In late June 2026, numerous social media posts claimed that U.S. President Donald Trump blamed his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, for "ruining his presidency" by tricking him into starting the war with Iran.
The posts spread amid U.S. airstrikes on Iran, while Iran struck Bahrain and Kuwait. Soon after a spate of strikes, Trump said the U.S. and Iran would meet in Qatar for renewed talks.
The claim spread on Facebook, X and Reddit:
(Facebook user "World Wide News")
There is no evidence that Trump said the above about Kushner. A search of news coverage about Trump's statements on Iran showed that he said Kushner advised him about attacking Iran, but he did not say Kushner "ruined" his presidency or tricked him into starting the war. The claim originated from an account that describes itself as satirical.
We found the earliest example of the purported quote on a Substack account called The Halfway Cafe (archived). Its description states, "The account is run by Dadaist graffiti news. Halfway true comedy and satire for your doomscrolling by Dash MacIntyre. I don't report the facts, I improve them."
MacIntyre is a comedian, political satirist and poet. Snopes has reported on his satirical content before. In an email to Snopes, MacIntyre said he originated the claim as satire to criticize Trump's leadership decisions and Kushner's dealings in the Middle East.
We searched for variations of the claim using Google, DuckDuckGo (archived) and Bing (archived) and did not find any reporting from reliable media outlets authenticating it.
While the above claim is false, Trump said Kushner advised him about attacking Iran. During a March 2026 speech at Trump National Doral Miami, the president said:
The situation was very quickly approaching the point of no return and the United States found it intolerable, in my opinion, based on what Steve, and Jared and Pete and others were telling me. Marco was so involved, that I thought that they were going to attack us. I thought they would -- if we didn't do this at the time we did it, I think they had in mind to attack us and if you notice they did something which was very foolish, very stupid, I would say.
Vanity Fair reported in 2017 that Trump blamed his son-in-law for giving him bad advice on an unrelated issue — specifically about the firings of Mike Flynn, a former national security adviser to Trump, and former FBI Director James Comey.
For further reading, Snopes has reported on numerous satirical stories by MacIntyre, including the fake claim that staffers said Trump's "terrible body odor" obstructs his agenda.
For background, here is why we alert readers to rumors created by sources calling their output humorous or satirical.