Jared Kushner's Remarks About His Relationship With Ivanka Trump Are Very Revealing

Jared Kushner got candid about his relationship with Ivanka Trump in a recent political forum held by CNN.

In an interview with CNN political commentator Van Jones, the White House senior advisor, when asked about being part of a power couple with Ivanka, said, "Anyone with Ivanka would be a power couple. ... Ivanka is brilliant. ... Working together has given me an even greater appreciation for just how effective she is."

His fawning, even self-deprecating — "anyone with Ivanka would be a power couple" — comment makes sense in the context of other anecdotes about their power dynamics we've heard come out of the White House.

In Michael Wolff's tell-all Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, which we should take with a grain of salt, Wolff writes that the two had made a deal about who gets to run for president first, if it comes to that. "Balancing risk against reward, both Jared and Ivanka decided to accept roles in the West Wing over the advice of almost everyone they knew. It was a joint decision by the couple, and, in some sense, a joint job. Between themselves, the two had made an earnest deal: If sometime in the future the opportunity arose, she'd be the one to run for president. The first woman president, Ivanka entertained, would not be Hillary Clinton; it would be Ivanka Trump."

According to body language expert Patti Wood, author of Snap: Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language, and Charisma, Ivanka has over time seemed to emerge as the one with the upper hand in the relationship.

When analysing photos of the two from 2014, Wood says she's noticed that Jared didn't make a lot of effort to show his affection for her. "If you look at what's striking about all of these 'early' photos is how he's facing flat-out toward the camera and she's an 'attachment.' She's doing all the work of intimacy to make it look like they're a couple," she says.

But Ivanka and Jared's body language has changed in a major way. In more recent photos, they are on a more equal plane. "She's still slightly angled toward him, but not as much. He's more 'V-ed' toward her — they're more in a love 'V' position here, which shows more equality. His shoulder is tilted down to her, which gives her a little bit more power," Wood says about this 2017 photo (below), which was taken just as President Trump announced a travel ban on seven Muslim-majority countries and thousands protested in airports across the U.S., and thus widely slammed for being tone-deaf.