According to individuals working with the Mexican government, Kushner served as both a source of comfort and a backchannel during a months-long process that was filled with threats of devastating tariffs and accusations that the country wasn’t doing enough to stem the tide of immigration to the U.S’s southern border.
Tapping on Kushner for clarity has become a semi-official policy in the top ranks of the offices of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard, those same sources same. One person familiar with the bilateral interactions said that senior Mexican officials had sought aggressively to cultivate Kushner as a primary contact and possible “good cop” since at least early 2017.
“The idea was always that Trump is an emperor that thinks he has clothes on but really doesn’t,” one source who directly communicates with the presidential palace in Mexico told The Daily Beast. “I think they’ve found that they can come to rely on Jared. The question is whether what they relay to him is making its way to Trump.”
