Jared Kushner Behind the Scenes Role in Donald Trump's 2024 Run

Former President Donald Trump said last year that he didn't want his daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner, who both served as top advisers in his administration, involved in his 2024 campaign.

While Kushner is not formally part of Trump's campaign, he appears to be working behind the scenes to help his father-in-law win back the White House.

Earlier this month, The Washington Post reported that Kushner had helped arrange an interview with Univision, the country's most influential Spanish-language network, in a bid to court Latino voters, considered a crucial voting bloc in next year's election.

He was in the room when Trump hosted a trio of Univision executives during the hourlong interview, according to the newspaper. Kushner reportedly facilitated the interview thanks to his long working relationship with one of the executives, Bernardo Gómez Martínez.

Last year, Univision merged with Grupo Televisa, Mexico's largest TV network, creating TelevisaUnivision and elevating Gomez, a longtime Televisa executive, to co-CEO of TelevisaUnivision. Gomez helped facilitate the Mexican government's decision to award Kushner with the Order of the Aztec Eagle—the highest order granted to foreigners in the country—in 2018, Puck reported, and the pair have hosted each other at their homes.

"By all accounts, Kushner remains part of Trump's inner circle," Costas Panagopoulos, a political science professor at Northeastern University, told Newsweek. "Formally or informally, I expect he will continue to play a role in Trump's political endeavors until Kushner either screws up or says or does anything that smacks of disloyalty to the former president."

Univision's interview with Trump sparked a backlash in the Latino community for its friendly tone and lack of follow-up questions or pushback against Trump's statements, contrasting the network's past aggressive reporting on the former president.

Univision canceled a booking with President Joe Biden's media director, Maca Casado, to respond to Trump's interview and Biden campaign ads that were scheduled to air during the interview, The Post reported, citing unnamed sources. A new Univision policy bars opposition ads from airing during single-candidate interviews.

The network's shift to the right since the merger has sparked alarm among Democrats, who worry that Trump's unchecked claims could sway swing voters.

Newsweek reached out to the Trump and Biden campaigns for comment via email.

Jaime Dominguez, a political science professor at Northwestern University, told Newsweek that despite Kushner's efforts, the interview "will do little to mobilize Latino voters."

"As always, that will have to come from [get out the vote] efforts and on-the-ground campaigning," he said.

He noted that the "new corporate leaders at Univision, perhaps, may want to widen their audience and, therefore, are offering a platform for the GOP to compete for ideas that will resonate with the Latino electorate."

Noting that a majority of Latino voters are still registered as Democrats, Dominguez added that giving more airtime to Republicans "could also force the [Democratic National Committee] to sharpen their political messaging around issues that matter to Latino voters: the economy, health care, education and immigration."

Javier Palomarez, the CEO of the United States Hispanic Business Council, previously told Newsweek that Univision's "shift toward Trump should be setting off alarms" for Democrats. He said that the Biden administration is "tone deaf to the issues Hispanics care most about."

A Univision poll of 1,400 Hispanic voters in September found a majority (58 percent) lean toward voting for Biden over Trump, but that Trump is overwhelmingly favored to be the Republican nominee.