The Charlie Kirk Show - Jared Kushner | An Insider’s Preview of the 2020 RNC + How to Secure Peace in the Middle East
Aired: 2020-08-25
Duration: 40:40


=== New Opportunities in the Region (12:03) ===

[00:00:00]  Thank you for listening to this Podcast 1 production.
[00:00:02]  Now available on Apple Podcasts, Podcast 1, Spotify, and anywhere else you get your podcasts.
[00:00:08]  Hey, everybody.
[00:00:08]  Today on the Charlie Kirk Show, Jared Kushner, senior advisor to the President of the United States, joins us exclusively to talk about the Israel-United Arab Emirates peace deal.
[00:00:18]  He talks about the 2020 reelection strategy for the president and so much more.
[00:00:23]  I want to thank those of you that are monthly supporters of us at charliekirk.com slash support.
[00:00:27]  CharlieKirk.com slash support allows us to hire more staff and to keep our amazing production team doing two podcasts a day and one on Saturday and one on Sunday.
[00:00:36]  Email me your questions.
[00:00:37]  As always, freedom at charliekirk.com, freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:00:41]  We have another really important sister episode that you guys should listen to today where we dissect the Republican National Convention and exactly what happened.
[00:00:49]  You guys are really going to enjoy that episode.
[00:00:51]  Buckle up, everybody.
[00:00:52]  Jared Kushner is here.
[00:00:53]  Here we go.
[00:00:54]  Charlie, what you've done is incredible here.
[00:00:56]  Maybe Charlie Kirk is on the college campus.
[00:00:58]  I want you to know we are lucky to have Charlie Kirk.
[00:01:01]  Charlie Kirk's running the White House, folks.
[00:01:05]  I want to thank Charlie.
[00:01:06]  He's an incredible guy.
[00:01:07]  His spirit, his love of this country, he's done an amazing job building one of the most powerful youth organizations ever created.
[00:01:14]  Turning point USA.
[00:01:15]  We will not embrace the ideas that have destroyed countries, destroyed lives, and we are going to fight for freedom on campuses across the country.
[00:01:24]  That's why we are here.
[00:01:27]  Hey, everybody.
[00:01:28]  Welcome to this episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.
[00:01:30]  We are honored to be joined by senior advisor to the President of the United States, Jared Kushner.
[00:01:35]  Jared is a friend of mine, and he does extraordinary work for our country and for our president.
[00:01:41]  Jared, welcome back to the Charlie Kirk Show.
[00:01:43]  Thank you, Charlie.
[00:01:43]  It's great to be with you, and thank you for all that you do.
[00:01:46]  I've really enjoyed watching you grow over the last years and your organization, the work that you've done, and you've really are a dynamo.
[00:01:53]  So you have my total respect and appreciation.
[00:01:56]  Well, thank you, Jared.
[00:01:57]  So I'm going to read from CNN here, and I want to congratulate you and your team on how hard you have worked on this Israel-United Arab Emirates peace deal.
[00:02:06]  It says, the impending peace agreement between the UAE and Israel is a game changer for the entire Middle East.
[00:02:12]  That's CNN.
[00:02:13]  Jared, first, again, congratulations.
[00:02:15]  I know you and Avi and your whole team have been working diligently over the last couple of years on this.
[00:02:20]  Can you just walk us through some of the backstory of how this deal was done and the geopolitical significance of it?
[00:02:26]  Absolutely.
[00:02:27]  And first of all, whenever I get a question that starts with, I'm going to read you something from CNN, it doesn't usually go that way.
[00:02:33]  So, but this was something that really was so widely praised and appreciated by everybody because it's peace.
[00:02:40]  Who can be against peace?
[00:02:41]  Although there are a few people who have been against peace, but this obviously has been a great progress.
[00:02:47]  So President Trump was able to negotiate the first peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
[00:02:54]  So it's the first peace agreement in the Middle East in 26 years and obviously was a big breakthrough.
[00:03:00]  Again, you'd speak to a younger audience, and what you find a lot is that younger people want different things than older people.
[00:03:07]  And the Middle East is changing.
[00:03:09]  They've had 20 years of being stuck in a quagmire where you have all of these different interests that are looking to divide people and hold people back.
[00:03:18]  The previous administration had left the Middle East in a total mess.
[00:03:21]  They made the Iran deal, which was terrible.
[00:03:23]  It put Iran on a pathway to a nuclear weapon.
[00:03:26]  It gave them $150 billion.
[00:03:28]  They used a lot of that money to fund their proxies.
[00:03:30]  And if you look at the Middle East, everywhere where there's failure, it's really where Iran is.
[00:03:34]  So if you look at Lebanon, it's a failed state.
[00:03:36]  Thank you to Iran.
[00:03:38]  You had Iraq was falling apart, which allowed ISIS to form.
[00:03:42]  Obviously, Yemen fell apart too, and Syria fell apart in Libya.
[00:03:45]  So you have Iran's hand in a lot of the chaos that really has ensued.
[00:03:50]  President Trump came in and he really galvanized the region around how do we find common areas of objective.
[00:03:55]  And in order to have prosperity, which everyone wants, we need to have a common security architecture and we need to stop these old conflicts.
[00:04:04]  So we called this the Abraham Accords because it was about bringing people of all faiths, you know, Christians, Jews, Muslims together to realize that we have so much that we want in common that we want together.
[00:04:16]  Younger generations want to have a better job.
[00:04:18]  They want to have a better life.
[00:04:19]  And it's about making that the priority focus.
[00:04:22]  So in this deal, getting Israel to come together with the United Arab Emirates, that hopefully will be the crack in the dam that allows for other Arab countries to do the same.
[00:04:31]  And it will just change the Middle East in terms of what the discussion is.
[00:04:35]  So instead of being focused on old conflicts, hopefully people can get really focused on pursuing new opportunities.
[00:04:41]  It's incredible.
[00:04:42]  And having visited Israel a couple of times, I was there when the embassy was moved to Jerusalem.
[00:04:46]  I have seen how the region has gone from one where they didn't feel like America was on the side of what was right and what was good in the region instead of was trying to overly pander to Iran to now the tone in the region is a complete and total recalibration for the better.
[00:05:01]  And you're exactly right.
[00:05:03]  You know, visiting Judea and Samaria and some of the young people that live there, you know, the Israelis in particular, they felt as if the prior administration kind of left Israel on a kind of on an island, if you were.
[00:05:15]  And I think the change in this administration's approach, thanks to you and your team, has just been incredible.
[00:05:21]  Can you talk a little bit about how your team was able to pull this off from what you're able to disclose?
[00:05:28]  Because this is not a small accomplishment.
[00:05:30]  I mean, there are thousands of articles, Jared, praising what this has been done from people that were otherwise, but it would have been critics.
[00:05:36]  Even Joe Biden came out and said he kind of almost took credit for it.
[00:05:40]  Yeah, I don't know if you saw that.
[00:05:41]  He was like, oh, it's because of us.
[00:05:42]  I mean, go figure.
[00:05:43]  Can you just give us some insight into how this was negotiated to take an Arab state and the Jewish state to have agreement to actually normalize relations?
[00:05:54]  Sure.
[00:05:54]  So I would say the first thing we did, you know, I obviously come from a different background than a lot of the career diplomats.
[00:06:00]  But the first thing that I did was I went to the region and met with all the different leaders.
[00:06:05]  And the most important thing I did was I tried to listen.
[00:06:08]  And, you know, I feel like a lot of the people have been doing this for a long time.
[00:06:11]  They would come and they knew all the answers and they would try to lecture people on what to do and not to do.
[00:06:16]  But the president's always a he's a pragmatist.
[00:06:18]  He's a deal maker.
[00:06:19]  And the number one thing we did was we really tried to listen and understand what the board looked like today, you know, not what it looked like 20 years ago or what the old grievances were.
[00:06:28]  And pretty quickly, the board became very clear.
[00:06:31]  What we realized was that there were a lot of fractured relationships.
[00:06:35]  And so we started building the relationships back.
[00:06:38]  When President Trump moved the embassy to Jerusalem, a lot of the foreign policy experts criticized him for doing it.
[00:06:45]  People said the world was going to end, which at the end of the day, again, the next morning the sun rose, the next evening, the sun set.
[00:06:51]  And all the fears and predictions didn't happen.
[00:06:54]  But people said he didn't get anything for it.
[00:06:56]  But what President Trump said at the time when we were discussing it in our meetings was he said, well, first of all, you shouldn't get anything for doing the right thing.
[00:07:04]  It's the right thing to do.
[00:07:05]  America is a sovereign nation.
[00:07:06]  We have the right to recognize another sovereign nation's determination as to what their capital is.
[00:07:10]  And there's a historical precedent for it as well, which goes back 12,000 years.
[00:07:14]  So President Trump wanted to do that.
[00:07:16]  He also said, look, I made the promise and I keep my promise.
[00:07:19]  And I know from doing business in that part of the world for a lot of years that if they know that you don't keep your word, then they won't respect you.
[00:07:26]  And even though it will make some people uncomfortable, I want to be known as somebody who keeps my word, not just when it's easy, but more importantly, when it's hard.
[00:07:34]  And so what President Trump actually got was not a traditional diplomatic concession, but he got the respect of the people in the region.
[00:07:41]  And he also got the trust of Israel and of the Israeli politicians and the Israeli public.
[00:07:47]  And they knew that he'd keep his word.
[00:07:49]  When he did things like Golan Heights and then exiting the Iran deal, they also saw that he's somebody who was really going to look out for Israel's security and not push them to do something that would compromise that.
[00:07:59]  And so, again, the steps that the president's taken have all been unorthodox.
[00:08:03]  And there's been a lot of criticism from the career diplomats and from what I call the cottage industry of peace processors along the way.
[00:08:11]  But the reality is that President Trump was able to achieve a different result by taking a different approach.
[00:08:16]  And one of the lines that I would say is, people said my approach was different.
[00:08:20]  I wasn't doing it the right way.
[00:08:22]  And I said, well, look, this is Middle East peace.
[00:08:25]  It's the hardest problem set in the world.
[00:08:26]  It's almost the butt of a joke that you're going to try to make Middle East peace.
[00:08:30]  But the reality is I said, look, there's a high probability of failure.
[00:08:33]  But if I'm going to fail, at least I want to fail in an original way.
[00:08:37]  I want to follow logic, try to do things that make sense.
[00:08:41]  Try not to make the same mistakes that not mistakes, try not to do the same things that have failed in the past and try to bring forward to create a different outcome.
[00:08:51]  And so it was about building trust with the different leaders, really to the point where nothing ever leaked out to the press.
[00:08:57]  They were willing to have free range of discussions with us, we're able to brainstorm together.
[00:09:02]  So it wasn't us versus them.
[00:09:03]  It was us all on the same side of the table saying, how do we, we all agree on what we want to accomplish.
[00:09:09]  How do we work together to try to accomplish those objectives?
[00:09:12]  And so it was a collaborative effort and it was a very creative effort.
[00:09:15]  And ultimately, it took a lot of courage from Prime Minister Benjamin Etanyahu and the Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed from the United Arab Emirates.
[00:09:24]  No doubt.
[00:09:25]  And it was a recognition that Iran was the number one threat in the region.
[00:09:28]  And actually that Israel and the UAE, there's no reason why they should not have some sort of normalized ties.
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[00:10:27]  And again, I want to just reinforce to our listeners, there are a lot of younger listeners, Jared, that are still learning about kind of the geopolitical complexity of the region.
[00:10:36]  I just have to reinforce how big of a deal this is historically.
[00:10:39]  I mean, every president has made some sort of an approach to try to get something like this done.
[00:10:44]  And the only thing they're ever able to get done is Israel gives up more land and eventually, you know, the terrorist cells seem to get more emboldened.
[00:10:52]  This was not the case.
[00:10:53]  This was actually such a massive breakthrough that even the career diplomats, as you put them, they would not have been able to negotiate this for the couple decades.
[00:11:03]  So Jared, I want to get into some points.
[00:11:06]  It's you have a younger audience.
[00:11:07]  What I would just say is that I think that for the younger generation, I think this is also a great thing to show that if you have an idea and you have a new approach and you're empowered to do it, you obviously need to listen to the advice of people who have done it before.
[00:11:22]  You want to study all the things they've done and you want to be guided by past precedent, but you have to be courageous enough to follow logic and to follow things that you think will work because perspective is a matter of where you stand.
[00:11:36]  And you have some people who have been stuck with a problem for so long that they just see it one way.
[00:11:41]  But when you come in with a fresh perspective, sometimes you're able to accomplish things that other people can't.
[00:11:46]  And so hopefully it's very empowering for the younger generation to realize that we do have the ability to take on some of these great challenges and things that people think can't be solved are solvable.
[00:11:57]  If we are constructive, respectful, we listen, we work together, we study problems and we work hard.

=== Pragmatic Trade Deals for Workers (07:20) ===

[00:12:03]  So much is possible that maybe some people think is impossible.
[00:12:07]  Totally.
[00:12:08]  And that's a perfect segue to kind of the three things I want to talk about that I believe the president will mention this week during the convention that your team helped pioneer.
[00:12:18]  And that is the new trade negotiation post-NAFTA, the USMCA, also criminal justice reform, the First Step Act, which I think is really amazing.
[00:12:28]  And I want to get into that at length because you were the one that put this forward.
[00:12:32]  And the Democrats were talking about some of these issues when it comes to incarceration, yet they would not recognize at all last week their convention was President Trump who signed the most significant landmark accomplishment legislation when it came to that.
[00:12:47]  And then also, of course, the right to try legislation that I know you were involved with as well.
[00:12:52]  Can you just start with the USMCA and then get to the First Step Act as to just reminding the American people as we enter this political season of how the president has taken that creative and disruptive approach?
[00:13:03]  And I know you've played a very important role in that.
[00:13:06]  Sure.
[00:13:06]  So, you know, trade policy was not something I knew much about, obviously, coming to Washington, but I didn't appreciate how much it impacts all of us.
[00:13:15]  So if you think about the big debate in Washington, you've had politicians saying that they're for the American worker, but then they would make all these crazy trade deals that basically shipped our factories overseas.
[00:13:25]  So we had the NAFTA trade deal between U.S., Mexico, and Canada in 1994.
[00:13:30]  And then we had China entering the World Trade Organization in 2001, both things actually that were very much pushed by the Democratic Party.
[00:13:38]  And through those trade deals, basically we've had about 70,000 factories that have left our shores and about 5 million jobs.
[00:13:47]  And now the doctrinaires of free trade will basically say that, well, the good news about free trade is the labor cost in different places is lower.
[00:13:55]  And so you end up in a situation where the cost of a t-shirt goes down by a dollar for everybody.
[00:14:00]  And so the net benefit to society is better.
[00:14:04]  But what a lot of these economists have failed to take into account is that there's maybe a distributed winning, but there's big concentrations of where the losses are.
[00:14:14]  So a lot of these communities, whether rural or inner city communities, this is where a lot of the manufacturing was in the 60s and the 70s and the 80s.
[00:14:23]  And then with all these trade deals, a lot of these factories closed, the steel mills closed, the plants closed.
[00:14:28]  And what happened was these communities became hollowed out.
[00:14:30]  There was no plan to transition these workers to a different skill set.
[00:14:35]  So some of them got new jobs, but some of them didn't.
[00:14:38]  Some of them went to crime.
[00:14:38]  Some were addicted to drugs.
[00:14:40]  Some went on government dependencies.
[00:14:42]  And then obviously the reverberations down the generations were quite extreme.
[00:14:46]  So these were policies done by people in Washington who were very disconnected from the people.
[00:14:52]  The Mexico-Canada trade deal, again, President Bush promised to renegotiate it.
[00:14:57]  President Obama promised to renegotiate it.
[00:15:00]  President Trump was the only one who got to Washington and believed that you were actually supposed to keep your promises.
[00:15:05]  And quite frankly, if we knew how difficult it was going to be, maybe he would have rethought it.
[00:15:10]  But it was a Herculean task to do it.
[00:15:13]  And it took us about a year and a half to do.
[00:15:16]  It was around the clock marathon sessions.
[00:15:18]  It's the largest trade deal in the history of the world, $1.3 trillion a year of trade.
[00:15:23]  And what the trade deal that President Trump ultimately got was it'll bring back about 80,000 auto jobs, about 500,000 jobs, and it will add a half a point to GDP to our economy forever just by rebalancing to have more manufacturing in North America.
[00:15:39]  It was the first trade deal in over 20 years that the labor unions endorsed because it was very pro-worker and it did a lot of things.
[00:15:46]  It had the strongest environmental protections of any trade deal in history that were enforceable, the strongest pro-worker enforcements.
[00:15:53]  And it was phenomenal for America's farmers and ranchers.
[00:15:56]  So President Trump cut a hard deal.
[00:15:59]  You heard a lot of squealing in Washington because he was threatening to terminate these deals or he was threatening to impose tariffs and he did impose tariffs, which again made people uncomfortable.
[00:16:09]  But if people are comfortable, then they're never going to make change.
[00:16:11]  So President Trump's negotiating style is he'll eliminate the status quo because in Washington, everyone can complain about the status quo.
[00:16:19]  But then when it takes, you know, then when you want to change it, you know, everyone gets scared of the risk that it takes to get there.
[00:16:25]  So President Trump eliminates the status quo.
[00:16:27]  And then as a business guy, he'll do everything possible to mitigate the risk and then everything possible to lubricate the good outcome that you're trying to accomplish.
[00:16:34]  And so that deal was just a masterclass in negotiation.
[00:16:38]  And ultimately, President Trump made a phenomenal deal.
[00:16:41]  And he's, again, most people make one trade deal every 10 years.
[00:16:44]  President Trump did a trade deal with Mexico, a trade deal with Canada, a trade deal with China, a trade deal with Japan, a trade deal with South Korea.
[00:16:51]  And he's opened more markets for American products than anyone before.
[00:16:56]  So I do believe that trade is essential.
[00:16:58]  It keeps the jobs and the wealth in the country.
[00:17:01]  And President Trump's the first, you know, I heard Bernie Sanders talking at the convention about trade deals.
[00:17:07]  And I respect Bernie has a point of view that's consistent for many years.
[00:17:11]  He's always been about the American worker.
[00:17:13]  But the reality is that President Trump's the first president to ever put in place pro-worker trade policies along the lines of what he's been talking about for a long time.
[00:17:22]  So again, I think that Washington's a funny place.
[00:17:25]  You have to, you know, again, for me, it was definitely an adjustment period.
[00:17:28]  You were one of the few people who believed in me in the beginning, and I appreciate that, Charlie.
[00:17:33]  But what I found here is you have a lot of people who can tell you how the world should be.
[00:17:38]  You have a lot of moralists who will lecture you on what's right or wrong.
[00:17:41]  But what you really need is a very strong sense of pragmatism and people who are willing to break a little bit of China to figure out how to get to a good outcome.
[00:17:49]  And that trade deal was a major win for America and something, again, that only President Trump was able to accomplish.
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=== Bipartisan Prison Reform Success (13:00) ===

[00:19:24]  What was incredible is there are so many of these things happen simultaneously, right?
[00:19:27]  So you were negotiating the Emirati-Israeli deal.
[00:19:31]  You were trying to get the first step back pass, which I want to talk about.
[00:19:34]  You were getting the USMCA.
[00:19:36]  Meanwhile, you also secured the Olympics and the World Cup.
[00:19:39]  Not little things.
[00:19:40]  I mean, any other administration would have just had like, let's just focus on our entire executive branch government on this singular issue.
[00:19:48]  Can you quickly talk about the First Step Act, Jared?
[00:19:51]  And then I want to transition to how we are going to communicate all of these victories to the American people politically, especially as we are kind of going through convention week.
[00:20:00]  Because one of my frustrations is so many people that are open-minded.
[00:20:06]  They need to hear more about this incredible policy portfolio that you and your team and the president have been able to accomplish.
[00:20:12]  That truly is unprecedented.
[00:20:13]  So can you talk about the First Step Act and how that is in contrast to just some of the endless bluster of the Democrats that talk a good game on these issues, but in reality delivered nothing?
[00:20:24]  Sure.
[00:20:24]  So again, the First Step Act is the largest criminal justice reform in history.
[00:20:30]  And, you know, President Trump, when he ran for office, he promised to fight for the forgotten men and women of this country.
[00:20:36]  And, you know, what we did was we basically studied a lot of issues and we thought what could be.
[00:20:42]  My father spent a year in prison and obviously it was a very emotional time for me and my family and something that taught me a lot about the world and really helped form who I am.
[00:20:52]  And so for whatever reason, I went from a place where 10 years prior, I was visiting my father in a federal prison every week.
[00:20:59]  And then 10 years later, for, you know, really through the grace of God, I was sitting in the office next to the president of the United States.
[00:21:06]  And I got a call from Senator Grassley and Senator Durbin saying we'd really like to do something on this where we can fix some of these laws that were put in place in 1994, actually led by Joe Biden.
[00:21:18]  He bragged about writing these laws.
[00:21:20]  And these laws created disproportionate sentences for crack versus cocaine and did a lot of things that basically resulted in putting a lot of black men in jail for very, very long periods of time.
[00:21:33]  And so it was this tough on crime notion that went a little bit too far and had a lot of racial consequences to it.
[00:21:41]  So they said we want to try to fix it and then also figure out how we can do better job rehabilitating people who are in prison.
[00:21:48]  Because people who are leaving prison, you have to think about what's the purpose of a prison?
[00:21:52]  Is it to punish somebody?
[00:21:53]  Is it to warehouse somebody?
[00:21:54]  Or is it to rehabilitate somebody?
[00:21:56]  And I believe that it should be to rehabilitate because if you're in a business and you know where your future customers are coming from, that's where you market to.
[00:22:04]  We know where a lot of our future criminals are coming from.
[00:22:06]  They're in our prisons.
[00:22:07]  So while they're in our custody, we should be spending the time, the resource, and the money to figure out how do you help them not become future criminals so that you have less crime in society and you don't have to spend the money housing them and detaining them.
[00:22:21]  And so I was able to get some buy-in from the Hill and study what's the right way to do it.
[00:22:25]  I saw a lot of conservative support, a lot of liberal support, and I really tried to build a coalition.
[00:22:31]  At first, a lot of people on the left were not willing to work with the White House just because they were afraid of politics.
[00:22:38]  Again, I was asked the other day, but Senator Harris, I reached out to her office because she talked about criminal justice reform.
[00:22:44]  And I said, can we do a meeting?
[00:22:45]  I want to try to bring the sides together.
[00:22:47]  And she wouldn't even take a meeting on it.
[00:22:49]  So she was too afraid to try to have the dialogue that could have made progress on an issue that she cared about.
[00:22:55]  And I believe that the real champions in Washington are the people who will put the politics aside and focus on the objectives.
[00:23:01]  And they don't mind if they get hit a little bit.
[00:23:02]  I get hit all the time.
[00:23:04]  But whenever I get hit, I say, well, if I wasn't making a difference, then they wouldn't want to attack me as much.
[00:23:09]  And so you have to be for progress.
[00:23:11]  So we made a lot of progress.
[00:23:13]  We got a bipartisan group together.
[00:23:15]  We outlined what the appropriate reforms would be.
[00:23:17]  But then we had to take it to the president.
[00:23:19]  And President Trump being a builder, I really had no experience with the prison system.
[00:23:24]  And I need to explain to him, you're a tough on crime law and order president, but this is why it makes sense.
[00:23:31]  And basically, we explained to him that a lot of these people leaving prison, if we're not helping them get jobs and rehabilitate and figure out how to housing and figure out how to re-enter society, then you're basically predetermining that they're going to commit crimes in the future because they don't have a choice.
[00:23:45]  And so he saw it right away and he says, I want to fix this.
[00:23:49]  Let's do it.
[00:23:49]  Give it everything I got.
[00:23:50]  And when President Trump got involved and endorsed it, things started moving tremendously.
[00:23:55]  And we had a couple of people who tried to fight us.
[00:23:57]  Like, you know, like Attorney General Sessions was very anti-it, but ultimately we were able to work through it.
[00:24:03]  And thanks to President Trump's leadership, we were able to get it passed with a massive majority.
[00:24:07]  And then 10 states did copycat legislation.
[00:24:10]  So again, I really believe that a lot of families were impacted.
[00:24:16]  When somebody goes to prison, it's hard on them, but it's also very hard on their family and their friends and their community.
[00:24:21]  But this gave a lot of hope to people in prison.
[00:24:23]  And it showed that if you do things right, you can have a second chance.
[00:24:29]  And so President Trump's been a strong proponent for second chances.
[00:24:32]  And again, I heard the Democrat convention last week where they're talking about racial injustice and inequality and all these different things.
[00:24:38]  Well, you don't solve that by complaining.
[00:24:40]  You solve it with policies.
[00:24:42]  And what President Trump has done over the last years is methodically lay out a set of policies to start try to address these injustices.
[00:24:49]  And he's made more progress in three years than all these politicians who have been lecturing on this in the last 30 years.
[00:24:55]  And so I think that it's a major accomplishment for President Trump, but hopefully just the beginning of what he's capable of doing to really correct some of these wrongs that do exist, unfortunately, in our country.
[00:25:08]  I think that's a perfect transition, Jared.
[00:25:10]  I was so enthused when I saw the email come out from either the campaign or the White House, the press release, of President Trump's second term promises.
[00:25:18]  And whether it was teaching our kids American exceptionalism, school choice, which I am very enthusiastic about, which I believe could be one of the winning issues for the president coming into this election.
[00:25:30]  Also, being, I believe there was a phrase that was used, being the drugstore of the world, which I love.
[00:25:35]  I just love that kind of imagery.
[00:25:37]  Can you talk about the president's second term promises?
[00:25:40]  Because this presidency has been very eventful.
[00:25:43]  You guys have been through so much, more so than I think any other team has had to endure, whether it be the fake impeachment, the Mueller investigation, and then, of course, the virus, the lockdowns, and the recovery from it.
[00:25:54]  In a lot of ways, the president has to communicate like he's going to rebuild the country from something that damage that the country has never really seen before in such a short period of time.
[00:26:05]  Can you talk a little bit about the policy promises that the president laid out?
[00:26:09]  And I think he did a great job on Steve Hilton's show around these sort of second term objectives.
[00:26:16]  Sure.
[00:26:17]  Let me talk about the macro before I get into the micro.
[00:26:20]  I think the macro is that, you know, President Trump believes that, you know, based on his policies, it actually will be not easy, but it will be very achievable to recover very, very quickly from this economic downturn.
[00:26:32]  And, you know, if you think about it, the coronavirus is leading to the acceleration of a lot of different trends.
[00:26:37]  So there were trends towards digitalization that's now accelerating thanks to the virus.
[00:26:43]  And so, you know, strength of a country is really a relative term.
[00:26:48]  Strength is a relative measure.
[00:26:50]  And so, you know, if we do this correct, you know, America can emerge from this way stronger in the world than before.
[00:26:56]  If we do this wrong, though, America can emerge much weaker in relative power relative to the world.
[00:27:01]  So what we've done is we've already started some of the most important aspects.
[00:27:05]  Obviously, we did the economic stimulus, which really saved our economy.
[00:27:09]  We had some very dark and uncertain days, but thanks to the way that the president solved it, it looks like we're heading towards a V-shaped recovery, which is excellent for our country.
[00:27:20]  We've really accelerated the onshoring.
[00:27:22]  America can't be reliant on foreign countries for a lot of these goods.
[00:27:26]  We created Operation Airbridge, which basically was bringing flights that were just going back and forth over from Asia to get a lot of goods that we don't make in America over here.
[00:27:36]  While simultaneously, we've opened a ton of factories here in America to make masks and gowns and tests and all the different things that we need.
[00:27:43]  Also, drugs.
[00:27:45]  We want to be making all of our pharmaceuticals here in America as well.
[00:27:48]  So the ability to do advanced manufacturing, if you think about advanced manufacturing, the components really are low-cost energy and high-skill labor, right?
[00:27:59]  So the reason why a lot of our factories moved overseas is to chase low-skilled labor.
[00:28:03]  But as robots and technology have developed, the component of manufacturing that's made up by people is actually smaller.
[00:28:11]  So you can make up with a lot more with robots and with advanced manufacturing.
[00:28:16]  And if you have a high-skill population, you can train people to do it well.
[00:28:19]  So America is actually poised to be a leader in advanced manufacturing because of our low-cost energy and our great workforce.
[00:28:27]  We just need to be oriented towards it.
[00:28:29]  But so we've taken a lot of steps to do that.
[00:28:31]  And President Trump's fully committed to bring all of our jobs back and bring our manufacturing back and making America a net exporter of many of these critical goods because people don't want to be reliant on other countries.
[00:28:44]  They like their trading relationships with America.
[00:28:46]  And as we've reduced a lot of the trade barriers with other countries by taking a tough approach, we now have access to more markets than we've had in a long time.
[00:28:54]  So I think that macro-wise, he believes that we have the right opportunity to really thrive as a country and be even better off than we were before.
[00:29:02]  And we've already put those policies in place.
[00:29:03]  The deregulation that the president's done has allowed the economy to roar.
[00:29:08]  We're working on a lot of different aspects that we believe will make a big difference.
[00:29:12]  Healthcare, President Trump's taken on the drug companies.
[00:29:15]  He's taken on the hospitals to create price transparency, which will, again, he's all about make sure that the patient has as much choice as possible and the lowest cost possible.
[00:29:25]  And so no matter what insurance you're on, he wants you to have more choice, lower costs.
[00:29:29]  And again, because President Trump wasn't from Washington, he took on all the lobbyists and the people who have been here for a while.
[00:29:36]  And he's done some incredibly disruptive things that, quite frankly, nobody had the balls to do before.
[00:29:41]  So healthcare-wise, his policies have been tremendous, and he's creating a much more efficient marketplace in quite an inefficient area.
[00:29:49]  School choice is something that you mentioned, which I think is critical.
[00:29:52]  And that's, you know, in a lot of the inner cities, you have a lot of failing schools.
[00:29:56]  And what happens is, is we want to create an incentive for these local communities in order to give each parent the money that they would get for school and let them choose which school they go to to create a competition for which schools can be excellent.
[00:30:11]  And the truth is, is that we can do a lot from Washington, but we're also going to need the local communities to rise up and come together and to take control locally.
[00:30:20]  And we'll be the best partner that they have to execute that.
[00:30:23]  But we can't want these local communities to want better schools more than they want better schools.
[00:30:28]  And I believe that we have the right plan to partner with local communities to figure out how we can push that forward.
[00:30:34]  The economy, again, President Trump knows how to create jobs, knows how to build an economy, and he'll do that well.
[00:30:39]  And he's got a lot of different issues.
[00:30:41]  So I think that if you think about also foreign policy-wise, President Trump's policy has been America first.
[00:30:47]  We have knock on wood.
[00:30:50]  We've had no troops killed in Afghanistan since February.
[00:30:52]  We have a peace outline.
[00:30:55]  Hopefully we'll see that finalized and we'll see our troops home.
[00:30:58]  I think we're down to about 4,000 troops in Afghanistan now.
[00:31:01]  And that's a war we've been in.
[00:31:03]  I mean, great nations cannot fight endless wars.
[00:31:06]  It just bleeds your treasury.
[00:31:08]  And obviously, we can't be putting American soldiers at risk.
[00:31:12]  We've lost too many soldiers in areas like that.
[00:31:15]  And in the Middle East, the president's obviously made the historic peace agreement we spoke about earlier.
[00:31:20]  He's strengthened our allies.
[00:31:21]  He's brought them together.
[00:31:22]  He's weakened our enemies.
[00:31:23]  And he's trying also to bring our troops home.
[00:31:27]  So, and then with trade deals, President Trump's opening markets and he's stopping other countries from taking advantage of us.
[00:31:32]  So, what I saw with a lot of these foreign countries is that they love the arrangements that they have with America.
[00:31:38]  And so, their whole goal has been just a tap, tap, tap, run out the clock.
[00:31:42]  And, you know, they drag on.
[00:31:43]  But President Trump, again, he forces action.
[00:31:46]  And, you know, all the people who have said, well, Washington's been noisy the last couple of years.
[00:31:50]  We've seen a lot of activity.
[00:31:51]  There's too much chaos.
[00:31:52]  Well, that's because President Trump is keeping his promises and he's making people very uncomfortable because he's trying to bring change.
[00:31:58]  But the net result for his shareholders, which are the American people, is that you're going to have better jobs, more access to capital, better trading opportunities, a better economy, better health care, and the opportunity to live a better life.
[00:32:11]  And so the one final thing we were talking before about the inner cities.
[00:32:16]  President Trump does have a whole agenda for the inner cities to really reach out to non-traditional Republican voters, but to work on all the fairness issues.

=== Forcing Action Over Chaos (02:22) ===

[00:32:24]  So again, I heard the Democratic Convention.
[00:32:27]  It was a fairly dark depiction of America, the Republican Convention.
[00:32:30]  It's going to be a very proud expression of how much we love America.
[00:32:35]  We're proud of America.
[00:32:36]  We think America is great.
[00:32:37]  It can be even greater.
[00:32:38]  We're going to lay out a lot of policy prescriptions for things that we can do that will make a big difference.
[00:32:43]  And I think that his vision for America is incredible and the policies that he put forward are great.
[00:32:49]  But I will just warn you: don't feel constrained to that list because, as the president says all the time, I think I've kept more promises than I made.
[00:32:56]  So even though he's promising to do those things, I have no doubt he'll execute them.
[00:33:00]  But hopefully he'll do way more as more ideas and opportunities emerge.
[00:33:05]  I totally agree.
[00:33:06]  And the president even said today, he said, where's Joe Biden's list of judges?
[00:33:10]  I think that's such a winning message, I have to say.
[00:33:13]  Putting Joe Biden and his campaign on defense on the type of judges they'll put on the courts is a winning message.
[00:33:18]  And I love the stance against the hospital lobby and the pharmaceutical lobby and also to end the endless wars.
[00:33:26]  Whether you're working from home or working on your fitness, you want what you're listening to to be actually what you're listening to, not what your roommates or your children are listening to.
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[00:34:18]  Jared, in closing, final question.
[00:34:20]  Can you just give us an analysis of how you guys are viewing the race?
[00:34:23]  A lot of our listeners, we get thousands and thousands of emails a week of people that are a little anxious, to be honest.
[00:34:29]  And I'm constantly communicating how polling is done and how our enthusiasm is off the charts and how I think actually things are breaking in the favor of the president.
[00:34:38]  In your capacity that you're able to, can you just give us some of your analysis of how you're viewing the race and how you think things are trending?

=== Winning This Election by More (04:32) ===

[00:34:47]  Sure.
[00:34:48]  So first of all, I don't mind that people are anxious.
[00:34:50]  It's good for you to be anxious.
[00:34:52]  You know, we've got to work hard.
[00:34:54]  We can't take anything for granted.
[00:34:55]  We have to make sure that we're doing everything possible to increase our chances.
[00:35:00]  But I will say that we like where we are relative to four years ago.
[00:35:03]  We've got a tremendous operation in the field.
[00:35:05]  We're very well funded as a campaign.
[00:35:07]  And quite frankly, we have a great message and a better messenger than last time.
[00:35:12]  We're very excited that the convention's over.
[00:35:15]  The president was a little nervous that actually they wouldn't allow Joe Biden to go forward and be the nominee.
[00:35:20]  So he's quite happy that that's done.
[00:35:22]  Now, I think we're going to see a real conflict of ideas.
[00:35:25]  We're seeing the virus, the coronavirus start to come under control a little bit more.
[00:35:30]  Cases are going down.
[00:35:31]  Deaths are plateauing, which is good.
[00:35:33]  And we're seeing, again, our economy continues to stay open, which is very important.
[00:35:37]  And more therapeutics are being advanced.
[00:35:40]  Yesterday, we announced convalescent plasma, which is tremendous.
[00:35:43]  And with the vaccine, the fastest vaccine ever to development was 13 months to phase three.
[00:35:49]  And we did the first one in four months.
[00:35:51]  And then we have three vaccines right now that are in phase three trials.
[00:35:55]  And we're mass producing six vaccines so that the first one that can prove efficacy and safety will be able to start injecting right away.
[00:36:02]  So we will have a vaccine by the end of the year.
[00:36:04]  And we're feeling quite optimistic about that.
[00:36:08]  With regards to the race, I'll just point you.
[00:36:10]  I mean, people get scared because they see the public polls.
[00:36:13]  In 2016, if you look at the public polls in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania between Labor Day and the end of the campaign.
[00:36:21]  And the reason I say that is because right now a lot of the polls are not using likely voters, which is obviously the barometer you should use.
[00:36:28]  But let's take the polls between Labor Day and Election Day.
[00:36:32]  There's 120 in those three states.
[00:36:34]  Out of those 120, only one had Donald Trump winning those states.
[00:36:37]  He ended up winning all three of those states.
[00:36:39]  I do think that the public polling has done more of advocacy.
[00:36:42]  If you think about 2016, many of the pollsters and many members of the media just got the race totally wrong.
[00:36:48]  And nobody was fired.
[00:36:49]  Nobody was admonished.
[00:36:50]  Nobody apologized and said they basically said, well, we weren't wrong.
[00:36:53]  It was Russia that tilled the election for them.
[00:36:56]  And then they investigated us for two years and legal fees and headaches later.
[00:36:59]  They found, well, actually, Russia had nothing to do with Donald Trump winning.
[00:37:03]  He won because he had a better message, a better campaign, and America wanted an outsider like him.
[00:37:09]  So I think it's the same thing now.
[00:37:10]  There's a tremendous amount of enthusiasm.
[00:37:12]  Our polls show that in all the swing states that Trump won last time, he's either ahead or he's within the margin.
[00:37:20]  But we're seeing tremendous trends.
[00:37:21]  There was just a poll in Minnesota that showed him even.
[00:37:23]  Michigan's gone from showing him 14 down to now basically even.
[00:37:28]  And we're seeing that all throughout the Midwest.
[00:37:30]  And I think that the American people, they want to see a president that's going to stand with the police.
[00:37:35]  They know that Donald Trump can bring back jobs.
[00:37:37]  And they realize that the Democrats, the only thing that they have to offer is that they don't like Donald Trump.
[00:37:42]  But that's not enough to explain to people what their vision is for the country.
[00:37:45]  And at the end of the day, the president has a vision.
[00:37:48]  It's a clear vision.
[00:37:49]  Nothing's hidden, right?
[00:37:50]  You know, you don't have to guess what he's thinking.
[00:37:52]  Just look on Twitter.
[00:37:53]  You don't have to guess what his policies are.
[00:37:54]  Just look at what he said.
[00:37:56]  But he's got a very clear and effective way for America.
[00:37:59]  And the one thing with President Trump as well is that if he gives a promise, you know he's going to keep that promise, unlike most politicians.
[00:38:05]  So he demands results.
[00:38:07]  He gets things done.
[00:38:08]  And so we feel really good.
[00:38:10]  I think that if you look at the states, you used to go state by state, obviously, Florida.
[00:38:15]  We won that last time by more than by a lot of votes.
[00:38:18]  I believe we're going to win this time by more.
[00:38:20]  Same with Ohio.
[00:38:21]  North Carolina and Georgia, you know, we think are looking very good.
[00:38:24]  Arizona, the same.
[00:38:25]  And then you need to break, you know, one of the states in the Midwest.
[00:38:28]  But we also have new states on the map this time that we didn't win last time.
[00:38:31]  Like we're playing in Minnesota.
[00:38:33]  Last time we had one staff from Minnesota.
[00:38:36]  This time we have 80.
[00:38:37]  We think that that's a state that could really break for Donald Trump.
[00:38:40]  Same with New Hampshire, same with Maine, same with Colorado, same with Nevada.
[00:38:44]  So we've got a lot of states, same with New Mexico, a lot of states that we didn't play last time, but because of the advanced notice we've had and because of the resources, we're playing in all those states.
[00:38:55]  And we think that there's a big rush of enthusiasm for Donald Trump.
[00:39:00]  And like I said, the polls are funny, but there's only one poll that counts, and that's the election.
[00:39:06]  So I am hopeful that people will come out and vote for the person that they believe will make the country achieve its potential and help them live better lives.
[00:39:15]  And I think that that's a very, very clear contrast in this election.

=== Double-Digit Bump for Republicans (01:20) ===

[00:39:19]  Well, I totally agree.
[00:39:21]  And Jared, thank you.
[00:39:22]  I say all that in my personal capacity.
[00:39:24]  That's right.
[00:39:24]  All of that is in your personal capacity.
[00:39:26]  I want to make sure I preface that as well.
[00:39:28]  Well, Jared, you have an incredibly busy portfolio of things to continue to help save the country.
[00:39:32]  We're so thankful that you were so generous of your time.
[00:39:35]  Big week with the RNC.
[00:39:37]  We're all going to be watching.
[00:39:38]  And I think this is going to be a double-digit point bump for the president and for Republicans.
[00:39:42]  And I think things are trending the right direction.
[00:39:44]  And congratulations on all that you and your team have accomplished.
[00:39:48]  Great, Charlie.
[00:39:48]  And really, congratulations to you and your team as well.
[00:39:51]  You guys are doing great work, and it's an honor to work together.
[00:39:53]  And I look forward to many, many great successes together for years to come.
[00:39:57]  Four more of them.
[00:39:58]  All right, Jared.
[00:39:59]  Thanks so much.
[00:39:59]  I appreciate it.
[00:40:00]  Speak to you soon.
[00:40:01]  Thanks.
[00:40:04]  What a great conversation that was with the senior advisor to the President of the United States, Jared Kushner.
[00:40:09]  Please get involved with Turning Point USA by going to tpusa.com, tpusa.com.
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[00:40:35]  Thank you guys so much for listening.
[00:40:36]  More episodes coming up this week.
[00:40:38]  God bless you.
[00:40:39]  Talk to you soon.