Jared and Ivanka fought to boot Mike Pence to save GOP’s 2020 ticket from defeat: Ex-Trump official

Tuesday, former National Security Adviser John Bolton's book will be released to the public. Advance copies have already been sent out and hardcopies have been shipped to hit porches. One tidbit of information included in the pages was that Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump did want to get rid of Vice President Mike Pence from the 2020 election ticket.

The conversation was being held around Christmas 2018 when Trump went to Iraq to visit the troops after he was criticized for never stopping to visit troops in war zones as his predecessor did.

"Trump also arose "early," although it was already afternoon Iraq time, and we spent a fair amount of time in his office chatting away because so few others were up yet. We ranged from what he would say to the Army and Marine troops at al-Asad and in the State of the Union address in January, to sending a New Year's greeting to Xi Jinping and whether Trump should get the Nobel Peace Prize," Bolton recalled.

Trump then also raised the issue of Pence, which was a "widespread political rumor" by then.

"White House gossip was common that Ivanka and Kushner favored this approach, which tied in with [Nikki] Haley's leaving her position as UN Ambassador in December 2018, thus allowing her to do some politicking around the country before being named to the ticket in 2020. The political argument in Haley's favor was that she could win back women voters alienated from Trump. By contrast, it was said, the evangelicals supporting Pence had nowhere else to go in 2020, so their votes were not at risk if Haley took his place. I explained it was a bad idea to jettison someone loyal, and that doing so risked alienating people he needed (who could stay home, even if they didn't vote for Trump's opponent) without necessarily generating new support because of the replacement. That seemed to be Trump's thinking as well."

At the time, Haley denied the rumors, saying Pence had her support.

“Certainly, there have been a number of people telling people in the White House, including the president’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and daughter Ivanka Trump, that Nikki Haley would be a politically smart choice to replace Pence,” Axios reporter Jonathan Swan reported. “So this is partly why a lot of these rumors have been circulating.”

Mike Pence's biographer reported "that's all real," nearly a year later during an MSNBC appearance in Sept. 2019.

“These are fealty tests, these are loyalty tests,” said journalist Tom LoBianco. “For some of them they feel it is incredibly demeaning of him, and it goes to this point of him playing the long game. He has to survive, you know, the talk … about Jared (Kushner) and Ivanka (Trump), ways to get rid of him. Politically, you need to bring back suburban voters and women.”

Bolton's book mentions Ivanka Trump just 17 times in the pages and Jared Kushner 57 times.