The Charlie Kirk Show - Jared Kushner Sets the Record Straight

00:00:00.000 Hey everybody, today's in the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:00:01.000 Jared Kushner joins us.

00:00:03.000 I think Jared gets a bad rap by too many people.

00:00:05.000 I encourage you to listen to this entire episode and decide for yourself.

00:00:08.000 All I can say is I work personally with Jared on many different projects that really made an impact on our country when he was in the White House.

00:00:15.000 Email me your thoughts as always freedom at charliekirk.com.

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00:00:56.000 Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.

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00:01:41.000 Hey, everybody, welcome to this exclusive and special episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:01:45.000 We wanted to do this exclusively so we could have a long-form conversation with someone who I got to know rather well over the last couple of years.

00:01:52.000 And we worked on some things when he was in the White House, and I saw firsthand how hard he worked on the America First Agenda.

00:01:59.000 And that is Jared Kushner, author of a new book, Breaking History: A White House Memoir.

00:02:05.000 And Jared joins us right now.

00:02:06.000 Jared, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.

00:02:08.000 Thank you, Charlie.

00:02:09.000 It's great to be with you.

00:02:10.000 And thank you for all the great work you did over the last years when we were fighting together on so many different things.

00:02:15.000 So really great to be with you.

00:02:17.000 Of course, we were in the trenches on a couple of things, and I saw firsthand just a little bit of the pace and the pressure that kind of you had to deal with in the White House.

00:02:27.000 So let's just kind of start there.

00:02:28.000 You came from the private sector.

00:02:29.000 You then came into the White House.

00:02:31.000 Talk about just kind of the first couple of days, weeks, and months in the White House.

00:02:35.000 As someone who is used to kind of private sector behaviors and practices, cutting into government, it's a completely different thing.

00:02:44.000 Tell us about that.

00:02:45.000 Yeah, so I write about this in the book, and what I tried to do is bring people who, you know, everyone talks about Trump, they talk about the administration, they obsess about Washington saying what they should do or shouldn't do.

00:02:56.000 But what I tried to show people what it was like as somebody who was from the private sector and not from Washington, going into that universe and just realizing what a bizarre world it was.

00:03:06.000 And at first, it was very disorienting in the sense that you come at every meeting, you have people telling you new regulations you have to follow.

00:03:14.000 What are your protocols to do phone calls?

00:03:16.000 And, you know, just it becomes a very procedure-driven place.

00:03:20.000 And so it becomes very easy to get bogged down by procedure and not get anything done.

00:03:25.000 But we found our way through it.

00:03:26.000 And again, President Trump, you know, he jokes that the first night he ever slept in Washington, because he wasn't a mayor, a governor, or senator, he slept in the White House.

00:03:34.000 And so he had a team of people with him who were also outsiders to Washington.

00:03:39.000 And we all came in and tried to figure out how to implement his agenda, which was contrary to a lot of the Republican orthodoxy that had been in place for some time.

00:03:48.000 So it was really an exciting experience, but a lot of challenges were faced, but ultimately figured out a lot of incredible things with the help of people like yourself and many others who grew and learned with us.

00:04:00.000 So let's start with kind of one of the things you worked on.

00:04:02.000 And the portfolio of what you worked on is rather extraordinary, whether it be the Abraham Accords, the trade talks with Mexico, China, the Israel-Palestine peace plan, Nord Stream 2, Russia and Germany, prison reform, the first Saudi Arabian trip, the move of the embassy to Jerusalem, and many other things, as well as the lockdowns and COVID in Fauci and all sorts of different things around that.

00:04:25.000 Let's start, though, with what you kind of mentioned kind of Republican orthodoxy.

00:04:30.000 One of the things that Republican politicians said for years is you can't touch any of our trade deals with Canada or with Mexico, specifically NAFTA.

00:04:41.000 You were tasked with, you know, being the emissary of President Trump to renegotiate those trade deals, especially with Mexico.

00:04:48.000 And those deals almost fell apart, actually.

00:04:50.000 Tell us about what the mandate was from the voters to redo our trade deals, and especially with Mexico and what the administration was able to accomplish.

00:05:00.000 Right.

00:05:01.000 So what I, again, it's very clear that politicians tell you a lot of things, but you have to look for the facts for yourself, right?

00:05:07.000 So NAFTA was a deal that Ross Borough famously said, you're going to hear that sucking sound.

00:05:12.000 That's going to be all the manufacturing jobs leaving our country.

00:05:16.000 And for whatever reason, that was the prevailing mindset at the time.

00:05:21.000 I think big, big, really driven by big business.

00:05:24.000 And it worked, right?

00:05:26.000 You know, during the campaign, President Trump was talking about how all the big car factories in North America were being built in Mexico and they were all being taken out of our country.

00:05:36.000 And so that deal was one that died a million times.

00:05:40.000 I think that's probably where maybe my inexperience came in handy because Obama and Bush both said they were going to renegotiate it and neither of them did because renegotiating a trade deal is an absolute brutal endeavor.

00:05:52.000 And I take people through some of the technicalities of it and some of the back and forths, but it really took President Trump threatening to get out of it.

00:05:59.000 And he was very, very close on several instances to actually doing it.

00:06:02.000 So it wasn't actually an empty threat that was able to help us achieve the breakthrough.

00:06:06.000 And what it did is it's brought about 500,000 jobs back to America.

00:06:10.000 It stopped the flow of manufacturing jobs to other countries.

00:06:14.000 And what I would say is too, as somebody who is newer to the trade discussion globally, you have this debate whether trade balances are good or bad.

00:06:22.000 And I kind of learned from Bob Lighthizer, who was the lead negotiator on this.

00:06:26.000 And what he would always say is if they're not bad, then why haven't we dealt with anyone who actually wants to have one?

00:06:32.000 We're the only one who's okay having it indefinitely.

00:06:35.000 We met with the, I think it was Leo Gerard from the Steel Workers who said, you know, these are transfers of wealth.

00:06:41.000 And that was what President Trump believed.

00:06:44.000 And then what you saw was that the benefits of globalization would be distributed, right?

00:06:47.000 You move manufacturing overseas.

00:06:50.000 Maybe you tap into lower wage labor in Mexico or Vietnam or China.

00:06:54.000 It means the cost of a t-shirt is 50 cents less for everyone.

00:06:57.000 And that benefit is distributed, but the costs of it become very concentrated.

00:07:01.000 So the steel plants, the manufacturing plants, these really hollowed out a lot of towns in America.

00:07:05.000 And a lot of times we didn't have plans in place for people to transition to new industries.

00:07:10.000 So it really hurt communities.

00:07:12.000 It took wealth out of communities.

00:07:13.000 Sometimes people wouldn't find new jobs.

00:07:15.000 They'd get into drug addiction.

00:07:17.000 They'd get into crime.

00:07:18.000 And then the next generation has even more challenges because the school systems get worse as the tax base erodes.

00:07:24.000 So the cost of trade on our country, these bad trade deals for 30 years has been really tremendous.

00:07:31.000 And President Trump was committed to reversing it.

00:07:33.000 And I write in the book, you know, not only why this is important, but I take people through how he renegotiated deals with China, with Mexico, with Canada.

00:07:42.000 And I also talk about how he exercised American might and understood from a business savvy point of view how to do those things effectively.

00:07:52.000 Just hearing you talk here, Jared, it just brings me back to feels like you're talking about 20 years ago.

00:07:57.000 I mean, just that kind of tone of how you're talking and bringing back jobs to our country.

00:08:02.000 It's just, it's so depressing to watch what's happening.

00:08:05.000 I was going to ask you this question later, Jared, but I just would love it as it's kind of come to me now.

00:08:09.000 I mean, you did all these success, your team, Avi, you know, Cassidy and President Trump and everyone, all this success.

00:08:15.000 And just to kind of see what's happening now, I mean, what's your take on that?

00:08:19.000 I mean, talking about onshoring jobs and representing voters, it must be maddening to witness this over the last 18 months.

00:08:28.000 You know, I think for President Trump, it's very, very frustrating to watch.

00:08:32.000 You know, he did all this great work.

00:08:33.000 He had the economy roaring and he had the world peaceful.

00:08:38.000 And, you know, he feels like it's such a shame.

00:08:40.000 You know, the thing that I learned from being in Washington was I learned the nuance of a lot of these issues, right?

00:08:45.000 They're a lot more complicated than people think.

00:08:48.000 But after doing it for four years, fixing them is actually a lot easier than I would have thought four years earlier.

00:08:54.000 So you look at all the deregulation we did to unleash American energy independence, right?

00:09:00.000 Now we're going to Iran and Venezuela and begging them to pump more oil.

00:09:05.000 When, you know, if you let the Keystone pipeline work, you'd have plenty of oil here in North America and stop with the regulations.

00:09:11.000 So I think that a lot of it's just common sense.

00:09:14.000 I think the potential of our country is unbelievable, maybe even greater than I thought.

00:09:19.000 Global power is something that's more of a relative commodity than something that's absolute.

00:09:26.000 And America has the best private sector in the world.

00:09:29.000 We have the best ingenuity.

00:09:30.000 We have the best system for contracts and for rule of law most of the time.

00:09:36.000 And so our country's poised to really explode in a very positive way economically.

00:09:42.000 And I do think that a lot of these issues, right, our foreign policy, which I'm sure we'll talk about, was very different than not just the Democrats, but also the Republicans before us.

00:09:50.000 And I think Trump was an outsider and he was against sending our sons and daughters to these endless wars throughout the world and against these trade deals that would enrich corporations at the expense of the middle class in America.

00:10:03.000 And so we came in and we were able to get incredible results on doing these things.

00:10:08.000 And I think that a lot of people learned from seeing the way Trump exposed all of the BS in Washington.

00:10:15.000 And I think people have a much better sense for where the problems are, how to fix it.

00:10:19.000 And I don't know why.

00:10:20.000 I mean, I think that these people came in and they were just so anti-everything Trump did, but they put in place so many policies that I think are very unpopular, that make no sense, that have caused massive inflation, wars in Europe, provocations with China, higher gas prices.

00:10:37.000 And it's all a border that's wide open, that's leading to human trafficking, more sexual abuse of migrant women, human slavery, increased spentanol to our country.

00:10:49.000 And it just makes no sense to me.

00:10:51.000 So, you know, I have to think that common sense will prevail.

00:10:53.000 We have a lot of very smart people in this country.

00:10:56.000 And I anticipate that that will be registered in the upcoming elections.

00:11:02.000 Yeah, I certainly hope so.

00:11:03.000 You write in the book here on Trump's decision-making style.

00:11:06.000 Trump has a habit of seeking information and opinions from people whose views are often overlooked.

00:11:11.000 As a builder, he would visit construction sites and ask the frontline workers for their input on serious design questions.

00:11:18.000 Three rules of Trump, the first of many media crises, taught me what I later call the three rules of Trump.

00:11:24.000 Number one, controversy elevates message.

00:11:26.000 Number two, when you're right, fight.

00:11:28.000 And number three, never apologize.

00:11:30.000 Elaborate a little on that, Jared.

00:11:32.000 Yeah, so there's two different points there.

00:11:35.000 And one of the reasons I wrote this book was because it was kind of maddening for me to see all these people become experts on Donald Trump, whereas I felt like the truth was always hiding in plain sight, right?

00:11:47.000 And he is who he is.

00:11:48.000 He's been the same person for, he wouldn't like me to say his age, but for all those years.

00:11:52.000 And he was the same guy who was on the TV shows, the same guy who was building casinos, the same guy who was writing books.

00:11:59.000 And the same guy that now the people who hate you know love just a decade before, before he got into politics as a Republican, and so I really wanted people to see what it was like being with him in the room, how he contemplated a lot of these decisions that ultimately achieved these results.

00:12:15.000 Right, because there's two cross currents, you know in in my book, which which really represent the two cross currents of the four years under Trump.

00:12:22.000 On the one hand, you had, I think, pretty unparalleled assaults, whether it was from the media, through special counsels, congressional investigations, through impeachments I write about all those the false Russia allegations which, after two years and $35 million, turned out to be proven untrue, and what it was like to personally be accused of treason and have people saying that things were going to go wrong, and what it did to the work environment inside the White House.

00:12:48.000 But, at the same time, you had all these incredible policy successes, whether it was peace deals, how we made, how we worked very well with China, we worked very well with Russia under complicated circumstances, what we did to strengthen the relationship with Israel, working in the Middle East, how we cut trade deals with Japan, South Korea, all these different instances.

00:13:05.000 So he's a very, very successful president.

00:13:07.000 He increased the metabolism of government.

00:13:10.000 He was a businessman, he wasn't a politician, so he was focused on results, and sometimes the process got very messy to get there and, and what I saw is again, he was very experienced at dealing with the media, way more than me, obviously.

00:13:21.000 I mean i'd now do a couple interviews because I wrote a book um, but I did very, very few during my time in government.

00:13:27.000 You know, it was more working behind the scenes, helping him, you know, implement things and get things done uh, but what I saw with him during the campaign uh, which was very fascinating to me and this is what I write during the 2016 campaign, was that, you know, the controversy actually gave him a lot of free media.

00:13:42.000 So he would say that, you know, Mexico is sending their worst people, you know, to America and uh, and the media would say, what he's saying is we have to build a wall.

00:13:50.000 The media would say well, that's xenophobic, that's racist and, and you know, they would think that the conversation stopped with them.

00:13:56.000 But, like I, I came to learn American people are much smarter than the media believes, and so they'd be at their, their dinner table and they'd say, well, do you believe what that guy Trump said?

00:14:04.000 They'd say well, you know.

00:14:05.000 Well, I think what he said isn't, you know, maybe didn't say it right, but the way I would say it.

00:14:09.000 But you know, illegal immigration is wrong, we should have people coming into the country illegally, and so it stimulated debate.

00:14:16.000 And so you know he didn't back down when the media attacked him and I think he was the first uh president, I think, in in this era of what i'll call like the culture wars, to really stand up and fight back to the media, and that just gave him more standing, and I think that's what the voters liked in him and they liked that he.

00:14:32.000 He was a true outsider who wasn't trying to conform to the Washington way or play by their rules, and it was very effective.

00:14:40.000 So I want to make sure we have plenty of time to talk about the Middle East uh, because that really was, in my opinion the, The crowning accomplishment of kind of your portfolio, Jared.

00:14:50.000 And I saw that from afar.

00:14:51.000 And I did go actually just coincidentally, I was there in Israel for the embassy move to Jerusalem, which was just amazing.

00:15:00.000 But this was the deal that we were told that could never be done.

00:15:04.000 We were told that getting the Arabs and the Israelis together and to have some sort of a peace deal could never get done.

00:15:11.000 President Trump used to joke about it and he used to say this is the impossible deal.

00:15:15.000 And I will say, Jared, I think in the debates, President Trump didn't focus on the Abraham Accords nearly enough.

00:15:23.000 I just, that was my one personal piece of feedback.

00:15:25.000 I remember saying that on our show and tweeting it out because there's Joe Biden rambling about how Donald Trump's going to bring us into a war or something.

00:15:31.000 Wait a second, we just brokered peace against Israel with Israel and the UAE. 0.63

00:15:36.000 Just take some time, Jared, to talk first about, you know, how politicians said how impossible this was, and then what was accomplished and how you got it done.

00:15:46.000 I mean, from a layman's perspective of my own, it looks as if pressuring Iran and making a consensus against Iran played a role in that, but it's probably far deeper than that.

00:15:57.000 Walk us through all that, please.

00:15:59.000 Well, I think a big underlying lesson in all this is you have to be very careful about trusting what the media says or what experts say, right?

00:15:59.000 Sure.

00:16:07.000 So all the experts in the media, you know, first they were saying that if Donald Trump was elected, we'd be in World War III.

00:16:13.000 And I really show in the book how he was very thoughtful and deliberate in a lot of high-stakes situations that ultimately led to peace and no new wars.

00:16:21.000 And the first president in many years that many decades that didn't bring new wars to the world.

00:16:28.000 But the second thing was, is that the conventional thinking was said by John Kerry when he was leaving in 2016, where he said, you know, let me be very clear, there'll be no peace between Israel and the Arab countries until we have peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

00:16:42.000 And I actually accepted that to be true because, you know, what the hell did I know?

00:16:46.000 And, you know, and I spent my first year really talking to people.

00:16:50.000 And I try in the book to take people through my journey of listening.

00:16:53.000 I think that was a very important component I write about meeting with one of the leaders in the Middle East, where he said, you know, usually the U.S. sends one of three types of people to see me.

00:17:02.000 First are people who come and fall asleep in meetings.

00:17:04.000 The second are people who come and basically read me talking points and have no ability to interact.

00:17:09.000 And then the third are people who come and try to convince me to do things that aren't in my interests or my country's interests.

00:17:15.000 And you're the first person to come and really ask me questions on what I think the right end state should be and probing me on different ways to try to get there.

00:17:23.000 And so the first phase was listening.

00:17:25.000 The second phase was really doing things differently than had been done before, but logically, like moving the embassy, getting out of the Iran deal, but taking calculated risks.

00:17:35.000 And I people went to the situation room and into the intense debates because a lot of these decisions were made against the advice of Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Intelligence Agency that all warned President Trump that if he does these things, the world is going to end and World War III will occur.

00:17:51.000 And President Trump did it.

00:17:53.000 We, like a businessman, he mitigated the risks.

00:17:56.000 I talked about how we did that.

00:17:57.000 And, you know, he made the decision.

00:17:59.000 Lo and behold, the next morning, the sun rose, next evening, the sun set. 1.00

00:18:02.000 Then what we did is we basically exposed the Palestinian issue as being kind of full of crap. 1.00

00:18:08.000 And that the whole notion was that the leadership was existing to enrich themselves versus improving the lives of the people. 0.97

00:18:15.000 And then we worked to align the leadership from Israel and the Arab countries around their joint interests and joint opportunities.

00:18:23.000 Peace should be about the future, what you can get, not about being stuck in old grievances.

00:18:27.000 And I take you into a dinner in the book, which is one of my favorite chapters where I was having dinner with the Sultan of Oman.

00:18:33.000 We went till four in the morning and had literally a 30-course meal where he was making sure I ate every single course.

00:18:39.000 And he said something that really resonated with me, which was that, you know, I feel badly for the Palestinian people that they carry with them the burden of the Muslim world. 0.63

00:18:49.000 And after reflecting on that statement for a couple of days, I basically said, wait, who the hell elected these people, these incompetent negotiators, to represent the entire Muslim world? 1.00

00:18:57.000 And so, unlike the people before, we treated it like two separate issues: the Arab-Israeli conflict, which really is kind of a post-World War II phenomenon, right?

00:19:05.000 The Jews and the Muslims lived side by side for thousands of years before the post-World War II breakup and Nasser's invasion of the newly established state of Israel.

00:19:15.000 And then you had the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is effectively a border dispute after the Arabs lost three offensive wars.

00:19:23.000 And there's really no, there's really no historical precedent for still having a claim to land after you lose three offensive wars.

00:19:31.000 And so, and I also note that most of the modern Middle East is essentially arbitrary lines drawn by foreigners anyway.

00:19:37.000 So, I think people through how it occurred.

00:19:39.000 And then you have a lot of instances of just amazing leaders and Bibi Netanyahu, Mohammed bin Zayed, Mohammed bin Salman, Saudi Arabia, obviously President Trump, and my team, Avi, working with Secretary Pompeo, Robert O'Brien, David Friedman, Ambassador Okalta, Ambassador Fisher, and everyone, and Yusuf al-Taiba, and just everyone coming together and being in the right place at the right time, trusting each other.

00:20:04.000 Ambassador Dermer, working through a lot of complicated issues, and then finding a way to make it happen.

00:20:10.000 And we kept it quiet, we kept it secret, and it really shocked everybody and has just changed the world.

00:20:15.000 And I'll just say one final thing: I'm sorry to give such a long answer on this, but what it's done is the Abraham Accords has opened up a channel now between Israel and the Arab countries, which allows Muslims to finally go and visit the Al-Aqsa Mosque and counter the narrative that's been used for 75 years that Israel is against them.

00:20:36.000 And so, what it's doing is it's lessening the tension against Israel and further isolating Iran and Hamas and Hezbollah and the groups that are basically looking for destruction.

00:20:45.000 And the modern Middle East is about all these countries now saying our primary goal is to create security for our people and then give them economic opportunities that they can live better lives.

00:20:54.000 So, it's a real changing point in the Middle East, which is a changing point in the world.

00:20:58.000 You think about the last decades, how much blood and treasure has been spent in the Middle East. 1.00

00:21:04.000 And unfortunately, I think that that's in the past, but now the future is incredibly bright.

00:21:11.000 And this is a major, major turning point.

00:21:13.000 And President Trump and his diplomacy in the Middle East changed the world.

00:21:16.000 And so, that was really one of the primary reasons I wrote the book was to document all this for history and give readers an inside account as to how it happened.

00:21:24.000 Because I joke, it happened on Plan C, but only because we went through the alphabet three times with different approaches that failed that we've had learned from in order for that to occur.

00:21:35.000 Is there any fear you have, Jared, that this administration might reverse some of these gains?

00:21:40.000 I mean, there's a pending nuclear deal with Iran potentially.

00:21:45.000 Do you have any fears that all the progress that you guys made could be upended?

00:21:51.000 So, initially, I was very nervous, right?

00:21:53.000 They were very young deals.

00:21:55.000 We had six peace deals in the last six months, and then we had a lot more ready to go.

00:22:00.000 I actually laid them out for the incoming administration how I would approach it.

00:22:03.000 I think they were very close to getting a deal with Israel and Saudi.

00:22:06.000 Instead, they chose to go back to the old policy of running to Iran and getting on their knees and begging for a deal, which has been really counterproductive.

00:22:15.000 And they wouldn't call the agreements by their name for the first year of the Abraham Accords.

00:22:19.000 And then, finally, after a year, they did.

00:22:21.000 And then, finally, after a year and a half, they went to Saudi Arabia and recognized that they've been a partner of America for 80 years and a very strong ally and a country that they have to work with if they want to keep the region stable and keep oil prices globally in check.

00:22:37.000 And so they're getting better in terms of what they're doing.

00:22:41.000 I do hope they can embrace it anytime.

00:22:43.000 And I think it would make a big difference.

00:22:45.000 The good news is they've endured despite that.

00:22:47.000 I think they're doing quite well.

00:22:49.000 I mean, every day you read about new business deals between the different countries or flights that are being opened.

00:22:53.000 You see things on social media of Jews and Muslims coming together for dinner or prayers or celebrations.

00:23:00.000 And so that's something that would have happened beforehand.

00:23:02.000 So they're doing really well. 1.00

00:23:04.000 And again, I really hope that they don't make another stupid deal with Iran. 0.98

00:23:09.000 But what's happening now is you have a block of stability in the region that's come together because of the Abraham Accords that I think would allow the region to work through even a bad deal. 0.99

00:23:19.000 But I think it's just putting unnecessary pressure on the region that's just had two decades of bad luck and is finally has a lot of wind at its back.

00:23:28.000 I think they should focus on what works instead of going to what doesn't work.

00:23:34.000 Yeah, and I'm very worried about this potential Iran deal.

00:23:37.000 I think it could have some very serious implications in more ways than one.

00:23:42.000 So also, Jared, you worked on all these different sorts of things.

00:23:45.000 I want to talk just about one in particular, which was the virus and the lockdowns.

00:23:51.000 You know, there have been some people that said that you were the one, and I think this is such misreporting because I know it for firsthand because you and I were communicating throughout this and you were very busy, but that you were somehow the designer of the lockdowns and wanted things to continue to be locked down.

00:24:06.000 It was actually the opposite.

00:24:07.000 You were one of the ones pushing to reopen America.

00:24:10.000 Talk about your role and how you just got thrust front and center into unprecedented biological attack, whether it from COVID and our response to that.

00:24:21.000 Walk us through all that.

00:24:23.000 Yeah, so I have about four chapters in the book on this.

00:24:26.000 I could have written a whole book on it, but bottom line is, it was after the culmination of a lot of learnings in Washington.

00:24:33.000 A couple of things had started to go right.

00:24:35.000 A lot of things have started to go right.

00:24:37.000 And then we get hit with the virus.

00:24:38.000 Vice President Pence calls me in and asked me to help figure it out.

00:24:42.000 We were woefully undersupplied as a country.

00:24:45.000 The stockpile was bare.

00:24:48.000 And the right conclusion at the time was, I think, to lock down for two weeks and to slow the spread.

00:24:53.000 We had a situation where it was going out of control.

00:24:55.000 We didn't want to be like Italy. 0.80

00:24:57.000 But after that, I think the consensus was that we had to start opening it up.

00:25:01.000 I write in the book about several interactions between Dr. Fauci and President Trump, how Dr. Fauci is basically looking to keep things locked down.

00:25:09.000 And President Trump is saying, and look, I'm not going to preside over the funeral of the greatest economy in the history of the world.

00:25:16.000 But it was tough because whenever we would push back on the doctors to try to open things up, they would accuse us of trying to kill people.

00:25:22.000 And what President Trump would say is that, look, people are dying from, they're losing their jobs, they're depressed, they're overdosing on drugs, children are falling behind in school.

00:25:32.000 We got to get people back in school.

00:25:33.000 And it was a real battle.

00:25:34.000 And I try to take people into what those battle lines were.

00:25:37.000 And in that story I was telling earlier, Dr. Fauci then backs off and says, look, I'm just here to give you medical advice.

00:25:42.000 Your job is to consider all these other things.

00:25:45.000 But I think he embraced the role of being a Trump antagonist.

00:25:48.000 The media was always looking to build people up if they were counter to Trump.

00:25:52.000 And again, I write a bunch about my interactions with Dr. Fauci, but I also write more importantly about the miracles that we pulled off on during the COVID virus, whether it was how we were able to save really the economy, whether it was how we ran testing or how we got the fastest vaccine in history done.

00:26:09.000 And a lot of it was because we embraced certain good parts of bureaucracy.

00:26:12.000 We got all the bad parts of the bureaucracy out of the way.

00:26:15.000 We brought in the private sector.

00:26:17.000 Again, Trump was a businessman beforehand.

00:26:19.000 He brought in a lot of businessmen.

00:26:20.000 He was an outsider.

00:26:21.000 He thought about getting results.

00:26:23.000 And that was really what we did.

00:26:25.000 So, you know, some of the work in COVID is some of the work that I'm most proud of because it really did save a lot of lives.

00:26:30.000 And we just pulled off miracle after miracle to accomplish things that when we were initially passed with them look unsolvable.

00:26:39.000 So, Jared, kind of the book, there's so many other pieces of the book we could cover here on just kind of navigating Washington, D.C.

00:26:47.000 And I mean, COVID is a huge part of it.

00:26:49.000 And then on impeachment and all of that.

00:26:52.000 I want to ask you, though, what is the future for you?

00:26:54.000 And you think the future of the MAGA movement and President Trump?

00:26:57.000 I mean, there's a lot of whispers of whether Trump's going to run again.

00:27:01.000 This is quite, you know, an amazing portfolio of accomplishments.

00:27:04.000 But as you all know, that's only one term.

00:27:07.000 What do you think the future is in store for you?

00:27:10.000 So let me talk about the MAGA movement first, because I do think that, again, I was somebody from New York who's probably center left, who was in an echo chamber of people with the heads of media, heads of fashion, heads of technology, heads of finance.

00:27:25.000 And I thought I was with a worldly crew.

00:27:26.000 And then I write in the book about my personal journey of traveling with Trump throughout the country, going to Springfield, Illinois with him to a rally of 15,000 people.

00:27:34.000 And the manager says to him, Congratulations, sir, you just broke Elton John's 36-year record beforehand.

00:27:41.000 Trump turns to me and says, Well, see, I don't even have a guitar badge if I had a guitar.

00:27:45.000 And I learned that the issues were much different than people thought.

00:27:49.000 And I think that what Trump did on policy was some of the most unbelievable pro-American policy.

00:27:54.000 I never thought of him as left or right.

00:27:57.000 I thought of him as a pragmatist primarily.

00:27:59.000 And a lot of his policies really resonated with me in that regard.

00:28:03.000 So I think what you've seen after him is he's not only inspired a lot of business people to come to Washington.

00:28:08.000 We had a lot in our administration who were phenomenally capable and phenomenally competent and low ego.

00:28:15.000 What he also did is now a lot of people are taking his policies and building them out.

00:28:19.000 And I think that that's becoming the heart and soul of what's a new Republican Party.

00:28:23.000 And so you saw that we grew more diverse and picked up more votes in 2020 than at any time before.

00:28:30.000 And I do think that it's a growing party.

00:28:32.000 And if they focus on the policies and they do the right things, I think it will continue to grow.

00:28:36.000 So that to me is tremendously gratifying.

00:28:38.000 Like I said, I'm very long, our country.

00:28:40.000 I think we have tremendous potential with the right leadership and the right policy.

00:28:44.000 Unfortunately, that's not what's being implemented now, but it's very doable if people do it.

00:28:48.000 So I think the MAGA movement is really just early on.

00:28:51.000 I think Trump's also, you've got a whole new breed of politicians who have learned how to fight back and have learned how to operate like him.

00:28:58.000 And so I think you're going to see a big difference in that regard.

00:29:02.000 For me, though, look, I never thought I would be in politics.

00:29:05.000 I kind of write about my journey getting there.

00:29:08.000 It was a thrilling journey.

00:29:10.000 It's an action book.

00:29:11.000 I mean, the book reads very fast.

00:29:12.000 I tried to give people the intensity of what it was like to both be constantly dealing with a lot of complicated people and investigations, but also struggling to figure out how to navigate new terrain, a new job, and trying to get things done.

00:29:26.000 And then how we got things done.

00:29:27.000 So I hope that what my book does is both inspiring people from the private sector to come into politics and then also helps them learn how to avoid some of the mistakes that I made, which I think I'm pretty honest about in the book, and hopefully accomplish even more than I did much faster and with less pain than I did it.

00:29:46.000 So, you know, right now I'm loving the time with my children and loving being in the private sector and loving just being in the free state of Florida.

00:29:53.000 And so I think that that's really where my head's at right now.

00:29:57.000 But it was absolutely an incredible experience.

00:29:59.000 And I felt like it was very important to put it all down and leave the book behind for others to share that experience.

00:30:07.000 Well, very good.

00:30:08.000 In closing, Jared, I want to ask you: I defend you and I defend all that your team did.

00:30:13.000 But you know, you're the recipient of some smears on the right and people that just tend to focus on you.

00:30:19.000 What's your response to that, just specifically or generally, or broadly, as you do this work?

00:30:23.000 As it must be frustrating to kind of get it from the right, but also from the left.

00:30:27.000 And I tell people, I said, look, unless you were in the White House and you actually see how things were done, I was in the office with Jared and Avi and they were doing calls about how to build the border wall, how to get it done, how to use any sort of military funding.

00:30:42.000 And I can't remember the details of it.

00:30:43.000 I was like, that's who is in charge of that.

00:30:45.000 So do you have any response to that, Jared, of any kind of the smears that sometimes come at you or towards you, especially now that the book is out?

00:30:54.000 Yeah, I would just encourage people, if you want to judge me, then now I've given you my story.

00:31:00.000 You can judge me.

00:31:00.000 I'll say what I'm for.

00:31:01.000 I'll say what I'm not for.

00:31:03.000 But what I would say is, again, when I got to Washington, I was very ill-equipped to understand the positioning and how people position themselves.

00:31:10.000 And so I basically just went and I tried to get things done.

00:31:13.000 And so again, I was very, very lucky that President Trump gave me the opportunity that he did to work with him on the campaign and then to work in the White House and all the different files.

00:31:22.000 And again, there were some files that I wanted to work on, like prison reform, which you were very helpful in doing, which was tremendous.

00:31:29.000 And there were some files that I was given because no one else, Bannon and Kelly, weren't getting it done, like building the wall.

00:31:34.000 And so, you know, I think that I am who I am.

00:31:38.000 I don't apologize for who I am.

00:31:39.000 I'm very proud of the things I've done.

00:31:41.000 It's been an absolutely amazing journey.

00:31:44.000 But I think now for the first time, I didn't do a lot of talking.

00:31:47.000 So other people were defining me and often based on not full information.

00:31:52.000 So now I put my book out and I'm doing interviews and people can form their own opinion and see what it is.

00:31:58.000 But throughout the four years, I think I served the country well.

00:32:03.000 I think I served President Trump well.

00:32:05.000 And very, very proud of the different accomplishments I was able to play a role in, whether it was getting the trade deals done with Ambassador Lighthizer, whether it was getting the border wall built with Mark Morgan and Chad Wolf and General Seminite and everybody else, or whether it was working on Operation Warp Speed to get the vaccine done in record time with Monsieur Slowy and Gus Perna, or whether it was working on the Abraham Accords with Avi and Robert O'Brien and Secretary Pompeo and then Usmalteva and others.

00:32:33.000 So very, very proud of the work that we did.

00:32:36.000 And I just hope that others learn from what was happening in the Trump administration.

00:32:41.000 I think the media tries to paint it different than it was.

00:32:44.000 They try to make it seem like every day was January 6th.

00:32:47.000 But the reality was that the results were phenomenal.

00:32:50.000 A lot of great things happened.

00:32:52.000 And I do think history will want to study how that occurred.

00:32:55.000 And that was because there were outsiders going to Washington focused on results and doing it in a different way than had been done previously.

00:33:02.000 Buy the book and judge for yourself, everybody.

00:33:04.000 Breaking History, a White House memoir by Jared Kushner.

00:33:06.000 And Jared, I loved working with you on some projects here and there.

00:33:10.000 It was fun.

00:33:10.000 And you were always really great to turning point and to me.

00:33:13.000 And I thank you for that.

00:33:14.000 And we'll see what the future holds.

00:33:15.000 Everyone, check out a copy, Breaking History, a White House memoir by Jared Kushner.

00:33:19.000 Jared, thanks so much.

00:33:21.000 Thank you.

00:33:21.000 And Charlie, if I could just close by saying that it was very easy to be good to you and to turning point because you guys always made things very easy for us.

00:33:29.000 You capped into so many talented young people.

00:33:31.000 And every time we wanted to get something done, you guys were just absolutely phenomenal partners to work with.

00:33:37.000 So as much as we were enabling you to do many things, you were making our job a lot easier.

00:33:42.000 And that was what a great partnership was about.

00:33:44.000 So very grateful for all the great contributions that you and your organization have made.

00:33:49.000 Thank you.

00:33:49.000 Well, thank you, Jared.

00:33:50.000 And we'll see what the future holds.

00:33:51.000 Thanks so much, Jared.

00:33:52.000 Talk to you soon.

00:33:53.000 Thank you.

00:33:54.000 Thanks so much for listening, everybody.

00:33:56.000 Email me your thoughts as always freedom at charliekirk.com.

00:33:58.000 Thanks so much for listening.

00:33:59.000 God bless.

00:34:01.000 For more on many.

The Charlie Kirk Show - September 03, 2022

Jared Kushner Sets the Record Straight

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