Jared Kushner claims in his forthcoming memoir that former Trump chief of staff John Kelly once shoved Ivanka Trump and later offered a “meek” apology for the incident.
Kushner, former President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and a top White House adviser, said in “Breaking History: A White House Memoir,” due to release in August, that Kelly had a “Jekyll and Hyde” personality and showed his “true character” on the day he allegedly shoved his wife, Ivanka.
“One day he had just marched out of a contentious meeting in the Oval Office,” Kushner said in the memoir, according to The Washington Post. “Ivanka was walking down the main hallway in the West Wing when she passed him. Unaware of his heated state of mind, she said, ‘Hello, chief.’ Kelly shoved her out of the way and stormed by. She wasn’t hurt, and didn’t make a big deal about the altercation, but in his rage Kelly had shown his true character.”
Kelly later went to Ivanka’s office to offer “a meek apology, which she accepted,” Kushner said, noting that Ivanka’s chief of staff Julie Radford witnessed the apology. “It was the first and only time that Ivanka’s staff saw Kelly visit their second-floor corner of the West Wing,” he wrote.
Ivanka through a spokesperson said the incident did take place how Kushner recalled in the memoir.
Kelly, though, strongly denied the account, telling the Post, “I don’t recall anything like you describe.”
“It is inconceivable that I would EVER shove a woman. Inconceivable. Never happen,” the retired four-star general added. “Would never intentionally do something like that. Also, don’t remember ever apologizing to her for something I didn’t do. I’d remember that.”
Radford told the Post that she heard Kelly apologize to Ivanka.
Kushner added in the memoir that Kelly was dismissive of Ivanka behind closed doors, but in public showered her “with compliments to her face that she knew were insincere.”
“Then the four-star general would call her staff to his office and berate and intimidate them over trivial procedural issues that his rigid system often created,” Kushner wrote. “He would frequently refer to her initiatives like paid family leave and the child tax credit as ‘Ivanka’s pet projects.’”
As reported earlier this week, the memoir also details Kushner’s thyroid cancer diagnosis and treatment, which he has never spoken about publicly.
“On the morning that I traveled to Texas to attend the opening of a Louis Vuitton factory, White House physician Sean Conley pulled me into the medical cabin on Air Force One,” Kushner said, according to The New York Times. “‘Your test results came back from Walter Reed,’ he said. ‘It looks like you have cancer. We need to schedule a surgery right away.’”