Jared Kushner says to understand Trump, study Alice in Wonderland's Cheshire Cat
President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner told author Bob Woodward that there are four texts a person should "absorb" in order to understand Trump, and one involves falling down a rabbit hole.
In his new book, Rage, Woodward writes that Kushner told him the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland can help a person grasp Trump's unconventional management style. "If you don't know where you're going, any path will get you there," Kushner paraphrased.
Woodward called Kushner an "ever-loyal cheerleader and true believer" of Trump, adding that "where others saw fickleness or even lies, Kushner saw Trump's constant, shifting inconsistency as a challenge to be met with an ever-adapting form of managing up."
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In addition to Alice in Wonderland, Kushner encourages people who want to understand Trump to read Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter; The Gatekeepers: How the White House Chiefs of Staff Define Every Presidency; and a 2018 Wall Street Journal column by Peggy Noonan, in which she calls Trump "a living insult" and "a circus act." Kushner wasn't trying to insult Trump with his reading suggestions, Woodward says, but "when combined," the four texts paint Trump as "crazy, aimless, stubborn, and manipulative."
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