The Kushner-Trump Merger

This summer, I profiled Jared Kushner in New York Magazine. Two days after my piece ran, Jared and Ivanka Trump announced their engagement. This past Sunday, Jared married Ivanka at a “star studded” gathering, which according to People, included Russell Crowe, Natalie Portman, Barbara Walters, Regis Philbin and Rudy Giuliani, among others. The couple released an “official” wedding photo. Back in July, Ivanka told me: “Another thing that I think is incredible about him…is every night when he goes home, he works for about an hour and a half and return e-mails he hadn’t had a chance to return before. He’s just very diligent … Even when we first started dating, I’d call him at 6 [a.m.] when I’m getting up, and he’d be awake; he’d definitely be awake when I was going to sleep. And all Sunday he’s in the office.”

The wedding was largely a Trump affair, held at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. Tomorrow night, Jared’s parents Charlie and Seryl will hold their own party, a lavish gathering for more than 500 guests at the Puck Building, which Charlie bought in 1999 (In 2003, he leased three floors of the building to NYU at below market rates, just when Jared was applying to law school there).

You can read my profile of Jared HERE

And my extended interview with Ivanka HERE

The Fat, Filthy New Jersey Governor’s Race

Is being fat a political liability? That’s one of the questions I explore in the current issue of New York, in my a piece on the nasty New Jersey governor’s race between Chris Christie and Jon Corzine. Christie, the former US Attorney for New Jersey, is to put it generously, a large man. Corzine, who has been trailing in the polls until recently, has run a slate of television advertisements that show Christie’s unflattering girth. One ad even goes literal, claiming Christie “threw his weight around” as a federal prosecutor to get out of traffic tickets. From the piece:

Christie lacks the easy charm of a traditional front-runner. For one, he’s fat. In a state where dirty politics competes with the Jets as the favored spectator sport, Christie’s weight has become fodder during a race that has been intensely personal and nasty, at times comically so. “He looks hideous! And unhealthy,” says longtime Democratic state senator Ray Lesniak. “That doesn’t portray the discipline that’s necessary to lead this state.” This summer, the Corzine campaign ran an unflattering television spot that featured slow-motion shots of Christie’s massive gut after members of a focus group responded that they were turned off by his tubby physique. “They chose to run with the ad because people were appalled by his obesity,” one Democrat close to the Corzine campaign told me. In September, another Corzine ad took a more direct approach, saying that Christie “threw his weight around” as prosecutor. Comella says the ad “is clearly part of an overarching strategy to personally attack Chris Christie.” The Corzine campaign denies this. “The ad’s only purpose was to show how Chris Christie used his position as U.S. Attorney to get out of traffic stops,” responds Corzine’s spokesperson, Sean Darcy.

Read the full piece HERE