CAN WE HELP?
Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner attend a press conference in the White House Rose Garden.
By Zach Gibson/Bloomberg/Getty Images.
If you’ve been wondering how Ivanka Trump and Jared Kusher spent their holiday vacation at Mar-a-Lago, we now partially know. While in Palm Beach, Florida, the couple decompressed from their political power positions, and the stress of the government shutdown, by venturing out to the local multiplex to see a movie.
The duo had an array of screening options. If they wanted to go light, they could have seen Mary Poppins Returns. If they wanted to feel hopeful about the next chapter of their lives, they could have checked out Jennifer Lopez’s feel-good comedy Second Act. If they were in darker moods, they could have opted for the gritty Nicole Kidman thriller Destroyer. But for controversial key figures in a highly divisive political administration, the couple went in an interesting direction, according to People—by seeing Vice, Adam McKay’s biopic about another controversial key figure in a highly divisive political administration: Dick Cheney.
Sure, it is a little curious why the president’s senior aides were at a Florida multiplex at all during a government shutdown. (Though Christian Bale really is great.) And if they were going to wait out their administration’s consequential political decision in a movie theater, why wouldn’t they at least pick a different film? Aren’t movies supposed to be escapes from our own dark realities?
But there is another intriguing detail to the report: “Partway through the showing, [Trump] and Kushner and their Secret Service detail got up and left,” per People. “It remains unclear what prompted the exit, though the witness describes it as abrupt.”
What was the reason behind the sudden exit? A source close to the administration confirms to Vanity Fair’s Emily Jane Fox that the couple did see the movie during their vacation, and did exit early—though close to the end of the film. So they could not have been upset by Bale and Amy Adams’s bedroom Macbeth monologue, which takes place about halfway through the film, or the split-second cutaway to a young Donald Trump. If they had been shaken by the portrayal of a morally bankrupt business executive pursuing his own personal interests inside the White House, they presumably would have left a little earlier in the film.
So maybe it was the gory heart-attack details that got to them? Maybe the early exit was just a security precaution. Or maybe there was simply an issue with the babysitter—er, two nannies—at home.
Vice is not the only entertainment project premiering last year that McKay used to hold a mirror up to the members of the First Family. McKay also executive produces the HBO series Succession, which was partially inspired by the trials of Kushner’s family.
“The show very much reflects our time—this whole idea of a generation of rich kids who have this sense of entitlement. We see examples of it every day in the press, particularly in relation to our POTUS,” McKay told Vanity Fair earlier this year. McKay wondered what Kushner’s family might think of that project of his, telling us, “Would they watch it and be like, ‘Oh cool, it’s us.’ Or would they watch it and be like, ‘Those sons of bitches, how dare they?’ My guess is they don’t watch it. I would love to hear a reaction from one of these families.”
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This story was originally published by Vanity Fair
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