Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I think you did an excellent job of summarizing a lot of the context, but watching what's unfolded over the last 48 hours has been truly heartbreaking to see.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We're still in the early stages of what's developing, but seeing the images on X of militants, terrorists going door to door with machine guns and
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
gunning down innocent civilians, seeing beheaded Israeli soldiers, seeing young 20-year-olds at a rave dance party to celebrate peace with militants flying in and then shooting machine guns to kill people indiscriminately, seeing young children captive and held prisoner, seeing 80-year-old grandmothers, a Holocaust survivor, also being taken captive.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
These are just images and actions that we have not seen in this world since 9-11.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
This is a terror attack on the scale of which we have not seen, and it's been incredibly hard for a lot of people to comprehend.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
My heart goes out, obviously, to all of the families of the victims, to the families of those who are held in captive now, and to all of Israel, because one of the beautiful things about the state of Israel is that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
When one Israeli is hurting, the entire nation comes together.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's a shame that it's taking an action like this to unify the nation, but I have seen incredibly beautiful signs over the last 48 hours of a country coming together.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The Jewish people have been under oppression before.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The Jewish people know what it's like.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And seeing people rally together to fight for their homeland, to try to reestablish safety is a very beautiful thing to watch.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I wish it wasn't something we had to watch, but it is.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
With that being said, though...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The backdrop, I've been speaking to friends over the last couple of days.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I have one friend I spoke with last night who was saying that a good friend messaged him saying, I'm going in, we're going to do some operations to try to free some of the hostages held in one of the kibbutzes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Messaged him the next morning.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He was one of the first through the door to try to free these hostages.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he was killed by a Hamas militant.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And sadly, we're going to be hearing many, many more stories of brave Israeli soldiers trying to get these terrorists out of Israel, trying to free innocent civilians who unfortunately are risking their lives to do it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And they're all heroes, but some will have a less good fate than others, sadly.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So it's a very, very heartbreaking moment.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I do think that it's very important at this moment in time for the entire world to stand behind Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think that Hamas has shown the entire world who they really are.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think what their aim is, what they're willing to do, and all of the strong security that Israel's put in place.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
over the last years, which in some instances was criticized, I think is now being validated that there was a real threat that they were looking to deter.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So short answer is my heart is broken, praying for peace, praying for strength, praying for Israel to do what it needs to do to avoid being in this situation again, which is either eliminating or severely degrading Hamas's capabilities.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
There cannot be peace in Israel and in the Middle East while there is a terror group that is being funded by Iran that is allowed to flourish and is allowed to plan operations that are going to aim to kill innocent civilians.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so as somebody who was formerly in this position who.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I was intimately involved with Israel with the strategies to minimize attacks from Hamas and to try to turn the region around.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think we did do a very substantial job under President Trump.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The Middle East went from one of the most chaotic regions in the world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You had ISIS in 2016.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
ISIS had to caliphate the size of Ohio.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They were beheading journalists.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They were killing Christians.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They controlled 8 million people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They were planning attacks all over the world from their caliphate.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They were using the internet to radicalize people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We had the San Bernardino shooting in America.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We had the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And there was real threat.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then you had Iran, which was given $150 billion in a glide path to a nuclear weapon.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And they were using their newfound riches to fund Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, different rebels all over the region that were looking to destabilize further.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Syria was in a civil war where 500,000 people were killed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Yemen was destabilized.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Libya was destabilized.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it was just a mess.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And all of America's allies had felt betrayed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
President Trump came into power.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We rebuilt the trust and the relationships with all of our traditional allies.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We were able to eliminate ISIS, the territorial caliphate.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then we were able to project strength in the region, really go after Iran's wallet.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We were able to stop through crushing sanctions a lot of their financial resources, which they were using to fund all these terror groups.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so we left the Middle East with six peace deals and a fairly peaceful world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So seeing what's happening, I think it was completely avoidable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think it's horrible to see that it's occurring.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I pray that those in power will make the right decisions to restore safety, but also to potentially create a better paradigm for peace in the future.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think you did an excellent job, Lex, of really giving the summary.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Just a couple things maybe I'll add to it is that Hamas was originally founded from the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, which is a group that's caused a lot of issues in the region.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They've attacked Israel many times in the past.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
There's a lot of discussion about how Israel is an occupying power.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Well, in Gaza in 2005, they withdrew from all the land, and then they say Israel's an apartheid state.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Well, Israel then gave governance of the region to the Palestinians.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then what's happened is the Palestinian people's lives have now gone down, not up since then.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I will say that under Hamas's leadership in Gaza, the people who have suffered the most are the Palestinian people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I've watched cries throughout my time in government from people saying, we want to see the Palestinian people live a better life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I agree with those people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think that the Palestinian people in Gaza are essentially hostages.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
In Gaza, you have basically 2.2 million people that are being held hostage by 30,000 Hamas terrorists.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And that's really the problem.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I would just encourage people to push their attention and energy in this moment and their anger towards Hamas.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Those are the people who are killing innocent civilians, who are
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
murdering indiscriminately.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And those are the people who have held back the Palestinians from having a better life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And just finally, what I would say is, what we saw with Hamas was that if you go back to 2007, they basically had just one plan that they did over and over.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And we were very careful to try to monitor very closely and stop the Iranian money and the resources from coming in.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And again, we took a little bit of
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
criticism from the international community from keeping the border tight.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But unfortunately, every time you'd allow construction materials to go into Gaza, they'd use them to build tunnels, not homes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You would have equipment that would come in to build pipes, they'd turn it into bombs.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So it was very, very hard to figure out how do you get the resources into Gaza to help people live a better life, while at the same time, the leadership in Gaza was taking all those resources and turning it into military equipment to attack Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Sure.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So the correlation, I mean, there's reports that Iran is behind the attack.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Hamas has thanked Iran for their support.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it's been very well known that Iran supports the destruction of the state of Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I won't say Iran as a country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I'll talk about Iran in the leadership.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
There's actually a beautiful thing I saw on the internet where at one of the soccer games in Iran, they were trying to rally support for the Hamas terror attacks.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And a lot of people in the crowds were chanting FU to the regime because I think the Iranian people, the Persian people generally are peace-loving people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
who don't want to see this focus on destruction and annihilation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But you saw this in 2015, 2016, when the Iranian government had resources, the region was less safe.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And since now, there's been more resources allowed to go to the Iranian regime by lack of enforcement of sanctions.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And as a result, Iran is funding Hezbollah, Hamas.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They were funding the Houthis.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Now there's a little bit of a detente between Saudi and Iran, which has led to that going down, which only further
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Proves that Iran was behind the Houthis, which is what the Saudis had been saying for years and Iran was denying.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So there's a very strong relationship between the two.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And we always knew that the way that Iran fights wars or fights conflicts is never directly.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's usually through its proxies.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And in this case, Hamas has been a proxy for Iran, who wanted to obviously see the destruction of Israel, but also does not want to see the Israelis and the Saudis come together for a peace agreement.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
In actuality, I don't think any of it is, but the Al-Aqsa Mosque is something that all of the Shia jihadists have used for years in order to justify their actions that are aggressive towards Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
This is something I'll maybe even take a step back and go through.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
When I was working initially in my first year on the peace plan, I was doing a lot of listening.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And quite frankly, a lot of what people were saying to me didn't make sense.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And the reason why I was trying to figure out, they were talking about sovereignty over Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
After the temple was destroyed, then there was a big mosque built there, and it's one of the more holy places in Islam now.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So the big thing everyone was saying is, what do you do with this land where you have a mosque built over a very big Jewish site?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I was hearing all of the experts, and I always say experts with quotes because only in Washington can you work on something for a decade and continue to fail, and then you basically leave and are considered an expert.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But that's one of the problems with Washington, which maybe we could talk about later.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But the notion here was I went and I said, let me try to understand what the issue is with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the people, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I always felt the politicians were a little disconnected.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I commissioned several focus groups, one in Amman, one in Cairo, one in Dubai, and one in Ramallah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I asked people, Muslims, what is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict about?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Mm-hmm.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And time and time again, the most popular thing that they said was that Israel was not allowing access to the mosque for Muslims to pray.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And what was interesting was, is that Israel's policy is to allow anyone who wants to come and pray peacefully at the sites to come and pray.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Sometimes they have security issues when there's provocations.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But by and large, since 1967, when Israel...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
was able to take back Jerusalem in a defensive war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Just to be very clear, they were attacked in the south and they were attacked from the east.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And they basically were able to beat back the Jordanians and the Egyptians and then reconquer the old city of Jerusalem.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And during that time, immediately after Israel then passed the protection of holy places law,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
which was they basically took resources they didn't have, and they said, we're going to restore the Christian sites, the Muslim sites, the Jewish sites.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And they've worked to allow everyone access to the mosque.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So today, any Muslim who wants to come can come and pray at the mosque.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The mosque is, Israel's acknowledged that King Abdullah, the King of Jordan, is the custodian of the mosque.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And as long as people want to come to the country and pray peacefully, they're able to do that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But if you look at a lot of the propaganda that's been used by ISIS or Iran to recruit terrorists or to justify their incursions, they often say they're doing it in the name of liberating the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But from an operational and pragmatic perspective today...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Any Muslim who wants to go to the mosque, you can book a flight to Israel now through Dubai because there's flights between Israel and Dubai.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And as long as your country has relations with Israel and they'll accept your passport in there, you can come and pray.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And that's what Israel wants.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Israel wants Jerusalem to be a place where all religions can come and celebrate together.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But you have a lot of actors that look to find ways to use these religious tensions in order to sow division and justify violent behavior.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So Israel's good at a lot of things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They're not very good traditionally with public relations.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
After the Abraham Accords, we made the first Abraham Accords deal in August 2020, and then we made five other deals.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We first did United Arab Emirates, then we did a deal with Bahrain, then we did a deal with
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Kosovo.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Then we did a deal with Sudan.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Then we did a deal with Morocco.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then we got the GCC deal done as well, the tension between Qatar, Saudi, UAE, Egypt, and Bahrain.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And that was allowing us to create a pathway to then pursue the Israeli-Saudi normalization.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So we had so much momentum then that the goal was just keep getting more
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
countries to normalize relations with Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Once you create the connection between people and create the ability for people to do business together, the ability for flights to fly between, then you would just start naturally having people coming and everyone has a smartphone today so they can then post and combat the misinformation that's been out there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But this misinformation is not something that's new.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
One of the
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Characters who played a very big role in spreading the anti-Semitism and the violence in Israel in the 1920s was a guy named Haj Amin al-Husseini, who was known as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He was very close with Hitler and Mussolini, and he was working with them to try to get some claims to the Middle East once the Jewish people were annihilated.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And what he did for a very long time was he did the same shtick, only it was before you had smartphones and YouTube, where he would say, the mosque is under attack.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
These imperialist Zionists are coming in to try to destroy the mosque.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he would use that to raise money from Indonesia, from Pakistan, from all over the world, and then use that threat to justify recruiting groups of young, vulnerable Muslim men and then
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Getting them in the name of religious rights to go and kill people, which really is more of a perversion of the religion than I think the true essence of what Islam is.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think Islam at its core is a peaceful religion, and I think that's where a lot of the great leaders in Islam want to take it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But the people who use Islam or the mosque as a justification for violence, those are people who I think are really disrespecting the Islam religion.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Yeah, so I always believed in foreign policy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I learned very quickly that the difference between a political deal and a business deal is that in a business deal, you have a problem set, you come to a conclusion, and then if you buy or sell something, you either have more cash or you have a company, so more to do, less to do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Political problem set is very different, where the conclusion of a problem set is essentially the beginning of a new paradigm.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So when I would think about how do you
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
How do you move pieces around the board?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You couldn't say, let me just solve the problem.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You have to think about what happens the day after the signing and how do you create a paradigm that has positivity to it?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So the biggest piece of what President Trump did during his four years in office was he really strengthened the relationship with Israel, number one.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he did things like recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He moved the embassy to Jerusalem.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He recognized the Golan Heights.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He got out of the Iran deal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We did an economic conference in Bahrain where we brought Israelis to meet with Saudi and Emirati and Qatari businessmen, and everyone came together.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And each one of these instances were unthinkable previously.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And everyone said that if you did it, the world was going to end.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Every time President Trump did one, the next morning the sun rose, the next evening the sun set, and things moved on.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so by doing that, what President Trump did was he slaughtered a lot of the sacred cows of these false barriers that people had erected and showed people that the vast majority of the people in the Middle East, whether they're Jewish, Muslim, Christian, whatever religion they are,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They just want to live better lives.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so what we basically did was create a paradigm where the voices for peace, the voices for together now finally had a forum where they were able to do it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And we did that in the backdrop.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The way we were able to be successful was we severely limited the resources of Iran and they were focused more internally and they couldn't cause the trouble that they were causing everywhere else.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Since we've left, obviously the dynamics have changed, but-
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The way you get to peace is obviously, number one, through strength, and number two, by finding a way for people to be better off tomorrow than they are today.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And what I found was that most of the voices looking for violence or trouble were people who were just focused on what happened two years ago, 20 years ago, 70 years ago, 1,000 years ago.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
People who were trying to solve those problems in that context often were looking more to
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
use those past grievances as a justification for their power and for the bad behavior that they were looking to perpetuate.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Sure.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So this was something I took on.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I was working on the political framework between the Israelis and the Palestinians and trying to understand what were the issues.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And the issues were not very many.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It basically was you had a land dispute, so you had to figure out where do you put borders ultimately.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You had a security paradigm, which I was much more favorable to Israel's perspective on.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And obviously, the events of the past 48 hours have fully justified that bias.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then in addition to that, you had to deal with the religious sites.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But I felt operationally that wasn't actually as complicated as people made it because you wanted to just leave it open for everybody.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Then I went through and I felt that the Palestinian leadership was fairly disincentivized to make a deal because there was just this paradigm where they had billions of dollars coming in from the international community.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think that they feared that if they made a deal, they would lose their relevancy internationally and the money would stop flowing into the country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
What I tried to do is to say, my approach when I would get into a hard problem, say, how do I understand all the different escape hatches?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
How do I try to eliminate them?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then build a golden bridge that becomes really the only, but also the most desirable pathway for the decision makers to walk through.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it wasn't always hard.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And sometimes you have to go and hold their hand or you try to pick them up and walk them across.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But a lot of these leaders are very reluctant to change.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And the dynamics of the Palestinians also were such that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think they were fairly stuck where they were.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So we developed a business plan for Gaza, the West Bank.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We threw in some improvements for Jordan and Egypt as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I based it off of the Vision 2030 that they did in Saudi Arabia, which I thought was a visionary document.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I went back through this process and I studied basically every economic project in the post-World War II period.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So we looked at what they did in South Korea, why it was successful with some strong industrial planning.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We looked at Japan.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We looked at Singapore.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We looked at Poland, why it was successful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We spent a lot of time on the Ukraine plan for the country and why it wasn't successful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And that was mostly because of governance and corruption, which actually resembles a lot of what's gone wrong with the Palestinians, where there's no property rights, there's no rule of law.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And what we did is we built a plan to show, you know, it's not that hard, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
In the sense that between the West Bank and Gaza, you had 5 million people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And we put together a plan, I think it was about $27 billion.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We got together a conference.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I had the head of AT&T.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We had Steve Schwartzman from Blackstone came, which was very gracious of them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We had all the leading Arabic businessmen, the leading builders, leading developers.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And the general consensus of that conference was that this is very doable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We think that for Gaza in particular, it would cost maybe $7 to $8 billion to rebuild the entire place.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We felt we could reduce the poverty rate in half.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We can create over a million jobs there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Hmm.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The only thing that people said was holding it back wasn't Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
What was holding it back was governance, and people wouldn't have confidence investing there with the rule that Hamas was perpetuating.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I encourage people actually to look at the plan.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It was very thoughtful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It was 181 pages.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We went project by project.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Each project is costed out.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's a real plan that could be implemented, but you need the right governance.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And all of the different Arabic countries are willing to fund it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The international community is willing to fund it because they've just been throwing so much money at the Palestinians for years.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
That's never been outcomes based or conditions based.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's just been, you know, entitlement money.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And unfortunately, it hasn't really achieved any outcomes that have been successful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So it's a great business plan.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It just shows, too.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Rebuilding Gaza could be easy, but like I said, the problem that's held the Palestinian people back and that's made their lives terrible in Gaza has not been Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's really been Hamas's leadership or lack of leadership and their desire to focus on trying to kill Israelis and start war with Israel over improving the lives of the Palestinian people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mean, Hamas has been running it now for 16 years, and they don't have a lot to show for it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And our posture with them was basically a very simple deal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
If you think about what's the end state in Gaza, it's actually not that complicated.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
There's no territorial disputes, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The border's the border.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
There's no religious issues there as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You're not dealing with Jerusalem.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You're basically just dealing with the fact that Israel wants to make sure that there's no threat from Gaza.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So it's a demilitarization or some kind of security guarantee from a credible source where Israel doesn't feel like Gaza can be used to stage attacks into Israel or to fire rockets into Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And by the way, these are things I was saying three, four years ago, that that was the objective.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And that was really the fear now that's been proven.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Unfortunately, the fear continues.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
has manifested.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And in exchange, you can rebuild the place and you can give the people a much better life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But Hamas has not shown a desire for that or a capability for that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I don't think there's enough trust to allow them to do that, which is why, you know, under the current circumstances, if you do want to have peace there, Hamas has to be either eliminated or severely degraded in terms of their military capabilities.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So, all I can talk about are where we left them, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We left them a place where they had tremendous momentum in the Middle East.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I met with them during the transition and said, you know, look, you know, we even got the Qatar-Saudi conflict done, which was a big—no peace between Israel and Saudi would have been possible without that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So, we even got that done in our lame duck period.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And they came in and they said, look, we want to focus on the three Cs, which is COVID, climate change, and China.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I said, that's great.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But the Middle East, we have an amazing place right now.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's stable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
There's momentum.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Iran is basically broke.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We put such crippling sanctions on Iran that they went from about, I think it was 2.6 million barrels a day of oil they were selling to about 100,000 under Trump.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So their foreign currency reserves were basically depleted and they were broke.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Same with the Palestinians.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We stopped the funding to UNRWA, the UN agency, which is totally corrupt.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We've put $10 billion in there over time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I did a poll in the Middle East, in Gaza to say, okay, we've invested $10 billion here as a country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
are we popular?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The US had a 7% approval rating.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
USAID had a 70% approval rating, but it just felt like a waste of our taxpayer dollars.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And again, we wanted to make it conditions-based.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The Biden administration came in, number one, they started insulting Saudi and Russia.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Oil prices went up.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
At the same time, what they did was they stopped domestic production of oil.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They disincentivized
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
A lot of oil and shale production with regulations.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They stopped pipelines.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Oil prices went up.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They stopped enforcing the sanctions against Iran, probably to get the oil prices lower to make up for what they were doing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They ran to Iran to try to make a deal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They started funding the Palestinians again right away.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I even said...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
If you're going to fund them, if that's your policy, I respect that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Again, elections have consequences and you can take a different policy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But what I would recommend is get some conditions, make them do some reforms, make them give property rights to people, make them do real economic investments for people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But they just went right away.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So they were funding the Palestinians, not enforcing the sanctions, and then overall just projecting a lot of weakness in the region.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So one of the most embarrassing examples is what happened in the United Arab Emirates.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Again, an amazing, probably one of America's best allies over the last 20, 30 years.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They fought with us in Afghanistan.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They were the first Muslim country to stand up and do that after 9-11 because they didn't want it to be a war of the West against the Muslim religion.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So they joined the fight because they saw it as a fight between right and wrong.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They have rockets shot into their country from the Houthis, and they basically don't get a call from the U.S.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
for 17 days.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They need their equipment that they buy from the US, which creates jobs in the US.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They need it restocked.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We don't call.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So they've severely degraded the trust that we had to rebuild with our allies.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think they've been working now to get it back.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They, after two years, started working with Saudi and Israel, which I think was good.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think that they realized after a stint that maybe the process that President Trump had created in the region was the right policy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And keep in mind, President Trump's policy was
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
that I was working on was very strongly criticized during the first three years before we were able to achieve the results because it was departure from the failed policies of the past.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so first there was a return to those policies, appease Iran, let's criticize Saudi Arabia.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Then they started embracing and working on the Israel-Saudi deal, which was really exciting.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think we were all very excited about it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But they did it in public.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think that that also was something, and I didn't have access to their intelligence.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I assumed that by doing it so publicly, they thought that they'd either had a deal with Iran because they were letting them get all this revenue where Iran wouldn't be a problem.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But one of the reasons with the Abraham Accords, we kept it so quiet during the whole time was because we always felt like
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
the troublemakers in the region, particularly Iran, who we thought would be disadvantaged by having UAE, Saudi, Israel all together.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Israel's a nuclear power.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You have other strong economies.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Iran seeks instability.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They seek looking to create division in the region.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And if you can create that economic sphere where you have security from Haifa to Muscat, from Israel to Oman, all the way through with Saudi, Jordan, UAE, Qatar,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Egypt, that's an incredibly powerful block.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
If you can make it secure and then get economic integration, that really could be a Middle East that thrives.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So Iran obviously wanted nothing to do with that, and that's why they've been working to disrupt.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I think the administration has – they took an incredibly stable situation with momentum.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think they underestimated –
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
the way that Iran would approach the region to undermine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think they gave way too much rope to Iran.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think that they didn't seize when they had an opportunity of strength with the Palestinians to try to drive to a conclusion that I believe could have prevented us being where we are today.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Not to mention that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Even just three weeks ago, I mean, it's a bad look that they just basically gave $6 billion to Iran in exchange for hostages.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then Iran's basically funding these terror attacks.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They're killing American citizens in Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it's a heartbreaking situation, again, totally avoidable, and one that I think has been very badly mismanaged to date.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I want to say one thing, Lex.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I have a lot of friends who are fans of Trump, who are not fans of Trump.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But one thing I want to say with absolute certainty is that if President Trump was in office, this never would have happened.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And when President Trump was in office, anyone who supports Israel or who wants to see Jewish people not be innocently slaughtered, he would never have allowed that to happen.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It did not happen when he was in power.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I hope people recognize that as something that's very, very true.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
How I would play the ball where it lies right now.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Keep in mind, we transferred the ball.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It was on the green.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Now it's almost like it's gone back 150 yards and it's in a sand trap.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think the way that I would play the ball right now is, number one, is you have to show strength.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I actually think President Biden's words were the right words.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I see that they're moving aircraft carriers to the region.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Again, the purpose of having a strong military, I believe, obviously, if you get into a war, you want to win the war, but the purpose of a very strong military primarily is to avoid a war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I don't know what kind of credibility the Biden administration has to show the strength, but right now you have to support Israel completely.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You have to really...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Let people in the region know that there'll be consequences if they try to escalate.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Again, we saw a little bit of rocket skirmish from Lebanon, from Hezbollah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But again, this is the type of thing that they have to know there'll be severe consequences if they make this a multi-party fight.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think sending a strong message to Iran, I think that they have to see some consequences from this and know that they're not going to be allowed to have a free reign to cause instability and that Iran doesn't usually fight face to face.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They usually do it through proxies.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But let's just all be honest about where this is coming from and let them know that there will be a consequence if they instigate these actions.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Again, at least with the Biden administration, they've had contact with Iran.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They've been talking with Iran, but they've allowed Iran.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mean, again, the number I saw last year, I think under Trump, the number was maybe like $4 or $5 billion of oil revenue.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And in total, I think last year it was something like $45 billion in revenue.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
This year, I think there'll be even more.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
That's a combination of them driving up oil prices, but also allowing much more sales.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You would think that they would find a way to get them to behave and allow them to have this happen.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Or if that's not the case, then be tough.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Go back to being tough.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
That's what you have to do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think right now it's probably not the best to think about that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think that we want to think about that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
after whatever is going to happen is going to happen now.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think right now the number one priority for Israel has to be to fully regain security in the country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then number two is to figure out how you can, like I said, eliminate or degrade the Hamas capability or other Iranian threats to make sure that you have your security apparatus.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think that the Israeli leadership right now should proceed with that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I don't think that they should be thinking about normalization with Saudi at this moment.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
my instinct, and I've been watching this Israeli-Saudi normalization play out, obviously just speaking with people and seeing what I've been reading and watching with great excitement.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think it would be a game changer for the region.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think it's one of Iran's worst nightmares to have Israel and Saudi interlinked together.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think it'd be great for the Saudi people from a security perspective, what they're discussing with America would be
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
very strong.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The ability to get different elements across would be incredible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So what I would say with it is that the industrial logic held yesterday, and I think it will hold again tomorrow.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I always expect countries to act in their interests.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The deal that's on the table right now between Saudi, Israel, and America is in Saudi's interests, it's in America's interests, and it's in Israel's interests.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
What's going to happen now, though, is the political dynamics are going to shift.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think that, as we've seen with political dynamics, they come and go.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think let's get through this moment, and then I hope at the right time that those talks will be able to resume and conclude in an appropriate way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it's funny, Lex, when I was working on the US-Mexico agreement for the trade, we would have every day there'd be a tweet that would go out or there would be an issue.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mean, people forget how intense it was between America and Mexico.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I would speak to my counterpart in Mexico after a rough day and we were working on something, we were making progress, it'd get blown up.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I'd speak to him and say, you know what, look,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
they're not moving America, they're not moving Mexico.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Let's just, you know, let's stop for today.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Let's pick up tomorrow and let's find a new way to bring this forward.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I would just encourage everyone working on that, not to give up, to keep working hard at it and to find a way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But like I said, I would take a little bit of a pause for the time being.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Let's let the current situation play out and then hopefully there'll be a way for it to move forward.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think there'll definitely be communication, but words on phone calls is only worth so much.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's really trust between people and power.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And obviously, when you're in a position of power, you represent your country and your country's interests.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But the ability to have trusting relationships where people feel like they're okay taking more risks to help each other, that's actually what's most important.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So communication, I hope for, but
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
deepening and trusting relationships.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
That's what I believe makes progress and keeps people safe.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mentioned this earlier, but whenever I would get a problem set in government, I'd always think through from a first principles perspective, what's the logical outcome, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And forget about all the reasons why it can't happen.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
That's what everyone in government's always rushed to talk about.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But I do think here, number one, Israel has to have a secure environment where they don't feel threatened from Gaza.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And number two is the people in Gaza need to have an environment where they feel threatened
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Like they can live a better life and have opportunities.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So that's the end state.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so I think that the international community should come together.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I do think that the people who are usually putting blame on Israel should now realize that maybe they've been a little bit of harsh here and that Hamas has been as big a threat, if not an even bigger threat than Israel has been saying.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I do think that if the international community comes together and unites behind Israel and really forces Hamas and their Iranian backers to stop hostilities, to stop saber rattling, to stop misrepresenting the history in order to justify their violent behavior.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And if they say instead, we want to hold you accountable, no more money.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And they all say that they're gonna stand behind Israel's efforts to eliminate their national security threats.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then we will all come together and only fund again into a framework that we believe can be a long-term solution where the Palestinian people really have a chance to live a better life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
That's really the best way to get there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
There's tons of complicated factors, but that's the end state that the global community should be looking to come together.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it's very achievable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's very, very achievable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I think as a leader, you can't change yesterday, but you have the ability to change tomorrow.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And that's a very important fundamental.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mean, that's true for all of us, not just leaders.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But we saw with 9-11 how America was caught off guard by a terrorist attack.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We acted somewhat rationally, somewhat emotionally, which led to a 20-year war with
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Trillions of dollars lost, I think almost a million lives lost, not just American, but all lives.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it was a total tragedy what occurred.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think right now the temptation is to be strong.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think that that's a necessity.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I do think eliminating risk is the right objective.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think the goal should be to stay very clear about what the objective is.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But also, this attack was very well planned not to walk into another trap.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think you have to be very smart, very cautious.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I've been happy to see that what they've been doing in retaliation so far has been somewhat measured, and they've taken their time to try to assess what's achievable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Again, I don't have access to the intelligence, and we're talking at a very early stage in this conflict, so a lot could happen even by the time this is published.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But my hope is that they'll just stay very focused on what the objective is and try to make sure that they're acting appropriately in order to do that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I will say this too, that this has been different than what I've seen in the past in that the attacks were so heinous and so disgusting that I've seen the international community rally around Israel
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
more so than I ever have.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I hope that Israel continues to keep the moral high ground and continue to communicate what they're fighting for, why they're fighting.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I do hope that the international community supports the objective and they can work together to achieve it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Bibi is definitely a historic figure.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I meet with a lot of different world leaders, and some of them, I would say, they're very, very special transformational figures.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And some, I would say, how the hell is this person running a country?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And Bibi is somebody who has done a lot for the state of Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He has a tremendous understanding of the security apparatus.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He has tremendous global relations with
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So for a crisis like this, I think Bibi's the leader you want, if you're Israel, to be in that seat.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think he's ambitious in what he's going to look to achieve.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He understands his role in history as somebody who's helped strengthen Israel economically, militarily.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I don't think he wants to see his legacy destroyed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
be somebody who left israel more vulnerable than it had to be so i think in that regard he'll be incredibly strong but i also think that he'll hopefully be calculating in the risk that he takes and not create more risk than is needed and that's easy to say you know the two of us sitting here having a conversation when you're sitting in that chair as a leader
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
um in the fog of war it's a very very um it's a very hard decision to make he's been here before he um he he knows the weight of the situation i'm sure he knows the moment and i pray that uh that he'll do uh what's right here to bring the best outcome possible
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
On the one hand, the political turmoil is a sign of a vibrant democracy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think it's been actually nice to see how people have fought for their country and their beliefs in a democratic way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You compare that to the Palestinians, where there's no democracy, there's no free speech, there's no free press.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You can't disagree with the leadership in Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
If you want to be homosexual, you can have a
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You can go to a parade and live your life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
In Gaza, they'll throw you off a building and kill you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So in Israel, you have the freedoms, which I think make it a special place, and you have a very vibrant democracy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
With that being said, the times in Jewish history where the Jewish people have been most vulnerable have been when there's been division, and that's when the temple was destroyed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But that's not just with the Jewish people and with Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
That's in all societies.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So-
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I definitely believe that this division has left them less prepared for the situation than it would.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I do think there's real lessons we should be taking from this here in America, where we're in a time where we're very divided.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But I do think that it'd be very wise for our leaders to find the areas where we do agree and find ways to secure our southern border, to make sure that we know who's in our country, what risks we all face.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I do think that division definitely creates risk for countries.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
This is something I've observed over the years since I got involved with the Israeli-Palestinian issue with a lot of interest.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think a lot of the people who are
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
pledging support for the Palestinian people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think that they want to see the Palestinian people live a better life, and I actually agree with them in that regard.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Unfortunately, I think many of them are incredibly ill-informed as to the facts on the ground.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think all of the people who are advocating online for the Palestinian people, who are going to these marches in support of them, I think they'd be best served if they really care about effectuating the outcome of
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
joining with Israel right now and directing their anger towards the Hamas leadership.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think that it's very clear that the group that's responsible for the Palestinian people living the lives that all of these people are angry about is Hamas.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And if they direct their anger towards Hamas and put the attention on the failings of Hamas and put forth a vision for what they'd like to see leadership in Gaza do, and they respect
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
that there's a real fear that Israel has and any country would have of having a group of terrorists next to them that's calling for their destruction.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think that that recognition of finding a way for Israel to be secure and then having an opportunity for the Palestinian people to live a better life is the right pathway to try and pursue.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
100%.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's very, very clear.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think that if people were honest about the situation, if they spent the time to really understand it, again, you know,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
If you follow the conference I did in Bahrain, we had all the leading businessmen there and they said, we can rebuild Gaza very easily.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We all want to.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The leading Arab businessmen, the leading American businessmen, everyone wants to.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They're just held back by Hamas.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so I do think having an honest conversation about this at this point in time has really only one logical conclusion.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And my hope is that maybe this conflict leads to that conversation being had.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And if it is, then maybe that brings more unity and understanding, and we kind of get to a conclusion better that could improve the lives of the Palestinian people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think when Donald Trump was president, we had a peaceful world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Everyone said if he was elected, we would have World War III.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Meanwhile, he gets elected and he not only is the first president in decades to not start any wars, he's making peace deals.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He's making trade deals.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He's working with our allies, getting them to pay their fair share in NATO.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He's having a dialogue with China, with Russia.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He's weakening Iran.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so I do think that the job he did as a foreign policy president was tremendous.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Now more and more people are starting to recognize that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Again, under President Biden, this is the second war that's broken out in the world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And when you have a weak American leadership, the world becomes a less safe place.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so my hope and prayers are that President Trump is reelected and that he's able to then restore order and calm and peace and prosperity to the world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
From a place of strength.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
That's the only way he knows how to do it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The Middle East for 20 years was an area of conflict.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They spent all their money on bullets and bombs.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You have young leadership now in Saudi Arabia and UAE and Qatar, and there's a much more ambitious agenda now for the region to make it an economic superpower and hub of the world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Israel is one of the most burgeoning and exciting tech economies in the world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And if you think about it, it's almost like having Silicon Valley not connected to California.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The thing that's held the region back for all these years has just been the conflict and the division and the lack of connectivity.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But if you have that region, if it can all come together, if you can create a security architecture, you have an incredibly young population, you have a lot of wealth and resources and a lot of capabilities and know-how.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so I think that if...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's managed correctly.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And if Iran is able to be restrained and suppressed with their ambitions to cause destabilization, I don't mean Iran the country, I mean the Iranian regime.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Because actually, once you have this economic sphere, if you could bring Iraq into it, if you could bring Iran into it,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
that makes it even bigger and stronger.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And the Persian people are incredibly entrepreneurial and incredibly industrious.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I do think that the region has tremendous potential.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's just been held back by bad policy, bad leadership, bad objectives.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And again, when President Trump left office in 2021, the Middle East was really on a very, very positive trajectory.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And if the right things happen, it can continue to be so.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I'm praying at this moment in time that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We navigate the current crisis that the important objectives are achieved of eliminating the terrorists and their threats, and then allowing the leaders who are focused on giving their citizens and their neighbors the opportunity to live a better life are able to work together and really dream and be ambitious and find ways to create a paradigm where humans can flourish.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
what is the best way to defeat hate in the world hate is is a very powerful force and it's much easier to hate people you don't know um it's funny when i was working on prison reform one of the most interesting people i met was a reverend actually down in texas who negotiated the first
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
between the Bloods and the Crips, two of the notorious gangs in America in prison.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I was very excited to meet him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And when I met him, I said, well, how'd you do it?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
he said it's very simple he says i got all the guys together and i i had a tremendous amount of barbecue brought in he says and i got the meeting says no drinking says drinking sometimes gets people a little bit more against each other he says but i got a meeting and they started sitting down together and they started saying you know what you're just like me and all of a sudden they started finding areas where they were more together yeah look i've traveled all over the world now i've
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I've been very fortunate to meet people from different states in America.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I've different political persuasions, different ages, different classes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And what I found is that there's a fundamental driving amongst all of us where we all want to live a better life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
People don't want to fight naturally, but it's easy to fight when you feel wronged or you feel like somebody disrespected you or somebody did something from hatred.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And hatred leads to more hatred, which sometimes just pushes that cycle further and further.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I believe that each and every one of us has the power to stop that cycle.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And we don't do it by being on Twitter and yelling at people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We don't do it by just being critical.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We do it by finding the people we disagree with, by listening to them, by asking questions, by sitting with them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then if we each take responsibility to try to make the world better, then I think that there's no limits to the incredible place that this world can be.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
i do believe that yeah and you have some bad people i mean you have some real evil people i mean a big part of the work i did was on uh prison reform and you know previously the mentality was is that the prison should basically be a warehouse for human trash and if you've made a mistake in this world then you know we're going to throw you out and we're going to make the rest of your life incredibly difficult because you can have a criminal record you're not going to have access to jobs
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But what I found is when I would sit with people in prison, the people I met through my father's experience and who I met along the way is that people make mistakes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We're all human.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think it's the right thing from a religious perspective to give people second chances.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I always believe you shouldn't judge people by the worst mistake they make in their life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Unfortunately, now in the era of social media, people will say one wrong thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It sticks with them forever.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They get canceled or they get put out.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We're all humans.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We grow from our mistakes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We learn from our mistakes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think that some people are just evil.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
There are some evil people, but I do think the vast, vast, vast majority of people are good.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I do think that people sometimes also can be in a bad place and then society can push them to a worse and worse place, but we all have the power to make them feel loved, make them feel heard.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think there's also tremendous power that we have as people to help people get to a better place.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so my wife and I, we've always tried to be a force for good.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We've always tried to provide a place where people can discuss with each other.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
When we were in Washington,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We would host dinners at our house all the time, or we would have Democrats and Republicans sitting together.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I saw Senator Feinstein just passed away.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We had a great dinner at her house when she was a senator with her and her husband, and Mark Meadows when he was on the Freedom Caucus.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We had actually a fascinating discussion about Iran.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Mark was much more hardline than me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I had to actually bite my tongue.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I was impressed at how much he did, whereas...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You know, Feinstein and her husband were like super into, you know, they knew the Iranians well, they thought they were peace loving, and it was an incredibly robust and respectful debate.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so I don't think we maybe concluded anything that night, but it was interesting for people to get together, having a dinner at my house where I had
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Dick Durbin, the number two ranking Democrat in the Senate, Lindsey Graham and Stephen Miller, who's known to be a very hard line on immigration, discussing what an immigration reform could look like.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mean, they left that dinner saying, wow, we hadn't spoken to people on the other side and we actually agree on like 85% of things, like maybe something is possible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so I believe that we should always be trying to push to make the world a better place.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And you only do that by listening to people and connecting with people and by respecting people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And finally, I'll just say on this is that, you know, I meet people all the time who have so much confidence in their perspectives.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I'm very jealous that these people are able to be so confident about every single thing, because for me...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I have some degree of confidence in the things that I've studied and what I've learned, but I'm always trying to find people who disagree to kind of sharpen my perspectives and to help me grow and to help me learn further.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so I think that's kind of the beauty of the world is that the knowledge base continues to grow, the facts continue to change, and what's possible tomorrow continues to become different.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so as humans, we have to continue to thrive, to learn, and to grow, and to connect.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And if we do that, everything's possible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Thank you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And Lex, if I could say just one final thing, which is that my thoughts and prayers are really with all of the people in Israel and the innocent civilians as well from the Palestinian side.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And my prayers are with the IDF soldiers that they should be safe and they should be really watched by God to accomplish whatever mission will enable to make the world a safer place.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
If I look back on the different negotiations I had when I was in government, either with leaders of countries, with representatives of leaders, or even with members of Congress to pass legislation, the most important thing I would draw back to would be trust.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think getting to know each other, understanding what was motivating the other party to get to the outcome, and making them feel like you weren't going to use whatever information they gave you to benefit yourself at the expense of them is probably what I would call table stakes to have a shot at accomplishing anything that was hard in negotiation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
After that, I would say taking maybe a first principles approach to what the outcome of whatever problem you're looking to solve should be.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Now, you have different kinds of negotiations.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I always try to create a framework in the negotiation where...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It wasn't me against you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It was always, let's agree on what the outcome is that we're trying to accomplish.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Let's all sit on the same side of the table and say, we want to get to this outcome.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
How do we get there?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Really trying to create a roadmap.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so once you understand the destination you want to get to, the endpoint,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
then you'd have to work backwards and really try to put yourself in their shoes and try to understand what were their motivations macro.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Most of the time, you have to assume that a leader's primary objective was to stay in power.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so all decisions made would be made through the framework of what it would take to do that and how it would impact their ability to do that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then finally, I would just say that in any negotiation, you have to understand the power dynamics as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And you have to then weight your approach in order to maneuver pieces to accomplish the objective.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so in areas where we had stronger power dynamics, I'd always look at it and say, what are the potential escape routes where a politician would say,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
This is just the reason why we can't get there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I'd always think, how can you try to eliminate those escape routes or make them much harder to accomplish?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then ultimately think about what's the golden bridge that you want to create for them in order to get to the other side where they were motivated to get there because it was in their self-interest to get there, but also because it helped accomplish the different objective.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I have many examples that I lived through with that, obviously, negotiating the
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
in Congress for prison reform.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I had to form a lot of trust with Democrats, whether it was Hakeem Jeffries or Dick Durbin.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then also on the Republican side, I had Mike Lee, I had Lindsey Graham, I had Tim Scott, Senator Grassley, and then also Doug Collins in the House was tremendous.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And every time we maneuvered something, we would get attacked either from the left or
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
There was a time we were being attacked by Nancy Pelosi, John Lewis, for not being inclusive enough.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then there were times that we maneuvered it, we'd be attacked from the right for maybe going too far.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And ultimately, we had to find just the right place where we can get it done.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And the same thing happened with USMCA, where we were negotiating the biggest trade deal in the history of the world, which was $1.3 trillion in annual trade between Mexico, Canada, the United States of America.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And we were able to form good trust with the other side and try to say, how do we create win-win outcomes?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And ultimately, we were able to do something in a record time that people thought was very hard to do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And both of them, in a divided time of the Trump administration, were bipartisan wins with big, big votes in the Senate and the House.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But in fairness, too, for him, during the time that we were dealing with him, he was always in election versus election and then election.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
you know, what he was saying wasn't wrong.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think he was more expressing his concerns given the dynamics.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And, you know, we never held those concerns against him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We just said those are real concerns he had.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We respected those concerns, but then we helped him prioritize to help accomplish the right things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And that's ultimately what the partnership is, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
My job was to represent America.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
His job was to represent Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And you had other parties representing their own interests.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And as long as you assume that, you know, people were
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
acting mostly in good faith, you were able to navigate areas where you didn't have complete overlap of priorities and objectives.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I would say that I always would think about how can I be a partner to others?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Like I would want somebody to be a partner to me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And a lot of it comes from just my different experiences in business.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I've had great partners.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I've had terrible partners.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
My father, you know, again, a lot of my childhood was I was exposed to business.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
My father
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
On Sundays, he would take us to job sites and to the office with him instead of to football games like my friends' fathers would do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so we were exposed to business.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And what he would say about his father, who was an immigrant to America, came over with nothing, had no formal education, but he would always say, a good deal with a bad partner will always be a bad deal, and a bad deal with a good partner...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
you'll figure it out.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so going through some of the challenges that I had in my life early on, whether it was the issue with my father that I'm sure we'll talk about, or even going through some tougher financial times during the great financial crisis, I really learned a lot about partnership.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I always thought, how can I act in a way where I could be the type of partner or friend to others that I wish others would be to me?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So leaders are generally chosen by their country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so my view was, if I had an objective, I didn't get to choose who was the leader of other countries.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
My job was to deal with that leader, understand their strengths, understand their weaknesses, understand their power dynamics as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You know, one of my greatest takeaways when I grew up, I'd read the newspapers about all these powerful, famous people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then as I got older and had the chance to
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then ultimately, you know, interact with them in government as I realized that they're just like you and me, they wake up every morning, you know, their kids are pissed at them, their wife doesn't want to talk with them, you know, and they've got, you know, a set of advisors around them, one saying, you know, let's go to war, one saying, let's make peace, one saying, do the deal, one saying, don't do the deal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And they're all thinking, where do I get advice?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
How do I make decisions?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so understanding the true human nature of them and then the different power dynamics around them, I thought was very key.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so I didn't have a choice, do I deal with them or not?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It was a function of how do you deal with them effectively in order to find areas where you have common interests and then work well together to pursue those common interests in order to achieve a certain goal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So this was a book I read way before the notion of serving in government was ever even on my mind or reality.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I remember thinking about it, reading it and thinking how World War I started, where you had somebody who was assassinated, and then you had all these different alliances that were created.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then in order to accomplish objectives, it triggered all of these...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
people getting in bed with everyone else because of documents that were created without the intent of going to a massive war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think in the course of World War I, it was one of the greatest atrocities that we've seen as humanity.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We've had 16 million people killed in that war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And as I was reading the book, I remember thinking to myself, even though things are set in a certain way, go sit with somebody, go talk to them and say, this doesn't make sense, this is wrong.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
How do we create a better pathway?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And as a civilian, all my life, I would read the newspapers, I would observe how different leaders would act.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But when we had the opportunity to serve in government and have the position, you realize you're not a civilian.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You don't have the luxury of sitting back and letting the world happen the way it's happening.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You have agency and you have the potential to influence the outcome of things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And one thing I've seen is, you know, most political prognosticators are wrong.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Anyone who tells you what's going to happen really has no clue.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it's not because they're bad or they're not intelligent.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's because nobody knows.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And at the end of the day, the outcomes in the world are usually driven by the decisions of humans themselves.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And if you're able to come together, form relationships, listen to each other, you can do that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And one of the great examples that I speak about in the book is with North Korea.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Whereas if you remember in 2017, it was very intense.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
When President Obama was leaving office, he told President Trump that the single biggest fear that he had, and this is a time when the world was a mess.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You had
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The Middle East was on fire.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
ISIS was beheading journalists and killing Christians.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They had to caliphate the size of Ohio.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Libya was destabilized.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Yemen was destabilized.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Syria was in a civil war where 500,000 people were killed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Iran was on a glide path to a nuclear weapon.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Yet the single biggest fear he had was North Korea.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then it got compounded by the fact that we get into office and President Trump brings his generals around and he's learning how to interact with all the generals and says, okay, what are my options?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And they said, calm down.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We've been using all of our ammunition in the Middle East.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We don't have enough ammunition to go to war over there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he says,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Let's not let that be too public.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Let's try to restock and come up with a plan.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And at the time, there was a lot of banter back and forth.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I was able to, I got a call from a friend who was an old business contact who actually had done business in North Korea.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he said, you know, I'd love to find a way to solve this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I was getting calls from friends at the time saying, I'm trying to go to Hawaii for vacation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Should I not be going?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Is it not safe?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mean, we forget the psychology of how intense that was at the time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then through that interaction, he called some of his contacts in North Korea.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then we were able with the CIA to open up a back channel that ultimately led to the
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
the de-escalation, the meeting between Trump and Kim Jong-un, which led to a de-escalation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So that was really the mindset, which was whenever there's a problem, just pick up the phone and try.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think President Trump had a very similar approach, which was let's give it a shot.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he wasn't afraid to go after the hard ones too.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I'll say one final thing on this, which is that in politics,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
the incentive structure is just much different than in the real world, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
In the sense that you have a hard problem, then if you try to solve a hard problem, the likelihood of failure is great.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Whereas in the business world, if you're going after a hard problem, we celebrate those people, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We want our entrepreneurs and our great people to go after solving the big, hard problems.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But in politics, if you try to take on a hard problem,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You have a high likelihood of failure.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You'll get a lot of criticism on your pathway to trying to accomplish that if you fail.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then if you fail, it has a higher probability of leading to you losing your opportunity to serve.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so it's just one of these things where people want to play it safe, which is not the notion that really was taken during the time that President Trump was in office.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I don't think it has to be that way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And that's, I think, one of the great lessons from the time of the Trump administration.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He brought a lot of people from the business world into government.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The business people have a much different mindset than government people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And there was a lot of resistance.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think part of why there was so much resistance was because
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think about it from my personal sense was that if I was successful with no traditional qualifications to do diplomacy, it meant that all the people with traditional qualifications in diplomacy didn't necessarily need those qualifications in order to be successful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
That same sentiment manifested itself in many areas in government.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think that in the business world, it's outcome-oriented, it's results-oriented.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And, you know, what we would see in New York is there they would stab you in the eye.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
In D.C., they would stab you in the back.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it just became a whole different dynamic of how you work through these different areas.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So the answer is it doesn't have to be that way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You just need the right courageous leader.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And that's why I'm so optimistic about what the future of America and the world could be if you have the right people in power who are willing to take on the right challenges and do it in the right way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Yeah, it's always very challenging.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And especially when you're going against the grain of what's established, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We did something different to think that an old business contact that I had could then do it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mean, that's the type of thing that, you know, if the press knew what we were doing, they would have derided it and criticized it in every which way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But that was one of the benefits of operating very much below the radar is that we were able to try all these different things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And not all of them worked, but some of them did.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But that is what's amazing about the world, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
This could be the biggest story on the front page of every paper, and they're inciting fear in everyone.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it's not illegitimate fear.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mean, there were missile tests over Japan.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mean, you had a lot of...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
very big challenges with that file.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then all of a sudden we make contact, we go through negotiations to set a meeting.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
There's a meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong-un.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then all of a sudden there's a framework to try and move things forward.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And again, I think that there's a lot of possibility there for what could happen if it's worked in the right way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We're all human beings, and people want to be successful, and people want to be good.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And you're right, too.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
There's way more emojis involved in diplomacy than I ever would have expected.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Yeah, completely in every way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mean, that's an incredible book and it's a very entertaining read.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It has obviously a lot of good historical context on some of the key players, whether it was Anwar Sadat or Menachem Begin or Jimmy Carter and Cy Vance and a lot of the others who were involved with those negotiations.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The thing that I kind of took from that experience was just how personal it was.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And again, one of my favorite stories from that book was how Anwar Sadat, who was a big, big leader, he had a mystic who was, according to this book, again, history, I like reading it, but I always realize that you have to notice that this is just the perspective of a given author that's writing it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But the way that they write this book was that he had an advisor who was a mystic, and the mystic was having a back channel with the Israelis.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And the mystic told Sadat, if you go to Israel and you make a speech at the Knesset, Bagan is ready to give you the Sinai.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so he goes to Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They set this whole thing up.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He goes and gives the Knesset.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They go for their meeting after.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And Sadat says, okay, well, are we going to do this thing?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And Bagan says, what are you talking about?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I'm not giving you an inch of our land.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it was just one of these things where it was a miscommunication that brought about the symbolic visit of Anwar Sadat to Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And that was one of these notions that just made everyone think that something was possible that they thought was impossible a moment before.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Actually, we had an example like that during our time in government when we
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Did the Abraham Accords.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The first step of the Accords was really a phone call between President Trump, Prime Minister Netanyahu, and Mohammed bin Zayed, who at that point was the crown prince and de facto ruler of the UAE.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But all we had was a phone call and then a statement that was released.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And what was interesting after that is we said, okay, well, how do we integrate countries?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Nobody's done this in a long time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And we were trying to figure out all the issues and there's big miscommunications between Israel and UAE and we were navigating through all the issues.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so after a couple weeks, I said, you know what, I've got to go over there and try to sort through these issues.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So we make a plan to go to Israel, then we can go to UAE.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then a young gentleman who worked with me named Avi Berkowitz says, well, if we're flying from Israel to UAE, instead of flying on a government plane, why don't we see if we can get an El Al plane and we'll do the first official commercial flight?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so I said, that's a great idea.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Let's call, you know, Ambassador Otaiba, Yusuf, who was a tremendous player in the Abraham Accords working behind the scenes, you know, day and night, and was really a big catalyst.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So he calls Yusuf and he said, sure, no problem.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Let's give it a shot.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So we go and we do it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he says, if we can work out these issues, what we'll do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So we go to Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We do our meetings.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We get everything back into a good place.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We set up this trip over.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We fly in an LL plane.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We fill it up.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
At the time, it was during COVID with a health delegation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We had the financial ministry because we had to open up banking relationships.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They could wire money between countries.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We wanted to get health partnerships.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Then we just had a lot of legal things and national security things we wanted to start putting together.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So we do this flight and we end up landing in UAE.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And the picture of us coming off the plane, being greeted by Emiratis and Tobes with an El Al plane with an Israeli flag on it, just captured everyone's imagination.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so it was one of these things where it's like, you work so hard on the details and the negotiation, I mean, hundreds of hours to kind of make sure everything's perfect.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And the one thing that you do kind of
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Yeah, let's give it a shot.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
That image ended up capturing everyone's heart.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So going back to Sadat, that visit was very critical.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And what was interesting was, is according to this book, it happened because of a miscommunication.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
That was the first part.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The second part of the book that's just amazing theater, and actually the book was based on a play, was just going back and forth with all of the different methodologies that they tried that failed, but they kept trying out it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then ultimately seeing how the personalities were able to find ways
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
to make the compromise that ultimately was a very, very big thing for more stability in the Middle East.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so amazing book, I would highly recommend it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
A very entertaining read and something that at least gave me encouragement to keep going when the task I was pursuing seemed so, so, so large.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think you have to be respectful to the craft that you're in where words matter, but then realize that they don't matter as much.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then also...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
focus on the fact that the actions are actually what's gonna matter more than the words.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so you have a difference between leaders and politicians.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Politicians are there to say the right thing and to hold the power.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Leaders are people who are willing to do things that will be transformational from my perspective.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so when I would think about diplomacy,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
words without actions or without the threat of actions.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And that was something that President Trump did very well, was that people knew that he was willing to take action.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He was very unpredictable in how he would act.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And that made our words much more effective in what they did.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So it's all a combination.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Coming from the private sector, we were all about results, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
If you're in government, you can work on something for 10 years and fail and then retire and they consider you an expert.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
In the private sector, if you work on something for 10 weeks and you don't have a success, then you're unemployed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So it's a different kind of notion.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it was just understanding the mentality and trying to adjust and bridging the divides between the different trainings.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It was just the only way to be.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mean, if I was giving up a nice life in New York, and if I was giving up the stuff that I really enjoyed, the company that I'd helped build, and the life that I was enjoying in order to do government, I was going there to make a difference.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And we had to focus on it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The other skill set, so there was a couple of skill sets that I found were quite deficient in government.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
First of all, there was a ton of amazing people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mean, people talk about the bureaucracy and
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
What I found was is you had incredibly committed, passionate, intelligent, capable people all throughout the government.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And what they were waiting for, though, was direction and then cover in order to get there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so there were a lot of tasks that I worked on, whether it was building the wall at the southern border, where I was able to work with Customs Border Patrol, Army Corps of Engineers, military, DHS professionals, DOD.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And we basically all came together.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then once we had a good project management plan, we were able to kind of move very, very quickly.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think we built about 470 miles of border barrier in about two years, basically.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And that worked very well because we basically brought private sector project management skill sets, which were quite often missing in government.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The second one is just, you know, we spoke about negotiation earlier.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I would say that most people in government, it's just a different form of negotiation than you see in the private sector and way less effective in that regard, which is why I think it's good the more we can encourage more people with private sector experience to do a stint in government and to –
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
really try to contribute and serve their country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
That's how our founders, I mean, George Washington and all the founding fathers, they were working on their farms.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They left their farms serving government, then they went back to the farm.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And that was kind of the design of the representative government.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It wasn't a career political class.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It was people coming in to
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
know show gratitude for the freedoms and liberties that they enjoyed and then you know you know do their best to kind of you know help others have those same opportunities that they had and then they'd go back and live their lives and so um so i think that there's a lot of opportunity with our government of people with more business mindsets who are going to think about things from a solutions perspective go and serve is that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So we don't have enough time on this podcast to go into it, but it's... Look, there's a lot of aspects that work as well, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But I do think we've gotten too big.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You know, Neil's book that you mentioned, you know, one of the things that I took from that, I read it, I think, in 2012, right kind of in the middle of the great financial crisis was...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He was talking about how government regulation often was put in place to deal with old crises, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So it was never going to solve future problems.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It was more to kind of create, to solve for problems that had happened in the past.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I remember thinking about that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
One thing I was very proud of, of the work of the Trump administration was that you had four years consecutively where there was a net decrease in the cost of regulations, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So to give you a context, in the last year of Obama in 2016, there were 6 million man hours spent by the private sector complying with new federal regulations.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And that's not really what the intent of our government was, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
If we have rules or regulations, those should be legislated by Congress.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They shouldn't be put in by bureaucrats who are basically saying, I want to follow this objective.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So using kind of the power of the pen in order to do that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So the deregulatory effort
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
was actually very critical to Trump's economic success that happened at the beginning of the administration.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then what I saw with regulation was anytime either there was legislation or regulation coming, the people pushing for it were usually the people who would benefit from the regulatory captures.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You had these, you know, you look at, you know, the great financial crisis where you had this big banking reforms.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Well, what happened during the big banking reforms?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Then you had a big reduction in the amount of banks that occurred and the big banks became even bigger.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Whereas I don't think that was the intention of the legislation, but the people who were writing the legislation and influencing it had a lot of the constituencies from those larger institutions.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then what happened as a result of that?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
A lot of these smaller institutions didn't have the ability to be as competitive.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They had more restrictions, more costs.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They became less profitable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But these were the banks that were serving small business, which is the biggest creator of jobs in our country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then as a result, the bigger banks got more powerful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And what happened in the country as a result of the regulations that they put in place, the wealth gap in the country grew.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It didn't shrink.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so I think oftentimes what they say these regulations are intended to be
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
the result often becomes the opposite.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so what President Trump did in his administration was they did a massive deregulatory effort.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think they pledged that for every one regulation they put on, because you do need some regulation in an economy and in a society, they would take off two.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And in the first year, they eliminated eight regulations for every one.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so that was just something I took from it, which was, I thought, very interesting.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And you had to really...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think you just have to think through what are the consequences going to be of the different actions you take.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And often government gets it wrong by taking an action that feels right but has big negative consequences down the road.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Sure.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So to give the listeners some context, and people remember this now, it's been kind of swept away because it turned out not to be true, was that after President Trump won the election in 2016, instead of the media saying, we were wrong, because again, everyone thought he had zero chance of winning, they said, okay, well, we couldn't have been wrong.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It must have been the Russians who worked with him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
At first, when this started coming up, I thought this was ridiculous.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mean, I was very intimately involved with the operations of the campaign.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I was running the finance of the campaign.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I was running the digital media of the campaign.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I was running the schedule for the campaign.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I knew that on most days we had trouble, like, you know, working, coordinating with ourselves, you know, let alone, you know, collaborating with another government and colluding as they called it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We did a great job, I think, as an underdog campaign, very leanly staffed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then they said that we were working with the Russians.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so at the time, I didn't take it too seriously because I knew there was no truth to it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But it was amazing to me to start seeing all of these institutions, whether it was CNN, The Washington Post, New York Times.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
These were news organizations that I grew up having a lot of respect for.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
taking these accusations so seriously and then working themselves up in order to just cover it for two years.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Then as a result, you had a special counsel, you had a House investigation, a Senate investigation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I personally spent about, I think, over 20 hours just testifying before these different committees.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Again, spent millions of dollars out of my own pocket on my legal fees to make sure I was well-represented.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And the reason I did that was because I saw in Washington, it was like a sick game, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's almost like, you know, even though there was no underlying problems to the accusation, I felt like this is one of those things where they're going to try to catch you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then if you step on the line, they catch you with one misrepresentation, they're going to try to put you in jail or worst of, you know, and so for me, that was a big concern.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it was amazing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
My poor mom, I told her to stop reading whatever.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I said, I promise you, we didn't do anything wrong.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's good.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But she'd call me and say, well, our friends were on the Upper East Side.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We're talking with Chuck Schumer.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
She says, Jared's going to jail.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We know for sure that he colluded with the Russians.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And this is like a leading senator saying things like this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so it was just interesting for me to see how the whole world could believe something like
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And be talking about it that I knew with 1000% certainty was just not true.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so seeing that play out was very, very hard.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Obviously, you know, I was accused of a lot of things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
There were times in Washington I was radioactive.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I remember one weekend.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
um you know it was all over cnn you know the people they panels on cnn like the news organization that i grew up thinking was like the number one trusted name for news in the world talking about how i'd committed treason because i met with an ambassador and said we'd like to hear your perspective on what you think the policy should be in syria where there was a big civil war happening and and isis and a lot of different things
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It was quite a crazy time in that regard, but luckily, again, we were able to fight through it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It was a major distraction for our administration.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think we were able to stay focused on the objectives and the policies, but it was a crazy time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I learned a lot from that experience.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So it was a surreal experience.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I would say number one is I felt very confident that I hadn't done anything wrong.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I'd always tell my lawyer, the good news is I've got a good fact problem.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I need a good lawyer to get me through it, but it's much easier to be a good lawyer if you have a very innocent client.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so the fact that I knew that I didn't have, I didn't believe that I had any legal liability was
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
helped me kind of intellectually separate the challenge I needed to do to fight through it from it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then I just basically said, like, you know, I'd had hardship earlier in my life where I dealt with the situation with my father.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And what I realized there is that you can't really spend energy on
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
on the things that you don't control.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
All you can do is spend your time and energy worrying about what you can control and then how you react to the things that you have there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so it took a lot of discipline.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It took a lot of strength.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And again, I give my wife, Ivanka, and even Donald a lot of credit for having my back during that time and encouraging me just to fight through it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Um, and then I also had to make sure that I didn't allow that to distract me from my job.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I felt like I had an amazing opportunity in the white house to make a difference in the world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And if I would have spent all my time playing defense, you know, in politics, it's a time duration game in business.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You have whatever duration you set for yourself in politics.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's time duration.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We had four years, um,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Every day was sand through an hourglass.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
My mindset was, I need to accomplish as much as I can in these four years.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I guess the traditional game that's played in Washington is whether it's the media, the opposition, their job is to distract you and then try to stop you from being as successful as you want to be.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so just fought through it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And-
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It wasn't always fun, but we got through and thank God it's something people don't talk about.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it has been amazing to me, just the lack of self-awareness and reflection of a lot of the people who hyped this up for two years.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They don't think there was anything wrong with it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And that's interesting, but my view is we got through it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's good.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So it's in the past.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then I started moving to the future and that's really...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
didn't have a choice what do you mean i mean i could have spent every day feeling sorry for myself for complaining or saying things aren't fair but the the general way i looked at it was that in life every opportunity has a cost and you know you could look at it and say maybe this was a massive cost either in in dollars or in time or in reputation or in or in um or in an emotional drain but
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But you could also say that, you know, I had an opportunity to work in the White House and I had an opportunity to work on some of the hardest challenges.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And you talk about how that's not celebrated.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
That is something very different.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
In the private sector, when you take on big challenges, that is celebrated.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
In government, when you take on big challenges, people want to see it fail or they want to criticize those people who are trying to take that on.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think that's wrong.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
As a country, we should be thinking big, we should be dreaming big, and we should be encouraging our politicians to try and to fail more and to go and to take on big things, knowing that there's risk of failing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Obviously, we want them to succeed, not to fail, but let's take on the big things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Let's try to do that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I think it's just very basic that you're in a situation, I've made decisions, I can't go back and change decisions in the past.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I still felt very blessed to be in the position I was in, and I knew that I just had to work through it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And like I said, I was very lucky to have support from my wife and from my family and from good friends.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Again, I think I'd chosen very good friends in life, and my friends were with me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I had one friend who, my lowest moment,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
uh you know got on the plane you lived in arizona got on a plane and came just have dinner with me to say just just pick your head up i know you're down now you're going to be fine just just fight through that meant a lot to me and again i i always think in my life you know you don't learn as much from your successes you don't learn as much from your high points you learn the most about who you want to be and how the world works from your lowest moments and at those lowest moments it just it made me better and it taught me how to be a
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I tried to just get tougher and I tried to just get better and work through it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I think it was just number one, knowing that you had a partner and knowing that you had somebody who loved you and believed in you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think that was definitely by far the biggest of anything.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Love is the answer.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Love is very important.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But then there's also a lot that I've learned from her, always getting me to read different books or learn different things, which I love.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But she's also, I think, an amazing role model.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I go through our time in Washington where
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
There were so many people who were, I thought, very nasty to her unfoundedly.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I'm not talking about individually because, again, most people interacted with her were super kind.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But I would see people on Twitter or different places go after her, and she always stayed elegant.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I felt like that was something that she never stooped down to a lower level.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
She kept her elegance the whole time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And she really went to Washington wanting to be a force of good.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I see all the time that she follows her heart.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
She does what's right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And she has a very strong moral compass.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I feel very lucky to have her as a partner.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I respect her tremendously.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Oh, always fresh.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The thing with diners, there's so much to love about it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But I grew up,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Obviously, in New Jersey, when I'd go with my father to business, he'd always stop.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We'd eat at a diner.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Late night, I'd come back with my friends.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We'd stop at a diner.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it's a tradition that Ivanka and I love doing as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think there's a notion of it's very egalitarian in that people from all places are there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You could order basically whatever you want.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mean, the menus at the diners look like the phone book.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it's amazing how they keep so much fresh ingredients to do it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
At least the good ones do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I love as a Jersey guy, you get mozzarella sticks and an omelet at any hour of the day because most of them are open 24 hours.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And that's basically my Ivanka, my go-to.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We'll throw in a milkshake or two as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But for me as a kid, my father would take me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Sometimes I'd sit with him in the meeting.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Sometimes I'd be at the table next to him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He'd give me a bunch of quarters to put in the music machine that they would have on the wall.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it was always just a great experience doing it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
In Jersey, and I joke that if you grew up in Jersey, you grew up with just enough of a chip on your shoulder that you have to go and make something of yourself in life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's a special place.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I had an amazing childhood there and very, very proud to be from the state.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I will just give a little bit of a plug now because the state...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
has now actually turned the corner and they had a $10 billion budget surplus for many years.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It was a state that was basically bankrupt.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And now actually under a pretty progressive Democrat governor, Phil Murphy, he's turned the state around and it actually has a very bright future ahead.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it's probably one of the best places
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
To raise a family in the country, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's got very low crime, one of the best public school systems in the country, pretty good healthcare system, a lot of green parks.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
People know the Turnpike, but it's got a lot to it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
That's really great.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I'm a big, big fan of Jersey.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I like how this is a first for this particular podcast.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's where it's at.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's where it's at.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Jersey Shore is the whole thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I'm not talking about the snooki part.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I'm talking about the real nice parts where you have great food, great people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mean, nice parts.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Sure, so my father is an amazing person, and we grew up in New Jersey.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
My father was a big developer, a great entrepreneur, built an amazing business.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He got into a dispute with two of his siblings, and through that dispute, they basically took all of the documents in his company, went to the US Attorney's Office, and turned from a civil dispute into a real public dispute.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
My father did something wrong in that process.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And when he got arrested for that, he basically said, you know what, what I did was wrong.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he took his medicine and he did it like a man.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he said, I'm going to go to prison.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he did that for a year.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so, yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
For me, that was a very challenging time in the family.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Obviously, you know, it was a shock.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It was a total change.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mean, I grew up, my childhood was, I think, a very nice childhood.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You know, my parents always said, you know, do good in school, work hard.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You know, I was very focused on my athletics.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I was captain of the basketball team, captain of the hockey team, baseball.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You know, I ran a marathon with my father, and it was always about pursuing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Went to Harvard, graduated with honors, and then was in NYU pursuing a law degree and a business degree.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I was working at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office at the time, actually thinking I wanted to go into public service, because my father always taught us.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We were always surrounded by politicians, and he always said, you know, my parents came to America.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They lived in the land of opportunity.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And they had these opportunities because this is the best country in the world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so you should be successful, work hard.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Don't ever let your opportunities become your disadvantages.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Because you have advantages in life, you have to work harder.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And that's what he instilled in myself and my brother and always pushed us to make the most of ourselves.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And-
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
When we did that, everything changed overnight when my father got arrested.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Obviously, it's very embarrassing for a family when you're on the front page of the papers.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I would see the newspapers writing all these things about my father that I didn't think were representative of the person that I knew.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It was a big change for our family.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I was angry.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I was angry.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I said, I could be angry at the prosecutor.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I could be angry at my father's brother.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I could be angry at my father's lawyers.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I could be angry at my father for making this mistake.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then I kind of said, that's not going to change anything.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I had a real shift.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I do think that that was a
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I basically said, let me focus on the things I can control.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Let me focus on the positive things I can do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And from that moment forward, I said, how can I be a great son to my father?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
How could I be a great older brother slash substitute father for my two sisters and my younger brother?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
How could I be there for my mother?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
How could I be there for my father's business?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I just went into battle mode, and I put my eyes
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I put my armor on and I just ran into it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And for the next two years, every day was painful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mean, I was dealing with banks.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I was dealing with the company who still had subpoenas.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I was still in law school.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I told my father I wanted to drop out of law school and business school, but he said, please don't.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I would...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
basically go to law school one day a week, or maybe I'd skip it most days and I'd go to his office every day.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And my friends would joke that if my professors wanted to fail me, the law professor would have to give me a test that had four pictures and say, circle who your professor is.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But I would basically take a week off, I'd read the books and I did well and I got my degrees.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it was just a very, very challenging time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But like I said to you before, is that you learn the most about life and you learn the most about humanity
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
and yourself when you're in your most challenging periods.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I'll say that that experience also changed the people I interacted with.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Spending weekends with my father down in a prison in Alabama, I met the other inmates, I met their families.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I spent time then trying to advise the children of other people who were going through the same experience that I'd gone through on how to navigate it correctly.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And you just learn a lot about the world and you see that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You know, in life, everything could get taken from you, your status, your money, your friends.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I saw that certain people were very disloyal to my father at the time, who he thought were friends.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It was only a handful, but again, I learned from those people, how can I be a true friend to people?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
How can I be better?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I learned a tremendous amount through that experience.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The way I interpreted it at the time, and those were very, very memorable words, and it occurred.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I was down after I picked up my father from the arraignment.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I drove him down.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I drove the car, and my father and I are very, very close, and he didn't say a word for the whole time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think he was processing, number one, what was happening to him, and I couldn't even imagine anything.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But I actually think the bigger pain for him, because my father is such a committed person to the family, is like, did I let my family down?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Did I let my kids down?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I do think he felt at that moment like his life was over.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He couldn't really see past that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
what this challenge was going to bring and if there would be a life for him after it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I could see that he had a lot of fear and he really wasn't saying much.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then I didn't know what to do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so I just stood by him and stood close.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And later that day or the next day, he got up and started walking.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He had an ankle monitor.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
For whatever reason, the prosecutor was such a
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So aggressive, he was a flight risk.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So they made him wear an ankle monitor.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They were very, very aggressive and nasty.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And at the time, my father was the biggest donor to Democrats.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The prosecutor was a Republican.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It was a very political thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And what happened was, is he was walking around the pool and I just started walking with him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he said to me, you know, Jared, in life, sometimes we get so powerful that we believe everything.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
that we're the dealer.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He says, but we're not the dealer.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
God's the dealer.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And we have to come down to earth to understand, like you said.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So what I took from that was that my father, with all of his success, had started to believe that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
That maybe certain rules didn't apply to him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think that that's where he made a mistake.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think he had a lot of regret that he made the mistake.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And my father is a very humble person.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He's a very moral person.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
For me, with my humility, my brother and I joke that we give our credit for being humble, number one, to being Mets fans, because every year you have a lot of promise and then it never ends up paying off.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Although now with Steve Cohen, hopefully we're on a different trajectory.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But the other thing is also our mother.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Our mother really raised us to be very humble.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We knew we had a lot, but every Sunday morning, my mom was there clipping the coupons.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The cereal we ate in our house was based on what was on sale versus what we liked.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
When we would have a problem with our teachers in school and I'd say, well, teacher doesn't like me, she'd say, well, I'm not calling them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's your job to make the teacher like you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so my mother gave us a lot of that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
My father gave us a lot of the grounding.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think during that time, my father was just...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
realizing that maybe he had gotten disconnected from the grounding and the values.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And again, I think he also accepted maybe he could have blamed others for acting inappropriately, but I respect the fact that he took responsibility himself and said, I can't control the actions of other people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I can't control what they do is right and wrong.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I can just control my actions.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
as I go on the next journeys in my life and I go to government, I go to Washington.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mean, I even think through the craziness of going from, you know, visiting my father in a prison to 10 years later, sitting in the office in the White House next to the president of the United States.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And like, I think about that story and that it's a story that only God could write.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I really believe that you have to have a lot of faith because the lows and the highs are both
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
so extreme and unbelievable that I feel like those low moments in some ways allowed me to keep my grounding and to understand what was truly important in life for when I ended up going through those other moments.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Oh, 100%.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
100%.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Definitely.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You know, you mentioned about power, money corrupting.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
There's a great quote I heard a friend of mine say.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's a guy, Michael Harris, who was one of the founders of Death Row Records.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he was being interviewed recently, and they asked him about what happened with Suge Knight.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And his line was, you know, money just makes you more of what you already are.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Mm-hmm.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Maybe it didn't act in a way that I thought was always conducive to the objective.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I think it's a very big problem that you have.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Whether it's something that's solvable, I think it's about having the right leaders and hopefully for the leaders, having good friends.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mean, I'm still friends with a lot of the people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I interacted with when I was in government.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And the number one thing I try to be to them is just a good friend.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I try to be somebody who they can talk about things with.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I don't go in trying to tell them what to do on different things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think that that's a big thing is that people just need friends and they need conversation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And if they have that, then hopefully that allows them to keep their head in the right place.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Sure.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So we passed a law called the First Step Act, which was the largest prison and criminal justice reform bill that's been done maybe in 30, 40, 50 years in the U.S.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so what it basically did was two things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Number one is
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It took the prison system and it took a certain class of offenders and allowed them to become eligible for earlier release if they go through the certain trainings that will allow them to have a lower probability of going back.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So stepping back, you look at the prison system, you say, what's the purpose?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Is it to punish?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Is it to warehouse?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Is it to rehabilitate?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I do think that we're a country that believes in second chances.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I saw firsthand when my father was a client of the system, how inefficient it was and how much better it could be.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And when my father got out, we didn't run from that experience.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He started hiring people from Rikers Island and different prisons into the company, into a second chance program, which we're very, very proud of doing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And what we saw through our micro experience was that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
If you give people mentorship, if you give them job training, a lot of people leave, they have addiction issues, and they can't find housing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so people leave prison with a criminal record, and they're less likely to go back and reintegrate in society without help.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
from different institutions that can help them do that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So we modeled the reforms off of what they did in Texas and Georgia and other states where they basically put a lot of job training, alcohol, and addiction treatment programs in the prisons as a way to incentivize the prisoners to work on themselves while they're there in order to allow them to reenter society.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's turned out to be very successful so far.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They just had a report that showed that the general population
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's at a 47% recidivism rate, meaning that people who leave federal prison, half of them go back.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And people who have now taken this program, only 12% of them go back.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So number one, you're making communities safer because if people are going to now get a job and enter society, instead of committing future crimes, you're avoiding future crimes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And number two, you're giving people a second chance at life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so that was the first part of it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The second thing we did was there was a rule passed in the 90s that basically penalized crack cocaine at 100 times the penalty of what regular cocaine was.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think a lot of the motivations what people say in retrospect was that crack was more of a black drug and cocaine was more of a white drug.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so there was a really racial disparity in terms of what the application of these sentences were.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So they then revised that to make it 18 to one.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And what we did in this bill is we allowed it to go retroactive to allow people who were in prison with sentences under the, what we thought was the racist law to be able to make an application to a judge in order to be dismissed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it was based on good behavior, um,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
being rehabilitated and the fact that they would have a low probability of offending in the future.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so that was really the meat of it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And there was a couple other things in there we did as well, which were also quite good.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So we did it, worked very closely with the Democrats, Republicans to do it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
At first, President Trump was a little bit skeptical of it because he's a big, strong law and order supporter, but he made me work very hard to put together a coalition of Republicans and Democrats and law enforcement.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We had the support from
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
from the policemen.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We had the support from the ACLU.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And ultimately, we were able to get it together.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it was an amazing thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We ended up getting 87 votes in the Senate.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
This happened for me at a time while the Russia investigation stuff was still happening.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
A new chief of staff came in, John Kelly.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He basically marginalized me and the operations.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I had kind of less day-to-day responsibilities in the White House.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so for me, this effort became one of my full-time efforts along with negotiating the Mexico trade deal and along with the Middle East efforts.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And the reason why that was great was because it didn't have a lot of support from the Republican caucus originally, and people thought there was no way it would happen.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I really was able to be the chief executive officer
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
the middle executive, the low executive, the intern.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And through that process, I really got an education on how Congress works, on how to pass legislation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I was negotiating texts.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I was negotiating back and forth.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I built a lot of trust.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Again, I would deal with, whether it's Hakeem Jeffries or Cedric Richmond, we built a lot of trust.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We'd speak three times a day.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
These guys had my back.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The ACLU, again, I never thought they were suing our administration every day or every other day on something.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But for whatever reason, we built trust and we were able to work together.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then also with the real conservative groups, because there was a lot, a big part of the conservative base that felt like we should be giving people a second chance.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And in addition to that, this will keep our country safer and it will reduce the cost of what we spend on prisons.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so it was a great effort and I was very, very proud that we're able to get it done under President Trump.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Hand-to-hand combat, meetings.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You know, like the cool thing about this, so everyone always says, I always get frustrated when I hear a lawmaker say, oh, the Senate's not what it used to be or Congress isn't what it used to be.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Things are broken today.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I don't think that's true.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think, you know, going through the process,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think that our founders were totally genius in the way that they designed our system of government.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And what I saw is you just have to work it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So everyone knows the power of their vote.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Some would give it to me easily.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Some wouldn't give it to me easily.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Some would trade it for other things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Some would withhold it because they were pissed about other things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it was just hand-to-hand combat.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So it was just making calls, using the phone, going, walking the halls, going to lunches, hosting dinners at my house.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It was just, it was a nonstop lobbying effort.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And by the way, it was also adjudicating issues and making people feel like they were heard, hearing their issues, and then trying to find solutions that you don't put something in that then tips off where you lose a whole coalition.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So it was really a balancing act, but it was an amazing thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And-
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Worked very closely on that with Van Jones and Jessica Jackson, who also gave me a lot of help on the left.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it was an amazing thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Had a great team too.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The answer is yes, and the answer is no.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I made some incredible friends, lifelong friends, through my time in Washington.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But the way I think about it from politics, and I think in geopolitics as well, is I would say that politicians really don't have friends, politicians have interests.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And as long as you kind of follow that rule, you should be able to know how to rate where your relationship with a given person falls in the spectrum.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But I do think I was the exception.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I did make some tremendous friends.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Again, I'd go back to what I said about negotiation where when you're in a situation where there's really nothing in it for any of you personally, but you're in a foxhole together and nobody in Washington can get anything done by themselves.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You have people coming from all different backgrounds, all different experiences, all different geographies coming together.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
agreeing on an objective, creating a plan, and then every day rowing together in order to get it done, it's a beautiful thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And you really learn what people are about.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so when you go through an experience like that, you learn who's in it for themselves, you learn who's in it for the cause.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And for every thing you read about in the press of a fight I had with somebody because we were at odds, I have about 100 people who have become lifelong friends because I respect the way
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
That when we were under fire together, they got better, they were competent, and they were there to serve for the right reason.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so I guess the answer is yes, it is possible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You have to be careful because there are a lot of mercurial people there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I always say the politicians are like gladiators.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I didn't have as much respect for politicians till I got there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But if you think about it, everyone who's got a congressional seat or a Senate seat, there's 25 people back at home who want their job, who think they're smarter than them, who are trying to backstab them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so I always say that the political dynamic, it's like...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
In the private sector, you're standing on flat ground.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You choose which fights you take on, when you take them on, how you fight them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
In politics, it's like you're standing on a ball.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And what you have to realize is that there's maybe like 10 things that you have to do, but there's a potential cost to taking on each one that might destabilize you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You fall off the ball, and then you lose your opportunity to pursue those.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You have to always be
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
kind of marking everything to market and going through your calculations to make sure you can accomplish what you want to without falling off the ball and losing your opportunity to make a difference.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Just doing good by others, I feel like, is a... I'd like to say that's true, Lex.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's just way more complicated.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mean, you look what happened this week with Kevin McCarthy, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He did what he thought was morally right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He thought, you know, he did a bipartisan deal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He was told that, you know, they would have his back.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then the moment things got tough, they cut him loose.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So, again, I don't know if that was the right thing or the wrong thing, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I've also seen leaders on the other end say, I'm going to do things that are short-term or selfish, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But the way they justify to themselves is to say, I believe that myself staying in power is existential to the greater good.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I will do things that maybe are not in the greater good now because I believe that my maintaining power is.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so it's complicated.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
In an idealized world, I'd love to believe that's the case, but it's just way more complicated than that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Yeah.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I wish it wasn't, but it is.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
and it's just sad to see and i wish there was a kind of machinery of government would inspire people to be their best selves in their last days versus the war cells right when that system gets invented you know you'll you'll share with me what it is but it's uh look i let me give you another way to frame it which is and this was kind of the the revelation we spoke before about you know kind of when i was getting my butt kicked by the russian investigation and all the different areas
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But kind of the basic framework I looked at was I said, okay, this all feels tough, but I said, the game's the game.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The game's been here way longer, but way before I came, and it'll be here way long after I leave.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so I have two choices.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I can complain that the game's tough, it's not fair, it's not moral, or I can go and I can try to play the game as hard as possible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think that there's two different things, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You have people who are willing to kind of sit in the stands and they're willing to yell at the players or make their...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
their points known, or you have people who are willing to suit up and get in the arena and go play.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I have a lot of respect for the people who suit up and go play.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And again, some of them, I wish they would play for different means, but the fact that they're willing to put their name on the ballot, make the sacrifice and go put on the pads and get hit and hit others.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think that you need those people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I wish more people who had maybe the moral wiring that you discussed would be putting on a helmet and going to play because it's hard.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's hard.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It is.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But I'll give you, again, an optimistic side of it is that what you're seeing now with social media is I do think with what's happening at X, there is now more of a reversion towards more egalitarian, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And egalitarianism of information.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so for many years, the media publications were the gatekeepers.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then you had these social media companies that grew, they became so powerful, but then they were tilting the scales.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Why they were doing it, we can go through long explanations for that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But if there truly is a real forum and a democratization of information, then you would think that the marketplace of ideas would surface the real ones and discredit the non-real ones.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think that as a society, we're starting to kind of come to grips with the fact that the power...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
dynamic is changing and that some of these institutions that we used to have a lot of faith in don't deserve our faith.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And some of them will actually reform and maybe re-earn our faith.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I think that there could be an optimistic tone.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Again, the years of Trump, I think that he was an outsider and he represented something that was existential to the system.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You think about for the 30 years before, you were either part of the Clinton dynasty or the Bush dynasty.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think a lot of people in the country felt like that whole class, whether you're wearing a red shirt or a blue shirt, wasn't representing them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And Trump represented a true outsider to that system.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I do think that as he went in there, there was a lot of norms that were broken to try to stop him from changing the traditional power structure.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I think that we're at a time where maybe there will be an optimistic outlook.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
breakthrough where you'll have institutions that will allow for a lot more transparency into what truth really is.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So for the listeners, Mohammed bin Salman is now the crown prince of Saudi Arabia.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He has risen to that position over the last couple of years, and he's been a tremendous reformer for the country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He's gone in and he's really modernized the economy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He's put a lot more investment into the country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He's marginalized the religious police, and he's really done a good job to bring modernization and a lot of reform.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So he's been a great reformer.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
What he's like as a person is he's very high energy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He's got tremendous candle power, very, very smart, incredibly well-read.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
When he was younger, his father would give him a book a week and make him report on it on the weekend.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He was trained as a leader and as a politician.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
really by his father.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He's not Western educated, so he grew up in the Saudi culture, and he's a real Saudi nationalist.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He loves their history, loves their heritage, has a deep understanding of the tribal nature of the region.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And his father was actually known to be a tremendous politician.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So when he was
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
governor of riyadh people who i speak to today about him say that if they had a full election he would have won in a landslide they say every time somebody went to the hospital he was the first person to call anytime there was a funeral he was the first person to show up he's a very very beloved leader um
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Mohammed bin Salman, he was a businessman before he got into Crown Prince.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So he thinks really with a business mindset about how he runs the country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he's brought, I think, a different mindset and energy to the Middle East.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
One thing I'll say that maybe that comes to mind here is that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I remember early on talking with him about all the different initiatives he was taking on.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He's building a big city called Neom in the desert in a place where there really was nothing on the Red Sea.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And a lot of people were criticizing the ambition of the plan.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I was sitting with him one night and I said, why are you taking on all these things?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You've got a lot of different programs, but what most politicians do is they set lower expectations and then they exceed the expectations.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he looked at me without hesitation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He says, Jared...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The way I look at it is that in five years from now, if I set five goals and I achieve five goals, I'll have achieved five things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
If I set 100 goals and I fail at 50 of them, then five years, I'll have accomplished 50 things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so it's a very different mindset as a leader.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The way I got to work with him was Saudi Arabia was a big topic in the campaign.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
President Trump was basically saying during the campaign that they've got to pay for their fair share.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They haven't been a great partner in the region.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He's very critical of Saudi.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then during the transition period,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I was asked by several friends to meet with a representative of Saudi Arabia.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I said, I don't want to meet with them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But I came over and I met and they said, well, we want to make changes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I said, well, you have to make changes to how you treat women.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Then women couldn't drive.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They had guardianship laws.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So you got to start working with Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You have to be paying more of your fair share and you have to be stopping the Wahhabism that's being spread.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And again, I had no knowledge.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
These were just kind of the traditional talking points about Saudi Arabia.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The guy I was with basically said, it was a guy, Fadal Tunzi, who's a very respected minister there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He says, Jared, he says, you don't know much about Saudi Arabia, do you?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I said, no, no, no, I don't.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's just really what I've kind of been told or what I read.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he says, okay, let me do this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
we want to be great allies with America.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We've traditionally been great allies with America.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Can I come back to you with a proposal on ways that we can make progress on all of the different areas where we have joint interests?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And keep in mind at that point in time, the Middle East was a mess.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And probably the single biggest issue we had after ISIS was the ideological battle.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
If you remember in 2016, there was the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, you had the San Bernardino shooting, and people were being radicalized online with the
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then there was a lot of crimes that were happening because of that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it was a big topic in the campaign.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so that, when I was thinking about talking to different generals and what capabilities the US had to really combat the extremism and the ideological battle, what we realized was that Saudi Arabia is the custodian of the two holiest sites in Islam, the Mecca Medina, that that would be the best partner to work with if they were willing to.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But for years, they really hadn't been willing to kind of lean into this fight.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I said, sure, give a proposal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So they come back, give a proposal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And they said, look, if you make President Trump's first trip to Saudi Arabia, we will do all these different things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We'll increase our military spending and cooperation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We'll counter all the terror financing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Unbelievable layer.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I took the proposal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I went to the national, then it was General Flynn.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I said, if Saudi Arabia did these things, would this be considered a big, unbelievable, but it will never happen?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I said, well, they're telling me they want to do these things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Again, having no foreign policy experience, I'm just saying I've got somebody telling me they want to do it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And that's kind of where we started.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We get into office.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I don't think much more about it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then I think it was like maybe a month in, President Trump has a call from
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
with King Salman.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And before the call, we're in the Oval Office, and the president's basically saying, well, you know, this is what we want to go through.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I have Secretary Mattis and Secretary Tillerson, the Minister of Defense and the Secretary of State basically saying,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You have to deal with MBN.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
MBN is the guy who's been our partner for all these years.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He's the head of intelligence, and he's been a great partner.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I said, well, if he's been a great partner, then why do we have all these problems that you guys are complaining about with Saudi?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I said, I've been told that we have this proposal from MBS, who's the deputy crown prince.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And that's who we should be dealing with on this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so the phone call starts and President Trump listened to both of us.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And on the phone call with King Salman, President Trump says, okay, we'll go through all these things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
These are the things we want to get done.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he says, well, who should we deal with?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And King Salman says, deal with my son, the deputy crown prince, MBS.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so President Trump said on the phone, have him deal with Jared.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Because I think he knew that if he would have put him with the other guys, they were not believers in what he had the ability to do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And that's how I got assigned to work with him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I get back to my office after that, have an email from him, spoke to him for the first time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then we just went to work.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And a lot of people were betting against that trip.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They thought it wasn't going to be successful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And they've been betting against him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he's been underestimated, but he's been doing an incredible job.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And the whole Middle East is different today because of the work that he's done.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Maybe some of it came from my inexperience, but my desire to listen and hear people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So, you know, I had this proposal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I was told that all of these things were good.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Then we're trying to schedule this trip, and the National Security Council calls a meeting where we're in the Situation Room, and we have Homeland Security, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State, and everyone's saying, this is going to be a disaster.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They said, if we go to Saudi Arabia, the Saudis never keep their promises.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And our Secretary of State at the time was a gentleman named Rex Tillerson.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Mm-hmm.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Who'd been the CEO of Exxon.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So he dealt with all these people very extensively.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he basically said, in my experience, the Saudis won't come through.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And Jared, you don't know what you're doing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You're wasting your time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I basically was at a point where I said, look, guys...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But they're saying they want to do all these things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Shouldn't we at least give them a chance to try to do it?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Why do we want to predetermine their direction by not giving them a chance to change?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Just because things in the past haven't gotten the way you want them to, that doesn't mean they can't go that way in the future.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So we fought the battle.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They basically deferred and let me go through with it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But when I do the planning meetings for the trip, nobody would show up because they all thought it was going to be an absolute disaster.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And by the way, they probably weren't wrong to think that because I'd never planned a foreign trip before and I'd never done any foreign policy before.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So during the planning, I'd speak to MBS almost every day, and I'd go through all the different details and the things that would be coming up.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I said, look, I really need to get these things in writing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He sent over a guy, Dr. Masada Laiban, who's a tremendous diplomat for them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he came to Washington, stayed for three weeks, and we worked through all the different details of what we needed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And we ended up coming to an arrangement on what it should be.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I think about now, in retrospect, why...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I was so focused on getting things like this done and why I even believed that they could be possible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But the answer is really the people I was talking to on the other end were telling me that these things were possible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so just because they hadn't been done before and just because others around me didn't believe that they could be done, I wasn't willing to just say, well, let's not try.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think that is funny.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
That was an essay I read and we're doing just a snippet of it, but I would encourage anyone listening to go and find it and read the entire thing because it's something that really spoke to me as I was transitioning into my new career now.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I just loved it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But when we were talking about why certain people who don't have traditional qualifications are able to come in and do incredible work and solve complex problems, it made me think of that essay, which is why I shared it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think that in the context of the work that I was doing here,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
uh perhaps not having the historical context became an advantage and obviously went back and then tried to study it but if you go into a problem i always find that especially in the political realm my favorite political issues are ones where they're contrarian by being obvious and you know sometimes they feel very intuitive and so you take them on there's always a lot of resistance when you go against something that's been accepted
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
as the way that you're supposed to do things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I came to learn over the course of my time in government that when everyone was agreeing with what I was doing, then it actually made me more nervous because I felt like you have these problems, they haven't been solved for a long time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then if you take the same approach as others, you're gonna fail just like they did.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So taking a different approach doesn't mean you're gonna succeed, but at least if you fail, you're gonna fail in an original way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so I did like this a lot.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think that what I saw was the people who were very good at getting things done that hadn't been done before were people who came with different qualifications, different perspectives, and they came in and really worked the problem in untraditional ways.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so-
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think in the Middle East, I came in with a very different approach than people before me, not because I came in deliberately trying to do it differently, but because I came in trying to listen and understand from people why the problem hadn't been solved and then think from a first principles perspective on what's the right perspective today, not based on what happened 50 years ago or not based on what somebody's feelings who were hurt were.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
but what's the right thing to make people's lives better, to make the world a safer and more prosperous place tomorrow?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Sure.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So, you know, it's funny, we were talking before about how, you know, we wish leaders would set big audacious goals and take on big things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Well, that's what he did with Vision 2030.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You know, when he was young, and again, this is something that was derided and a lot of people were very skeptical of it, but the people actually, you know, picked it up and read it, said this is a very thoughtful plan that's very achievable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So he studied his country and said, what's our place here?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
in the world?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
What are our advantages?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
What are our disadvantages?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then he set publicly KPIs that he wanted to hold his country to and then put in place plans and committees and really worked hard to push things in that direction, which was pretty remarkable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think that it's something when I saw it, I thought it was
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
very refreshing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I said, wait, in America, why don't we all have set goals?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Why don't we have KPIs?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I do think that it's something that most countries, if not all countries, should have.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
One of my favorite quotes was from the Alice in Wonderland where the Cheshire Cat says, if you don't know where you're going, it doesn't matter which path you take.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so I think that that's something that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
really helped set them on a good path and they've been very successful with it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
One of the things he told me about putting that together was he said, you know, my father's generation, they created this country from almost nothing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They came here, they were a poor country, they were Bedouins in the desert.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then they look back and see what they've done over 50 years and they say, it's absolutely remarkable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He said, his generation, they come in and they say, we're very grateful for everything that's been done to date.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But we have so much opportunity that we're not taking advantage of.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so he's now empowered the next generation to be ambitious and think big and grow with it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
What that means for his vision for the Middle East is that the general architecture that should exist, and now there's excitement in the discussions with Israel that have advanced, was the general view of what we thought from a Trump perspective should be the new Middle East is having
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
an economic and security corridor all the way from Haifa to Muscat, from Oman to Israel, where basically you go through and if you can create a security area where people can live, you know, free of fear of terrorism and of conflict.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The Middle East for the last 20 years has been a sinkhole for arms, for death, for terrorism.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's been, you know, awful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's been a big national security threat for America, a big place where our
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Our treasure is gone.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We've had a lot of our young, amazing American soldiers killed in action there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And the same thing for the Arab countries as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So if we can create a security architecture for that region, and then we can create economic integration between all the different countries.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mean, the amount of innovation happening in Israel is unbelievable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Think of it like Silicon Valley is not connected to the rest of California.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You have a very young population, a very digital savvy population.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You have a lot of resources.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so if you can get that whole set, the potential for it is unbelievable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I do think that that's his ultimate vision is to become a really strong country economically and then to become a place where you could be funding advancements in science, advancements in humanity, advancements in artificial intelligence, and think about ways to be a positive influence in the world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So what he said to me was no different than what he ultimately said on 60 Minutes, which was, as somebody helping lead this country, I bear responsibility.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I'm going to make sure that those who are involved are brought to justice.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I'm going to make sure that we put in place reforms to make sure things like this don't happen again.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It was a horrible situation that occurred.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
What I saw from him after that was just a doubling and a tripling down on the positive things he was doing, figuring out ways to kind of continue to modernize his society, build opportunity in the kingdom, and to continue to be a better ally to all the different countries that wanted to be aligned with them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Yeah, so it definitely created massive tension and it became a very high profile action that actually overshadowed a lot of the good work that was being done in the region and a lot of the progress we were making.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But when you think about this or you think about the other issues that we've gone through today,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think the general framework that I always try to approach things with is you can't change what happened yesterday.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You can only learn from it, and then you can change how you deal with tomorrow.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And when I think about the people in power, what do I hope that they're spending their time focused on?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Two basic things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Number one is how do I create safety and security for my people and for the world?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then how do I give people the opportunity to live a better life?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so when things like this happen, obviously, you know, there are certain reactions that are appropriate.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But ultimately, you have to think through how do you not allow the paradigm that you're creating in the world to lead to worse outcomes?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
than would happen otherwise.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so when I would think about foreign policy in general, one of the differences between foreign policy and business is that in business, the conclusion of a problem set, you finish a deal, you either have, you know, a company or a property, or if you sell it, you have, you know, less to do and more capital, hopefully if it's successful, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
In a political deal,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's always about paradigms.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So the end of a problem set is always the beginning of a new paradigm.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And you're always thinking through how do you create an environment that leads to hopefully the best amount of positive outcomes that could occur versus creating a paradigm that will lead to negative outcomes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So bad things happen a lot in the world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And you have to make sure that when those happen, people are held accountable for it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But you also don't want to make sure that in the process of making sure that there's accountability for these actions, you don't set a lot of progress that the world is making back that will lead to worse off situation for many more people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
If I had to give you the most simple answer, I would say that it's structural.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And if you go back to the incentive structure of different leaders, this whole peace process between Israel and the Palestinians, and again, I've gotten criticized for saying this, but it's what I believe, so I'm going to say it, is that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
the incentive structure was all wrong.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And when I went before the United Nations Security Council to discuss the peace plan that I proposed, which again, was more of an operational plan and it was a pragmatic plan.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It was over 180 pages in detail.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
In politics, people don't like putting forward detail because it just gives a lot of places for you to get criticized on.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Nobody actually criticized the detail of my plan.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They just criticized...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
the fact that it was coming from us and didn't want to debate the merits of the operational pieces of it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I created a slide where I showed from the Oslo Accords till the day I was there, all the different peace discussions.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I put a dove in the slide for those.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then I put a tank for every time there was a war, because there was always skirmishes between Hamas and Hezbollah and the Palestinians.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then I showed two lines and they both went from the bottom of the page all the way up like this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
One of the lines was Israeli settlements.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So every time a negotiation failed, Israel was able to get more land.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then the other one was money to the Palestinians.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I said, every time a negotiation failed, the Palestinians would get more money.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The problem with that money, though, was that it wasn't going to the people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Some of it would make its way down, but most of it was going to the politicians.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You had leadership of the Palestinians, who was basically, I think at that point, it was in the 16th year of a four-year term, so it wasn't democratically elected.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And a lot of what I tried to show was that there was no rule of law, there was no judicial system, there were no property rights, and there was no opportunity or hope for the people to live a better life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
All of the envoys to date were basically trained to go and do the same things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And again, I got massively criticized by all the previous envoys for not doing it the same way they did.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But I thought the problem structurally just didn't make sense.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so I felt like the incentive structure was all wrong and I took a different approach.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so what's the different approach?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I started writing down a document.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
These are the 11 issues, but there's really only three issues that matter.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I said, just tell me what you think the compromise is that you think the other side could live with that you would accept.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it was very hard to get them talking about this.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Oh, you have to go back to 1972.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You have to go back to 1982.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You have to go back to 2001.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You have to go to camp.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I was just like, I don't need a headache and I don't need a history lesson.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Just I want a very simple thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Here today in 2017, what's the outcome that you would accept?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I was dealing with their negotiators, their back channel secret negotiators, their double secret.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I was like, this whole thing is like, it's a process created where nobody wants to talk about the actual solution.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So coming from the business world, I said, okay, let me just write down a proposed solution that I think is fair.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And let me have each side react.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Like, don't tell me about theoretical things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Like, tell me...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I want to move the line from here to here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I want to change this word.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I tried to make it much more tactical.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And what I realized was the Palestinians, they'd worked so hard to get the Arab world to stay with the line of the Arab Peace Initiative.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so I went back and I read the Air Peace Initiative.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It was 10 lines and it didn't have any detail.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So it was a concept.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so they liked that concept because it allowed them to reject everything.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They kept getting more money.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mean, Bibi Netanyahu, who runs one of the most incredible economies in the world, who runs an incredible superpower militarily for the size of their country, he would fly to Washington to meet us and he'd be taking a commercial El Al plane.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
A boss who runs a refugee organization, a refugee group, right, that claims that they don't have a state that gets billions of dollars in aid every year from the global community would fly in a $60 million Boeing BBJ.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So the whole thing was just very corrupt and off.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I do think that that's why it, I don't think people were incentivized to solve it, to be honest.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You have to separate it into two different issues.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think that that's actually how we came to the Abraham Accords is that, you know, I tell the story in the book and it was one of my like favorite experiences during my time in diplomacy where I went to meet with Sultan Qaboos, who was the Sultan of Oman.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And we fly out there because he'd had a secret meeting with Bibi.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I thought maybe he was open to normalizing with Israel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So after he meets with Bibi, he calls me and says, I want you to come see me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I go over to see him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And again, I tell the story.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It was a crazy night and all these different areas.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But when I was talking to him, he basically says to me,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I feel badly for the Palestinian people that they carry with them the burden of the Muslim world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And that line just like stuck with me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And a couple of days later, I was thinking about it and I said, wait a minute.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
who elected the Palestinian people to represent the Muslim world on the Al-Aqsa Mosque?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so the reason why I felt like it had never been solved was it was a riddle, A, that I believed was designed to not be solved.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But B, you were conflating two separate issues.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You had the issue between Israel and the Muslim world, which really was the issue of the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then you had just a territorial dispute, which throughout history, you have lots of territorial disputes and they're usually resolved in different ways.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So, if you go back to the Israeli-Palestinian issue, there's just a couple components you need to solve.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Number one is territorial contiguity, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You need to figure out where do you draw the lines, and that's something that, you know, you can talk about what people were owed 70 years ago, but it's much more productive to say this is what you can make work today.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And that's kind of what we did.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We literally spent months and months drawing a map and we put something out, probably changed a couple of lines here and there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But by and large, it was a very pragmatic solution that I think could work.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think it could work for the safety and security of Israel, which was number one.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So first issue is drawing a map.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Second issue is security.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Again, Israel...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And again, this is one issue we were incredibly sympathetic with Israel, which is you can't expect a prime minister of Israel to make a deal where he's going to make his people less secure than before.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So we worked very closely with them on a security apparatus.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We laid something out that I think would keep the whole area safer and it would make sure Israel was safe and also keep the Palestinian issue safe.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So you need security.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Number three was the religious sites.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And that was one that was actually...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
always made much more complicated by people, the Al-Aqsa Mosque, because you basically have Haram al-Sharif, which is a place where the mosque was built in the 7th or 8th century.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But originally, it was where the Holy of Holies were and the Beit HaMikdash for the Jewish people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then compounding by the fact that you have all of the Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, it's a city that should be bringing everyone together, but in fact, has become a place where you have wars and hatred and a lot of different conflicts that have risen because of it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But what I said was, instead of fighting over concepts of sovereignty, which is interesting how I got to the notion that this wasn't really the big issue, I basically said just operationally, why don't we just make it simple?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Let everyone come and be able to worship as long as they're being able to worship peacefully.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So that's really the...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
contours of it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And what the Palestinians have done is they've kind of deflected from a lot of their own shortcomings.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And a lot of the Arab leaders did that as well, kind of in the pre-Abraham Accord days by kind of allowing this issue to be so prevalent.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So one thing I'll say on the Palestinians is that what we tried to do by laying out a plan was we said, okay, what are the reasons why the Palestinian people are not having the lives that they deserve?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I'll give you a
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I studied the economies of Jordan, West Bank, Gaza, Egypt, Morocco.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
This was numbers from like 2019.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But what was interesting was the GDP per capita of somebody living in the West Bank was actually the same as Jordan.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it was actually more than somebody living in Egypt.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And the debt to GDP that the Palestinians had was like 30, 40% compared to Egypt, which was at like 130%.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And Jordan, which was at 110%.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And Lebanon, which was at 200%.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so you're in a situation where a lot of this stuff didn't make sense.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But if you draw lines, create institutions where Palestinian people can now feel like they have property rights and have ownership over their place and let the money flow past the leadership ranks to the people, let them have jobs, let them have opportunity.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then let all Muslims from throughout the world have access to the mosque and Israel making sure that they can control the security, which I think the Jordanians and a lot of others want Israel to have strong security control there to prevent the radicalists and the extremists from coming.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
you could have peace there very easily.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So to date, all of the aid that's been given to the Palestinians has been an entitlement.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's not conditions-based.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's always just we give the money and there's no expectations.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's very simple.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You make the aid conditions-based, you fight for transparency, you do it through institutions other than the PA, or you put reformers into the PA that will allow it to go down that way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
PA being the Palestinian Authority, which is the leadership.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's not hard to do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It just takes people who actually want to do it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But I think that the mindset of the international community has not been, let's solve this problem.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's like, let's just throw a little bit of money.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The money's Novocaine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Let's put a little Novocaine on the problem and let's not have to deal with it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But nobody's ever said, oh, let's do an accounting of the $20 billion we've given them and see how many jobs it's done and where it's gone.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
That just hasn't happened.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Again, it's an incredibly corrupt organization, UNRWA.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You think about the post-World War II dynamic.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You had a lot of refugees.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
My grandparents were refugees post-World War II.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Every other refugee class has been resettled and you only have one permanent refugee organization ever created.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Why was this done?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It was done to perpetuate the conflict so that a lot of Arab leaders could basically deflect from a lot of their shortcomings at home.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so I think for Israel, they view all these things as existential.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They value their safety.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They've been under attack for a long time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I do think having a deal where we can say, how do the Jews and the Muslims come together?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think King Abdullah from Jordan's been an incredible custodian for the mosque.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think everyone in my travels recognize that he's the right guy for that, that the King of Jordan should be the custodian of the mosque.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We should have some kind of framework to make sure everyone has access.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The more countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel, the more Muslims and Arabs that should be able to come and visit.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And by the way, the more you have these normalizations...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Think about what that will do to the economy of the West Bank, where they'll have great hotels, hospitality, tremendous tourism industry because of all the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish holy sites that they have there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So there's a lot of potential there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We just have to get unstuck.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I believe that...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's so possible if the leaders want to make tomorrow better that they can.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And unfortunately, the people who suffer the most are just the Palestinian people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think that in Gaza, they're hostages to Hamas.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And in the West Bank, they're just held back because their leadership just is afraid or too self-interested.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
To give them the opportunity to change their paradigm and pursue the potential of what they have.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And by the way, it's an incredibly well-educated population.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's an incredibly capable population.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And they're right next to Israel where the economy, they need everything.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so the potential should be incredible if you can just move some of these pieces.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But again, there's still a lot of emotion and hatred you have to work through as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But I do believe that you're not going to solve that by litigating the past.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You're only going to solve that by creating an exciting paradigm for the future and getting everyone to buy in and then move towards that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So one thing on that, which is very interesting, is when I got into my job in the Middle East, all the conventional thinkers said to me, the separation in the Muslim world is between the Sunnis and the Shias, and that's really the big divide.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And as I was traveling, I didn't think there was any divide in that regard.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The divide that I saw was between leaders who wanted to give a better opportunity for their people and create economic reforms and opportunity, and leaders who wanted to use religion or fear to keep their stronghold on power.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so if you think about who's not creating the opportunity for their people is the Palestinian leadership and the Iranian leadership.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
All the other Arab countries were focused on how do we give opportunity for our people to live a better life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Sure, so it's an amazing thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I sit here today, somebody not in government, and every day I see another flight that goes between, or I see an Israeli student studying at a university in Dubai or a new synagogue opening up in Abu Dhabi, and it just gives me such, or Bahrain, it gives me such tremendous pride to see all of the progress that's been made.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
How it occurred, part of why I wrote the book was to put this down for history's sake, to go through all the different intentional, unintentional, circumstantial things that occurred.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's funny, we left government.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
There's a lot of people saying, well, this is why.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I said, I was kind of at the middle of it, and I couldn't even perfectly articulate why it happened, because it was an evolution of a lot of things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I joke that...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We made peace on Plan C, but only because we went through the alphabet three times, failing at every letter.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And by the time, but we didn't give up and we kept going and we got it done.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
That's probably the best place to start.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So what we did is we made a peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and then Israel and Bahrain.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Then we did a deal with Israel and Sudan, then Israel and Kosovo, Israel and Morocco, where basically countries that didn't recognize each other before ended up recognizing each other.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
All of these were Muslim-majority countries, and getting them to integrate with Israel was a very big thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The traditional thinking had always been was that Muslim Arab countries would not make peace with Israel until the Israeli-Palestinian issue was solved.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And what we were able to do is separate the issues and then make these connections, which are leading to amazing interaction between Jews and Muslims.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So when I think about kind of, obviously you have national security, you have emotional benefits from these things, but the single biggest benefit that I've seen from the accords is that if you were an Arab or a Muslim and you were, you know,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
and you were willing to say positive things about Israel or the Jews before this came out, you had been viciously attacked by the media or the hordes of influencers or the extremists in these different countries.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
What this did was it brought out into the public the fact that Jews and Muslims can be together and they can be respectful, they can have meals together, and that the cultures can live together in peace.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I would say the simplest form is it's just a mindset.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it's almost like you're taught all your life we're enemies or we can't be friends with that tribe.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
On the other side of the fence.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then one day the leaders get up and say, no, it's okay now.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And there was never an issue between the people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The people were just taught different things and they were separated from each other.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But again, one of the things that I respect about the work you do is you believe in the power of conversation and the power of human interaction.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And these issues and gaps between us feel so big now.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
when we think about them, when we're told about them, when we read about them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But when we go and sit with each other, all of a sudden we realize maybe we have a lot more in common than we have that divides us.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
For me, what I've seen about it that's made the biggest difference is I've seen people who wouldn't have the ability to be together, be together,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And that's now forming a nucleus of togetherness, which is a restoration.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So you think about the modern Middle East from post-Holocaust to now.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Again, in 1948, after that War of Independence, you had Jews living in...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Baghdad and Cairo, then they became so anti-Jewish that they then expelled all of the Jews from all these capitals of those cities.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So you think about the Jewish history in Baghdad.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mean, I think the Talmud was written in Baghdad.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It was a place where in Babylon,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
where the Jewish people thrived.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think in 570 BCE, when Nebuchadnezzar conquered Jerusalem, he took about 10,000 Jews back with him to Babylon because he thought it'd be good for his economy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And during that place, the Jews actually flourished and had a good life there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
For a thousand years before the Second World War, the Jews and the Muslims lived very peacefully together.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So people say that what we're doing now is an aberration.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I actually think it's not an aberration.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think it's actually a return to the time where people can live together culturally.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so this is the beginning of the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it's the beginning of togetherness, which, again, you think about how much war, how much provocation, how much terrorism has been made in the name of religious conflict.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
This is, I think, the start of the process of religious respect and understanding.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Sure.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I left government, obviously worked for four years.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It was a very action-packed time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
That's why I wrote the book.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I wanted to put down all those experiences.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I started thinking, what do I want to do next?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So my previous career, I'd been in real estate.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I'd worked with my brother on some technology businesses that I'd started.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then I got into government.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I kind of had a career shift, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
In my previous career, obviously, it was very successful.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The New York Times, they violated and they published my financial statements.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They showed I was making about $50 million a year in the private sector before I went to government.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I went into government and I...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I volunteered, I didn't take a salary.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I paid for my own health insurance for four years, my wife and I. And then we went and I was thinking, should I go back to my old company or should I start something new?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And my thinking was, is that through my time in government, I'd met so many people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I'd learned so much about the world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I had a big understanding now for how the macroeconomic picture worked.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I did feel like there was a lot more that I could do than just going back to real estate.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
In the meantime, I was getting a lot of calls from different CEOs and companies saying, can you help me with this company?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Can you help me with that company?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Your knowledge could be helpful to help this company navigate this challenge or to expand internationally.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so I said, you know what?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Maybe I should create a business to do an investment firm.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
where I can do something different, where I'm putting together geopolitical expertise and traditional private equity and growth investing and figure out how to do that, where I can do something differentiated, where I can invest in growing things and help with my navigation skills and relationships.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So that was kind of the thesis of what I thought could make sense as kind of a next step.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I called different friends.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They were very excited to back the effort.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Obviously, this was coming off the success that I just had in the Middle East where I did six peace deals there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And, you know, one of the notions I wanted to be able to do with the firm was to be able to take money from the Gulf and then to be able to invest it in Israel to continue to build the economic links between the countries.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Again, if countries have more economic ties, I think war and fighting is less likely.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then in addition to that, I wanted to figure out how do you bring the entrepreneurs together from both of those countries together.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So that was really the mission of what I set out to do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So far, I've been enjoying it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's been a lot of fun.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I've been learning a ton.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think we're doing very well with it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
In terms of the criticisms, I think that I've been criticized in every step of everything I've always done in my life.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so what I would say is, this business is actually an objective metric business, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's about returns.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So in three, four years from now, five years from now, see how I do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Hopefully I'll do very well and judge me based on that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
In terms of
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
any of the nefarious things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I haven't been accused of violating any laws, and I haven't violated any of the ethics rules either.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
When I was in government, I every year submitted all my financials to the Office of Government Ethics.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They certified it every year, and I followed every rule and every law possible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So to my critics, I'll say,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
criticize me before, you'll criticize me now.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I'm going to keep doing me and going to keep pursuing things that I think are worthwhile.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I'm very excited about this chapter of my career.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I would say his unpredictability.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think that as a leader, he consumes a ton of information.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He doesn't like to be managed or have his information filtered, so he'll speak to a
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He's very pragmatic.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I don't see him as terribly ideological.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I see him as somebody who's about results.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think he wants to deliver results.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think ultimately, I mean, he's an incredible fighter.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He's a big counter puncher.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But he also wants to get along with people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And that's probably the biggest surprise that people found with him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mean, you look at even situations like, I would always tell people, if you disagree with him, don't go on television and criticize him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Just pick up the phone and call him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And go see him and he'll talk to you about it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He may not agree with you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But again, that's what Kim Kardashian did when she had a case of clemency with a woman, Alice Johnson, that she felt strongly about.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We went through the case.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I wouldn't have had her call if I didn't think it was a legitimate case.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So we spent about eight months quietly working through the case, working through the details to make sure that it really was a worthy case.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I brought it to President Trump, said, you know, she'd like to come meet with you to talk about this case.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he said, how come?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So she came in, we went through the case, and President Trump ultimately granted the clemency to Alice Johnson, who was a woman who was accused of being part of a drug ring.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
She had basically a life sentence for doing it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
She'd served 22 years in prison.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
While in prison, I mean, she basically was a grandmother, and she was putting on the prison plays.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
She was mentoring young women in prison, somebody who...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Again, there's always a risk, but by and large had a very, very, very low risk of committing a crime in the future.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then it goes back to the notion of, are we going to judge people by the worst decision they make in their life?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so President Trump was willing to grant the clemency and it went.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think that it just goes to the notion of like,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Maybe this goes back to his unpredictability in a positive way, which is if you go sit with him and you make your case, he'll hear you, he'll listen to you, and he's not afraid to act and he's not afraid to be controversial, which I think is a good thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So from a foreign policy point of view in particular, his unpredictability just meant that everyone was always on their back foot.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
People...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
were afraid to kind of cross America.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And what I would tell people who don't like Trump is I would say, think about how crazy he's making you and his enemies.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You know, he did that to the enemies of America.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And yeah, so he was a very, very strong president and I think did a great job.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
In all the agreements that I was negotiating, I wasn't doing it as a principal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I was doing it on behalf of President Trump.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
People knew that I had access to President Trump, and they knew that I could say, you may say this that we don't like, but I'm going to have to take it back to him, and then we'll see what he does.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
One of the biggest instances was on the USMCA trade deal, where
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Um, that deal happened because Mexico was legitimately concerned and smartly so that president Trump was going to impose tariffs on the car industry, which would have been decimating to their economy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And by the way, he was ready to do it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We were holding him back from doing it with every ounce of strength that we could.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So it wasn't a bluff.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mean, that was actually real, but they were smart to read that it was real.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And ultimately we created a great win-win deal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I'll tell you a funny story that just popped into my mind from the tariffs.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We used a 232 national security exemption to protect our steel industry, and we put tariffs on steel and aluminum.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Again, I thought about this because we also negotiated them with Canada.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
There was a very funny phone call where Trudeau was calling Trump.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Again, they got along decently well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And Trudeau's calling and saying, you can't put national security tariffs on us in Canada.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You know, we're your NATO ally.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We fought wars with you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We do military together.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And Trump says to him, didn't you burn the White House down in 1812?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And Trudeau says, that was the French.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He says, no, it was the Canadians.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so it was just, you know, like I said, he's always keeping everyone on their toes.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And, but he was, he wasn't, he took very calculated risks.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And like I said, you know,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Everyone was outraged all the time with everything.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But if you look at his body of work, people said if he was elected, he would start World War III.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Meanwhile, we inherited a world filled with wars.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
No new wars, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Three years, he made peace deals.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
No new wars.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He was tough.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He was strong.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
People respected him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He built relationships and got trade deals done, got peace deals done.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The economy was rocking.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
His body of work, I think, was pretty strong as president.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think 100% it would have been avoided, not 99%.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You know, President Trump for...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Four years, had no problems with Russia.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We were arming Ukraine, but we were working with Russia.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And again, the first two years, we had a little bit of issue working with Russia because they were accused of colluding with us, and so we had to go through that investigation again.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But in the second two years, we were trying to focus Russia on what are the areas where we can collaborate together.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think Russia, we thought it was in their strategic advantage to play US and China against each other because of the way that everything was done before.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They were stuck with China, but not getting a lot for it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Under Bush, they took Georgia.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Under Obama, they took Crimea.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Under Trump,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
There was no problems.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then under Biden, unfortunately, I think they misplayed a couple of things, which I think provoked Russia to go forward.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Still no excuse to do what they did.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think that the invasion was a terrible thing and should not have occurred.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But with that being said, I think 100%, if Trump was president, there would not be a war in Ukraine today.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think we go back to negotiations.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Number one is trust, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Both leaders have to have the ability to communicate what an off-ramp is without fearing it's gonna leak to the public.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So if you go to the posture of Zelensky right now,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And by the way, President Zelensky, I have a lot of respect for the courage he showed, especially initially.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You saw what Ghani did in Afghanistan.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They were getting attacked by the Taliban.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He took the cash and got the hell out of there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Staying in Kiev when he did how he did, it was one of the most brave things we've seen in a long time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he has a ton of my respect and admiration for doing that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But now he's promising his people, we're going to win the war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And the military action has not necessarily coincided with that sentiment.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so there has to be some form of off-ramp, but he can't say that publicly.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So for him to be able to work privately with somebody who can help create a new paradigm where both leaders can say, we're going to stop the bloodshed, we're going to stop the risk of nuclear war for the world, we're going to stop what's happening, that's really what it will take.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
How that occurs, again, it's not
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
something I'm involved in now, so I don't know who the right broker is or how to put that together.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But essentially, they need somebody in between them who can figure out how do you create a landing zone that works because neither party is going to jump until the pool is filled with water.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And you have to outline what the go forward looks like because you can't just stop it for then to get worse for both parties.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You have to...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You have to move it forward into what happens next that hopefully can start to turn the tide to benefit both sides where they can focus on the future instead of being stuck into the old paradigm of who started what, who's to blame for what, who did what to who.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's just a lot of tough stuff now that's occurred that's going to be hard to walk back.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it's a big task to get it done.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But for the sake of the world, it'd be amazing if we were able to reach a conclusion to that conflict.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Leadership.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It has to be somebody who's willing to put themselves on the line to go and do it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And again, if you're the U.S.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
president and you're the most powerful nation in the world, you should be trying.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But I do think, again, the posture that the U.S.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
has taken is probably...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
been in a place where it would be very hard for them to get the trust of Russia based on the way that they've played their moves to date.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I always thought from the beginning that Putin would try to bring in President Xi in China to resolve it, to basically give a big screw you to America to say,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You know, China's now the one, you know, in charge of this, but that hasn't seemed to manifest itself to date either.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But it takes leadership.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You know, the leaders have to get in and say, you know, let's get everyone together and let's try to get this done.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Because every day it goes on, A, more people are dying, and B, you know, we do risk a nuclear war for the world, which is not a good situation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I didn't deal with Russia a ton, but in my interaction with Putin and with Russia, I would kind of point out a couple of things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Number one is when America was hit with COVID and New York was looking like we were going to run out of ventilators and masks, Russia was the second country that sent us a plane load of supplies.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And they didn't send that because they hate America.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They sent that because we were starting to make progress together as countries, and they thought that they wanted to show goodwill to figure out how can we start working together.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And again, people may attack me for saying that that sounds naive.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Again, the past 15 years may show that that's not the case, but I don't believe that countries have permanent enemies, and I don't believe countries have permanent allies, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Again, you think about the US and Russia in World War II, we worked together to defeat the Nazis.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And now we're great allies with Germany, who basically was our great enemy in World War II.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We're great allies with Japan, who was our great enemy in World War II.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So it goes back to the notion we discussed earlier of you shouldn't condemn tomorrow to be like yesterday if you're unhappy with yesterday.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So number one is I would definitely ask him about that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The phone call that you mentioned was after we did a pretty intense negotiation to create the largest oil cut in the history of oil production.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So during COVID, demand just shut off like crazy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it was stopping very quickly.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Saudi and Russia at that time were having a conflict.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They created this thing called OPEC+, which goes back, again, history between the two countries where they had conflicts.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then all of a sudden, they were working together to try to stabilize the oil markets.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But they couldn't agree on the cuts, so Saudi actually increased production.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So you had two things hitting at once where Saudi and Russia were both increasing production and demand was dropping.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So you were headed for a real crisis.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I was starting to get calls from a lot of the oil industry executives here in America saying, you don't understand.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We can't just flip a switch and turn off our oil wells.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We're running out of storage here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I said, look, President Trump likes low oil prices, so he's not upset about what's happening.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You have to call him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And if he gives me permission or the instruction, then I can try to intervene.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But right now, he's not inclined to intervene.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
After a little bit, he said, you know what?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Get involved.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Go do it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It was right over Passover.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
This was during COVID.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I spent three days nonstop on the phone with Kirill Dmitriev from Russia and with MBS directly.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I was dealing with Dan Burlett, who was our energy minister, going back and forth.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it was crazy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mean, it was just one of the craziest negotiations.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We ended up agreeing on the largest oil cut in the history of the world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But the story you went to before, which was pretty funny, was finally make the deal and
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And we set up a call between King Salman, Vladimir Putin, and President Trump to announce the deal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I'm like, oh, this is great.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So President Trump gets honest, congratulations, we have a deal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then King Salman says, we don't have a deal.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Mexico hasn't agreed to their cuts.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he's saying, what do you mean?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so they were part of the OPEC+.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so I get a note saying, you got to go call Mexico.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I'm calling Mexico.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They're saying, we're not doing any cuts.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I said, why?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I said, we're hedged at $55.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I said, why do you tell us that in the beginning?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I'm telling the Saudis.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So we were working through this whole thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So meanwhile, we were trying to find the compromise with Mexico.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I set up a call with Trump and Putin so they can kind of talk this through.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he was always trying to play the game of how do we get Russia away from China?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He always thought that that was not the right strategic framework for US interests.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And again, we had no problems with them during that time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
What I would say is that for Zelensky and Putin, any conversation with both of them is about understanding their perspective.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think with Putin, he's a student of history from the things that I saw with him.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
If you look at Russia over the last 500 years, I think they were attacked by the Polish in early 1600.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think they were attacked by the Swedes in the 1700s.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think they were attacked by Napoleon in the 1800s.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then in the 1900s, they were attacked by Germany twice.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so from his perspective, there is, in the early days of Russia,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
they were attacked by the Mongols.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They were very vulnerable.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And a lot of the geography of Russia today is really designed for defensive purposes, that they have natural barriers that makes them easier to defend.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And Russia is a massive landmass.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's twice the size of America.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They have 11 time zones in the country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so I do think that for Vladimir Putin, his biggest concern is how do we create a security paradigm
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
in the West of his country that won't be a creep.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think that there's two different parts of the mindset.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The people who are most cynical of Putin will say, well, he's just trying to recreate the USSR.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He's being expansionist.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And the people who want to be sympathetic to him will say, well, if you think about it, the Russian perception of the NATO arrangement was that they wouldn't be expanding westward.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Over the last years, they've included all these countries that they said they promised they wouldn't
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
include.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Who knows what the promises were or weren't.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But what I do know from his perspective is allowing Ukraine into NATO was always a red line.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And that's why we never offered it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We never provoked it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We never brought it up.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We said, we're going to arm them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And we basically said, just calm down.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We don't want any conflicts there.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We have bigger issues and bigger opportunities to work from.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I do think you have to think through what's a paradigm that he can accept.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I do think that he'll give the justification for why he's done what he's done.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then I think the framework for a solution is about how do we move both parties forward?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Tough job.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I hope you get the opportunity to do it because I think it's a conversation that will only help the world hopefully find a pathway forward.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And understanding the DNA of countries.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It was one of the most phenomenal books, and I just found it on Amazon randomly, but I loved every minute of it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The chapter on America is also incredible, going through the evolution of how we became the country we are, the different acquisitions, the different changes, why we have all these geographic advantages.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it's an unbelievable book for anyone who's interested in geopolitics.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So during the transition, President Trump took a call from the head of Taiwan, and that sent the Chinese into a real tailspin.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he didn't do it, I think, to be provocative to them as much as just as a businessman, he felt you answer your call.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Somebody wants to speak to you, you speak to him like you.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You want to have conversations, hear their point of view.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But it was taken as a very big insult, and it was against tradition and norm.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so that was something that set us off in a wrong direction.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
My view at the time was that we are kind of entering a G2 world, whether people want to admit it or not, and that a lot of these countries in what I call the middle market countries were basically playing – this one, China, was being aggressive with their one belt, one road.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They were basically playing U.S.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
and China against each other.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I thought that by the two leaders coming together, there were some things they wouldn't agree on, but there was a lot that they probably could agree on, which could lead to resolutions to a lot of issues in the world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
That was my most optimistic view.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
my most more pragmatic view was that President Trump had very big issues on trade that he wanted to get to with China.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You know, he felt like China, their trade practices were unfair.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They weren't following all the global rules of trade.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He was a little bit nervous that they would be provocative with Taiwan.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I felt like the two of them getting together would be the best way to try and resolve that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So the Chinese are very proud and a lot of it is about face.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so we, in order to negotiate for that first call,
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We basically agreed on what would happen in the call.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So not let's just have a call, say, hi, nice to meet you, is a question of President Trump basically agreed that he would acknowledge the one China policy, which he didn't see as a big concession because you could always unacknowledge it the next day.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So yeah, I'll acknowledge it and then we'll go.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And in exchange, President Xi was going to come over to the U.S.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
for a visit so they could sit together.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And they wanted to do it outside the White House.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so we agreed on Mar-a-Lago, which I also thought was good because President Trump always felt much more comfortable when he was hosting at his properties.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he just felt at home.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so he liked having people as his guests and he loved it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He always felt really relaxed and it was great.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So that was really what we did.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Then the Chinese come over.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
very much anticipated visit and it was incredible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So they were supposed to sit together for 15 minutes and they sat about an hour and a half together.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And during that meeting, President Trump basically said, look, let's just set some ground rules to this relationship.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Like, let's just not talk about Taiwan.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Like, you know, just don't do anything I don't want on the table.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
If it does, I'm gonna have to do harsh things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I just don't want this to be a problem for four years.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We got bigger issues.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They basically just, again, you notice four years of Trump administration, no Taiwan talk whatsoever.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It was a non-issue.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Started talking about the trade issues.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They spent a lot of time on North Korea.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
President Trump was trying to get the perspective from President Xi about North Korea because that was, again, considered from Obama the biggest national security issue that we faced at the time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And they just had a good feeling for each other.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It also helped that my wife and I, we actually had a Chinese nanny and teacher in our house and our kids learned fluent Mandarin.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And our daughter actually opened when President Xi and President Trump were together with Melania and with Madame Peng.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
My daughter actually sang them a couple of Chinese songs.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I thought that was a nice way to show, you know, we're tough, but we respect your culture.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Because the Chinese have an incredible culture that goes back thousands of years.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They're very proud in how they do it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think that sign of respect also set things off in a very warm way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
way for President Trump to say, my granddaughter speaks Chinese and we're showing you the respect, which I think is very important.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he did have respect for them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The next part about the visit, I mean, obviously we had a lot of discussions on trade, but the part that was probably most impactful to me was President Xi basically did an hour monologue
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
At lunch, where he just went through Chinese history from his perspective.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he talked about, with particular emphasis on kind of the Treaty of Unequals and then the Hundred Years of Humiliation.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then you go through from Mao...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
All the way to today, and you had China coming back and rising, and you could tell that he learned the lessons from the past and was very committed to kind of seeing China go through.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So that was a different time, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So China today is different than it was in 2017.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I remember President Xi was at Davos and he was vetted by all the top business people in the world as the... Donald Trump was the threat to the global world order.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
President Xi was the champion of free trade and the biggest champion of environmentalism and fighting for climate change.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And what occurred was President Trump came in and basically said, like, I think China has not been following the rules-based order.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Took very, very drastic approaches with tariffs.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Every time he would do the tariffs, again, you know, I had Mnuchin, our treasury sector, come to vonk my house.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
If he does this, this is going to crash the whole economy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mean, these – and by the way, he believed it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mean, these were things that people were telling him would be very tough to do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
President Trump had a gentleman named Ambassador Lighthizer, Robert Lighthizer.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He was really the tip of the spear on all of our trade negotiations.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He worked very well with Secretary Mnuchin.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And we ended up increasing tariffs to numbers that hadn't...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
even been thought could happen.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So we did the first round of tariffs.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Then the Chinese came back and retaliated very surgically, trying to hit us in all the areas that politically would have been difficult.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And what Trump did was instead of backing down, he took some of the revenue from the tariffs, gave it to the farmers and said, I know that this is going to hurt your business, but I'm going to make sure you guys are made whole.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then he doubled down and basically went back at the Chinese with even more tariffs.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So what we watched over a year and a half was probably the biggest hand of poker that was ever played.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it was an amazing experience to be a part of it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And the role I played was really working for Secretary Mnuchin and Ambassador Lighthizer as a back channel with the Chinese to make sure we can just deescalate things and get to solutions in the best way possible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So anyway, it was a fascinating time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But if you think about the global awareness of the bad practices that China was putting in place today versus what they were in 2016, I think one of President Trump's most successful policies was shifting the way the entire world understood the threat of China and then putting in place the beginning of a regime to try and rebalance the world so that we could have more economic parity.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Perfect.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So it's a very, very big book.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think it's a book definitely worth reading.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Michael is tremendous.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He speaks fluent Mandarin.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So he spent a lot of time researching to do the book.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I highly recommend it to everyone.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And it was considered more of a fringe perspective in 2016.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But it really, I think, came to represent the underpinning of what the collective thought was of the Trump administration.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And maybe you could argue that it was even more cynical.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The whole thesis of the book was that China from 1949 to 2049 was working to reclaim their position as the global leader, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So you had the Chinese empire.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
One of the things, I don't know if it's from this book or a different book that I read that spoke about how in the late 1700s, basically the emperor of China was offered some of the industrial capability from England, which was basically now becoming an industrial empire.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
the Industrial Revolution.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And basically, no, we're fine.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We're the great Chinese empire.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We don't need any of these things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We're better than that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And by rejecting that, the rest of the world got stronger.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
China remained weaker.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Then you had the opium wars.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The Chinese had big opium problems through all the trade back and forth.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then China from about 1840 to 1940, at 100 years, where they really, after all these treaties...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We're really a second-class country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so then you have the People's Revolution that comes in, and he talks about how China, very strategically, as a very, very poor country, would fight their way back and build brick by brick.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he proffers in the book that Nixon didn't go to China and open China.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It was China that actually went to Nixon and was able to use Nixon in order to open up
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then they talk about how under Carter, they were able to get the US to contribute to a lot of their, they were able to kind of start borrowing the US know-how from our university systems, from our medical, from our science, from our research.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And the whole notion that was the conventional thinking of American leaders was that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The more we helped China advance, the more they would become a free market economy, and it was a great market.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The only difference was that they weren't allowing us access.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They were making our companies basically give them all of their technical knowledge.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They were stealing our intellectual property.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They were doing espionage to steal a lot of the patents.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They were just ignoring our patents, and they weren't following any of the rules of international trade.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Then they started becoming the world's manufacturing hub.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They basically became the world's factory.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then they started this whole initiative called the Belt and Road Initiative in order to start locking in their lines of trades.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They were buying up all the ports everywhere.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They were building railways, thinking, how do we lock in our distribution so that we can maintain the dominance as the world's global factory?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so it was a brilliant long-term plan that they were doing
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And by raising awareness, by putting the tariffs, Trump slowed them down a lot.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
The real question is if they actually did achieve this full objective of becoming the world-dominant country, what they would have done with it, whether they would have been nefarious or not.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think from my perspective, even with some of the divisions and issues we have now in America, I still would rather an American-led world order than a Chinese-led world order be
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Um, but the notion was, is that they were playing a very zero sum game and really going to be the dominant leader in this new world order.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So, um, so that really framed the perspective and it wasn't necessarily, you know, people asked me was, was, and the Chinese were always fearing is Trump trying to stop our rise, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And you have a great book also by Graham Allison that he writes about.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
are we destined for war between the US and China?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he goes through different historical times where you have a power and a rising superpower.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think more than half the time, it ends up leading to war.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So the question is, what's going to happen here?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I do think that Trump's perspective, and this is my interpretation, because everything was always tactical day to day, and he was unpredictable to the Chinese, which they couldn't deal with.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he was unpredictable even to his team sometimes because he was playing it
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Day by day and issue by issue and always changing and adjusting, which is how an entrepreneur thinks.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He respected the job they did by building their country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They moved 300 million people out of poverty into the middle class.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They did it at the expense of a lot of other countries throughout the world, especially America.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But Trump says, look, stupid politicians made deals.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I respect China for doing what they did.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But what I want to do is I want to change the paradigm so that for the next 20 years, we can maintain our advantage over them.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We can maintain our competitive dynamic.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And his general view was that America is the best private sector in the world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We have a lot of the best minds in the world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And if we can just have a level playing field with set rules, then America should be able to outperform.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so that's really what we were trying to do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We were trying to kind of get rid of some of their state subsidies, make them follow some of these international rules of trade, and not allowing them to do predatory investments that then undercut
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Different industries that we had so that they can have global market dominance or monopolies on different industries and then have pricing power, but also geopolitical power.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So one of the examples that people talk about now is China for the last 20 years was very advanced on seeing this electrification trend.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
They subsidized solar panels.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
A lot of the American solar panel players were put out of business.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So now I think it's like 90 plus percent of solar panels in the world are manufactured in China.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Then all the rare earths that you need in order to...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
make these solar panels and to make these electric vehicles, China's bought up most of them and a lot of the refining capacities in China.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So thinking through strategically, how do we create an even playing field so that we're not at the mercy of them and how you can have a rules-based world order, that was really kind of the thought of what we were trying to work towards.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
No, it's been a pleasure to do this, and thank you for the opportunity to talk about these things.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So that was a really funny skit.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You know, it's funny, the thing I got made fun of the most for that was the wardrobe.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And that came from after three months in the administration, we were having dinner with all the generals and they were saying, you know, updating us on the war with ISIS.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And General Dunford said to me after, look, the president can't come to see how we're fighting this war, but I'd like to invite you to come with me to Iraq and come see.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And would you come with me?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I said, no, that's great.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I always learned in business.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Now, you can't make decisions from just an ivory tower.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You have to go to the front lines and see what's actually happening.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I said, no problem.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I'd love to go.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Meanwhile, two days before I'm about to go, the doc from the White House stops by my office and says, we need to get your blood types.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
What do you mean my blood type is?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You're going to an active war zone.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I'm like, okay, so I guess I'll go to a war zone.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I didn't really think this thing fully through.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I get on the plane with Dunford and we land in Iraq and he looks like GI Joe.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He's a great general.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He's very, very well respected in the military.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And we go in and we get on Black Hawk helicopter.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I said, you know, today's a nice day.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Let's take the sides off.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so I get on the plane and there's a guy, you know, military service officer who then takes a machine gun, locks it into a thing, takes the bullets, puts them into the gun, and is sitting there saying, we're ready to go.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then I'm looking out and there's like three other helicopters with guys.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
One was an Osprey with a guy buckled in, also with a machine gun looking out.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We take off and we're flying over Baghdad from the airport to the embassy.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And as we're going, I'm sitting in an open air helicopter with the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, guys with machine guns everywhere.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I would say slightly.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I mean, I was doing real estate like three months ago, you know, and now I'm flying over Iraq.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And the chairman says, that's Saddam Hussein's palace.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I look down, there's like a big bomb right through the middle.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Then you see the area with the two swords in the hands.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I'm saying to myself, like, how the hell did I get here?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Like, what is happening?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So meanwhile, we end up going to the front lines to be with the Iraqi military, which the U.S.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
military was working closely with.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I had a meeting that night with the president of Iraq.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so I wore – what do you wear to the front lines in a battle zone?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And also meet with the president.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I put a sports jacket on.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We land at the –
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
At the front line and they give me a bulletproof vest that says Kushner on it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I tape it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I just, I put it on, I go out and I cover the NER.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So it just said Kush.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I went and I didn't realize they were taking pictures.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So anyway, so that was the funny story behind that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then actually my brother was at some society event in New York and he ran into Jimmy Fallon.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So the two of them took a selfie together and Josh writes me, says, hanging out with my older brother in New York.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I'm trying to explain to him what your voice sounds like.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So it was good.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So that was a funny one.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But I think just being behind the scenes for me just gave me more maneuverability in the sense that
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Again, it goes back to trust and people knowing that I wasn't going to try to publicize the things they were telling me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think it just gave me more ability to operate that way.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I also realized too, communicating is a very important skill.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Luckily in Washington, there's no shortage of amazing communicators.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think there were a lot of people...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
who are much better at me than being communicators.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I was very happy that they were willing to do it because it wasn't something that I had a lot of experience with or necessarily I thought I was very good at.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so I kind of just did my job and just focused on getting things done.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Number one is I would say you just have to work hard at everything you do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Um, number two, I would say never stop learning and always try to say yes more than you should go out of your comfort zone.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think just, just, you gotta work hard at everything you do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And, and, and if you're going to take something on, do it the best you can.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You know, one of the lessons I write about in the book from my father was, I remember I was going for a job interview and he asked me, he says, well, what time do
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
are you leaving to the job interview?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Is that nine o'clock?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I said, I'll leave at eight o'clock.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He said, well, what if there's traffic?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I said, dad, I've done this drive a thousand times.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Like there's never traffic.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He said, what if there's an accident?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I said, I can't control that.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He said, Jared, the only excuse you ever have for being late is that you didn't leave early enough.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I just think it's something where if you want to accomplish something, you know, a lot of people I hear, they complain about what other people do or why it's hard or why it's impossible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And again, I say this as somebody who's been so blessed with so many things in life, but, you know, when I've had challenges or things I've wanted to achieve...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I just focus and say, what can I do?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I'll read everything I can get my hands on.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
If I fail at one, the door closes, I'll try the window.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
If the window closes, I'll try the chimney.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
If the chimney closes, I'll try to dig a tunnel.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's just, if you want to accomplish something, you just have to go at it.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think the most important thing I'll say, sorry, I'm kind of thinking my way into this answer, is just do the right thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think that's also right.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I saw that in my career, be good to people, be honest, do the right thing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And if you do that, I think long-term, it does pay off.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Maybe not in politics, but in the world at large, it does.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And my hope is in politics, it will as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It really started with just talking to people.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I would try to reach out to people who had been involved in different things and ask them what they did, what they thought of the problem, who they thought was smart on it, what they read that helped them get a better understanding, why they think something had failed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then I would just read voraciously on every topic.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Washington, it was harder to get advice from humans because I found humans had this weird tendency to talk to the media.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so I talked to somebody and I'd ask advice.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then the next thing I know is the Washington Post would call and say, Jared's an idiot, doesn't know what he's doing.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he's even going to this person to get advice.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I'm like, yeah, I'm asking everyone.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So books really became an amazing guide for me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And Ivanka, she's an incredible researcher.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
She's just voracious.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And so she gave me some of my best books and some incredible advice as well.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But that was really the process.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then I think that was kind of the first stage.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then the second stage was just constant iteration and readjusting plan as you continue to get more learning.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And one story I tell in the book as well is that on my first trip to the Middle East, where I met with Mohammed bin Zayed, who I spoke about earlier, the ruler of UAE, he
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I spent two hours with him asking him questions and really going through the Israeli-Palestinian issue, the Israeli-Arab issue.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he said to me at the end of the meeting, he says, Jared, I think you're going to make peace here in the Middle East.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I was shocked because, I mean, first of all, he was, you know, at the time, I think one of the most respected leaders in the region.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Somebody who I found to be very wise and super thoughtful and experienced.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I said to him, why do you say that?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I was flattered, obviously, but not certain why he was saying that based on the fact that I didn't know what my plan was.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I didn't know what I was going to do and I had no pathway to make peace.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And he said, well, the U.S.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
usually sends one of three different kinds of people to come see me.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He says the first are people who come and they fall asleep in meetings.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He said the second are people who come and they basically read me notes but have no ability to interact on the message they're there to convey.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And then the third have been people who have come to convince me to do things that aren't in my interests.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He says, you're the first person who's ever come here and has just asked questions.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
He says, why have you done that?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I said, because I figure this problem's been going on for a long time.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You live here.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I'll be gone at some point.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You're going to have to live with the consequences of whatever my work is.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And the US has a lot of power.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And my question is, what would you do?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
if you were me?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And how would you approach this and help me think about it?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And again, I wasn't going to then take his plan and then execute it, but I thought it'd be very provocative to understand from the people in the region and instructive how they would use the resource and the power that the US had to solve the problems that were having significant impact on their lives.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Yeah, and one of my wishes for society is I leave government.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I was living on the Upper East Side in a very liberal echo chamber.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I then traveled the country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I met so many people who I never would have met otherwise on the conservative side, on the independent side, on so many different issues.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think that people benefit if you have such a strong point of view.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I would follow the John Stuart Mill marketplace of ideas and find people who disagree with you and don't call them names.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Don't say they're a bad person.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Say, I want to understand why you feel the way you do.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Let's have conversations in this country.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think that that's probably going to be our best way to work through the issues that we have currently.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
What gives me the most hope is that anything's possible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
There's one lesson that I took from my time in government.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
It's that people coming together to try to make tomorrow different than yesterday can succeed.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And if the right people in the right places focus on the right ideas, I think the advancement that we can have
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I think that right now I see we're at a place in society where there's a lot of what I call squabbles between countries, which are really man versus man issues.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And those are as old as time, right?
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
You know, we've been fighting about borders or religion or whatever.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
or who wronged somebody 100 or 1,000 years ago.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And these are what I call more tribal battles.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
But I do think that as we advance with artificial intelligence, as energy becomes cheaper and it's more readily available, I think we're going to have massive industrialization.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think we're going to have massive advancement.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
I think in medical and science, we're going to have cures for diseases.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We have the potential in 10, 20 years from now to enter a dawn for humanity that could be incredible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We could become multi-planetary.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We can explore the wonders of the world.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
We can find things we didn't know.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
So I think that if we put our energy towards finding these advancements that will improve the lives of everyone on this planet...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Instead of figuring out ways to have these tensions between us, that for me is the most optimistic case for what's possible.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And the reason why I believe it's possible is because...
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
Somebody with no experience, somebody who all I really had was the faith of a leader, and I had the courage to try.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And I went out there with other people, and we took on some of the most hopeless, impossible problems, and we succeeded.
Lex Fridman Podcast
#399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East
And if we were able to do that, then everyone else should be able to do that as well.
And I have to tell you, it's been an honor to me to work with such a special man who's approached this impossible task with a full heart and with a full commitment.
And when things got tough and we ran into brick walls, every time that happened, we just said, let's make a new plan.
And that's what being partners with Steve was like.
And I also have to say, working with President Trump on this, his commitment to seeing peace, to seeing the hostages return home, to seeing Israel secure and safe, and to seeing the entire Middle East stable and thriving is unmatched.
I couldn't be more proud to see the way that the state of Israel and its people have carried themselves through this traumatic, unthinkable, horrific experience.
Instead of replicating the barbarism of the enemy, you chose to be exceptional, you chose to stand for the values that you stand for,
And I couldn't be prouder to be a friend of Israel, somebody who supports Israel, and somebody who fights very strongly to see Israel survive, succeed, and to achieve its fullest potential.