On its face, the burgeoning bromance between Jared Kushner and Stephen Bannon, the incoming senior counsel for Donald Trump, seems to make for an odd couple. Bannon, a portly 63-year-old former naval officer from a blue-collar Virginia family who architected an “alt-right” media empire known for its rabid anti-Semitic following, and Kushner, a twiggy, soon-to-be 36-year-old Orthodox billion-heir from New Jersey who spent his youth surrounded by the liberal Establishment, were unexpectedly thrust together in the midst of a presidential campaign falling apart at the seams. One was recruited as a strategist just as Trump’s chances of winning looked increasingly dire; the other wed into his inner circle years earlier by marrying his eldest daughter, Ivanka, and is now taking steps to join his administration. Apart from the fact that they both passed through Harvard a good 15 years apart, the common ground between the two would seem like a piece of real estate too small for either.

But Bannon and Kushner, both endless strivers, appear to have understood just how valuable that real estate was. In the game of thrones that was the campaign, and now, the transition, the two perhaps saw value in publicly and repeatedly backing one another. Bannon had successfully steered Trump’s ship back on course and opened up a sea of new voters that helped him sail right onto victory; Kusher, whose loyalty to family above all else rivals Trump’s, breathed rarified air in his father-in-law’s orbit, knowing that his spot within the Trump family tree would likely keep him there no matter what. As other once-trusted Trump allies suddenly found themselves locked out of those gilded gates—including Chris Christie (a longtime Kushner family foe after he locked up Jared’s father on fraud charges a decade ago), Newt Gingrich, Corey Lewandowski, Rudy Giuliani, and Paul Manafort—Kushner and Bannon outlasted them all and remain two of his most important advisers as he inches closer to the White House.

Perhaps that’s why they have so many glowing things to say about one another. A New York magazine cover story on Kushner out on Monday is stuffed with Bannon singing effusive praises for Kushner. “For a guy who was a progressive, he really gets this grassroots populist movement in a huge way,” Bannon told the magazine. He explained that the two bonded over Kushner’s willingness to throw out the tattered political playbook—a plan Bannon very much agreed with. Their shared stance on the state of Israel helped, with the two reportedly working together with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government last month when Secretary of State John Kerry criticized the building of Israeli settlements as an obstacle to a two-state solution.

That fellowship has bloomed into a political brotherhood, as Bannon described it. “If you’re in a foxhole with him, and fighting with him, you’re a brother, and he will defend you nonstop,” he said in the interview. When Bannon was accused of bigotry, Kushner served as a character witness, defending him against those who question how he could work with somebody who transformed Breitbart News into a haven for racism and anti-Semitism. (Bannon has also been accused by his ex-wife, in court documents, of not wanting his daughters to go to a school with Jews, an allegation he has adamantly denied.) “All I know about Steve is my experience working with him. He’s an incredible Zionist and loves Israel,” Kushner said in an interview with Forbes in November. “He was one of the leaders in the anti-divestiture campaign. And what I’ve seen from working together with him was somebody who did not fit the description that people are pushing on him. I choose to judge him based on my experience and seeing the job he’s done, as opposed to what other people are saying about him.”

It is possible that this mutual admiration is real. It is also possible that they share nothing in common other than their shared desire for Trump to succeed in order to serve their own individual goals and intentions. But that, perhaps, is the strongest tie that could possibly bind these two, in particular, together. It’s that kind of unbridled ambition that lasting love, or partnership, at the very least, is made of. Just ask the Clintons.