YouSaid · the spoken record

Jared Kushner

lines on the record: 249
first: 2023-10-11
most recent: 2023-10-11
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“And then it goes back to the notion of are we going to judge people by the worst decision they make in their life? And so President Trump was willing to grant the Climate Senior end. And I think that it just goes to the notion of like, 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. So from a foreign policy point of view in particular, his unpredictability just meant that everyone was always on their back foot people were afraid to kind of cross America. 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. He did that to the enemies of America. And yeah, so he was a very, very strong president and I think did a great job.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“She had a case of clemency with a woman Alice Johnson that she felt strongly about. We went through the case. I wouldn't have had her call if I didn't think it was a legitimate case. 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. I brought it to President Trump said, you know, she'd like to come meet with you to talk about this case. And he said, How come in? 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. She had basically a life sentence for doing it. She'd served 22 years in prison while in prison. I mean, she's basically was a grandmother and she was putting on the prison plays. She was mentoring young women in prison, somebody who, again, there's always a risk, but by and large had a very, very, very low risk of committing a crime in the future.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say his unpredictability. I think that as a leader, he consumes a ton of information. He doesn't like to be managed or have his information filtered. So he'll speak to a lot of people to draw his information himself. He's very pragmatic. I don't see him as terribly ideological. I see him as somebody who's about results. I think he wants to deliver results. And I think ultimately, I mean, he's an incredible fighter. He's a big counter puncher, but he also wants to get along with people. And that's probably the biggest surprise that people found with him. I mean, you know, you look at even situations like, I would always tell people, if you disagree with him, don't go on television and criticize him. Pick up the phone and call him and go see him. And he'll talk to you about it. He may not agree with you. But again, that's what Kim Kardashian did when...”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that I've been criticized in every step of everything I've always done in my life. And so what I would say is, you know, this business is actually an objective metric business, right? It's about returns. So, you know, in three, four years from now, five years from now, see how I do. Hopefully I'll do very well and judge me based on that. In terms of any of the nefarious things, I haven't been accused of any of violating any laws. I haven't violated any of the ethics rules either. When I was in government, I every year submitted all my financial to the Office of Government Ethics. They certified it every year. And I followed every rule and every law possible. So to my critics, I'll say, criticize me before, you'll criticize me now. I'm going to keep doing me and I'm going to keep pursuing things that I think are worthwhile. And I'm very excited about this chapter of my career.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I called different friends. They were very excited to back the effort. Obviously, this was coming off the success that I just had in the Middle East, where I did six peace deals there. And 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. Again, if countries have more economic ties, I think war and fighting is less likely. And then in addition to that, I wanted to figure out how do you bring the entrepreneurs together from both of those countries. So that was really the mission of what I set out to do. So far, I've been enjoying it. It's been a lot of fun. I've been learning a ton. I think we're doing very well with it.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“through my time in government I'd met so many people I'd learned so much about the world I had a big understanding now for how the macroeconomic picture worked and I did feel like there was a lot more that I could do than just going back to real estate in the meantime I was getting a lot of calls from different CEOs and companies saying you know can you help me with this company can you help me with that company your knowledge could be helpful to help this company navigate this challenge or to expand internationally And so I said, you know what, maybe I should create a business to do an investment firm 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. So that was kind of the thesis of what I thought could make sense as kind of a next step.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. So left government obviously worked for four years. I was a very action-packed time. That's why I wrote the book. I wanted to put down all those experiences. I started thinking like, what do I want to do next? So my previous career, I'd been in real estate. I'd worked with my brother on some technology businesses that I'd started. And then I got into government. So I kind of had a career shift. In my previous career, obviously, was very successful. The New York Times, they violated and they published my financial statements they showed I was making about $50 million a year in the private sector before I went to government. I went into government and I, you know, I volunteered. I didn't take a salary. 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? And my thinking was, is that I...”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, this is the beginning of the end of the Arab Israeli conflict, 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. This is, I think, the start of the process of religious respect and understanding.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In 1948, after that War of Independence, you had Jews living in Baghdad and Cairo, then they became so anti-Jewish that they then expelled all of the Jews from all these capitals of those cities. So you think about the Jewish history in Baghdad. I mean, I think the Talmud was written in Baghdad. It was a place where in Babylon where the Jewish people thrived. I think in 570 BCE, when Nabuchanetzer conquered Jerusalem, he took about 10,000 Jews back with him to Babylon because he thought it would be good for his economy. And during that place, the Jews actually flourished and had a good life there. So for a thousand years before the Second World War, the Jews and the Muslims lived very peacefully together. So people say that what we're doing now is an aberration. I actually think it's not an aberration. I think it's actually a return to the time where people can live together culturally.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say the simplest form is it's just a mindset. And it's almost like you're taught all your life. Enemies, or we can't be friends with that tribe. On the other side of the fence. And then, like, one day the leaders get up and say, No, it's okay now. And there was never an issue between the people. The people were just taught different things and they were separated from each other. 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. And these issues and gaps between us feel so big when we think about them, when we're told about them, when we read about them. 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. 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. And that's now forming a nucleus of togetherness, which is a restoration. So you think about the modern Middle East from post-Holocaust to now.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Attacked by the media or the hordes of influencers or the extremists in these different countries, 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.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's probably the best place to start. So, what we did is we made a peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, and then Israel and Bahrain. Then we did a deal with Israel and Sudan. Where basically countries that didn't recognize each other before ended up recognize each other, all these were Muslim majority countries and getting them to integrate with Israel was a very big thing. The traditional thinking had always been was that Arab countries would not make peace with Israel until the Israeli-Palestinian issue was solved. And what we were able to do is separate the issues and then make these make these connections which are leading to amazing interaction between Jews and Muslims. 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 willing to say positive things about Israel or the Jews before this came out, you would be vicious.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. So it's an amazing thing. 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. 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. It's fine. We left government. There's a lot of people saying, well, this is why 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. And I joke that we made peace on Plan C, but only because we went through the alphabet.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 Sinai's Sunnis and the Shias. And that's really the big divide. And as I was traveling, I didn't think there was any divide in that regard, 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. And so if you think about who's not creating the opportunity for their people, there's the Palestinian leadership and the Iranian leadership. All the other Arab countries were focused on how do we give opportunity for our people to live a better life.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are just the Palestinian people. And I think that in Gaza, they're hostages to Hamas and in the West Bank. They're just held back because their leadership just Is afraid or too self interested to give them the opportunity to change their paradigm and pursue the potential of what they have. And by the way, it's an incredibly well-educated population. It's an incredibly capable population. And they're right next to Israel where the economy, they need everything. And so the potential should be incredible if you can just move some of these pieces. But again, there's still a lot of emotion and hatred you have to work through as well. But I do believe that you're not going to solve that by litigating the past. 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.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where we can say, how do the Jews and the Muslims come together? I think King Abdullah from Jordan's been an incredible custodian for the mosque. I think everyone in my travels recognized that he's the right guy for that, that the King of Jordan should be the custodian of the mosque. We should have some kind of framework to make sure everyone has access. The more countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel, the more Muslims and Arabs that should be able to come and visit. And by the way, the more you have these normalizations, 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. So there's a lot of potential there. We just have to like get unstuck. I believe that it's so possible if the leaders want to make tomorrow better that they can. And unfortunately, the people who suffer the most are really...”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Palestinian authority, which is the leadership. It's not hard to do. It just takes people who actually want to do it. But I think that the mindset of the international community has not been let's solve this problem. It's like, let's just throw a little bit of money. The money's Novocane. Let's put a little Novocane on the problem and let's not have to deal with it. 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. That just hasn't happened. Again, it's an incredibly corrupt organization UNRWA. You think about the post-World War II dynamic. You had a lot of refugees. My grandparents were refugees post-World War II. Every other refugee class has been resettled and you only have one permanent refugee organization ever created. Why was this done? 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. And so I think for Israel, they view all these things as existential. They value their safety. They've been under attack for a long time. I do think having a”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So to date, all of the aid that's been given to the Palestinians has been an entitlement. It's not conditions based. It's always just we give the money and there's no expectations. It's very simple. 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.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But what was interesting was the GDP per capita of somebody living in the West Bank was actually the same as Jordan, and it was actually more than somebody living in Egypt. And the debt of GDP. 30 40% compared to Egypt, which is at like 130% and Jordan, which was at 110%, and Lebanon, which is at 200%. And so you're in a situation where a lot of this stuff didn't make sense. 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, 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, you could have peace there very easily.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because of it. 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? Let everyone come and be able to worship as long as they're being able to worship peacefully. So that's really the contours of it. And what the Palestinians have done is they've kind of deflected from a lot of their own shortcomings and a lot of the Arab leaders did that as well, kind of in the pre-Abrahamicor days by kind of allowing this issue to be so prevalent. 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? And I'll give you a couple things. One is I studied the economies of Jordan, West Bank, Gaza, Egypt, Morocco. This was numbers from like 2000.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is number one. So, first issue is drawing a map. Second issue is security. Again, Israel. 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. So we worked very closely with them on a security apparatus. 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. So you need security. Number three was the religious sites. And that was one that was actually 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. But originally it was where the Holy of Holies were in the Beita Migdash for the Jewish people. And, you know, compounding by the fact that you have all the Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, it's a city that should be bringing everyone together. But in fact, it's become a place where you have wars and hatred and a lot of different conflicts that have been.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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. But B, you were conflating two separate issues. You had the issue between Israel and the Muslim world, which really was the issue of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. 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. If you go back to the Israeli-Palestinian issue, there's just a couple components you need to solve. Number one is territorial contiguity, right? You need to figure out where do you draw the lines, and that's something that 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. And that's kind of what we did. We literally spent months and months drawing a map and we put something out, probably change a couple lines here and there, but by and large, it was a very pragmatic solution that I think could work. And I think it could work for the safety and security of Israel, which was”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have to separate it into two different issues. And I think that that's actually how we came to the Abraham Accords, is that I tell the story in the book, and it was one of my favorite experiences during my time in diplomacy where I went to meet with Sultan Kaboos, who was the Sultan of Oman. And we fly out there because he had a secret meeting with Bibi. And I thought maybe he was open to normalizing with Israel. So after he meets with Bibi, he calls me and says, I want you to come see me. So I go over to see him. And again, I tell the story. It was a crazy night and all these different areas. But when I was talking to him, he basically says to me, I feel badly for the Palestinian people that they carry with them the burden of the Muslim world. And that line just like stuck with me. And a couple days later, I was thinking about it. And I said, wait a minute, who elected the Palestinian people to represent the Muslim world on the Al-Aqsimos?”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Abbas who runs a refugee organization, a refugee group, 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. So the whole thing was just very corrupt and off. And I do think that that's why I don't think people were incentivized to solve it, to be honest.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Make it much more tactical. And what I realized was like the Palestinians, they'd worked so hard to get the Arab world to stay with the line of the Arab Peace Initiative. And so I went back and I read the Air Peace Initiative. It was 10 lines and it didn't have any details. So it was a concept. And so they liked that concept because it allowed them to reject everything. They kept getting more money. 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 plane.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Started writing down a document. These are the 11 issues, but there's really only three issues that matter. I said, just tell me what you think the compromise is that you think the other side could live with that you would accept. And it was very hard to get them talking about this. Oh, you have to go back to 1972. You have to go back to 1982. You have to go back to 2001. You have to go to camp. And I was just like, I don't need a headache and I don't need a history lesson. Just I want a very simple thing. Here today in 2017, what's the outcome that you would accept? And I was dealing with their negotiators, their back channel secret negotiators, their double secret. And I was just like, this whole thing is like, it's a process created where nobody wants to talk about the actual solution. So coming from the business world, I said, okay, let me just write down a proposed solution that I think is fair. And let me have each side react. Like, don't tell me about theoretical things. Like tell me, I want to move the line from here to here. I want to change this word.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so all of the envoys to date were basically trained to go and do the same things. And again, I got massively criticized by all the previous envoys for not doing it the same way they did. But I thought the problem structurally just didn't make sense. And so I felt like the incentive structure was all wrong. And I took a different approach.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I put a dove in the slide for those, and then I put a tank for every time there was a war because there were always skirmishes between Hamas and Hezbollah and the Palestinians. And then I showed two lines, and they both went from the bottom of the page all the way up like this. One of the lines was Israeli settlements. So every time a negotiation failed, Israel was able to get more land. And then the other one was money to the Palestinians. And I said, every time a negotiation failed, the Palestinians would get more money. The problem with that money, though, was that it wasn't going to the people. You know, some of it would make its way down, but most of it was going to the politicians. You had leadership of the Palestinians, who were basically, I think at that point, it was in like the 16th year of a four-year term. So he wasn't democratically elected. 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.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If I had to give you the most simple answer, I would say that it's structural. 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 the incentive structure was all wrong. 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, it was over 180 pages in detail. In politics, people don't like putting forward detail because it just gives a lot of places for you to get criticized on. Nobody actually criticized the detail of my plan. They just criticized the fact that it was coming from us and didn't want to debate the merits of the operational pieces of it. So I created a slide where I showed from the Oslo Accords till the day I was there all the different piece discoveries.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Accountable for it, 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.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have to think through how do you not allow the paradigm that you're creating in the world to lead to worse outcomes than would happen otherwise. 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 said you finish a deal, you either have a company or a property, or if you sell it, you have less to do and more capital, hopefully if it's successful, right? In a political deal, It's always about paradigms. So the end of a problem set is always the beginning of a new paradigm. 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. So, you know, bad things happen a lot in the world. And you have to make sure that when those happen, people are held to”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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. But when you think about this or you think about the other issues that we've gone through today, I think the general framework that I always try to approach things with is you can't change what happened yesterday. You can only learn from it and then you can change how you deal with tomorrow. And when I think about the people in power, what do I hope that they're spending their time focused on? Number two basic things. Number one is how do I create safety and security for my people and for the world? And then how do I give people the opportunity to live a better life? And so when things like this happen, obviously there are certain reactions that are appropriate. But ultimately,”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, what he said to me was no different than what he ultimately said on 60 Minutes, which was, you know, as somebody helping lead this country, I bear responsibility, and I'm going to make sure that those who are involved are brought to justice. And I'm going to make sure that we put in place reforms to make sure things like this don't happen again. It was a horrible situation that occurred. 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.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“National security threat for America, a big place where our treasure is gone. We've had a lot of our young, amazing American soldiers killed in action there. And the same thing for the Arab countries as well. So if we can create a security architecture for that region, and then we can create economic integration between all the different countries. I mean, the amount of innovation happening in Israel is unbelievable. Think of it like Silicon Valleys not connected to the rest of California. You have a very young population, a very digital savvy population. You have a lot of resources. And so if you can get that whole set, the potential for it is unbelievable. 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.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He said his generation, they come in and they say, We're very grateful for everything that's been done to Dade. But we have so much opportunity that we're not taking advantage of. And so, you know, he's now empowered the next generation to be ambitious and think big and grow with it. 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 as having an economic and security corridor all the way from Hyphem to Muscat from Oman to Israel, where basically you go through and if you can create a security area where people can live free of fear of terrorism and of conflict, the Middle East for the last 20 years has been a sinkhole for arms, for death, for terrorism. It's been awful. It's been a big”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where the Cheshire cat says, if you don't know where you're going, it doesn't matter which path you take. And so I think that that's something that really helps set them on a good path and they've been very successful with it. 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. They came here. They were a poor country. They were Bedouins in the desert. And then they look back and see what they've done over.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, you know, it's funny, we were talking before about how we wish leaders would set big audacious goals and take on big things. Well, that's what he did with Vision 2030. 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 who actually picked it up and read it said this is a very thoughtful plan that's very achievable. So he studied his country and said, what's our place? In the world, what are our advantages? What are our disadvantages? And then he said 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. I think that it's something when I saw it, I thought it was very refreshing. I said, wait, in America, why don't we have, you know, set goals? Why don't we have KPIs? And I do think that it's something that most countries, if not all countries should have, right? One of my favorite quotes was from the Allison one.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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, but what's the right thing to make people's lives better, to make the world a safer and more prosperous place tomorrow?”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Them on, there's always a lot of resistance when you go against something that's been accepted as the way that you're supposed to do things. 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. And then if you take the same approach as others, you're going to fail just like they did. taking a different approach doesn't mean you're going to succeed but at least if you fail you're going to fail in an original way and so i i did like this a lot and i i think that um you know 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 and so i think in the middle east i came in with a very different approach”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think that it's funny 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. And I just loved it. 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. And I think that in the context of the work that I was doing here, 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...”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Believed that they could be possible, but the answer is really the people I was talking to on the other end were telling me that these things were possible. 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.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Their direction by not giving them a chance to change 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. So we fought the battle. They basically deferred, and let me go through with it. 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. And by the way, they probably weren't wrong to think that because I'd never planned a far and trip before and I'd never done any foreign policy before. 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. And I said, look, I really need to get these things in writing. He sent over a guy, Dr. Masad, Aliban, who's a tremendous diplomat for them. And he came to Washington, stayed for three weeks, and we worked through all the different details of what we needed. And we ended up coming to an arrangement on what it should be. So, you know, I think about now in retrospect why I was so focused on getting things like this done and why I even believed.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe some of it came from my inexperience, but my desire to listen and hear people. So I had this proposal. I was told that all these things were good. 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. They said, you know, if we go to Saudi Arabia, the Saudis never keep their promises. And our Secretary of State at the time was a gentleman named Rex Tillerson, who'd been the CEO of Exxon. So he dealt with all these people very extensively. And he basically said, in my experience, the Saudis won't come through. And Jared, you don't know what you're doing. You're wasting your time. And I basically was at a point where I said, look, guys, but they're saying they want to do all these things. Shouldn't we at least give them a chance to try to do it? Like, why do we want to predetermine their...”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To work. And a lot of people were betting against that trip. They thought it wasn't going to be successful. And they've been betting against him. And he's been underestimated, but he's been doing an incredible job. And the whole Middle East is different today because of the work that he's done.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have to deal with MBN. MBN is the guy who's been our partner for all these years. He's the head of intelligence and he's been a great partner. 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? I said, I've been told that we have this proposal from MBS, who's the deputy crown prince. And that's who we should be dealing with on this. And so the phone call starts. And President Trump listened to both of us. And on the phone call with King Salman Trump says, okay, we'll go through all these things. These are the things we want to get done. And he says, well, who should we deal with? And King Salman says, deal with my son, the deputy crown prince MPS. And so President Trump sat on the phone, have him deal with Jared. 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. And that's how I got assigned to work with him. I get back to my office after that, have an email from him, spoke to him for the first time. And then we just went.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Arabia, we will do all these different things. We'll increase our military spending and cooperation. We'll counter all the terror financing. Unbelievable layer. So I took the proposal. I went to the National, then it was General Flynn. I said, if Saudi Arabia did these things, would this be considered a big, unbelievable, but it will never happen? I said, well, they're telling me they want to do these things. Again, having no foreign policy experience, I'm just saying I've got somebody telling me they want to do it. And that's kind of where we started. Again, to office, I don't think much more about it. And then I think it was like a baby a month in President Trump has a call with King Salman. 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. And I have Secretary Mattis and Secretary Tillerson, the Minister of Defense and the Secretary of State basically saying,”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have joint interests, and keep in mind at that point in time, the Middle East was a mess, and probably the single biggest issue we had after ISIS was the ideological battle. 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 extremism. And then there was a lot of crimes that were being happening because of that. It was a big topic in the campaign. And so that When I was thinking about talking 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. But for years, they really hadn't been willing to kind of lean into this fight. So I said, sure, give a proposal. So they come back, give a proposal. And they said, look, if you make President Trump's first trip to Saudi Arabia,”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For their fair share, they haven't been a great partner in the region. He was very critical of Saudi. And then during the transition, I was asked by several friends to meet with a representative of Saudi Arabia. I said, I don't want to meet with them, you know, but I came over and I met and they said, well, we want to make changes. And I said, well, you have to make changes to how you treat women. Then women couldn't drive. They had guardianship laws. So you got to start working with Israel. You have to be paying more if your fair share and you have to be stopping the Wahhabism that's being spread. And again, I had no knowledge. These were just kind of the traditional talking points about Saudi Arabia. The guy I was with basically said is a guy fought al-Tunzi, who's a very respected minister there. He says Jared says, you know, you don't know much about Saudi Arabia, do you? I said, no, no, no, I don't. Just really what I've kind of been told or what I read. And he says, okay, let me do this. We want to be great allies with America. We've traditionally been great allies with America. Can I come back to you with a proposal on ways that we can make progress on all of the different areas where we...”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I remember early on talking with him about all the different initiatives he was taking on. He's building a big city called Neome in the desert, in a place where there really was nothing on the Red Sea. And a lot of people were criticizing the ambition of the plan. And I was sitting with him one night and I said, you know, why are you taking on all these things? You know, you've got a lot of different programs, but what most politicians do is they set lower expectations and then they exceed the expectations. And he looked at me without hesitation. He says, Jared, you know, the way I look at it is that in five years from now, if I said five goals and I achieve five goals, I'll have achieved five things. If I set 100 goals and I fail at 50 of them, then five years I'll accomplish 50 things. And so it's a very different mindset as a leader the way I got to work with him was Saudi Arabia was a big topic in the campaign. President Trump was basically saying during the campaign that, you know, we're going to, you know, they've got to pay.”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really by his father. He's not Western educated, so he grew up in the Saudi culture, and he's a real Saudi nationalist. He loves their history, loves their heritage, has a deep understanding of the tribal nature of the region. And his father was actually known to be a tremendous politician. So when he was 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. It was a very, very beloved leader. Mohamed Ben Salman, he was a businessman before he got into Crown Prince. So he thinks really with a business mindset about how he runs the country. And he's brought, I think, a different mindset and energy to the Middle East. You know, one thing I'll say that maybe that comes to mind here is that”
2023-10-11 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #399 – Jared Kushner: Israel, Palestine, Hamas, Gaza, Iran, and the Middle East · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source