President Donald Trump is gearing up to announce a new White House office dubbed the White House Office of American Innovation, which will be led by his son-in-law Jared Kushner. Kushner is also a senior adviser to the businessman-turned-president.
According to a report in The Washington Post, Kushner will operate this new office within the West Wing and report to Trump. The office is expected to be filled with ex-business executives and is aimed at bringing new and fresh thinking to D.C.
“All Americans, regardless of their political views, can recognize that government stagnation has hindered our ability to properly function, often creating widespread congestion and leading to cost overruns and delays,” Trump said in a statement to the Post. “I promised the American people I would produce results and apply my ‘ahead of schedule, under budget’ mentality to the government.”
In addition to running the White House Office of American Innovation, Kushner will still play a big role in foreign and domestic policy and on personnel decisions for the president. He also will continue to serve as President Trump’s lead adviser in relations with China, Mexico, Canada and the Middle East, reported the Post. The report noted White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon won’t play a role in what Trump advisers told the paper will be an incubator of transformation.
According to the report, Kushner wants the new office to be viewed as “an offensive team” that comes up with non-ideological ideas that can attract top talent from inside and outside of the government and serve as a conduit with businesses, charities and academia, noted the report.
“We should have excellence in government,” Kushner said in an interview with the Post. “The government should be run like a great American company. Our hope is that we can achieve successes and efficiencies for our customers, who are the citizens.”
The new office will focus particularly on tech and data and is working with Apple CEO Tim Cook, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff, and Tesla founder and chief executive Elon Musk.