who spoke anonymously to the Washington Post.

Kushner is so important, in fact, that when he observes Shabbat on Saturdays — that is, when takes off work — the “workings of the White House sometimes devolve,” the Post reported.

One illustration of his influence occurred in January, when he helped the president draft a speech about Mexico with Luis Videgaray, Mexico’s foreign minister. Kushner attempted to convince Trump to soften his language about the United States’ southern neighbor, and eventually, he did. (Videgaray, however, denied that he had anything to do with the speech, calling it fake news.)

Regardless, Kushner’s victory was short-lived. Trump and Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto erupted in a spat about who would pay for the proposed Mexican border wall soon after Trump’s Jan. 26 speech.

The incident was seemingly a fitting analogy for how Trump and Kushner have operated. Kushner has quietly and carefully built relationships and worked behind the scenes, while Trump, loud, brash and mercurial, has aired out his grievances in public and ultimately decided on the bottom line.

“Videgaray has in his favor a close relationship with Jared, and that opens a direct channel of communication with Trump,” Rafael Fernández de Castro, a professor at the ITAM university in Mexico City, told the Post. But, he added, “the son-in-law is not going to save us.”