Jared Kushner says to understand Trump, study Alice in Wonderland's Cheshire Cat

Jared Kushner and Donald Trump.
(Image credit: Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

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."

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

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."

Continue reading for free

We hope you're enjoying The Week's refreshingly open-minded journalism.

Subscribed to The Week? Register your account with the same email as your subscription.

Catherine Garcia

Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.