Jared Kushner's Rise to Unimaginable Power

JARED KUSHNER is more like his father-in-law than anyone imagines.

- Andrew Rice

Until very recently, and to all outward appearances, Jared Kushner was just another socially striving young businessman with inoffensively Bloombergian political values. But over the past year, something seems to have changed—in his beliefs, in his manner, in his relationship to his peers among New York City’s elite. On a frigid day in December, Kushner visited the Times Square headquarters of Morgan Stanley to address a private meeting that the Partnership for New York City, which represents the interests of the business community, convened to discuss the outcome of the presidential election. More than 400 executives, many of them CEOs of major corporations, crowded into the bank’s wood-paneled dining hall to hear first from Charles Schumer, soon to be the Democratic leader in the Senate, and then from Kushner, representing his father-in-law, Donald Trump, soon to be the most powerful man in the world.

“Jared Kushner is the man,” said Stephen Schwarzman, the private-equity billionaire, as he introduced Trump’s emissary. (This account is based on interviews with multiple attendees.) Kushner, the 35-year-old husband of Ivanka, Trump’s favorite child, sat in a director’s chair, wearing a gray sweater and blazer over an open-collared shirt and a pair of gleaming white sneakers. He still has a boyish mien and a polite, ingratiating manner. But these days, he carries himself with the assurance of a man who just received the ultimate validation.