Donald Trump’s biographer believes he knows who’s quietly influencing the president’s decisions in his war against Iran.
With Trump and his inner circle offering few clear answers about the thinking behind the attack on Iran, even Republicans are growing uneasy about what the 79-year-old president’s endgame is.
“He has consulted with nobody. Nobody knows what is going on. Literally zero,” Trump biographer Michael Wolff said on the Inside Trump’s Head podcast.
The author said the one person who may know Trump’s true aims in the war—and might even be charting its course—is not a general or Cabinet member, but his son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
“I think Jared Kushner knows what’s going on. I think he’s the only person truly inside Trump’s head,” Wolff said of Ivanka Trump’s 45-year-old husband. “I think he is the person who Trump most turns to on this, probably the only person Trump listens to.”
“If you wanted to say who is the brains of this operation, within the context of using brains in a very relative sense, it would be Jared Kushner,” added the author, who was granted access to the White House during Trump’s first term, when Kushner served as a senior adviser.
While Kushner did not return to that official role in the second Trump administration, he has become the commander-in-chief’s favorite diplomat along with fellow businessman Steve Witkoff. The two men held unsuccessful talks with the Iranian regime last week before Trump launched his attack.
Wolff argued that Kushner may be the only person truly in lockstep with Trump on foreign policy, having long understood—and delivered on—the billionaire president’s eternal motive: his own benefit.
“When you look at what Trump does, why he does what he does, it is always smart to look at what he can get out of it. What is the personal advantage to Donald Trump?” Wolff said.
Kushner has a track record of securing lucrative deals for the Trump family, most notably a $2 billion investment in his private equity firm Affinity Funds from a fund led by his friend, Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
Kushner’s ties to the Middle East go far beyond bin Salman. The billionaire, whose “innate ability to make deals” the president once gushed about, also has long-running relationships with United Arab Emirates President Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed and Qatari Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.
Despite Kushner’s significant personal interests in the Middle East, Trump once again brushed aside ethical concerns and sent him to meet Iranian negotiators for denuclearization talks in Geneva last month.
The author suggested that Trump is primarily fixated on deal-making, real estate, oil, and sources of capital, and noted that the Persian Gulf has drawn his attention for years.
“The UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, that’s the crescent, for Trump, of opportunity,” Wolff said.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the White House for comment.
On Wednesday, Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton told The Daily Beast Podcast he was “very worried” that Trump “hasn’t thought through the implications or laid the groundwork” of his ambitions in the war, which has already claimed the lives of six U.S. troops and at least 1,000 civilians, according to reports.
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