i wanted to comment on jared kushner and ivanka trump. ast i don't understand is far as the republican party is concerned, they have lost all credibility. the implicitly and hypocrisy of being the public and party is staggering. for a candidate such as donald trump to now be in the white daughter to have his and his son-in-law -- this is nepotism at its highest. and it is happening in real time. and right in front of us. it is like a slow-moving car crash happening. and it is staggering to think of calledlican party who themselves on the constitution and they tout themselves as being patriotic with america first and all of that nonsense but the man that they have as their spearhead in the white house, this guy is going to ruin the country and he is going to make nixon look like child's play. with what he is doing. i am just watching this and i am stunned. if barack obama had done 1/10 of what this guy has done in 60 days? i mean, it is just hypocrisy. it is mind blowing. host: thank you. the white house gave a statement announcing that iv

just yesterday priebus held a meeting wisteve bannon and jare kushner.he goal of that meeting is to get everyone on the same page. cnn's sara murray has more. >> reporter: as ideology cal battle reaches in the white house. trump's strategist bannon is facing an uncertain future and have become isolated in the west wing. >> we hope that as long as america stands for justice, then peace and harmony will in the end prevail. >> the move highlighting the fault line emerging between the national wing of the trump's white house led by bannon and the moderate crowd encolluinclu jared kushner. the president's decision to appear in syria. >> i now have responsibility and i will have that responsibility and carry it very proudly. >> it is an abrupt change of tone from trump on day one where he will rely on bannon to craft a speech and hammering home this message. >> from this day forward it is going to be only america's first. america's first. trump has grown frustrated with fighting with top aids. the relationship between bannon and juared kushner has grown strang

trump's son-in-law, jared kushner. the chinese ambassador has back door a relationship to mr. kushner. they have come to at least one clear judgment. mr. trump's washington, his is the man to know. we want to hear your thoughts this morning. we'll start with joe. california. line for.com democrats. joe, good morning. caller: yeah, good morning. his, to me, is just part of to, you rump's plan know, just create a fortune. you know, he's little by little family. his it's almost a form of a family o ligarchy. ivanka and jared kushner are worth 3 or $400 million or something like that. smells of a conflict of some kind of way. should bei think they watched very closely in terms of doing, in terms of their role as part of president trump's white house. i question their knowledge in terms of being in are. itions that they i just think they're part of donald trump's business empire. > let's go to peter in douglasville, pennsylvania, also on the line for democrats this morning. morning. d caller: good morning. i feel almost the same way as on there. t was just trump won't verify any of

is jared kushner the secretary of everything? whether you have hundreds or millions... we think you deserve the financial freedom to sleep like this at night. this is the new success story. and at t-i-a-a, we're with you. start today at t-i-a-a dot org. guests can earn a how cafree night when theypring book direct on choicehotels.com and stay with us just two times? spring time. badda book. badda boom. or... badda bloom. seriously? book now at choicehotels.com >>> jared kushner is a very, very, very busy man in the trump administration today. the president's son-in-law was part of american delegation meeting in baghdad with iraq's prime minister. also he likes diplomatic experience. the white house explained his presence this way. >> he has a team that he oversees and i think there is a lot of areas that he has been working very diligently on behalf of the government, on behalf of the president's agendas. >> i want to bring in jane ross, writ writer, daniel w.dresner as a professor of international politics at tufts university an

view to jared kushner.y the chairman of the joint chief of staff, joe dunford, invited kushner to take this secret trip to iraq, arrived unannounced. it's not just the generals. secretary mattis, nbc news learned has had several meetings with kushner that's here at the pentagon, as well as at the white house. and just to give you a sense of what kushner will be seeing, he's going to see a very aggressive fight. remember the fighting in west mosul is taking place in iraq, also in syria, some u.s. troops were inserted behind enemy lines last week near the dam. one quick note on this, there isn't that much air activity taking place today. there is heavy weather and sometimes that prevents the eyes and ears and there's a little less, as they say here, kinetic activity. but overall, the pentagon sees this as an opportunity to cultivate jared kushner, explain their perspective, and hopefully gain an ally on some policy discussions. guys? >> yeah, it's interesting when you hear words like "cultivate" and "gain an

how would jared kushner -- let's just be honest. he saw a fight or skirmish or a scuffle in a war zone, what would he know a to z? he wouldn't know. that's what the secretary would know. he hired a bunch of generals and we haven't talked about that. you're reporting in the "washington post," you said, the loony strategic disaster in mar-a-lago this week, the president meeting with the chinese president thursday and friday. it's one of the most important relationships the u.s. has. why do you say that's going to be a disaster? >> because everything that donald trump believes when it comes to foreign policy is that what he wants out of countries like china or germany or what have you is pledges of investment in the united states. he wants sort of shiny deliverables to say, i have reached an agreement where china will bring $5 billion worth of investment in and that will create so many jobs. the question is, what is the quid pro quo for that? what will china ask for that? i think there is genuine concern where you will see u.s. foreign

not saying that to jared kushner.f your reporting that the president is putting any pressure on jared kushner to find the solution to this relationship? >> my understanding is that he's told them to cut it out. he's sick of seeing this. the last week has become -- the tension was sort of building, but this week has been ridiculous and there are stories from both sides. >> give us the most ridiculous example of how ridiculous it has become. >> you have stories now of like steve bannon saying to the president i want to talk my skills elsewhere if you don't like me. anyone who knows steve bannon he doesn't talk like that. he doesn't say sentences like that. so whoever put that out there, it's not steve bannon would say. he doesn't talk like that. he's a much more blunt instrument. the president is frustrated. my understanding is there is going to be a come by yeah but who knows if this is going to work. >> i don't want to hear steve bannon singing. >> we're done with it for tonight. thank you both for joining us. >>> com

why was jared kushner in iraq, what's the point of that trip? >> well, i think that's the million dollars question, it was an unannounced visit came at general joseph dunford. we know he's been charged with defeating isis in iraq. we know the two were traveling together in iraq, what we don't know are some of the key details, any time a senior official visits iraq some of the key details are kept secret. the bigger question is that when there are visits like this and some details kept secret usually we know why the visits took place in the first place, in this case we don't know why jared kushner was in iraq, what it does show is the continuing descending -- of trump family members, we see on the ground is a convergence of all of those three things, primarily military operations, there are decisions being made by american generals every day in terms of how the fighting is going, so how does jared kushner fit into that? that's the question a lot of the people are wanting the answers for. >>> fighting harder than ever before, it might be jared kus

but a meeting with jared kushner has not been scheduled.im matt, a correspondent for the daily beast who has been investigating the trump-russia question. and julian edelstein. tim mak, the significance of the intelligence committee wanting to speak to jared kushner about this, how do you read that? >> well, it's obvious that the senate intelligence committee wants to talk to jared kushner about his contacts with the russian ambassador and of course this russian banker, sergei gorkov, who as you noted was a graduate of the russian spy school as part of the broader investigation into the russian role in the u.s. election and whether or not anyone in the trump orbit was involved in that russian interference or had ties with the russian government. you know, jared kushner is the person closest to donald trump who it has been publicly reported has had meetings like this. >> julian epstein, how common are omissions like this in disclosure forms? >> well, they're relatively common. so long as people voluntarily come forward and clarify in a timel

we see jared kushner's role expanding. he's been given new duties and he was in iraq just last week, kind of assessing the situation on the ground. so it -- what it seems to be if you read it, the president is taking a hard look at his entire team and assessing if they're in the right places. and if it makes since to have these two squaring o on whole host of policy issues allf the time. i can tell you, steve bannon isn't backing down from this. and if you talk to folks who are close to him, he thinks he's winning this fight. and as you point out, chris, he welcomes a good fight, a good one. he's the one using all of these war terms and throwing the bomb. he's not backing down. he's not intimidated by the possibility of being ousted, that's for sure. >> let's end by talking about the stakes here. you know all of this stuff, big picture, whether we go to war or not, wait until we get more aggressive. how we handle the situation in north korea. how we handle the future of obama care, the things people care about. they have q

michelle kaczynski. >> reporter: more than a seat at the table, trump's son-in-law and senior advisor jared kushner, seems to be at the head of every table at the white house from streamlining government in the white house to achieving peace in the middle east. president trump says jared is such a good kid, and he'll make a deal with israel. tonight, kushner is in iraq, invited by the joint chief of staff to see the situation firsthand. to get an update on the fight against isis, prompting this bewildered tweet from president obama's deputy national security advisor ben rhodes, kushner in iraq before the national security advisor or secretary of state, totally normal. but it's not just iraq, but the president appointed kushner on a list of other issues, including trade deals, communicating with china, heading up the office of american innovation which includes updating the entire government's technology structure and tackling the opiod epidemic crisis. >> he's very good at politics. >> reporter: he's held meetings with foreign leaders when rex tillerson was noticeably absent. today the president wa

jared kushner is a new yorker, and steve bannon has a different view. and when it comes up to issues on how to handle health care they have different visions, and so while yes, there are disagreements and a clash here, so much of it will be on the substance of what trump does. while trump was elected on broad ticket discussions, he didn't have a replacement. he said replace it with something terrific, it is up to bannon and kushner to replace it. and they differ on the specifics. >> well, i think people close to steve bannon told me what he thought were policy disagreements he has come to realize may be more personal than that. he does feel a bit kneecaped or felt that way maybe before the friday peace-making session that reince priebus organized. but i spoke to someone today who is not really on team bannon and they said you have to realize that steve, unlike other people like paul manafort, who was thrown overboard when he became too much of a problem, steve bannon, this person said, is close to this president. they do enjoy a close working relationsh

most importantly, jared kushner is donald trump's son-in-law and husband to ivanka trump. en they were getting married jared never knew it would lead to this job. >> jared kushner is at the center of another high profile diplomatic mission meeting with the prime minister in baghdad. >> the president son-in-law and senior advisor met with the iraqi prime minister to discuss the fight against i.s.i.s. and get a firsthand look at the situation on the ground. >> trevor: he has to fight i.s.i.s.? i mean, it's crazy, but to be fair, maybe this is opportunity worst idea. if anyone could drive i.s.i.s. crazy it's a new york landlord. that's who. ( laughter ) you're saying if we want to move into iraq we have to pay a broker's fee? forget it! you just open the door! 5%?! 3%?! ahhh! overseeing the fight against i.s.i.s. would be big job for anyone but kushner wouldn't reach that spot in the presidential standing if that were his only responsibility. >> he's also tasked with brokering peace from the middle east and president of mar-a-lago. ( laughter ) >> trevor: i like how they slid

tonight the head of planning for that event, getting the president in the game and prepped, is jared kushner. the 36-year-old son-in-law who today was in baghdad. you have written about him tonight. kushner has a singular and almost untouchable role in trump's white house. what do we need to know about jared kushner? >> well a couple of things. first of all, jared kushner's portfolio is sort of constantly, you know, expanding and ballooning at almost comical speeds. and he has taken on all these roles. but i will say the first role that we realized jared kushner was taking on, even during the campaign, during the transition, and certainly now in the white house, was that of sort of shadow secretary of state. he was the person when you would talk to ambassadors in d.c., and diplomats. he was the administration's point person for sort of several dozen prime ministers, presidents, leaders of foreign nations who wanted to get a message to donald trump. so he has no real foreign policy experience other than sort of what he has picked up on the fly. but that is a role he has been playing for a whi

jared kushner is not the answer to all of this.government the way it's supposed to be run is the answer. >> what qualifications does jared kushner have? >> that's a great question. i know many people who have had dealings with him over time. they say he is a very intelligent guy, considerable charm. he is a 36-year-old man who has not a stitch of government experience, who has not a stitch of diplomatic experience. and while that doesn't mean he doesn't have a fresh perspective that might, you know, have value to it, it does suggest saying he is the first person able to solve the israeli-palestinian conflict is the epitome of magical thinking. >> for someone with no political experience and no governing experience. you wrote in the piece said earlier of how important loyalty and family are to him. perhaps having, you know, key family members or key people around him, maybe that gives him some sort of comfort. do you think americans are at risk when the key people that interest r there, like jared kushner and ivanka have no experien

. >>> now president son-in-law jared kushner is on a mission to iraq. and the way officials in washington are reacting. z2bg6z z10mz y2bg6y y10my gave us the power to turn this enemy into an ally? microsoft and its partners are using smart traps to capture mosquitoes and sequence their dna to fight disease. there are over 100 million pieces of dna in every sample. with the microsoft cloud, we can analyze the data faster than ever before. if we can detect new viruses before they spread, we may someday prevent outbreaks before they begin. so we sent that sample i doff to ancestry. i was from ethnically. my ancestry dna results are that i am 26% nigerian. i am just trying to learn as much as i can about my culture. i put the gele on my head and i looked into the mirror and i was trying not to cry. because it's a hat, but it's like the most important hat i've ever owned. discover the story only your dna can tell. order your kit now at ancestrydna.com. [student] i can just quit school and get a job. [ex student] daddy's here. [wife] hi [dad] hey buddy [son]

for jared kushner for anyone advising the. the to go to iraq to make the relationships and for them to be able to put a face to the name from their end but most importantly is to get that update. >> there is no substitute, you're right, for being on the ground and seeing it with your own eyes. how do you think what he's doing differs from that of rex tillerson? >> he's not the secretary of state, but he is a senior adviser to the president, so when you're at a table and discussing what the right policies should be to battle iraq, battle isis in iraq, or battling isis in syria, or you're talking about isis' moves in the command and control noelds popping up in libya or the other terrorist groups looking around the map and you have groups like the hakani network or al qaeda, al shabab, talking about latah bombs earlier in the show. it's more and more interconnected and the more informed you can be. there's a benefits, it says a lot for the leadership of the other government and our foreign troops to see those surrounding the pre

one, jared kushner as you point out is tasked with doing peace in the middle east. then the other issue is that the bank is the subject of a very serious investigation by the department of justice as to whether or not they helped americans avoid paying taxes with regard to banks offshore. so the notion he continues to be the beneficiary of this business that he ran for many years, that is in business with the biggest bank in a country with whom he is going to be doing extensive work from a diplomatic perspective is quite surprising. >> richard, from an ethic's standpoint is that an issue for you? and now that both ivanka trump and jared kushner are both now white house employees do you see other conflicts there? >> well, the law does not require them to sell the assets, but if they don't sell the assets and they have not sold the assets in real estate the law does require they recuse from any government matter that could have any economic effect on those assets, and that includes anything that has an affect on the real estate industry, on the financial services sect

they go to policy, jared kushner has grown frustrated with steve bannon.u know, in terms of immigration too extreme a and jared kushner want to moderate the president in his view. of course, bannon believes that the new yorkers and the white house which also includes trump's top economic adviser who bannon personally despices and kind of wall street democrat. >> new york times argued in an argument of bannon and jared kushner. bannon says to jush scribnared . >> here is a reason of no ground. you are a democrat, there is he is accusing him of the worse thing that he can be otherwise than jewish or a democrat. >> so are you racist? they can go back and forth here. the real problem is not jared kushner or reince priebus. it is not them, it is donald trump. there is no core. donald trump over the years and recently had gone back and forth in many key policies. healthcare and abortion and middle east and military action and so he does not give strong reactions of ideas. it is never about ideas. it is just about him. it leads to this battleground where anybody

i want to thank jared kushner who has been so involved. i'll let you take over for a little while. >> jared, you know his wife is about two minutes away from having a baby so he's here. he's coming to aipec. where is jared? jar jared spoke to many of his friends from israel and we put it together with a lot of great people. >> does it give you any pause to hear him constantly i guess calling him out or maybe using him as a crutch? >> one of the underlying things here if i can go back to jfk, he went through the bay of pigs a few months after he was inag rated. it was a disaster. he listened to all these professional career people who got it wrong so thereafter by the time of the cuban missile crisis he was relying on his brother and his speech writer all of whom he trusted, but he felt they had common sense and that the bureaucracy had failed him. i think there are a lot of presidents who have that sensation so therefore they turn to the people that they trust. in this case it's jared kushner. >> jared was in the room for every meeting. qu

with regard to jared kushner, saying he doesn't know anything, i'm not speaking on jared kushner's we-but clearly he has accumulated some level of trust an confidence an knowledge inside the white house to obtain positions that he has with the president. if we then appreciate that jared kushner's is in the spot he's in, and because the president tieks-- takes family so seriously he's not going anywhere, in your estimation f you are prescribing something for this white house beyond what is in this article, are you telling the president then to limit his portfolio? >> i would say that if jared kushner were truly public spirited person, what he would do, if he wants to stay in the white house, obviously he has to separate himself much more fully from his own business interests than he has. then he would say to the president, you need an a-team here. what i would like to do for you is run a staff prog ses whereby instead of giving your china portfolio to me and the middle east portfolio to me, and the reinventing government portfolio to me, we bring in people who actually knew about these iss

we know jared kushner's father was prosecuted a few years ago. was a big democratic donor and he blackmailed his own sister's husband to avoid an investigation. and the prosecutor in that case was chris christie. multiple reports said that the reason chris christie was sort of moved out of considering in the administration was jared kushner seeking revenge. obviously i can't speak to that. >> how would that affect the administration? what would that have to do with anything? >> all i'm saying is if you're going to worry about revenge, there's already those stories coming out about kushner. in the case of steve bannon, steve is a -- >> wait, hang on. i'm just trying to get to understand what you're saying. you speak of bannon, you're talking about breitbart, which is a huge platform. which is also the alt-right. you said what about snit >> it's the anti-establishment. i've never used the term alt-right. >> steve sure used it. >> i'm just wondering how would jared kushner exact revenge from his father-in-law -- >> no, no. what i'm saying is there w

perhaps jared kushner might bring a new perspective.in mind we have a young speaker paul ryan who is close with reince priebus. paul ryan says he talks to the president almost every day and he was young ambitious. we see jared kushner coming up. i don't think necessarily being a novice in policy is a bad thing. if you look at who he is compared with. >> also talking about the relationship between the speaker and reince priebus. there's word that reince priebus may be on the chopping block with gary cohn kicked around to replace him. gary is a former goldman sachs player who has now come in to help helm the national economic council. back to the bannon and kushner thing, john. the word is that donald trump has said work it out between the two of you. they seem to be completely polar opposites. if you look at that picture. i don't know if we can show that full picture from inside the room. i don't know if we can get wider. we cut the two main figures we're talking about out. steve bannon is by the door near the military guy. their eyes ar

so has jared kushner. we know that. those are two facts. it imminent he's going to get his head chopped off? i don't know, i don't think so. there's been a bit of a -- we'll see how it goes the next couple of weeks. >> we'll be watching. thank you for being with us. >> thank you. >>> we're going to take a quick break. when we come back, we're not going to take a break, that was entirely me freelansing and looking for a midmorning snack. forget what i just said. the report in "the washington post" is taking a closer look at steve bannon and his, quote, multi-media machine and how it paid him millions of dollars. joining me is shane bodberg, thank you for being with us. most people know about breitbart, but, in fact, steve bannon's been in the world of media and profit-making media for some time. tell me about this machine and how it all works? >> reporter: yeah, we took a look at how steve bannon moved from hollywood and wall street into the arena of politics. and really leveraged the infrastructure that he set up on the west coast, combined

this is not the president and the leader that they hadhought they had hoped for. >> a win for jared kushnerare not aligned with that right wing of the republican party. and i don't think jared is aligned with it. >> he's aligned with the president, which i still -- >> let's play devil's advocate when we're talking about georgia and ossof who is running for tom price's seat. $8 million. but most of that is coming from outside groups. is that -- do they run the risk of raising a bunch of money, making a big splash, but having voters say i'm not going to vote for a democrat. >> this happens a lot in special elections. they get elevated beyond their immediate impact and sometimes they become national rooting contests for political junkies and for people who donate money because they don't have another game in town. so that's -- there's a possibility that locally that would be seen as intervention. >> where do things stand with the republicans in gres at the moment? we're on recess. everyone had been talking about health care, but that didn't make forward progress in the final days before recess

and then we've got jared kushner moving around on his own. then we have a statement department sitting over there waiting to be asked a question, maybe a translation. they're not being talked to. meanwhile the president where he meets foreign dignitaries, this is -- you thoughts. there's a lots going on. >> i could not have said it better, chris. the competence issues here are just enormous. it's unsustainable. i mean, you can't sustain state craft like this with jared kushner in charge of everything. the question of how do they coordinate with the state department, well, indeed. i mean if jared kushner is off meeting with the chinese and taking care of israel and palestine, when do they connect with the state department. is the state department in the loop on all of this stuff or not. >> i don't think kushner sets palestine. we'll figure that one out later, any way, thank you. >> it's going to be okay. it's going to be okay. >> very comfortable with his movement. by the way, it's all over the place. up next top level from north korea says he

with jared kushner, you get a different set of problems.usly, he's less ideological, he's not connected to breitbart. but he doesn't know anything. even more than that, the problems of public integrity become worse the more power the kushner family has. it was the kushner family that negotiated this $400 million -- a chineseigh state influenced bank. people in every day the kushner family are thinking about similar kinds of transactions. having the affairs of the u.s. the hands of people who don't know anything about them -- they are not children. they haven't bothered to learn anything. their idea of research is to go to amazon.com and google the titles of books. reportedly, if true. and the book you pick is one that nobody interested in the field would recommend you to read, and the advisor you select on that basis is someone with no concern about these issues, this is in its own way as troubling as anything you have with steve bannon. it may be more familiar and less shocking to the prejudices of people who cover politics, but it is real

, jared kushner said to -- sorry.on said to jared kushner, here's the reason there is no middle ground. you're a democrat. there he is accusing jared kushner of the worst thing he could possibly be other than jewish in steve bannon's mind, a democrat. >> well, i want to know if jared kushner returned the favor and said you know you said you were running a platform for the all the right which is part of a conservative movement made up of white nationalists. are you a racist? are you a white nationalist? they can go back and forth. i think the real problem is not kushner, bannon, reince priebus, kellyanne conway. it's not anyone. it's donald trump. they are trolling about because at the core of the white house there is no core. donald trump has gone back and forth on many key policies. health care, tax reform, abortion, middle east, you know military action. because he doesn't give strong directions about ideas because he doesn't have is a lot of ideas and because it's never about his ideas, it's just about him, he lead

jared kushner is a new yorker, he was a democrat before this. hard right, he calls himself a pop you list, a nationalist. they have different ideas. when taxation comes up, when it comes to issues on how to handle health care they have different visions. s, there is a clash they are. so much of it is going to be on the substance what have trump did. while trump was elected on changing things up, he didn't have any specifics, he said repeal obamacare and replace it with something terrific. >> people close to steve bannon told me over the few days what he thought were policy disagreement may be more personal. he felt knee capped maybe, perhapst before the friday peace making session that reince priebus organized. but i spoke to someone today who is not really on team bannon. and they said, you have to realize that steve unlike other people like paul manafort who back during the campaign was thrown overboard when he became too much of a problem. steve bannon this person said is close to this president. and he is really the biggest link in that whit

to stand out there and put yourself before the public, i mean, i don't know if i've ever heard jared kushnerublicly. frank, does this not put jared in a different position that he will now be held accountable if he wants to move out from the shadows? >> yeah. >> we haven't heard him speak publicly but make no mistake what you've been reading over recent days is jared kushner leaking to certain source, steve bannon leaking to other sources. we've had breitbart, which is affiliated with that -- >> leaking works for you. >> putting yourself in the hot seat where you have to be held accountable and answer the hard questions that's a lot harder than leaking. >> lot harder than leaking and if he wins this war he is accountable and people will judge him by the results. i don't know that he needs to be someone speaking publicly. we haven't seen him doing that or ivanka doing a lot of that. we've seen them instead going this other route. >> incompetence, stephanie. that's where we're at right now. >> okay. we're taking a break. fox news hires an outside law firm to investigate bill o'reilly after los

have this shotgun marriage of convenience where they both feel threatened by the influence of jared kushnerrrival of ivanka trump, that only -- in the west wing, that only can strengthen jared's hand and gary cohn's hand and it could be close to the end of the bannon/priebus era in the trump administration. >> gabby, what about sources close to bannon that tell nbc he's not going anywhere, he wants to be there to make sure the campaign promises have a chance of becoming reality. but there are votes on capitol hill -- or are there votes to make that a reality? >> i think steve bannon sees himself almost as the gate keeper of president trump's campaign promises and that is why he has dug in his heels and remained in the west wing, even as he continues to come under fire and is kind of in the middle of this ideological war with jared kushner and gary cohn. i think it was interesting what ben was saying about him and reince priebus becoming strange bedfellows, uniting together to make sure that they have a sense of job security if jared kushner pushes for one of them to be ousted. i do think th

you can see jared kushner's rise to power based on this syria decision. ell in trump's eyes it is going to continue to propel kushner upwards in the white house. as josh noted, bannon had a couple of failures with the travel ban and with the health care bill. now the decision has gotten trump a lot of positive attention in the media and in the establishment. and i think despite the fact that trump is constantly criticizing the media and the establishment he is desperate for their approval. so i think this week was a good one for jared kushner and we will see him exercise more and more influence in the white house. >> as he may do that here, josh. if the criticisms remain, donald trump will lose his quote, unquote base, his nationalist base as he moves down this road. if you look at jared can kushner and ivanka trump, this white house will become more moderate. >> maybe. in terms of losing the nationalist base, you see some of the alt-right die hards were upset about the syria attack. they wanted a more isolationist policy. they see this as a project for th

. >> you mentioned jared kushner has a team working with him. help us understand what's in the portfolio and who is on the team? >> he's announced the office of american innovation the other day. we named a bunch of those folks that have been part of that team. he works with different people in the white house that oversee different parts of that portfolio. whether that's part of the team doing the middle east who has won things. there's people part of the team that are talking about the office of american innovation that he's discussed last week with respect to opioid use and others. so there's a team depending on the subject that is working with him and he's providing oversight and direction. >> so he's overseeing teams handling these dumpbt issues. there's mexico, canada, palestine, iraq. >> on iraq, don't go too far there. he was invited by the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. to e see the work that's being done there firsthand. i don't think let that translate into seeing iraq. he was invited to go see something by the chairman of the

it matters whether this is steve bannon's white house or whether jared kushner and cohn and ivanka and powell and that group are helping inside the white house. the difference is bannon will say to people, it's my vision, my white house. jared and ivanka trump and gary cohn will say it's donald trump's white house. bannon does think he create the donald trump. >> that's the fascinating story, the continuing topic we witness every day, human nature. human nature reading the lines of steve bannon or in between the lines of every steve bannon story, you clearly have a man here who thinks he created a presidency. >> by the way, just going to stop you here for one second. the trump people, including the president of the united states, can tell you to the day how many days steve bannon has been around. they give you the number of the day that steve bannon has been around. they tell you exactly when the mercers came in. all these johnny-come-latelies that created donald trump, donald trump and everyone around donald trump will say steve bannon created me, he was around for -- then they will g

in the white house he trusts jared kushner. it's not as much as having a son-in-law give him advice as much as a senior advisor. >> well, what is his son-in-law -- hold on. if it's not his son-in-law, if it's a senior advisor he trust, what does jared kushner know about iraq or peace in the middle east or negotiating with mexico or china? >> first off, you know, you surround yourself with experts on all -- you have a cabinet and secretaries all have their lane of expertise. >> what is jared's expertise in terms of being in iraq right now. >> as far as him being in iraq, i've taken this trip where last time i went to iraq was december of 2015. and when you meet it with the ambassadors, the iraqi leadership, you meet with our military commanders, you get briefed on the developments of the iraqi counterterrorism, the latest in taking back mosul and efforts to push isis out of iraq, we need to form a coalition government. and the relationships with surrounding countries like iran or turkey, and the kurds both in iraq and syria as w

this morning because we've had a series of falls and failures from this white house of perhaps jared kushnerus. >> they're looking to jared to fix everything and i don't know he has the experience and work to come into the white house and do that. he doesn't have a considerable amount of experience in government and so it's interesting to see that they're putting this all on jared. i don't think they should pin all their hopes on him because he doesn't have all the experience. there are questions concerning russia that tie direct loo to jared. he's going to come before the senate and house committees to answer questions about his relations with the russian ambassador. there's a dark cloud over everything that's going on because the election may be over but the investigation into what happened in the election is not over. it's just beginning. >> i guess what we're seeing if this is correct here, ed, that president trump is turning to the folks he trusts most. jared kushner, his son-in-law and to his daughter ivanka at the moment. if he's doing that, how much are they floundering. as we saw, h

and jared kushner's royalties here, this is from a financial disclosure.gain, we only know this because of the rules that force them to come out, $1 to $5 million in rent or royalties. and finally, what the ethics committee says we should do about this. what should be done? richard paynor, a former bush ethics lawyer, says on trade, tax reform and wall street deregulation, all these under ethics rules, neither of the family members should advise the president on them. we don't know if they will voluntarily comply with the counsel. that's something people debate. but we are certainly learning about more of the money and the potential conflicts based on these disclosures. >> well, let me ask you about this, ivanka and jared remain as beneficiaries to kushner's family real estate business. valued at $741 million. now, she resigned from the day-to-day management of her fashion brand, but she transferred assets from her business to a trust where she's the sole beneficiary and it is managed by her in-laws. and she has a stake in the trump international hotel her

but now in office you see him ceding so much control to his son-in-law, jared kushner. >> what's kushner's strength except blood, almost blood, married to the president's daughter? what's his strength over his president? >> i think he sort of doesn't get out over his skis. he keeps it very close to the vest. but he's sort of the power broker in the west wing. i think what you have with bannon, bannon didn't like this attack, didn't want to do it. but i don't think he spoke up all that strongly. he's pushed back on our questions to him about, you know, we hear that you didn't want to do this. he said, no, that's not true. >> of course they say that. >> but he doesn't have the juice in the administration right now to pick this fight. >> he was downgraded. he had his epilets off, you're not sitting in on the meetings, whereas kushner is right there at the big table all the time. >> i wouldn't overread too much into that because kushner was always having a seat at the table there in the cabinet room. bannon was usually in the shadows. >> wait a minute. bannon was wrong on this fight. jared kus

thank you for your time today. >>> the growing divide with jared kushner's star rising. are steve bannon's days numbered? next, a sense of what's happening to the president's inner circle. customers. who's with me? we're like a basketball team here at ally. if a basketball team had over 7... i'm in. 7,000 players. our plays are a little unorthodox. but to beat the big boys, you need smarter ways to save people money. we know what you want from a financial company and we'll stop at... nothing to make sure you get it. one, two... and we mean nothing. ♪ ♪ (i wanted him to eat healthy., so i feed jake purina cat chow naturals indoor, a nutritious formula with no artificial flavors. made specifically for indoor cats. purina cat chow. nutrition to build better lives. we've done well in life, with help from our advisor, we made it through many market swings. sure we could travel, take it easy... but we've never been the type to just sit back... not when we've got so much more to give when you have the right financial advisor, life can be brilliant. ameriprise >>> the trump admi

that includes 36-year-old jared ca kushner, husband of ivanka, a son-in-law he prizes like a fine piecejewelry. >> he went to jared. >> he goes to jared a lot despite his lack of experience in diplomacy and politics, kushner is now one of the most important people in the country. at the table during a briefing on u.s. military strike, as well as serving as senior adviser in the white house, overhauling federal government as head of new white house office of american innovation and acting as a shadow diplomat. when trump needed an aide to go on high-profile mission to baghdad to meet iraqi minister and discuss isis he didn't go to secretary of state, he went to -- >> he went to jared. >> when he needed trustee adviser, mar-a-lago trip, working with senators on justice reform, reimagine affairs and solve the nation's opioid crisis -- >> he went to jared. >> when he needed someone to broker peace in the middle east he said this about kushner the night before the inauguration. >> he's great. if you can't produce peace in the middle east, nobody can. >> what makes kushner qualified to solve

jared kushner is a democrat. steve bannon is maybe a republican, but he's mostly a disrtoon the right. then you have others as well. it does create for a different kind of white house than we've probably ever seen, but out of that, the president hopes to get diverse opinions and advice and hopefully it leads to good decisions. >> how do you work, though, matt, when somebody is a democrat and somebody else is not really a republican or whatever steve bannon ultimately is, an economic nationalist. these are not just competing idealogies, those are idealogies in direct conflict with each other. how do you run a white house like that? >> katy, it's a great question, and a lot of us looked at the creation of the white house staff and wondered how this was going to work. when you win a white house, you're so much fighting the bureaucracy which tends to lean left, and usually you're unified politically with the political jobs fighting the bureaucracy. what we have in the trump administration is real conflict at the poli

is it the jared kushner wing or is it the steve bannon wing? hat emerges as the stronger force on president trump? >> you knowed old add damage blood is thicker than water. whale jared is not technically blood, he's married to blood. if steve bannon wants to stay in that white house, he has to figure out how to co-exist with jared kushner. jared kushner is not the one to figure out how to co-exist with steve bannon. ultimately, that's the issue here. it's about more steve bannon figures out if he down plays the public persona can he still win the influence of president trump over time. does he have the patience to keep his powder dry to be there? as we know, he gets tired of ar aides every now and then, or do you stay in the outer circle and hope you get brought back in? corey lewandowski has found his way to stick around. so bannon's got to figure out a way to co-exist with jared kushner. >> chuck todd, thank you as always on "meet the press" where chuck will be joined by u.s. ambassador to the u.n. nikki haley who had very strong words this we