Ivanka reportedly used Steven Mnuchin to borrow Air Force planes, and Stephen Colbert feels for him

Stephen Colbert on Ivanka Trump and Air Force planes

(Image credit: Screenshots/YouTube/The Late Show)

published 14 March 2019

The newest splashy book taking an inside look at President Trump's White House focuses on his daughter Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, both top White House advisers. "It's called Kushner Inc. — Inc., of course, standing for incompetent," Stephen Colbert quipped on Wednesday's Late Show. And if you're wondering what Ivanka and Jared do with their days, well, a lot of them are spent on the road, and they reportedly like to travel in taxpayer-funded style.

According to the book, "Jared and Ivanka wanted to use all the privileges of the White House, but ran up against restrictions on using Air Force planes," Colbert said. Author Vicky Ward writes that Ivanka "often requested to travel on Air Force planes when it was not appropriate. When Rex W. Tillerson, the former secretary of state, would deny the requests, the couple would invite along a Cabinet secretary, often Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, to get access to a plane." Colbert grimaced. "Oh, I feel for Mnuchin here. He's like that weird kid you befriend just because he has a pool." He acted that out.

Ward also reported that Trump ordered Chief of Staff John Kelly to fire Jared and Ivanka and "get them back to New York" — "To which everyone in New York said, 'Quick, turn off the lights and pretend we're not home!'" Colbert joked — and that Ivanka insisted to economic adviser Gary Cohn after her father refused to condemn white supremacists in Charlottesville that "my dad's not a racist; he didn't mean any of it," and "that's not what he said." That sounded familiar to Colbert: "Wow, she's flat-out denying her father said the thing her father said on tape. I guess the Tim Apple doesn't fall far from the tree." Watch below. Peter Weber