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Deny, Distract, Blame: The Rhetoric of Jared Kushner’s “The Donald Trump I Know”
Background
Jonathan Swan’s recent interview with Jared Kushner made headlines when Kushner denied allegations that his father-in-law is a racist, but sidestepped the interviewer’s citing of specific racist incidents (transcript / commentary).
In his 2016 editorial, “The Donald Trump I Know,” in The New York Observer, a weekly newspaper which he then published, Kushner also responded evasively to “An Open Letter to Jared Kushner, From One of Your Jewish Employees” by Observer reporter Dana Schwartz, who asked Kushner to address attacks on her by Trump supporters after Schwartz tweeted that a Trump campaign ad contained anti-Semitic imagery.
But in his editorial, Kushner had a more complex goal than simply to avoid criticism. What at first seems like a defensive response is anything but defensive.
Audience
Kushner characterizes his audience by contrasting them with two other groups:
I tell people that Donald Trump is a Rorschach test. People see in him what they want to see — if they dislike his politics, they might see other things they dislike, such as racism. If they like his politics, they might imagine they’re hearing “dog whistles.” He will touch subjects politicians…
