Former White House trade adviser Peter Navarro is the second former Trump administration official to suggest that Jared Kushner is being dishonest about having thyroid cancer.
Kushner, who is married to former President Donald Trump’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, detailed in his new book, “Breaking History: A White House Memoir,” a private battle with thyroid cancer while serving as senior advisor to his father-in-law.
Navarro dismissed Kushner’s book as a work of “fiction” during an interview with Newsmax TV, and said the cancer claim was just another selling point.
“The thyroid thing, that came out of nowhere. I saw the guy every day,” he said. “There’s no sign that he was in any pain or danger or whatever. I think it’s just sympathy to try to sell his book now.”
An excerpt of the book said that Kushner “withheld a cancer diagnosis during tense negotiations with communist China.”
“As this high-wire act of trade talks with the Chinese progressed, I had to confront an unexpected and frightening personal problem,” Kushner wrote.
“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. ‘Your test results came back from Walter Reed,’ he said. ‘It looks like you have cancer. We need to schedule a surgery right away.’ The next morning, I told Ivanka what I knew. With as much confidence as I could conjure, I told her not to be concerned. Whatever this was, we would find a way to work through it.”
“With the exception of Ivanka, Avi, Cassidy, and Mulvaney, I didn’t tell anyone at the White House — including the president,” he added, according to Fox News.
Navarro was highly critical of Kushner, saying Trump would still be in the White House without Kushner (and Steven Mnuchin) being in the picture.
“Jared’s M.O. is basically take credit for whatever success we had, blame anybody when something didn’t work,” he claimed.
Last week, CNN’s Chris Wallace felt compelled to dispute the thyroid cancer claim, recounting a green room conversation he had with Mick Mulvaney, who served as former President Donald Trump’s acting Chief of Staff from January 2019 to March 2020.
“I was talking with Mick Mulvaney, Jared Kushner’s new book came out in which he says that John Kelly, the predecessor for him as White House Chief of Staff, shoved Ivanka out of the way,” Wallace told co-hosts Brianna Keilar and John Berman.
“He said that is inconceivable,” Wallace continued. “Could he have brushed by her? Yeah. Inconceivable that John Kelly, White House Chief of Staff, would have shoved Ivanka.”
The former Fox News host then addressed the cancer claim, “Mulvaney said ‘He never told me that. I have no recollection of it. And if he had, I would have remembered it.’”
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Tom Tillison grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills. Tillison also contributes to BizPac Review.
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