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You’re probably not surprised to learn that Jared Kushner enjoys Apple design. The Cupertino company does make some fine-looking hardware! But would you guess that the Trump suck-up actually buys expensive MacBooks just so he can install Windows on them?


It’s true. At least, it was a few years ago when Gawker’s founding editor, Elizabeth Spiers, inherited Kushner’s laptop at The New York Observer, when she took a job as the paper’s editor-in-chief. Spiers explains the experience bluntly in a Washington Post column published Thursday:

The computer was a recent-model Mac, but when I turned it on, it was inexplicably running Windows. I summoned our beleaguered IT guy to explain, and he informed me that it had belonged to Kushner, who liked the design of Apple products but preferred the Windows OS. “So he was basically using a $2,500 desktop as a monitor?” I said. The IT guy shrugged.


Actually, it’s a metaphor for the paralyzing combination of vanity and ineptitude that defines Kushner as a human being. (Spiers does a really great job of making this point in about 2,000 words, all of which you should read.) While the $2,500 monitor analogy doesn’t make perfect sense, the idea that a rich kid from Manhattan inherited his family’s real estate empire and then bought a newspaper for the fun of it, only splurge on unnecessary gadgets and fire staffers in order to make the business appear more successful than it actually is, well, it’s all horrifying.

Jared Kushner is now a senior advisor to Donald Trump, his father-in-law, and recently took on the perplexing task of making the government run more like a business. Kushner, as Spiers points out, has never been a successful businessman outside of his family’s real estate dynasty. One could even argue that he hasn’t even been successful at that, if the botched development of 666 Fifth Avenue is indicative of his capabilities. A few days after Trump’s election, Kushner also threw in the towel at The Observer, shuttering the print edition and putting the digital edition up for sale.

But back to running Windows on a MacBook. This is something plenty of people do for a variety of reasons. Those reasons are often utilitarian in practice. For instance, developers might want to see how their code runs on both operating systems without changing machines. Business types might prefer macOS but need to run a piece of software that’s only available on Windows. To pay the steep price for a MacBook only because you like how it looks is just ridiculous, though. You can buy a Windows laptop for a fraction of the price, one that might even outperform a MacBook Pro.

Obviously, Jared does what Jared wants to do. The 36-year-old likes to compare himself to a young John F. Kennedy, which almost makes sense if you simply focus on the nepotism that enabled him to rise to a position of power. In truth, Kushner has a lot more in common with his fried yam of a father-in-law. Both men are vain. Both men are incompetent. Both men love Ivanka Trump. Both men are trying to ruin this country. The similarities are uncanny, really.


[The Washington Post]