Sometime mid-Wednesday, Jared Kushner, the publisher of the New York Observer and the son-in-law of Donald Trump , took the rare step of penning a letter in his paper .

Titled The Donald Trump I Know, the letter rebutted a piece written the day before by an Observer reporter who was appalled by the Trump campaigns now-infamous tweet of an image widely criticized as anti-Semitic and by the nasty treatment she and others Jews have received online from Trump supporters.

Invoking his own familys wrenching history in the Holocaust, Kushner said the father-in-law he knew was no anti-Semite. How could he be, with a Jewish son-in-law, a daughter who had converted, and grandkids being raised Orthodox?

But Kushner did concede one small point. The offending tweet, he wrote, may have been careless a word he used twice. It was a rare expression of regret, even if he was copping only to an error in judgement and not, say, an act of malice.

Hours later, Kushner was knee-capped by his own father-in-law.

In an eye-popping speech Wednesday night , Trump made it very clear that he did not view the offending tweet as crass or anti-Semitic or even careless. If a mistake had been made, he argued, it was in taking the item down.

Yknow they took the star down, Trump told a crowd near Cincinnati. I said, Too bad, you should have left it up. I would have rather defended it, just leave it up, and say, No, thats not a Star of David. Thats just a star!