President Trump's business empire has long been a family affair and now his White House appears to be headed in the same direction. But what worked in building his personal fortune may not help his political fortunes.
Trump's old glitz and glamor brand has been repealed and replaced with a vaguely right-wing populist one. Whatever the advantages of the former in pursuing a mass television audience, it is the latter that got him elected president.
Like the old "Conventional Wisdom Watch" feature in Newsweek, the arrow next to son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner is pointing upward and the arrow beside top strategist and house ideologue Stephen Bannon is pointing downward.
Kushner has been pictured in Iraq wearing a bulletproof vest, looking like a Cabinet officer or even a young president rallying the troops. Bannon has been on the wrong side of some unpleasant public barbs from Trump.
Trump described Bannon in an interview with the Wall Street Journal as a "guy who works for me" while the president himself is his own "strategist." That follows similarly dismissive comments to the New York Post's Michael Goodwin.
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01.16.2025