The Surprising Figure Behind a Potential Second Trump Cabinet

In an interview with The New York Times published Tuesday, Jared Kushner said there was “zero” chance he’d join his father-in-law Donald Trump on the last stretch of the campaign.

“We’re rooting for him—obviously, we’re proud of him. But, you know, either way, our life will just continue to move forward,” said Kushner.

However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that Kushner is done with politics or wouldn’t join Trump’s team in the case of a win.

In early October, journalist Michael Tracey asked current Trump transition co-chair Howard Lutnick who was in charge of advising the transition team. Lutnick couldn’t name a soul—except for Kushner.

“Jared Kushner is a big help to me … he’s absolutely helping me,” said Lutnick.

While Kushner previously said he wasn’t looking to return to the White House, he was heavily involved in sabotaging the 2020 transition and played an integral role in the 2016 transition team, alongside Steve Bannon and Mike Pence.

As Rolling Stone explained, “Kushner may be trying to stay out of politics publicly, but he is one of the few remaining Trump loyalists with first-hand experience on a transition.”

In an administration obsessed with loyalty, blood (even through marriage) is thicker than water.

MAGA is seething at the possibility of their wives voting for Vice President Kamala Harris.

This narrative took off after Liz Cheney urged women to “vote your conscience,” even if it meant keeping their vote for Harris a “secret” from their Trump-supporting husbands.

Over the last couple of months, there have been growing reports of grassroots campaigns reminding women that no one has to know how they voted. Post-it notes have been left in women’s bathrooms reading, “Woman to woman, your vote is private.” And a new pro-Harris ad from Vote Common Good this week featuring a voiceover from Julia Roberts shows two women at the polls sharing an understanding gaze as they cast their ballots for Harris while their pro-Trump husbands cluelessly egg them on.

This development has deeply disturbed MAGA husbands everywhere.

Perhaps no one better portrayed the MAGA meltdown than Fox News anchor Jesse Waters on Wednesday evening.

“If I found out [my wife] Emma was going into the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that’s the same thing as an affair,” yelled Watters, who cheated on his first wife with Emma, then his 25-year-old employee. “That violates the sanctity of our marriage. What else is she keeping from me? What else has she been lying about?

“It’s over, Emma! That would be D-Day.”

“It is so repulsive. It is so disastrous. It is the embodiment of the downfall of the American  family,” Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk said on the Megyn Kelly Show after seeing the Roberts ad. “I think it’s so gross. I think it’s just so nauseating.”

Conservative content creator Mike Cernovich struck a similar chord. “Unless this changes, Kamala Harris takes PA and it’s over.” It seems that the men of MAGA feel as entitled to their wives’ votes as they do their reproductive rights.

The leaders of the MAGA movement are apparently on a mission to sow as much election misinformation as possible.

Republican vice presidential pick JD Vance followed in Donald Trump’s footsteps on Thursday, elevating voting conspiracies to his more than two million followers on X (formerly Twitter).

“If you are in line, stay in line! If someone tells you to get out of line or to go home, take a video of them!” wrote Vance. “If you commit voter fraud, or try to deprive people of their right to vote, we will prosecute you!”

The Ohio senator was responding to another post made by Trump campaign director James Blair, who claimed that Democrats were illegally shutting down a polling station in Quakertown, Pennsylvania, based on a video in which an unidentified woman wearing a “voter protection” badge from PADems instructed a voter to speak with a nearby police officer about the station’s changed availability for obtaining a mail-in ballot.

“The reason why it had to close is because a high volume of people want to do this, it’s slow and grueling ... they had to cut the line at 1:45,” the officer can be heard saying in the video.

Earlier that day, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, officials responded to criticism over the long lines for mail-in ballots, writing in a post on X that all voters who had joined the line before 5 p.m. would be able to receive a mail-in ballot.

The delays are, in part, thanks to a law passed by the Republican-controlled state legislature in 2019, which allowed most Pennsylvanians to vote by mail so long as they filled out an application at their county elections office.

But that process can take about 10 to 12 minutes per person, Bucks County Board of Elections Chairman Bob Harvie told CBS News.

“It is a very cumbersome process. We don’t have limitless resources here. We have a fixed number of staff. We have a fixed budget,” Harvie said.

But the filmed volunteer, who was hounded by the Trump campaign’s far-right allies, did nothing wrong according to Pennsylvania law, which permits poll watchers to stand outside of registered polling places. Volunteers can also monitor from inside the facility so long as they obtain a certificate from their local county board of elections and don’t overlap with other poll watchers monitoring on behalf of the same candidate.

The Trump-Vance campaign has kept a sharp eye on Bucks County this week. On Wednesday, the ticket announced that it had filed a lawsuit over alleged voter suppression in Pennsylvania, claiming without evidence that Bucks County was preventing Trump voters from participating in the 2024 election.

Speaking at a rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania, the night before, Republican National Committee co-Chair Michael Whatley claimed that the Keystone State had been “turning away our voters.”

The campaign did not point to any instance in particular that led it to believe that voters had been treated unfairly in Bucks County, but county officials had observed that there were complaints on social media (shared by the Trump campaign) about long lines to obtain mail-in ballots on Tuesday, the last day of their availability.

But Trump chose to stoke the flames Wednesday morning, posting on Truth Social that “Pennsylvania is cheating, and getting caught, at large scale levels rarely seen before.”

If Donald Trump wins, the conservatives behind the Project 2025 manifesto have a plan to go after pro-Palestine activists.

The Heritage Foundation, a right-wing think tank, has crafted the “Project Esther” plan to go after what it calls the “Hamas Support Network,” Drop Site News reports. To these conservatives, organizations such as American Muslims for Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, and National Students for Justice in Palestine are part of the so-called network. Even more mainstream groups are also singled out, including the Open Society Foundation, the Tides Foundation, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

The plan claims that these organizations and pro-Palestine advocates receive “indispensable support of a vast network of activists and funders with a much more ambitious, insidious goal—the destruction of capitalism and democracy.” The plan to crush the pro-Palestine movement includes using counterterrorism and sanctions laws to overrule constitutional freedoms, including the First Amendment.

The plans would include deporting international students and others on foreign visas if they take part in pro-Palestinian activism, as well as charging people under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which requires people representing foreign interests to disclose their funds and activities. The plan also suggests using RICO statutes, typically used against organized crime, to help prosecute leading pro-Palestine organizations.

Project Esther outlines a series of steps: going after “propaganda” in schools, pursuing intimidation tactics to stop students from joining demonstrations, and restricting communication, coordination, and meetings between pro-Palestinian groups. The plan envisions a point at which most of the Jewish community and the general public perceive pro-Palestine groups “as a threat to their safety.” The whole process would be successful “within 12 to 24 months,” according to the plan.

The disturbing part of this plan is that many of its tactics are not new: They are simply escalations of what is already happening. The RICO act was used last year against people protesting against “Cop City,” a police training facility in Georgia, and the Biden administration declared a Palestinian prisoner solidarity movement a terrorist group earlier this month.

The plan counts many conservative groups, including In Defense of Christians, the Family Research Council, the Philos Project, the America First Policy Institute, Concerned Women of America, and Regent University, among its supporters. In recent weeks, several Jewish groups have distanced themselves from the project due to its conservative ties.

Democrats have been broadcasting Project 2025’s disturbing plans throughout the 2024 election campaign. Project Esther takes those plans further to target First Amendment rights to squash a protest movement in the name of fighting antisemitism, while promoting prejudice against Muslims and Arab Americans. Democrats should oppose Project Esther just as much as Project 2025.

Beatrice Keul, a Swiss former pageant queen, has become the twenty-eighth woman to accuse former President Donald Trump of sexual misconduct.

Keul told The Daily Mail that she met Trump in 1993 after getting second place in Miss Switzerland and participating in the Miss Europe competition the year before. She caught Trump’s attention, and he offered her an all-expenses paid trip to New York to participate in the Donald J. Trump American Dream Pageant.

Trump approached her at an event at the Plaza Hotel in Manhattan, and they talked for about 15 minutes. Afterward, one of Trump’s assistants told Keul that Trump wanted a “private meeting” with her. She went, and Trump allegedly “jumped” on her as soon as she entered the room.

“I was not prepared. I tried to do what I could to get rid of him. “He kissed me on the lips and on the neck. He tried to lift my dress,” Keul told The Daily Mail. “He was grabbing and touching my body everywhere he could.” She thinks that her height (six-foot-one) was what helped fend him off.

Keul tried to get Trump to stop by asking him if they could talk, and they did for the next 30 minutes. He asked to see Keul again, and she agreed.

“I was in a foreign country. I was scared that I could not go home, or I couldn’t come back,” Keul said. “I was scared of everything, and when you’re scared, you say whatever it takes to save yourself.”

Keul is the second woman this election cycle to come forward. Stacey Williams last week told the media that Trump had also groped her in 1993, with Jeffrey Epstein watching. The Trump campaign has denied both allegations.