Steve Doocy has been among the only Fox News hosts to take the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort seriously. So Jared Kushner should not have been that surprised when he went on Fox & Friends to promote his new memoir and was met with the lightest of grillings about why his father-in-law was apparently keeping hundreds of classified documents at his private residence.
The interview began with Kushner saying that he was “just as shocked as most people were” by the FBI’s decision to follow a federal warrant and execute the search of Trump’s property, linking it to the “relentless attacks” against Trump during his presidential campaigns.
Then, after fielding another softball from guest host Katie Pavlich about whether anyone “can really trust the process here,” Kushner seemed taken aback by Doocy’s simple, legitimate question: “Why would the former president have that many classified things at Mar-a-Lago?”
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“So I’m not familiar with what exactly the contents were,” Kushner replied, distancing himself from his father-in-law before turning around to defend him. Then, continuing to dodge Doocy’s question, he embarked on an extended tangent about the “secret backchannel” he denies trying to set up with Russia during the transition period following the 2016 election and acknowledged that this is not the first time his family has been accused of committing “treason.”
“So I just think you have to be very careful with what you read and obviously just wait for the facts to develop,” he continued. “But there are so many things that have been hyperventilated about over the last years that turned out to be nothing.”
From there, Kushner steered the conversation back to his book with the help of Fox & Friends’ Brian Kilmeade, who was seemingly more than happy to rescue him from having to answer Doocy’s original inquiry.
“That’s again why I wrote this book is I wanted people to really understand what it was like to be living through that when you know you’ve done nothing wrong, you’re there trying to get good things done,” Kushner said, spinning as fast as he could, “and people are out there accusing you of all these crazy things and you have to prove that those things didn’t happen.”
“Right, and know that they didn’t and almost took you down,” Kilmeade added, practically finishing his guest’s sentence. “And knowing that you’re innocent you gave all your time and all those interviews and still had to wonder if the process would work.”
With that, Kilmeade changed the subject entirely, giving Kushner a chance to swipe at Anthony Fauci on his way out of public service. After implying that Fauci was more interested in defending himself than “getting things done,” Kushner gave Trump credit for doing everything he could to “save lives.”
