Former President Donald Trump nearly fired his daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner -- via a tweet -- according to an upcoming book about the 45th president's administration.
Quoting from an advanced copy of Maggie Haberman's "Confidence Man: The Making of Donald Trump and the Breaking of America," CNN said Trump complained that Kushner "sounds like a child," when the 41-year-old adviser to the former president spoke publicly about testifying before Congress in 2017. The book reportedly notes that this was just one instance in which Trump spoke about Kushner in an unflattering fashion.
He reportedly considered announcing on Twitter that Kushner and Ivanka, who both served in the Trump administration, would be leaving the White House. Trump was talked out of unceremoniously dumping the pair by White House counsel Don McGahn and John Kelly, who was the second of four chiefs of staff to serve the administration.
Author Ronald Kessler wrote in his 2018 book about the Trump administration that the former commander-in-chief made comments that Kushner came across as a child in interviews.
"Look at Jared," Trump reportedly told aides. "He looks like a little boy, like a child."
Kushner married Trump's eldest daughter in 2009. He surprised many by writing in a memoir released in August that while serving as a senior aide in the White House, he was treated for thyroid cancer in 2019. According to Reuters, Kushner said he was surprised by Trump, who told him him shortly before surgery to remove the cancer that he knew about the condition his son-in-law thought he'd successfully kept under wraps.
"I like to keep things like this to myself as well," Trump told Kushner.
Trump frequently announced staff shakeups on Twitter, sometimes unbeknownst to the people who were losing their jobs. One of those people was cybersecurity director Christopher Krebs, who refused to go along with Trump's false claim that he won the 2020 presidential election.
"I don't know if I was necessarily surprised," Krebs told CBS. "It's not how I wanted to go out."
The firings of McGahn, ex-chief of staff Reince Priebus, former Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjenm Nielsen, former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, and ex-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper were all announced via tweet. Trump was banned from Twitter following the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by his supporters.