While he’s not on the level of his famous father-in-law Donald Trump, Jared Kushner remains a very controversial figure. During Trump’s time in the White House, Kushner acted as a Senior Advisor to the president along with his wife, Trump’s daughter Ivanka.
Regardless of how you feel about Kushner, though, it’s difficult to not sympathize with him in recent days. That’s because Kushner, 41, recently revealed he had a secret fight with cancer while working in the White House, one that he even tried to keep secret from Donald Trump himself!
Jared Kushner’s surprise cancer announcement
Jared Kushner’s cancer diagnosis may be news to us, but it’s nothing new. In fact, he was diagnosed with thyroid cancer way back in 2019.
For a variety of reasons, Kushner chose to keep the diagnosis a secret. But the news came to light in excerpts published from his upcoming book Breaking History: A White House Memoir, set for release on August 9, 2022.
According to The New York Times, Kushner explains in his memoir that he wanted to keep his diagnosis a secret. “This was a personal problem and not for public consumption.”
Considering that a memoir helps turn much of his life into something “for public consumption,” It seems the reclusive Kushner decided to open up about one of the most harrowing times of his life.
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Details about Kushner’s cancer diagnosis
In his memoir via The New York Times, Kushner writes about getting the news that he had thyroid cancer in October 2019. “On the morning that I traveled to Texas to attend the opening of a Louis Vuitton factory, White House physician Sean Conley pulled me into the medical cabin on Air Force One.”
The doctor dropped the news that nobody wants to hear. “‘Your test results came back from Walter Reed,’ he said. ‘It looks like you have cancer. We need to schedule a surgery right away.’”
Kushner writes that they were able to catch the cancer “early.” Nonetheless, treating it involved removing a “substantial part” of his thyroid, and he was warned his voice could become damaged by the procedure.
Kushner tried to keep his cancer secret from Donald Trump
Once Kushner got the cancer diagnosis, he knew that he needed to act quickly to take care of it. There was just one problem: he would need to recover after surgery. And since he had one of the most important and powerful jobs in the world, he wanted to miss as little work as humanly possible.
The New York Times notes that in his memoir, Kushner laid out his fairly elegant solution to this problem. He scheduled his surgery for the day before Thanksgiving. “That way, I would miss the least amount of time in the office. My absence might even go unnoticed. That’s how I wanted it,” Kushner writes.
The “unnoticed” part is very important. Kushner not only wanted to keep his cancer secret from the public, he wanted to keep it secret from the president as wel! At the time of his diagnosis, Kushner immediately told his doctor, “Please don’t tell anyone — especially my wife or my father-in-law.”
When the day of the surgery arrived, he had already disclosed everything to Ivanka. He hadn’t told President Trump… but that doesn’t mean the president didn’t have ways of finding out.
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How Donald Trump found out about Kushner’s cancer
According to The New York Times, Kushner did his best to keep his diagnosis and his surgery as secret as possible. As he writes in the memoir, “I didn’t tell anyone at the White House—including the president.”
It’s not immediately clear why Kushner wanted to keep everything a secret from Donald Trump.Since Trump likes for himself and his family to appear strong, Kushner may have simply wanted to keep the appearance of weakness away from Trump entirely.
Regardless of Kushner’s motivations, he wasn’t successful. Kushner writes, “The day before the surgery, Trump called me into the Oval Office and motioned for his team to close the door.” Then he asked a simple question. “Are you nervous about the surgery?”
In turn, Kushner asked the obvious question: how did he know?
“I’m the president. I know everything,” Trump responded. After that, the typically gruff president showed his softer side, saying he respected Kushner’s desire for secrecy before reassuring him.
“I understand that you want to keep these things quiet. I like to keep things like this to myself as well. You’ll be just fine. Don’t worry about anything with work. We have everything covered here.”
Ultimately, the surgery was a success, and Kushner appears to be in good health now. Once his memoir goes on sale, we can look forward to learning more secrets about his life and his family.