As their horizons have brightened, notably, their circle has tightened, whether by choice or not. In Sun Valley, for instance, sources at the time told me they mainly stuck to the “Murdoch wing” of attendees. Though they were invited to Google’s annual, invite-only retreat on the Mediterranean known as “The Camp,” they turned down the invitation (the event did take place the week after Sun Valley, a trip which sources said enraged fellow West Wing staffers). In the meantime, they focused on their agendas. Ivanka has spent much of the last few months meeting with 15 to 20 lawmakers to discuss child-care tax credits and the administration’s tax-reform bill. They’ve been hosting members of Congress and the Senate, Cabinet secretaries, and White House staffers at their home for salon-type dinners on issues like tax and criminal justice reform. Last month, on their wedding anniversary, Ivanka mingled at the Fox News party hosted by Murdoch in honor of Laura Ingraham’s new show while Kushner flew to Saudi Arabia. Two times in the last three weeks, she sat with two of the network’s hosts, Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson, for interviews about the tax plan.
President Trump himself has repeatedly reminded the couple of what a nice life they had in New York, before they were “getting killed” by the press in D.C., several sources have said. Their old life in New York, of course, no longer exists for them as it did. Many of their onetime friends stepped away from the couple as they jumped in head-first to support her father and his policies, and few have rushed back toward them. Kushner himself noted to Forbes after the election that friends or business associates of theirs had not been enthused by Trumpian values, though he called it “exfoliation” on his part of former friends who didn’t have “a lot of character.”
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