The Ben Shapiro Show - Jared Kushner | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 104

00:00:00.000 You know, this is what I call the swamp's last stand.

00:00:02.000 And I think that this is really the last chance for the American people to truly have an outsider in Washington.

00:00:08.000 And hopefully when the president wins, he'll be in a position where he'll just accelerate the changes that he's been able to make and really drain the swamp and truly bring power in America back to the American people.

00:00:22.000 Some of the more effective policymakers in American history have also been the most unexpected, perhaps even the most reluctant.

00:00:28.000 Such is the case with today's guest, Jared Kushner.

00:00:32.000 In 2016, after working in real estate and business, Jared was presented with an assignment he had never anticipated when his father-in-law, Donald Trump, was elected president.

00:00:40.000 Jared promptly divested from many of his businesses to become a senior advisor to the newly elected president.

00:00:46.000 Despite a media that is eager to minimize the accomplishments of the Trump administration, Kushner has been at the forefront of some of the White House's most successful initiatives.

00:00:54.000 From the FIRST STEP Act, a groundbreaking criminal justice reform bill signed into law in 2018, to the monumental new peace deals in the Middle East, Kushner and his team have been leaders in shaping the future of the country at home and abroad.

00:01:06.000 Kushner, a modern Orthodox Jew, has managed to accomplish all of this while balancing a robust family life along with his wife Ivanka, who converted to Judaism in 2009.

00:01:14.000 Kushner has become one of the closest advisors to the president and continues to play a major role in the current re-election campaign.

00:01:20.000 Jerry joined the show to share his experience with the president and to remind the American people of the administration's accomplishments that will continue given four more years in office.

00:01:28.000 It was a great conversation.

00:01:29.000 I hope you enjoy it.

00:01:44.000 Welcome to the show.

00:01:45.000 Appreciate your time.

00:01:46.000 Thank you, Ben.

00:01:47.000 It's great to be with you.

00:01:49.000 You know, I want to start by asking you some questions the media actually will not ask you because it might, number one, humanize you, and number two, point out that you are not, in fact, the devil incarnate.

00:01:56.000 Why don't we start with the fact that you and your office have been largely involved with creating the first movements toward peace in the Middle East in a full generation, which means that normally, you know, if you were a Democrat, So, Jared, why don't you talk a little bit about how that came about?

00:02:10.000 That would mean that you were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize as it is.

00:02:13.000 It must be that you are a nefarious shill of the Zionist entity. 1.00

00:02:16.000 So, Jared, why don't you talk a little bit about how that came about?

00:02:20.000 Because it's really been undercovered by the media that there's actual movement towards serious peace in the Middle East for the first time since I was a child.

00:02:28.000 Yeah, well, what I would say, Ben, is that there are a lot of people out there So I recognize that the media is a small subset and obviously I take after four years what they say and do mostly with a grain of salt because I do find that people in the country and throughout the world, they see what's going on and they get it.

00:02:45.000 And so I find that that's not the standard to which we try to hold ourselves to.

00:02:50.000 But talking about the Middle East, I mean, that's just a great example of taking a problem set that's been looked at by so many people in one way for so long, and it's been approached with a very stale way of thinking.

00:03:05.000 And so when President Trump came in, he asked me to look at it. It wasn't something I had deep familiarity with, and I obviously didn't have all of the history with it that many of the people had looked at it before had. But we tried to take a logical approach to a problem. And what we did over the years is we stuck to our guns. And the closer we were getting, I think, to progress, the louder we were being criticized for our actions by a lot of the conventional thinkers who'd been doing it one way. And so

00:03:34.000 what we were able to accomplish was break through a wall that had existed for a long time to create a peace agreement between...

00:03:42.000 Israel and the United Arab Emirates, and then ultimately we got a peace agreement between Israel and Bahrain as well.

00:03:48.000 And so in Israel's previous 72 years, they'd had two peace agreements.

00:03:53.000 And then in the span of about 29 days, we had two peace agreements.

00:03:56.000 And so when we started, I said to our team, I said, let's look at this like there's this big wall in the Middle East. 0.85

00:04:03.000 People are so intimidated by the wall that let's do our best to hit it with everything we have.

00:04:07.000 And who knows, you know, maybe the wall is a concrete wall like everyone thinks, or maybe the wall is as atrophied, or maybe it's just a paper mache wall.

00:04:15.000 And at the end of the day, if we give it everything we got, maybe we'll be able to bust through it.

00:04:19.000 And thanks to the unconventional approach and a lot of hard work by people on my team and the president and this administration, we're able to I get a great accomplishment that I think will create a fundamental change in the direction of the Middle East for hopefully generations to come.

00:04:35.000 Jared, maybe you can talk about the sort of fundamental philosophical shift that had to happen in order for this to happen.

00:04:39.000 Because the conventional foreign policy wisdom going back decades was that if the United States was too pro-Israel, too openly pro-Israel, then this would inhibit peace in the Middle East.

00:04:48.000 That the only way the peace in the Middle East would ever be made was if Israel made concessions to the Palestinians and some sort of overall agreement was reached between Israel And the Palestinians, obviously, the perspective that the Trump administration took, that your office took, was that peace could be something that was done outside in, that the Palestinian issue could be put off to the side or at least delayed for the moment while other interests that aligned were formalized.

00:05:09.000 Why do you think it was that so many people ignored that for so long?

00:05:13.000 I think people use the false notion of America being an honest broker and they really put all their eggs into that basket saying we have to show that we're impartial.

00:05:21.000 But America is not impartial.

00:05:24.000 America's job is to look after the interests of America. 0.70

00:05:27.000 And, you know, one of the things that is a fundamental underpinning of our Middle East policy towards stability is the relationship with Israel, which we went to strengthen.

00:05:36.000 Uh, and then obviously also figuring out how after the previous administration, it did the Iran deal, uh, which probably is one of the worst transactions I've ever seen, maybe in history, uh, where basically they took the leading state sponsor of terror. 0.53

00:05:48.000 They gave them access to $150 billion.

00:05:51.000 They sent them a couple of billion dollars in cash.

00:05:54.000 Uh, and they basically, the day the agreement was signed, they were chanting death to America, death to Israel.

00:05:59.000 On the previous four years, America, previous eight years had, uh, had created, uh, schisms in all of their, relationships in the Middle East.

00:06:07.000 You know, their traditional Gulf partners felt very, very betrayed by America.

00:06:11.000 Same with Israel. 0.86

00:06:12.000 And then ISIS was flourishing in the region with a caliphate the size of Ohio.

00:06:16.000 So we came in and said, what are America's interests?

00:06:19.000 And we brought everyone together.

00:06:20.000 The president's first trip was to Saudi Arabia, where he assembled the leaders of 54 Arab and Muslim countries and said, these aren't America's problems.

00:06:27.000 These are your problems too.

00:06:29.000 We have to deal with extremism.

00:06:30.000 We have to deal with financing of terrorism.

00:06:32.000 We have to get rid of ISIS and we have to roll back Iran's aggression. 1.00

00:06:35.000 And if we do this together, we can make progress.

00:06:38.000 And so instead of focusing on the tactical things, which so many, I would call it cottage industry, peace processors did, and they'd get stuck in these, you know, philosophical or intellectual arguments.

00:06:48.000 We focused on what are we trying to achieve as a region?

00:06:51.000 And then You know, to untie the big knots, you had to untie some of the smaller knots, and we just kept moving forward.

00:06:57.000 And I'll say the other thing the president did was that he wasn't bullied into not doing what he felt was right.

00:07:03.000 You know, previous presidents, when they ran, promised they would move the embassy to Jerusalem.

00:07:08.000 And President Trump, you know, before he did it, everyone told him, including the intelligence agencies here in America, that if he did it, the world was going to end, and it was going to be, you know, unleashed chaos in the Middle East.

00:07:20.000 the Arab countries wouldn't talk to us anymore, and it would be a World War III. 1.00

00:07:24.000 And President Trump took the assessment, he looked at it, but after being on the job a year, he had enough knowledge of the players in the region to say, I don't buy that.

00:07:33.000 And he did it, and then what happened was, is the next morning, the sun rose, and the next evening, the sun set, and all of the different things that people told him would lead to the end of the world didn't happen.

00:07:42.000 And so at the end of the day, President Trump showed people that he was gonna take action, he wasn't gonna be bullied into not taking action, and by doing things differently, he really broke up the traditional field, and then sometimes you have to break a leg to reset it.

00:07:57.000 He ended up doing things that were not normally done, and that's what led to these breakthroughs.

00:08:02.000 You know, we tried to bring people together on what their common interest was and try to take them away from being stuck in these old grievances, because a lot of the peace process and a lot of these paradigms are riddles that were meant not to be solved.

00:08:13.000 And so, you know, how do you do it?

00:08:15.000 You have to change the parameters on what you're trying to accomplish things, because if there was an easy solution to the old riddle, it would have been solved, you know, a long time ago.

00:08:24.000 Let's talk about Middle Eastern policy more broadly for a second, because there's this sort of weird shifting goalpost thing that happens whenever people talk about Middle Eastern policy.

00:08:31.000 And that is that if peace gets made between particular regimes in the Middle East, then the media and members of the left immediately shift the discussion to, OK, but now we're working with regimes that violate human rights, ignoring, of course, the fact that the United States made tremendous concessions to the Iranian regime, which is probably the largest human rights violator in the Middle East and maybe across the planet.

00:08:52.000 So I find in politics in general, again, this was a newer thing for me, I was not in politics, but you know, you have a lot of people who want to do virtue signaling.

00:09:08.000 They'll go out and they'll do lecturing and they'll try to, you know, browbeat people and the mob likes that, right?

00:09:14.000 Because people want to see it.

00:09:15.000 But what we found is that You know, you could be much more influential with people when you're not criticizing them publicly.

00:09:21.000 It's a very, you know, fundamental premise that seems obvious, but you'd be surprised by how many politicians seem to, you know, miss that very simple notion.

00:09:31.000 So, you know, what President Trump has done in the region is he's not telling other countries, other leaders how to run their countries.

00:09:37.000 He doesn't choose who the leaders are of these countries.

00:09:40.000 We inherit the hand that we're dealt, and he works to further America's interests by working with people.

00:09:46.000 There are countries where we have common interests and we work together to try to pursue those and there are areas where we have disagreement and we try to have dialogue together to push forward on that.

00:09:56.000 But what he's not doing is he's not out there browbeating our allies on areas where we can do things that will benefit the American people.

00:10:04.000 He's out there working with sometimes rough or tough leaders on areas where we can benefit our country and their country and then on areas where we have disagreement by having a warm relationship and a dialogue you're able to try to work with them to do better and that's also why President Trump has been one of the most successful presidents at bringing hostages home, right?

00:10:23.000 He's you know, again a lot of these places you could sit there and lecture these leaders on how to run their countries But then they'll basically say, you know, well, you know, we're not going to help you with issues that you have interest in And so again, it's it's obviously a complicated balance, but you know in politics you very it's not really a black and white business You know things aren't really solved or unsolved. It's almost like the conclusion of every problem set is the beginning of a new paradigm and so everything's always fluid nothing's really ever

00:10:50.000 solid and you have to accept that as the status quo and then Constantly be working to optimize To you know make the things happen that you want to make happen Make things that are good better make things that are bad less bad and then just always try to figure out you know Who are you working for?

00:11:07.000 You're working for the American people.

00:11:09.000 What are their interests?

00:11:10.000 What is my job to do?

00:11:12.000 And then how can I pursue that and advance those interests every day?

00:11:16.000 Now, the other accomplishment that your office inside the White House has largely been credited with is criminal justice reform.

00:11:22.000 And I was wondering if you could sort of lay out the details there, because I've been more critical of criminal justice reform.

00:11:27.000 I'm a very tough on crime right winger, which means that my belief is that I've seen in California letting people out of jail early in the hopes that they are not going to be recidivists has largely redounded to the negative in the state of California. 0.95

00:11:40.000 But what does criminal justice reform do and what doesn't it do?

00:11:43.000 So, uh, you're being a right wing, you know, tough on crime is, is very much in line with my boss, President Trump, and he feels the same way.

00:11:51.000 I mean, he's very strong on law and order and doing it.

00:11:53.000 Now, uh, in politics, you know, a term like criminal justice reform, again, there's about a thousand shades of gray and there's a lot of different definitions for what it can mean.

00:12:02.000 Um, any policy or any element, you know, taken to an extreme could be bad and, and, you know, even things that are good.

00:12:08.000 And so the criminal justice reform that we put in place is not about, you know, letting, uh, you know, murders and rapists out of prison like some of the opponents tried to criticize it.

00:12:18.000 And it's not like what they did in New York, which was the no cash bail, which went way too far, which made the streets less safe.

00:12:23.000 The whole notion of what we did was We brought law enforcement together along with the advocates community and we said, what can we do to reduce crime?

00:12:31.000 And what we did is we followed the models that they did in a lot of Republican states like Georgia and Texas and Kentucky, where what they did is they took the prisons and they basically said, we have a lot of people in these prisons who have a high likelihood just per the data of going on to commit future crime.

00:12:46.000 So in any business, if you know where your future customers are coming from, that's where you want to market to.

00:12:50.000 And then You know, as a country, we have been having this philosophical debate over the last years, which is, what's the purpose of our prisons?

00:12:57.000 Is it to, you know, punish people?

00:12:59.000 Is it to warehouse people?

00:13:00.000 Or is it to rehabilitate people?

00:13:01.000 So it does cost the taxpayers a lot of money every year to house people in prison.

00:13:06.000 And then in addition to that, if they're all going to get out anyway, so, or most of them, I think 96, 97% of people are going to leave.

00:13:13.000 So, you know, when they leave, the question is, what product are you sending back into your community?

00:13:18.000 So if while you have them in your custody, Uh, you can give them skills training and you can help them, you know, deal with whatever substance abuse issues they have or mental issues and help them get the help they need and then help them transition back into the community.

00:13:31.000 Then what you're doing is you're reducing costs by not having them come back.

00:13:34.000 You're also reducing future crime by getting them back into a job.

00:13:38.000 So the criminal justice reform that we did brought programs that were very successful that help people reenter society.

00:13:45.000 to the federal level.

00:13:46.000 And then what we saw was 13 states copied that.

00:13:49.000 And I think that by and large has been a very successful program.

00:13:52.000 There are some things that come under the quote unquote title of criminal justice reform that this administration has not pushed for.

00:14:00.000 So we're not supportive of every element of it.

00:14:02.000 But when things are common sense that can both help people live better lives, you know, we do believe in second chances.

00:14:08.000 America is a country of second chance.

00:14:09.000 We don't want to judge people by their worst mistake they've ever made.

00:14:13.000 You know, people have the right for redemption, but we also want to keep communities safe.

00:14:17.000 And, you know, for me, this was a very personal one that I probably wouldn't have understood.

00:14:21.000 You know, my father went to prison for a year and I went and visited him every week.

00:14:26.000 And it was something that I met a lot of people who were in prison.

00:14:29.000 And what I found was there were some people who were just bad people, you know, for whatever reason, they had rough childhoods or rough experiences, but there were also a lot of people in prison who were good people who made a mistake.

00:14:39.000 And then they, you know, dug themselves into a hole and then they just, you know, to try to get out, did worse and worse things to dig themselves out.

00:14:45.000 And then there were some people who, you know, made a mistake and they really wanted to turn around their lives.

00:14:50.000 You know, just because these people are there, does this mean that, you know, society should turn their back on them?

00:14:55.000 They're Americans, they're human beings, and the right thing to do is to try to help them find their way.

00:15:00.000 And so, you know, when I was in the private sector, we had a second chance program in our company where we took people out of Rikers and we gave them mentorship and training and helped teach them skills.

00:15:09.000 And they became some of our most phenomenal employees in the company.

00:15:12.000 So I do believe that we have a responsibility in society to help everyone and to do a difference.

00:15:19.000 And this is one of the policies that's been very successful in keeping our community safe, but also being kind to the people who need kindness the most.

00:15:29.000 So, in just one second, I want to get into sort of the personal story of how you ended up in the White House, not being in politics, in charge of vast swaths of policy.

00:15:36.000 We'll get into all that in just one second.

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00:17:14.000 So let's talk about your personal history.

00:17:16.000 So you started off in business, you know, very heavily publicized.

00:17:20.000 You did real estate deals in New York, some of which went well, some of which didn't go so well.

00:17:25.000 Maybe you can talk a little bit about your business history, especially because there's been all this myth-making out there about how, you know, you were not great at business and then you come to the White House and now you're in the business of personal enrichment and it's all corrupt schemes.

00:17:37.000 Can you talk a little bit about your sort of business history?

00:17:40.000 Sure.

00:17:40.000 Well, look, you know, I was always raised in my family.

00:17:43.000 My grandparents were Holocaust survivors and my father always appreciated how amazing this country was.

00:17:49.000 And, you know, growing up, I was always exposed to business and I had much more of an entrepreneurial way.

00:17:55.000 I bought my first deals when I was 19 years old, when I was in college, and I was running a business then.

00:18:00.000 And then I decided when I was in college to go to law school so I applied to law school and business school and I was attending that and then I was working at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office and I thought I'd go into public service and be a prosecutor and that's when my father got arrested and I realized that I didn't want to be a prosecutor anymore after, you know, going through that experience.

00:18:20.000 You know, I saw that, you know, people with the power could have a lot of ability to do good but they also can cause a lot of harm inadvertently and so After that, I was kind of forced into my father's business.

00:18:31.000 I went through a rough period in that.

00:18:33.000 And then I got involved in different entrepreneurial efforts too.

00:18:37.000 So we sold my father's company by and large in about 2007.

00:18:42.000 And I took what we had there and we rebuilt.

00:18:45.000 So over about 10 years of running the company, we grew from about 70 employees to 700 employees.

00:18:51.000 We did about $14 billion of transactions.

00:18:54.000 By and large, most of them were incredibly successful.

00:18:56.000 And what we did in that business was very similar to what we do here, which is we tried to find the trends and be ahead of the trends.

00:19:04.000 So we were going to a lot of the places where the markets were starting to evolve and creating product that was catering to a next generation of technology workers and places where people wanted to be.

00:19:16.000 So it was quite a successful endeavor over the years.

00:19:19.000 And I also did some technology businesses, which were going well.

00:19:23.000 And then obviously my father-in-law said he was running for president.

00:19:28.000 And with him, there was always something different.

00:19:30.000 We didn't think that would impact our lives that much.

00:19:33.000 But then as that evolved, he kept asking me to do more and more for his campaign.

00:19:38.000 And as that kept evolving, we saw that he was really speaking for a lot of people in America who people weren't speaking for and who a lot of the politicians in Washington had abandoned.

00:19:50.000 I give the example of being in New York on the Upper East Side and thinking I was in an area with a lot of diversity of thought, and then realizing that it actually was a tremendous ecosystem that was self-reinforcing.

00:20:04.000 you know, we'd go to, you know, a big gala, like a Robin Hood event, and you'd hear these hedge fund managers get up and say, you know, we have to, you know, call your congressman, call your senator, Common Core is what's going to save America. This is what's going to help, you know, the kids in the inner cities who are, you know, failing schools. And then, you know, you'd go on the road with, with my father in law, and I hear him, you know, speak to a crowd of 20,000 people who were not at all resembling, you know, what CNN was telling people they were, I mean, according to CNN,

00:20:32.000 these were like Ku Klux Klan rallies, whereas, you know, I go to these rallies, and it was diverse groups of hardworking Americans who just wanted to feel like people were, in Washington, were paying attention to them.

00:20:42.000 And he'd get up and say, we're going to end Common Core and send education back to the states.

00:20:47.000 And the people got all excited.

00:20:48.000 I said, wait, I was being told in New York that Common Core is the greatest thing.

00:20:52.000 What are these disconnects?

00:20:53.000 And so for me, I didn't have a very political bent.

00:20:57.000 I wasn't as deep on a lot of the policy.

00:21:02.000 Uh, when I got involved in politics, but then on each of these different issues, the president would ask me, okay, study this policy, uh, tell me, you know, what has been tried, uh, what has failed?

00:21:12.000 Why is it failed?

00:21:13.000 And what's a strategy that we should approach almost like, you know, a consultant.

00:21:16.000 And I would put, uh, these policy plans together and that's how we would pursue a lot of these different things.

00:21:21.000 So, you know, I think it for me was really about understanding that there's two points of view and there's probably about a thousand points of view, but there's differing sides and there's a lot of nuance in these policies and at the end of the day, the goal has to be to make progress and push forward. So I got involved in politics in a very unexpected way. And obviously, it's been an incredible journey for me over the last years. But, you know, it's been an amazing honor to be able to work for, you know, all these people, all of the American people and to try to take areas

00:21:51.000 that were either important to the president or important to myself and to be able to focus on them and then to make a difference.

00:21:58.000 You know, you look at the Middle East, again, we've made two peace deals there. You look at criminal justice reform, you know, that's going to impact hundreds of thousands of families.

00:22:05.000 You look at the trade deals I was able to work on, whether it was the Mexico-Canada trade deal, which is the largest trade deal in history.

00:22:12.000 that's gonna bring 500,000 jobs to America.

00:22:16.000 And so, you know, there are a lot of benefits that can come when you're pushing on these policies.

00:22:21.000 You look at, you know, immigration.

00:22:22.000 The president asked me to take on the project of building the wall.

00:22:25.000 That's not something I ever thought I would do.

00:22:28.000 But again, it was just, you know, project management, figuring out how do we get all the different bottlenecks condensed and work through.

00:22:35.000 And, you know, now we're gonna break 400 miles, I think, in a week or two.

00:22:38.000 And so that's flying up and the border's been very secure.

00:22:41.000 We're detaining a lot more illegal drugs at the border.

00:22:44.000 We're stopping a lot more human trafficking.

00:22:46.000 And that's, you know, I think helping our country, you know, have a strong border.

00:22:49.000 And that's important to the president and the people who elected him.

00:22:52.000 So again, it's been an unusual journey.

00:22:56.000 Most people do public service later in their life.

00:22:58.000 I was on a very good trajectory in my business, so it probably wasn't the optimal time for me to give up my business life and come do public service.

00:23:06.000 But I find that you have to follow when the opportunity comes, not when you're ready for the opportunity.

00:23:13.000 Like I said, all these different chapters in my life have been unexpected, but I feel incredibly blessed to do the things that I've been fortunate to do.

00:23:21.000 So how did your political viewpoint itself change?

00:23:23.000 So you mentioned, you know, kind of being in the Upper West Side, kind of the New York enclave of politics, and then going out and visiting the middle of the country.

00:23:31.000 Were your political views fairly well defined before you entered the administration or before you started with the campaign?

00:23:35.000 Or was it sort of miasmatic for you?

00:23:37.000 And then over time, as you studied the issues, you ended up kind of where you are.

00:23:41.000 And what are you sort of your guiding political principles?

00:23:43.000 Or is it mostly just pragmatism?

00:23:46.000 I try to be pragmatic.

00:23:47.000 Look, nobody elected me, right?

00:23:50.000 People elected Donald Trump as their president.

00:23:53.000 He ran on a certain set of promises.

00:23:55.000 He felt it was very important to keep those promises.

00:23:58.000 I did have some arguments with some of the people early on in the administration, because they came in and they would say, well, these are the things we have to get done.

00:24:06.000 I said, well, look, it's different running a campaign to being in governing.

00:24:10.000 Now we're playing with live ammunition and there's consequences to the decisions we make.

00:24:14.000 And we have to make sure that the president's having thoughtful, nuanced plans that he can execute in an effective way.

00:24:21.000 And it's very important that we have people on all sides giving him their perspective so that he's not being pigeonholed into one decision that he may not be ready to make.

00:24:30.000 And so what I've tried to do is just make sure that, you know, when the president has a strong point of view on something that you have people giving him the reasons to do it.

00:24:39.000 You have people giving him maybe the opposing points of view when that's relevant, which is often.

00:24:46.000 and then allow him to make a decision.

00:24:48.000 And then once he makes a decision, make sure that you have competent people ready to get an execution and an implementation plan.

00:24:55.000 And by and large, I think that the president's been focused on a lot of things which really put Americans first.

00:25:03.000 And so one of the great examples was trade.

00:25:06.000 During the campaign, I remember seeing a New York Times article saying how Donald Trump has taken 100 years of trade, orthodoxy, and he's turned it on its head.

00:25:15.000 And there are some people who have, but he didn't change his point of view.

00:25:19.000 One thing that's amazing about him as a politician is he's not somebody who reads polls and then changes.

00:25:24.000 He has a point of view, and then I see the polls change towards him because he's willing to fight for what he believes in.

00:25:29.000 He has a real point of view.

00:25:31.000 And again, some things he's been able to convince people on others, but on trade, his whole notion was is that these trade deals are terrible, right?

00:25:39.000 Trade deficits do matter.

00:25:40.000 He believes that they're transfers of wealth.

00:25:44.000 He believes that these multinational corporations, in collusion with a lot of the government, have created these terrible trade deals that basically offshored a lot of our jobs.

00:25:55.000 The economists who were really ruling the day said, Well, you know, this globalization is good because it means that the cost of goods for everyone goes down.

00:26:02.000 But, you know, what people didn't take into account was that, you know, the benefit may be distributed.

00:26:07.000 So a t-shirt for everyone goes down by a dollar, but you have a lot of these factories that are leaving a lot of these cities.

00:26:13.000 And then if there's no plan to help the people who are working in those factories transition, the costs of globalization became very concentrated, especially towards, you know, really hurting the middle class in America.

00:26:24.000 So we saw Between 2001 and 2016, about 70,000 factories closed in America, about 5 million jobs go overseas, and those were great middle-class working jobs.

00:26:35.000 So President Trump came in, first person to take on China, the first trade deal in 20 years in the USMCA that was endorsed by the labor unions.

00:26:45.000 And he basically made deals that were here to bring manufacturing back to America to benefit the middle class.

00:26:51.000 And I think that if you look at a lot of these inner cities that have problems today, a lot of them do stem from the bad trade deals, right?

00:26:57.000 So if you had a factory in Baltimore, a steel factory or whatever it was that was shipped overseas because it was cheaper based on these trade deals to do it, you know, maybe half the people found new jobs, maybe half the people didn't.

00:27:08.000 Some went to social you know, welfare in different agencies, some people committed crime, some people, you know, different issues.

00:27:18.000 And if we didn't have a way to transition them to another job, that has reverberations, you know, downstream, what happens to their children, their next generation.

00:27:24.000 And so I do think a lot of the problems in our inner cities do stem from these terrible trade deals that were made by, you know, politicians in Washington who, you know, maybe bought into an orthodoxy that wasn't thinking about, you know, the American people.

00:27:37.000 And so, you know, President Trump's ran on a campaign of America first.

00:27:41.000 And I remember, you know, again, as somebody whose grandparents, you know, went through the Holocaust, you know, the critics in Washington said, well, that's a very anti-Semitic, you And I said, well, how's it, and I said, you know, if you're running for president of the United States and your notion is to put America first, I said, how is that not a good, a good slogan?

00:28:01.000 And then I was also saying, why is that controversial to people here in Washington, DC?

00:28:05.000 But you know, but by and large, he's just taken a very non Washington approach to a lot of things.

00:28:13.000 He's taken a very common sense approach.

00:28:14.000 Some things have been maybe a little bit more Republican.

00:28:16.000 Some things have maybe been a little bit more traditionally Democrat, but I think he's paved a real policy space for himself that I think by and large is built on pragmatism.

00:28:25.000 And I think he's also gotten a lot of things done and he's fought hard to do it.

00:28:28.000 I mean, a lot of people say there's a lot of noise coming out of Washington, you know, over the last four years, but I don't think he would have been able to have achieved the results he had, had it not been for all the, you know, making people uncomfortable.

00:28:41.000 What I find in Washington is people are very good at complaining about the status quo.

00:28:44.000 They can tell you what's wrong with something, but then when you try to change it, they get very, very nervous.

00:28:49.000 And, you know, a business person thinks different than a politician.

00:28:52.000 When you're in business, you, you basically say, my job is to try to do something because not making a decision is a decision, right?

00:28:58.000 So doing nothing is, is, is a decision.

00:29:01.000 And then you say, look, I know where I'm trying to get to, so I have to do everything possible.

00:29:05.000 To create a higher probability that I'll achieve the upside scenario and do everything possible to mitigate the downside scenario.

00:29:12.000 And that's basically what the president's done time and time again.

00:29:15.000 But he's made a lot of people very uncomfortable.

00:29:18.000 But we wouldn't have been able to make the progress we made with everyone in Washington being comfortable.

00:29:22.000 So in just a second, I want to ask you about your involvement with the Trump family, because now we all think of you as part of the Trump family, but obviously your last name is Kushner, so I want to ask about how you met your wife, actually, in just one second.

00:29:32.000 But first, hiring can be incredibly complicated.

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00:30:29.000 So let's talk about how you met Ivanka because you're a human.

00:30:31.000 I know that everybody thinks of you on the outside and I don't mean to be insulting as sort of, you know, robot inside Trump administration doing Trump administration bidding.

00:30:39.000 But you obviously are a human being.

00:30:41.000 Not only are you a human being, as it turns out, you have beautiful kids and a beautiful wife and a beautiful family.

00:30:45.000 How did you meet Ivanka?

00:30:46.000 Because this is obviously how you end up working inside the Trump administration.

00:30:50.000 So, again, I was in New York, I was doing, you know, a bunch of real estate and technology and publishing and my broker, actually, I worked with a gentleman named Moshe, actually, said, you have to meet this woman, Ivanka.

00:31:05.000 And I knew who she was, obviously.

00:31:06.000 And so he set us up for lunch.

00:31:08.000 I think she was trying to sell me a building for a price that didn't make any sense at lunch.

00:31:12.000 So we got together.

00:31:14.000 And it was just a nice time.

00:31:15.000 And then a couple weeks later, she reached out and said, let's get together again.

00:31:18.000 And so, you know, that's kind of where it went.

00:31:21.000 And, you know, we built a very, very close relationship.

00:31:24.000 I think we, I always say that if I wasn't so attracted to my wife, she'd just be my best friend. 0.96

00:31:29.000 And I found that, you know, she was a great person for me to be able to, you know, to learn from.

00:31:37.000 And I think that we just found a great bond, you know, exploring the world together.

00:31:42.000 And I think we shared very similar values of family.

00:31:45.000 And I also think that, you know, with everything that I'd been through with my father in my life, I had a very strong maybe sense for what in life was real and what was not real.

00:31:58.000 And I tried very hard to not spend my time on trivial things.

00:32:03.000 And I feel like Ivanka also had a very unique childhood where She was exposed to a lot of things, and I think that she also had a real desire to focus on what matters.

00:32:12.000 And for us, it really was about, we explored our faith together, it was about family, and it was about living a life that we felt that we could judge ourselves by our values, not based on the viewpoints of other people.

00:32:26.000 And you know, I think we've been very blessed to obviously have a beautiful family.

00:32:29.000 We have incredible friends.

00:32:31.000 And, you know, even through this whole experience, you know, the amount of friends who we've been disappointed by have been, you know, virtually non-existent because we didn't have friends who were trivial people, right?

00:32:41.000 They were people based on, you know, common values and common interests.

00:32:46.000 and a lot of people who have understanding that the world is a nuanced place.

00:32:49.000 And as we went through this exploration of obviously politics and obviously the world of conservatism and Republicans, which was maybe a little bit more foreign to us initially, we had a lot of people who, instead of being dogmatic about it based on what their preconceived notions were, these were people who basically wanted to explore with us and understand what we were seeing and see the other point of view that they necessarily weren't seeing before.

00:33:13.000 And so Ivanka has just been an amazing partner, an amazing friend, and she's an amazing mother, and just an amazing person.

00:33:20.000 And so I'm just very, very blessed to have her as my wife and obviously love her very much.

00:33:25.000 And how did you guys decide where did you want to be religiously?

00:33:28.000 As I was saying, I'm a religious Jew.

00:33:30.000 I'm a observant Jew.

00:33:30.000 You guys are observant as well.

00:33:32.000 How did you decide together where you wanted to be on that score?

00:33:35.000 So, it really started with exploration, right?

00:33:38.000 You know, obviously, my faith is something that is very important to me and something I was brought up with.

00:33:43.000 And as we started, you know, getting to know each other, you know, dating-wise, this was something she noticed.

00:33:51.000 And she said, you know, it's something that I'd be happy to learn more about.

00:33:55.000 And, you know, I started, obviously, you know, figuring out, you know, what's the best way to introduce somebody to Judaism.

00:34:04.000 And I started out, actually, with the notion of, you know, how do you explain, you know, the fact that the Jews are basically a persecuted people?

00:34:12.000 They've been that way for, you know, for thousands of years.

00:34:15.000 But, you know, the notion that, you know, you have to have faith in God.

00:34:18.000 And, you know, how do you explain some of these?

00:34:21.000 these things that happen.

00:34:23.000 And the notion is that basically, you know, the analogy that the rabbi that we were learning with at the time gave was that, you know, when you're a child and you come out of the womb and you see the first thing, you know, the people who are caring for you, they give you, you know, a shot.

00:34:36.000 And you know, you're saying, you know, the baby from their perspective is saying, you know, how is it that, you know, this person who's supposed to care for me is actually injecting me with a needle and causing me pain?

00:34:46.000 But what that, you know, child doesn't understand is that that's actually a, you know, a vaccine or a drug that's going to help prevent them from future suffering.

00:34:53.000 And so, you know, the notion was is that you have to have, you know, faith in God.

00:34:57.000 And then, obviously, the rituals that you go through are something that you do to try to bring you closer to God and closer together as a family.

00:35:07.000 And we just explored it together.

00:35:09.000 And I think that there were certain things that we chose to take on and certain things we didn't feel comfortable taking on.

00:35:14.000 But what we were able to do is to create a lifestyle that we were very comfortable with and that we felt allowed us to optimize both for meaning and for happiness.

00:35:26.000 And then obviously the values that we wanted to build a family around.

00:35:29.000 And so we were very blessed in that regard.

00:35:32.000 So now let's shift to how it is working inside the Trump administration with President Trump directly.

00:35:37.000 So, you go from being in the business world, running your own business, to suddenly you're working for Donald Trump, who, from the outside, appears to be an interesting boss.

00:35:46.000 What is it like to work with, that's putting it mildly, how is it to work with President Trump on a daily basis?

00:35:51.000 What is it that people on the outside get right about it, and what is it that people on the outside get wrong about working with and for President Trump?

00:35:58.000 So I think the best description from an external point of view that I saw after the last election was a woman wrote that the media took Donald Trump literally but not seriously, but the voters took him seriously but not literally.

00:36:14.000 What I understand about him is, first of all, it's been an absolute thrill working with him.

00:36:18.000 I think he's obviously a brilliant person.

00:36:20.000 He can't have accomplished everything that he's accomplished in his life without being a brilliant person.

00:36:26.000 I've also gone through this experience with him of seeing him adapt to politics and then also adapt to being president and continue to grow.

00:36:35.000 And make decisions right and what he's really done is is he's increased the metabolism of government, you know in a tremendous way, right?

00:36:42.000 He's very demanding as a boss and during that, you know, the cream rises and I'm not going to say a bad word but that sinks, you know along the way but what he is able to do is is really pushed for results.

00:36:55.000 And so what he finds is that he's very trusting of the different agency heads or people he's hiring to do jobs.

00:37:03.000 And he likes to agree with them on what the goal is.

00:37:06.000 And then he gives them a fair amount of latitude to try to accomplish it, unless it's something that he's tremendously focused on, then he'll have very strong points of view on how to do it.

00:37:15.000 But for me working with him, I find that it's very interesting to watch him work, other world leaders to watch him work, members of Congress, he likes to keep people off balance.

00:37:26.000 I think that's where he finds his strategic advantage.

00:37:29.000 And I've seen him again, outmaneuver some of the toughest and smartest world leaders that we deal with.

00:37:35.000 Because again, he's trying to always fight for America's interests, but he's the first president that truly understands, I think American power, the power that we have economically.

00:37:45.000 And I think a lot of politicians are trained to stay away from uncertainty.

00:37:49.000 They see uncertainty as an enemy because the media jumps all over them.

00:37:53.000 He's used uncertainty as a weapon, and I think he's used that to create outcomes that many people didn't think would be possible.

00:38:01.000 And then just on a personal level, I find that every day is different.

00:38:05.000 You never know what issue he's on.

00:38:09.000 A lot of people try to manage a boss.

00:38:12.000 He's not a boss that's manageable.

00:38:14.000 He likes to get his information from a lot of different sources, and I think that's a healthy thing, because again, he doesn't want a filtered point of view.

00:38:21.000 He'll want to speak to tons of people, and that's, I think, a very, very good thing.

00:38:27.000 And then again, he's very common sense and he's not afraid to take on fights.

00:38:31.000 Sometimes we wish he took on a few less fights, but the reality is, is he views it like he was given this opportunity from the American people to lead the greatest country in the world.

00:38:41.000 And he's going to spend every minute of every day fighting to try to push forward on the issues that he cares about, whether it's a small issue or a big issue, he's going to be pushing forward.

00:38:51.000 So he's very demanding.

00:38:52.000 I mean, it's a, it's truly a 24 seven job.

00:38:54.000 I'll get calls from him at one o'clock in the morning.

00:38:56.000 I'll get calls at five o'clock in the morning.

00:38:58.000 Um, and, uh, you know, he'll want to know the latest on this.

00:39:01.000 And sometimes I'll say how the, you know, why is he thinking about this issue at this moment in time?

00:39:06.000 But, you know, he's a very prolific reader.

00:39:08.000 He's, he's always staying on top of the news and, and what's happening.

00:39:11.000 And so it's, it's quite funny.

00:39:12.000 And I'd say the one final thing is that, He's actually very funny, too.

00:39:18.000 When you're with him, he has a great sense of humor.

00:39:22.000 I find the media doesn't do a good job.

00:39:23.000 They tend to lose their sense of humor when it comes to him.

00:39:27.000 He'll be sarcastic or he'll joke, but he's got a very good sense of irony.

00:39:32.000 And it's never boring.

00:39:33.000 And I will just say, you know, finally, that, you know, I think that, you know, I've been blessed to work with some incredible people at the White House.

00:39:39.000 If you look at the people who are really, you know, at the campaign and then now have worked all the way through, there's, you know, a very core group of people who really love the president, understand the president, and who are, you know, devoted to helping him see through what he started.

00:39:53.000 And I would say that that group's been, you know, incredibly successful.

00:39:56.000 Yeah, I guess, you know, I don't know how politics was before I got here.

00:40:00.000 Again, it was never something I focused on as closely, but I guess there's maybe a new thing of trying to vilify the people, you know, around a principle, not just a principle now in politics.

00:40:11.000 But, you know, these are all people who could be making a lot more money, working a lot less, seeing their families more.

00:40:17.000 But they don't do that.

00:40:18.000 They take the abuse, they work for lower salaries than they could be making, and they work 24-7 because they believe that this country's worth fighting for.

00:40:26.000 And it's very much a big inspiration for me to be able to work with such incredible people.

00:40:31.000 And again, over the last four years, if you take all of the emotion out and you take all the crazy things, like they investigated us for a couple of years and I saw all these great people having to get lawyers and do depositions on something that we had nothing to do with, which was the threat of a...

00:40:48.000 The allegation of a Russia collusion and, you know, everyone stuck in the pocket and they they knew that, you know, what they were fighting for is good.

00:40:53.000 But if you look at just the results that we achieved, obviously pre pandemic, and I think that, you know, we're seeing the recovery go very quickly.

00:41:01.000 Thanks again to the stimulus and the leadership of the president and the job that this administration's done.

00:41:06.000 To make sure that the pandemic was less severe than it would have been otherwise, and that the economic fallout has been a lot less severe than it's been in other countries.

00:41:16.000 I think I saw that the median household income, you know, grew by almost, you know, six times, you know, in his three years, what it did in the previous eight years beforehand.

00:41:24.000 And we were seeing, you know, one thing I always see with politicians, they talk about a K-shaped recovery now, where the wealth gap is increasing.

00:41:34.000 The wealth gap was increasing for the 15 years before.

00:41:36.000 Over the first three years of President Trump, the wealth gap was decreasing for the first time in decades because you had the people and the workers were getting their wages the fastest.

00:41:46.000 And I do think we're on our way back to that economy.

00:41:49.000 And obviously, the pandemic is, I guess, a once-in-a-century type of challenge that our country's really stepped up to the plate and has done a lot of things to combat it.

00:42:03.000 But I do think that we're going to come out of this even stronger because if you think about strength globally, it's really more of a relative thing than an absolute thing.

00:42:10.000 And as our economy grows much quicker, as the strength that we put into place manufacturing-wise and getting rid of dependencies and juicing our economy, I think that will lead to America being in an even stronger relative place in the world than it's been, especially as all these trade deals that we've made over the last year kick in, the deregulation is still in place, the lower taxes are still in place.

00:42:34.000 And I think that that's going to be a very exciting couple of chapters ahead if we stay the course.

00:42:39.000 So in just a second, I want to ask you about the administration's handling of COVID-19.

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00:44:01.000 So let's talk about the COVID-19 handling.

00:44:04.000 So obviously, President Trump, it appeared that, frankly, he was on a glide path to re-election before COVID-19, considering the performance of the economy, which was historically good.

00:44:14.000 Right now, even now, there's a poll from Gallup showing 56% of Americans say now, in the middle of the pandemic, that they are better off than they were four years ago, which is still an incredibly high statistic compared to past presidencies.

00:44:26.000 And then the pandemic hits.

00:44:28.000 And obviously, this, you know, is a is a curveball like none that I've seen in my lifetime with with lockdowns in major cities across the country.

00:44:36.000 There are some stories that were coming out specifically about the administration.

00:44:40.000 There was one story suggesting that there was politicization of the COVID response, that for some reason the administration was treating blue states differently than red states.

00:44:46.000 I was wondering if you could respond to that.

00:44:48.000 And then overall, the COVID-19 response, which seems to me, I've been saying for a while, Seems sort of striated.

00:44:56.000 One, I would say, avenue is the actual policy, which I think is quite good or as good as you could expect from a federal government.

00:45:03.000 And the second is the rhetoric, which seems to have been incredibly confused.

00:45:07.000 The message was shifting fairly often.

00:45:09.000 How do you think Americans ought to rate the COVID-19 response?

00:45:12.000 What are the factors that they should take into account?

00:45:15.000 So look, it's a big challenge for the world, right?

00:45:18.000 Every country's had a different challenge that's been put on them.

00:45:22.000 And I think that it's also an unprecedented situation.

00:45:24.000 So you have to think about how our government's, you know, geared to respond.

00:45:27.000 You know, our situation was is that You know, we were told that if we didn't take certain actions, there would be upwards of 2 million Americans that would die.

00:45:37.000 And what they asked the president to do was basically to shut down the greatest economy that our country had seen in a long time.

00:45:44.000 And President Trump said, look, obviously losing one life is too many.

00:45:47.000 So we took those very strong actions.

00:45:50.000 And then what we saw was a series of fears that were being hyped every day.

00:45:56.000 In the media, whether it was the fact that our frontline workers weren't going to have enough masks and gloves and gowns and all these items, people were going to die because they weren't going to get ventilators, there wasn't going to be enough hospital capacity.

00:46:09.000 And then what we did is we just, one by one, we dealt with every governor, whether it was a red state governor or blue state governor.

00:46:15.000 I mean, the stories that came out You know, there's one story that Vanity Fair wrote, which was a total joke.

00:46:20.000 They didn't even reach out to the White House, and they have nothing to substantiate their claim that we politicized this or that we were just dealing with red state governors.

00:46:29.000 Actually, Governor Murphy and Governor Cuomo's chief of staff both went on the record in a subsequent article.

00:46:33.000 They didn't call them, obviously, to say that it wasn't true.

00:46:36.000 But, I mean, there was a period of 30 days where I probably spoke to Andrew Cuomo once or twice a day, every day.

00:46:41.000 I spoke to Governor Murphy or his chief of staff.

00:46:44.000 every day and we were just problem solving in real time because it wasn't something that any of us had experience doing, but it was about making sure that we were pinpointing problems and working towards it.

00:46:56.000 And so, when we see on the news, doctors from the public health system in New York City saying that they were running out of masks, I literally got on the phone myself with the head of the public health system and said, are you guys out of masks?

00:47:09.000 He says, no, we're not out of masks, but we have a one week supply.

00:47:12.000 I said, well, how many masks are you burning through a day?

00:47:15.000 And he gave me the number.

00:47:16.000 I said, well, look, just tomorrow you'll have delivered to you a one month supply of N95 masks and we'll get it to you.

00:47:21.000 And they were very appreciative.

00:47:22.000 So what we did is we kept trying to find the bottlenecks and then solving them.

00:47:26.000 And what happened was is you had a lot of hoarding in the system, right?

00:47:29.000 A lot of countries have nationalized health, which is why they provide poor health and healthcare.

00:47:34.000 Then here in America, we have a much more private sector driven healthcare, healthcare service providers as well as the logistics and distribution of all private sectors.

00:47:45.000 So what we did was we very quickly figured out where it was and we created a control tower approach.

00:47:51.000 We brought in.

00:47:52.000 The top military professionals, logisticians, people who are experts at logistics to help us do this.

00:47:58.000 And again, it was frustrating, the politicization.

00:48:00.000 I mean, we had senators who basically every day would say they should be bringing in a general who's great at logistics.

00:48:06.000 We're saying, well, we did.

00:48:07.000 We had an admiral who was great at logistics, you know, working on this.

00:48:11.000 And then they were saying, you know, you need to have a plan.

00:48:14.000 We had plans.

00:48:15.000 We worked on these with the governors.

00:48:17.000 And we made sure that testing ramped as quickly as possible.

00:48:19.000 And again, there'll always be people who will be critical, but by and large, we met the challenges as they were able to do.

00:48:25.000 And obviously, we judge ourselves both in absolute terms, did we meet the challenge, but also, you know, relative to our peers.

00:48:33.000 And we've outpaced a lot of our peers' countries in almost every regard.

00:48:37.000 And so You know, it's been a big challenge, but also, America, the President believes in the Federalist system, which is that, you know, you obviously have to work with the different governors.

00:48:45.000 Some governors were very competent, some governors were less competent, but our job was just to constantly try to get them the resources they need and to help them learn how to do the different tasks that were required through that process.

00:48:57.000 And so, again, I think that, you know, when history looks back on this, they'll realize that when you take all the different factors into account, I do believe that the federal government rose to the challenge and I think that we did a pretty good job of getting the stuff that was needed to the places where it was needed and making sure that we had the right awareness and the right leadership to spread the information.

00:49:20.000 But obviously it was a very chaotic time in many regards.

00:49:24.000 So let's talk about the election now.

00:49:27.000 Obviously, we look at the national polling, and we're recording this in the middle of October, a couple weeks into October.

00:49:33.000 And in the national polling, the president is down double digits in most of the polls by the RealClearPolitics poll average.

00:49:38.000 He's running competitively in a lot of the swing states, but he seems to be down in the Midwest particularly, and some of the states that should not be swing states are polling really closely.

00:49:47.000 At the same time, the president pulls ahead of Joe Biden on what people say is their number one issue, the economy.

00:49:52.000 Again, there's a poll that shows that a vast majority of Americans say they're better off now than they were four years ago.

00:49:57.000 And I've been saying for a while on the show and publicly that it seems like this is almost entirely a referendum on how people perceive Trump personally.

00:50:05.000 That if you were to look at the Trump administration policy, Americans, they even say this in polling, like Trump's policies better than they like Biden's policies.

00:50:13.000 But they seem to have serious reservations about Trump as a human being, and namely his public persona, Twitter, the constant feeling of chaos and all this.

00:50:21.000 What would you say to Americans who are concerned about, you know, how the president approaches this sort of stuff?

00:50:27.000 And what can you say to make them more quiescent about it, considering, again, that that is a bridge that is, I think, going to have to be, is going to have to, again, is going to have to be bridged in order for the president to win re-election.

00:50:40.000 Right.

00:50:40.000 So what I would say is that, look, he is who he is.

00:50:42.000 And I think that the president has been this way for a long time.

00:50:47.000 He ran, you know, exactly, you know, being who he was last time and people elected him.

00:50:52.000 And over the last years, he's, you know, he hasn't changed and become somebody else.

00:50:57.000 And he's also kept all of his promises, you know, along the way.

00:51:00.000 And from a governing point of view, he did exactly the things that He did exactly the things that he said he was going to do.

00:51:07.000 I mean, today, as we're talking, you know, on the Hill, they have the hearings for, you know, the third Supreme Court justice.

00:51:12.000 The president, you know, promised he was going to appoint justices from a list because a lot of conservatives weren't sure, you know, you know, if the president, you know, shared their same beliefs.

00:51:22.000 And he says, well, you know, he came up with an unconventional political idea, which was, well, let me give out a list and I'll show you who I would choose from.

00:51:28.000 And he put out that list and he selected, you know, from his list every time there's been a vacancy on the court.

00:51:34.000 I think in a lot of things, the voters know what he's going to do.

00:51:36.000 And I think that, you know, people in America have very little tolerance for politicians who say one thing and then do something else.

00:51:43.000 And I think at the end of the day, they know with Trump what they're going to get, which I think is a good thing.

00:51:48.000 And what I'll just say now is that, look, we saw a very similar thing in 2016.

00:51:52.000 I think that obviously it's a closer election right now than it should be, given where the economy was pre-pandemic.

00:51:59.000 But I do think we're recovering well.

00:52:02.000 I think if you look at all the different states, again, I spent the last couple of days talking to all of our different state directors.

00:52:06.000 They're all telling me they feel like they're in better shape in their states than they were in 2016 at this time.

00:52:12.000 And so, you know, we'll see.

00:52:13.000 A lot's going to happen.

00:52:14.000 I always say a day in the world of Trump is an eternity, but three weeks in the world of Trump is definitely an eternity.

00:52:20.000 And so I think he told me at one point, he says, I think my news cycle at this point is about two hours.

00:52:24.000 So, you know, it's.

00:52:26.000 It's a different world, and I do think that it's also going to depend on who votes.

00:52:30.000 I think that he's got a lot of people throughout the country who are very motivated to get out there and vote.

00:52:37.000 I also think you have a situation where you have a lot of people who support him, but they don't want to fight.

00:52:42.000 You think about the abuse that people take.

00:52:45.000 Last night we were talking, there was a police chief who was fired in Pennsylvania because his wife posted on Facebook that she was voting for Trump because he was the only candidate who supported law enforcement.

00:52:55.000 And the police chief got fired for doing that.

00:52:57.000 I think you have a lot of people who are afraid to say that they're for Trump because they've been bullied by the media.

00:53:03.000 And that's not what we should be doing in a tolerant society.

00:53:05.000 I think people should be able to express their points of view.

00:53:09.000 But what I find in Washington, the lowest form of defense is when you are losing the argument.

00:53:14.000 You just say, oh, that person's a racist or that person's an anti-Semite.

00:53:18.000 And the amount of people I've seen who have been totally unhinged Uh, when they kind of make these allegations towards the president without looking at his record on either issue, uh, is just very disappointing to me.

00:53:28.000 And I think that people like that actually degrade the discourse in our country.

00:53:31.000 So, you know, if you don't like that the president tweets or communicates with the people on social media, I would tell you it's the opposite.

00:53:38.000 The, one of the benefits of, you know, this president is that you always know what he's thinking, you know, at any time, just have to, you know, whenever I'll get a call from him, the first thing I do is I go and I look at Twitter to say, what's he been, you know, what's he thinking about right now?

00:53:50.000 And I think that that's actually, you know, in a lot of ways a good thing.

00:53:53.000 And so, you know, look, I obviously have a lot of faith in the American people.

00:53:57.000 They'll make the right decision.

00:53:58.000 And I think that, you know, it'll be an exciting couple of weeks ahead.

00:54:02.000 And so in a second, I'm going to ask you about what the closing plan is, because there's only a couple of weeks until the election.

00:54:08.000 What is the closing messaging going to be?

00:54:09.000 But first, I don't know about you, I'm spending an awful lot of time these days consuming media, whether it is watching TV or whether it is listening to other people's podcasts.

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00:55:14.000 Okay, so let's talk about the closing plan for Trump's re-elect effort.

00:55:18.000 So you mentioned Twitter.

00:55:20.000 Obviously, I am definitely a member of the coterie that says that I wish that the president would drop his phone in the toilet.

00:55:25.000 And I wish that the messaging from the White House were a lot more singular.

00:55:29.000 Because when the president is on teleprompter, whether it's a State of the Union address or whether he is speaking in Eastern Europe, those speeches are the high points of his presidency.

00:55:37.000 I would say that probably three quarters of the low points of his presidency have been things that get tweeted that then immediately become a news cycle for a week.

00:55:45.000 There are certainly things where the media take comments that he makes and spin them completely out of context.

00:55:50.000 The most obvious example being the bizarre assumption that he was not denouncing white supremacy when he literally said he would denounce white supremacy on a stage with Joe Biden just a couple of weeks ago.

00:56:01.000 Given the fact that we are now in a shortened time frame and that there has to be really one singular message going forward to the election, what is Trump's closing pitch going to be?

00:56:09.000 Not only for himself, because the record is pretty good, but against Joe Biden in particular, because it seems like a lot of the 2016 election was reliant on the fact that there was a wellspring of deep antipathy for Hillary Clinton.

00:56:20.000 The American public had been built up for decades previous.

00:56:23.000 She was, by poll numbers, the most unpopular politician in America. 0.99

00:56:28.000 Joe Biden, there's not the same sort of antipathy.

00:56:30.000 So what does the campaign against Biden look like in order to put him in the spotlight a little bit?

00:56:34.000 So Biden is obviously different than Hillary Clinton. 0.97

00:56:36.000 You know, people don't hate him as much, but he also hasn't accomplished anything.

00:56:40.000 And so, you know, when people look at him, it's 47 years of, you know, just kind of hanging around government and being on every side of every issue.

00:56:47.000 I think that the Biden campaign is basically saying, well, you know, you failed on COVID and then basically saying, but if we're elected, we'll do absolutely nothing different.

00:56:54.000 Right?

00:56:55.000 I mean, they laid out their whole plan for what they would do, which is basically everything that we've done, which the media doesn't cover.

00:57:00.000 And, uh, And I do think the accomplishments that the president's had, especially towards getting the vaccine in record time and all these therapeutics has been incredible.

00:57:08.000 I think Trump's argument is, look, if you elect me, I'll give you the greatest economy you've ever seen.

00:57:13.000 And I did it once.

00:57:15.000 I built a great economy.

00:57:16.000 You were doing well.

00:57:16.000 Your family was doing well.

00:57:18.000 A lot of that's still in place.

00:57:20.000 And if you elect me, I'm very confident I could do it again.

00:57:22.000 So I think that's really the balance.

00:57:24.000 I think much deeper, though, what you're seeing with the media, and a lot of Washington is that, you know, Washington doesn't like outsiders.

00:57:31.000 Again, a lot of, you know, why I was a threat to Washington is because, you know, I'm somebody who's focused on results and process, results and how do you, you know, drive things to an outcome.

00:57:41.000 You know, Washington is focused on process.

00:57:43.000 It's people focused on how do you just go forward and then ultimately not get a lot But President Trump's brought accountability.

00:57:49.000 He's brought a different sensibility.

00:57:51.000 He's destroyed a lot of the institutions.

00:57:53.000 He's not going to their cocktail parties.

00:57:55.000 He's not playing by their rules.

00:57:56.000 He's not, you know, doing what the Washington media and the Washington politicians not acting in the way they want him to.

00:58:03.000 And they don't like that.

00:58:04.000 And so, you know, a big part of what this represents is they feel like they missed it last time.

00:58:09.000 You know, they allowed President Trump to get in and And they want to do everything possible this time to make sure that he doesn't get another chance.

00:58:19.000 But I do feel like after four years, you know, the president's gotten a lot done, but he also really now knows how Washington works.

00:58:26.000 He's also brought with him a lot of untraditional people to Washington, right?

00:58:29.000 So you think about the people who are traditionally qualified.

00:58:32.000 How are you qualified to be in Washington, right?

00:58:34.000 You're usually having worked in Washington before.

00:58:36.000 So all the people, you know, either worked for the Bush dynasty or they worked for the Clinton dynasty.

00:58:40.000 So, you know, it was really all the same thing.

00:58:42.000 You know, they may have been wearing a blue shirt or a red shirt, but they really were on the same team.

00:58:46.000 And I think the American people saw less last election as a left versus right election.

00:58:53.000 I think they saw more as an inside versus outside election.

00:58:56.000 And I think you'll have a lot of the same thing.

00:58:59.000 And I actually think that, you know, the media and a lot of the people in Washington help the president because what happens is he does make mistakes.

00:59:06.000 He's not perfect.

00:59:08.000 But they always overreact and over-pursue and they expose kind of the hypocrisy and kind of what they're trying to protect here, which is kind of their kingdom of influence.

00:59:18.000 And by doing that, I think the American people see that they have somebody who's truly fighting for them.

00:59:23.000 versus people who are kind of trying to take power for themselves.

00:59:26.000 And I think that that's really what a big part of this will also come down to.

00:59:31.000 And so, you know, this is what I call the swamp's last stand.

00:59:34.000 And I think that this is really the last chance for the American people to truly have an outsider in Washington. And hopefully when the president wins, he'll be in a position where he'll just accelerate the changes that he's been able to make and really drain the swamp and truly bring, you know, power in America back to the American people and take it away from the insiders who have had it for decades and quite frankly, who have sent their jobs overseas, who have got us into all these endless wars. We're going to have to be very careful about that.

01:00:01.000 One of the things I see with the president is the amount of resistance he gets when he's trying to, you know, make these peace deals or bring the troops home.

01:00:09.000 I mean, the resistance in Washington is tremendous.

01:00:11.000 And so, you know, you do have a military-industrial complex.

01:00:14.000 You do have a lot of people who, you know, who don't want to see these wars end.

01:00:18.000 But, you know, everyone in the last election said that if President Trump was elected, you know, immediately we'd go into World War III.

01:00:25.000 You know, you look at what's happened over three and a half years now, and, you know, he's made peace deals, whereas the people before him started wars, and he's bringing the troops home, and he's started no wars.

01:00:35.000 You know, he hasn't sent jobs overseas, he's made trade deals that have actually brought jobs home.

01:00:39.000 And so, you know, it's a real difference, and that's a real threat, I think, to the Washington establishment, and so obviously they're fighting him now with everything they have.

01:00:48.000 So obviously there's that.

01:00:49.000 You mentioned draining the swamp and there's this accusation that's been put out there by the media that the administration has engaged in self-dealing.

01:00:55.000 I want to give you the chance to rebut that accusation.

01:00:58.000 So again, you know, the biggest difference between the Trump family and I would say, you know, a lot of the other politicians is that, you know, the Trump family was a business family.

01:01:09.000 They were doing very well financially.

01:01:10.000 They were making money, my wife, myself and all of our endeavors and the president.

01:01:15.000 We gave those endeavors up and we gave up our ability to make money to go and do public service.

01:01:19.000 A lot of other people get into public service and then become wealthy.

01:01:23.000 Them and their families become wealthy off of that.

01:01:25.000 So, you know, again, especially in the first years, there were all of these allegations of potential conflicts of interest or areas where there could be compromise.

01:01:34.000 But after four years, nobody's actually found any areas where anyone's done anything wrong.

01:01:40.000 And so, again, when we came into government, we looked at, for me personally and my wife, we looked at, we spoke to the ethics lawyers.

01:01:48.000 We said, tell us what we need to divest.

01:01:50.000 We ended up divesting all those things.

01:01:51.000 My wife had her clothing company, which was making, it was doing about $500 million a year in revenue, it was a fast-growing company.

01:01:58.000 Ultimately, she gave that up so that she could devote herself full-time to serving government.

01:02:03.000 And one of the things I joke is that she had a mission-driven company that was making money.

01:02:07.000 She gave up the company and she was praised for it by all of the liberal media.

01:02:11.000 And then she gave up the company to just focus on a mission.

01:02:14.000 And then the media turned against her because they saw her as a threat in that regard.

01:02:18.000 And so, I look at all these things and I say that it's obviously come at a great cost to myself financially, to the Trump family to do this service.

01:02:28.000 But we all believe that it's been incredibly worth it.

01:02:31.000 You think about the impact we've been able to make on so many people.

01:02:35.000 People ask me all the time, what's been my favorite part about being in government?

01:02:40.000 I always say that the thing that I've enjoyed the most is working on the clemency issues with the president, right?

01:02:46.000 Where you take, you know, a case in before him and you're able to make a pitch for, you know, why somebody who has life in prison deserves to be let out and the president will take the time, study it, analyze it, ask probing questions.

01:02:56.000 But you have a lot of cases like, you know, like Alice Johnson, where he decides, let me give this person a second chance and you save that person's life.

01:03:04.000 And so you think about sacrifice that you make, and then you think you're making peace deals that are going to keep American troops safer and make the Middle East more safe.

01:03:15.000 You think about, obviously, doing trade deals that are going to bring millions of jobs back to America.

01:03:21.000 And then you think about doing criminal justice reform that's going to give people more hope, second chance, create less crimes in communities.

01:03:28.000 And these are just a few small examples of things that we've been able to work on for a few years.

01:03:32.000 So I do believe that the benefits that the country's received from having an executive as its leader, from having business people going through this has been tremendous.

01:03:43.000 And I think for, you know, for myself and for the Trump family, you know, we don't feel bad for ourselves.

01:03:50.000 We look at it and say, even though, you know, we've been harassed with investigations and accused of all these things, which they didn't do, you know, the financial sacrifice and obviously the fights that we've had to endure, have been well worth it because in life every opportunity has a cost and I think that you know the cost that we've That we've endured to do this is very small relative to the opportunity that we've had To make an impact on so many different areas of importance that you know I've benefited a lot of people here in America and

01:04:20.000 throughout the world I will say that when your wife shut down her clothing company My wife was very very upset about it because she is there I shop at the clothing company a lot.

01:04:28.000 So I want to ask you about how your family has dealt with all of the pressure.

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01:06:17.000 Obviously, being a public figure, you were a semi-public figure before.

01:06:22.000 Now you're an incredibly public figure as As I alluded to at the top of the show, you've been portrayed as literally the devil by many members of sort of the left-wing media, people at the Lincoln Project, and all that sort of stuff.

01:06:35.000 Have you and the family dealt with the not only increased scrutiny, which goes along with the job, but the tremendous levels of hatred.

01:06:42.000 And it really hasn't just been you, obviously.

01:06:43.000 It's been everybody who's worked in close quarters with the president.

01:06:47.000 Anybody who's apparently within a 300 foot radius of the president becomes a member of the coterie of the targeted.

01:06:54.000 So how have you been able to deal with that as a family?

01:06:57.000 I think, look, the first six months, it was maybe a little harder because the notion was is that, again, we were making all these sacrifices, giving up great lives and great opportunities and great opportunities to do wealth creation, to go to Washington and do service.

01:07:13.000 So why is there so much criticism for doing that?

01:07:16.000 But very quickly, we realized that that's just the game and the way it is.

01:07:20.000 And a lot of the people who are critical, they don't know us.

01:07:26.000 They don't know what we're doing or why we're doing it.

01:07:30.000 And so, you know, you tend to just block it out pretty quickly.

01:07:33.000 I do think it speaks volumes of people, though, who are so filled with hatred and poison that they go to such great lengths to be so critical and so cruel to people.

01:07:46.000 But, you know, look, one of the blessings, and I have many blessings in life, is that I feel hatred for nobody.

01:07:52.000 And so, you know, I want everyone to do well.

01:07:56.000 I think that that's something that you just have to push forward to.

01:07:58.000 So, you know, again, you know, we all have to feel like we're pushing forward on things.

01:08:02.000 And, you know, I always believe that at the end of the day, you know, we'll be judged not based on, you know, one story, what story was in the news one day or, you know, what some random person or random celebrity says about you.

01:08:15.000 We'll be judged by our accomplishments.

01:08:17.000 And so, You know, one of the things that I'm very proud of personally is, you know, the whole country was melting down after the tragic death of George Floyd.

01:08:27.000 And I had a lot of, you know, liberal friends saying, you know, history is going to judge one way or the other.

01:08:32.000 And, you know, I said to my team, I said, look, you know, people will always remember this time.

01:08:36.000 And some people were out marching in streets.

01:08:38.000 Some people were doing very bad things and looting and destroying neighborhoods.

01:08:41.000 Some people were sitting at home or virtue signaling on social media and doing videos crying about injustice.

01:08:47.000 I said, you know, we'll always remember that we were here.

01:08:50.000 You know, in the mines, working away, trying to find solutions.

01:08:53.000 And that's what we did.

01:08:54.000 I mean, we worked with law enforcement.

01:08:57.000 We worked with some families of victims of police brutality.

01:09:01.000 We brought people together at the White House.

01:09:03.000 We worked on some policies.

01:09:04.000 And the president, again, Congress did what Congress usually does, which is nothing.

01:09:08.000 They, you know, you had a bunch of people wear kente cloth and go and kneel in the Capitol. 0.93

01:09:12.000 And, you know, it was probably virtue signaling to a degree that was maybe even embarrassing for politicians.

01:09:18.000 But at the end of the day, they got nothing done and they couldn't do anything.

01:09:22.000 Well, we got an executive order done that focused on what are the problems.

01:09:27.000 The problems were is that a lot of these police departments didn't have standards for training that were modernized.

01:09:33.000 And we came up with a mechanism, not that we can nationalize law enforcement, where we could incentivize police departments to update and upgrade their standards based on Modern standards that were created by law enforcement because, again, law enforcement wants to earn the trust of the community.

01:09:50.000 And so we're going to announce pretty soon that we have thousands of police departments throughout the country that are now adopting those standards.

01:09:58.000 Whereas the previous administration, they held a commission and that commission, you know, I read the report and they said, you know, this is going to be the greatest day in law enforcement because this isn't just a report that's going to sit on a shelf.

01:10:11.000 This is something that's going to change things.

01:10:13.000 And then we look back and out of like 18,000 police departments in the country, 15 implemented their recommendations, one five.

01:10:21.000 And so at the end of the day, it's like Washington at its worst where, you know, you have a problem.

01:10:26.000 And the good thing is, is people here, you know, they get distracted very easily.

01:10:29.000 So people get focused on something and then it moves.

01:10:31.000 But you know, my team's tried to be focused on how do you actually, you know, not give into the hysteria.

01:10:39.000 How do you keep calmness?

01:10:40.000 How do you keep a calm head and focus on what's the problem?

01:10:45.000 What's an achievable solution?

01:10:47.000 How do we bring the stakeholders to the table?

01:10:50.000 And I think that's going to be emblematic of most of the president's tenure.

01:10:57.000 Uh, when Bob Woodward, you know, called, he wanted to do the book, you know, he said, well, what do you think?

01:11:01.000 He says, I want to do something different.

01:11:02.000 I said, well, you can write, you know, the same book as everyone else, which is, uh, what I would call like, you know, the, you know, the drama of White House in and out.

01:11:09.000 I said, but that's what I call the surface.

01:11:11.000 I said, if you want to write a real book, you should actually take, these are all the things that were accomplished and then write back and say, How were so many things that had been talked about in Washington for decades but not accomplished actually accomplished?

01:11:23.000 And obviously he chose the more sensational path because that's what sells books.

01:11:28.000 But the reality is that people should study this administration for its effectiveness because again, the president renegotiated the trade deals, did more deregulation.

01:11:38.000 I think in the year before the president became into office, six million man hours were spent in our economy complying with new regulations.

01:11:46.000 And then for his first three years, each year was a year where you had the first year, in particular, it was the first year ever that there had been a decrease in the cost of regulation.

01:11:55.000 And then that came down.

01:11:57.000 That unleashed American business, where energy independent for the first time as a country, thanks to what the president's done to launch that.

01:12:04.000 That means that people's gas prices are lower, their home heating prices are lower, and we don't have to be entangled in the Middle East in all of these endless wars. 0.99

01:12:13.000 I look at what my wife did.

01:12:15.000 We're focusing on getting STEM education grants available for all the public schools so that people could start learning the language of the future in computer science and education than all of the skills retraining programs that she's been doing to focus on the industries that are being disaggregated because of the industrial revolution and the businesses that are being created and figuring out how are we training Americans.

01:12:38.000 For the problems of tomorrow.

01:12:39.000 Business people think about, you know, where things are going and how do you make sure they get there and how do you avoid problems and seize future opportunities.

01:12:47.000 Politicians wait till there's a big problem and then they figure out how can we blame each other for the problem and spend no time focusing on solutions.

01:12:55.000 So, you know, we've been able to implement a lot of policies that will really lead to America being stronger for many decades to come.

01:13:02.000 And I do believe, again, that if the president's given four more years, you'll see an increase in catalyzation of those efforts.

01:13:10.000 Where, again, I think that the goal that we've set through the teams that have been studying it is normally productivity drops off in a second term.

01:13:18.000 But I do think in President Trump's second term, he can be twice as effective based on everything that he's learned and the quality of people that he's now surrounding himself with.

01:13:28.000 So final question for you, Jared Kushner.

01:13:30.000 I'm going to ask, what does a second Trump term look like?

01:13:32.000 What's on the agenda?

01:13:34.000 But if you'd like to hear Jared Kushner's answers, you have to be a Daily Wire member.

01:13:37.000 Head on over to dailywire.com, click join at the top of the page.

01:13:39.000 You can hear the rest of our conversation over there.

01:13:42.000 Well, Jared Kushner, really appreciate the time and good luck in the final weeks of the campaign.

01:13:47.000 Great.

01:13:47.000 Thank you very much, Ben.

01:13:48.000 Ben, good to be with you.

01:13:49.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

01:13:50.000 I'm Matthew Sklover.

01:13:51.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

01:13:52.000 I'm Matthew Sklover.

01:13:53.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

01:13:54.000 I'm Matthew Sklover.

01:13:55.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

01:13:56.000 I'm Matthew Sklover.

01:13:57.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

01:13:58.000 I'm Matthew Sklover.

01:13:59.000 I'm Ben Shapiro.

01:14:01.000 Executive producer, Jeremy Boring.

01:14:03.000 Our technical director is Austin Stevens.

01:14:05.000 And our assistant director is Pavel Lydowsky.

01:14:07.000 Associate producer, Nick Sheehan.

01:14:09.000 Our guests are booked by Caitlin Maynard.

01:14:11.000 Editing is by Jim Nickel.

01:14:12.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Coromino.

01:14:14.000 Hair and makeup is by Nika Geneva.

01:14:16.000 Title graphics are by Cynthia Angulo.

01:14:18.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire production.

The Ben Shapiro Show - October 25, 2020

Jared Kushner | The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special Ep. 104

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