Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, the most prominent Jews in Donald Trump’s family, categorically refused to demonstrate support for him as he floundered after Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, according to a new book by magazine writer Michael Wolff.
Wolff is known for his rollicking, literary style and speedy execution of political stories. His latest, “All or Nothing,” came out this week, just months after the events it chronicles during Trump’s victorious 2024 presidential campaign.
The book focuses on the campaign’s roller-coaster ride from post-Jan. 6 dejection to victory, with a heavy emphasis on Trump’s legal travails during that time. There are plenty of Jewish vignettes along the way, with Trump’s Jewish advisor Boris Epshteyn bookending the story.
Here are five Jewish tidbits to know from Wolff’s reporting.
- Trump’s team tried to convince him not to compare himself to a victim of the Nazis. After he was indicted on federal conspiracy charges, Trump said he was being persecuted as the Nazis had persecuted their victims — a comparison that earned him scorn from American Jewish groups. Wolff reports that Trump was fixated on the idea, writing, “The entire political team, along with panicky lawyers, tried to talk him out of the Nazi references, but Trump was adamant.”
- Trump did not enjoy his meetings with Miriam Adelson, the casino magnate who has picked up where her late husband Sheldon left off in bankrolling Republican candidates. “She is so boring. She just goes on and on,” Wolff quotes him as saying, later adding that he believed Adelson was lying to him about her plan to support him. Trump ultimately got more than $100 million from Adelson — and she ended up with proximity to the president at his inauguration.
- Kushner and Ivanka Trump distanced themselves from Trump and his campaign after Trump’s 2020 election loss, moving to Miami and focusing, for Kushner, on business deals. (“It was a Trumpworld joke that Jared was a wholly owned entity of the House of Saud,” Wolff writes.) Trump’s Jewish daughter and son-in-law, they declined to support Trump or sign a statement that he was not antisemitic after Oct. 7, when Trump initially lambasted Israeli leadership for allowing the attack on Israel to take place. (Trump was annoyed that the attack on Israel distracted from his campaign, Wolff writes.) “No, Ivanka and I aren’t going to do that. We’re not going to go and put our name on something and get in the middle of things,” Kushner said, according to Wolff. “That’s just not what we’re going to do this time.”
- Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said during the campaign season, as Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris considered him as a running mate, that Trump was “obsessed” with him. Wolff suggests that that was true. “If putting Shapiro on the ballot gave Harris Pennsylvania, Trump was convinced, he’d lose the election,” he writes, later adding that Trump and his team also came to believe what many others did — that Shapiro might prefer to run solo for the presidency in 2028 than leave his position and risk losing in the number-two slot. Ultimately, Harris chose Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz — and Shapiro remains popular in Pennsylvania, which Trump won by nearly two percentage points along with every other swing state.
- After Rep. Mike Johnson made a triumphant visit to Columbia University to denounce the pro-Palestinian student encampment there last spring, the speaker of the House urged Trump to do the same but was rebuffed. “No students, no students!” Trump reportedly said, in line with his political strategy, Wolff writes, of only appearing in front of admiring audiences. Since being sworn in, Trump has signed an executive order vowing to crack down on colleges that allow antisemitism to flourish and deport foreign students who support terror groups.
