The Charlie Kirk Show - Jared Kushner Sets the Record Straight
Aired: 2022-09-03
Duration: 34:02


=== First Days in the White House (02:56) ===

[00:00:00]  Hey everybody, today's in the Charlie Kirk Show.
[00:00:01]  Jared Kushner joins us.
[00:00:03]  I think Jared gets a bad rap by too many people.
[00:00:05]  I encourage you to listen to this entire episode and decide for yourself.
[00:00:08]  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]  Email me your thoughts as always freedom at charliekirk.com.
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[00:01:41]  Hey, everybody, welcome to this exclusive and special episode of the Charlie Kirk Show.
[00:01:45]  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]  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]  And that is Jared Kushner, author of a new book, Breaking History: A White House Memoir.
[00:02:05]  And Jared joins us right now.
[00:02:06]  Jared, welcome to the Charlie Kirk Show.
[00:02:08]  Thank you, Charlie.
[00:02:09]  It's great to be with you.
[00:02:10]  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]  So really great to be with you.
[00:02:17]  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]  So let's just kind of start there.
[00:02:28]  You came from the private sector.
[00:02:29]  You then came into the White House.
[00:02:31]  Talk about just kind of the first couple of days, weeks, and months in the White House.
[00:02:35]  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]  Tell us about that.
[00:02:45]  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.

=== Bringing Jobs Back Home (07:22) ===

[00:02:56]  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]  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]  What are your protocols to do phone calls?
[00:03:16]  And, you know, just it becomes a very procedure-driven place.
[00:03:20]  And so it becomes very easy to get bogged down by procedure and not get anything done.
[00:03:25]  But we found our way through it.
[00:03:26]  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]  And so he had a team of people with him who were also outsiders to Washington.
[00:03:39]  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]  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]  So let's start with kind of one of the things you worked on.
[00:04:02]  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]  Let's start, though, with what you kind of mentioned kind of Republican orthodoxy.
[00:04:30]  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]  You were tasked with, you know, being the emissary of President Trump to renegotiate those trade deals, especially with Mexico.
[00:04:48]  And those deals almost fell apart, actually.
[00:04:50]  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]  Right.
[00:05:01]  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]  So NAFTA was a deal that Ross Borough famously said, you're going to hear that sucking sound.
[00:05:12]  That's going to be all the manufacturing jobs leaving our country.
[00:05:16]  And for whatever reason, that was the prevailing mindset at the time.
[00:05:21]  I think big, big, really driven by big business.
[00:05:24]  And it worked, right?
[00:05:26]  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]  And so that deal was one that died a million times.
[00:05:40]  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]  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]  And he was very, very close on several instances to actually doing it.
[00:06:02]  So it wasn't actually an empty threat that was able to help us achieve the breakthrough.
[00:06:06]  And what it did is it's brought about 500,000 jobs back to America.
[00:06:10]  It stopped the flow of manufacturing jobs to other countries.
[00:06:14]  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]  And I kind of learned from Bob Lighthizer, who was the lead negotiator on this.
[00:06:26]  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]  We're the only one who's okay having it indefinitely.
[00:06:35]  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]  And that was what President Trump believed.
[00:06:44]  And then what you saw was that the benefits of globalization would be distributed, right?
[00:06:47]  You move manufacturing overseas.
[00:06:50]  Maybe you tap into lower wage labor in Mexico or Vietnam or China.
[00:06:54]  It means the cost of a t-shirt is 50 cents less for everyone.
[00:06:57]  And that benefit is distributed, but the costs of it become very concentrated.
[00:07:01]  So the steel plants, the manufacturing plants, these really hollowed out a lot of towns in America.
[00:07:05]  And a lot of times we didn't have plans in place for people to transition to new industries.
[00:07:10]  So it really hurt communities.
[00:07:12]  It took wealth out of communities.
[00:07:13]  Sometimes people wouldn't find new jobs.
[00:07:15]  They'd get into drug addiction.
[00:07:17]  They'd get into crime.
[00:07:18]  And then the next generation has even more challenges because the school systems get worse as the tax base erodes.
[00:07:24]  So the cost of trade on our country, these bad trade deals for 30 years has been really tremendous.
[00:07:31]  And President Trump was committed to reversing it.
[00:07:33]  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]  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]  Just hearing you talk here, Jared, it just brings me back to feels like you're talking about 20 years ago.
[00:07:57]  I mean, just that kind of tone of how you're talking and bringing back jobs to our country.
[00:08:02]  It's just, it's so depressing to watch what's happening.
[00:08:05]  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]  I mean, you did all these success, your team, Avi, you know, Cassidy and President Trump and everyone, all this success.
[00:08:15]  And just to kind of see what's happening now, I mean, what's your take on that?
[00:08:19]  I mean, talking about onshoring jobs and representing voters, it must be maddening to witness this over the last 18 months.
[00:08:28]  You know, I think for President Trump, it's very, very frustrating to watch.
[00:08:32]  You know, he did all this great work.
[00:08:33]  He had the economy roaring and he had the world peaceful.
[00:08:38]  And, you know, he feels like it's such a shame.
[00:08:40]  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]  They're a lot more complicated than people think.
[00:08:48]  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]  So you look at all the deregulation we did to unleash American energy independence, right?
[00:09:00]  Now we're going to Iran and Venezuela and begging them to pump more oil.
[00:09:05]  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]  So I think that a lot of it's just common sense.
[00:09:14]  I think the potential of our country is unbelievable, maybe even greater than I thought.
[00:09:19]  Global power is something that's more of a relative commodity than something that's absolute.
[00:09:26]  And America has the best private sector in the world.
[00:09:29]  We have the best ingenuity.
[00:09:30]  We have the best system for contracts and for rule of law most of the time.
[00:09:36]  And so our country's poised to really explode in a very positive way economically.
[00:09:42]  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]  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]  And so we came in and we were able to get incredible results on doing these things.
[00:10:08]  And I think that a lot of people learned from seeing the way Trump exposed all of the BS in Washington.
[00:10:15]  And I think people have a much better sense for where the problems are, how to fix it.

=== Two Cross Currents of Power (03:23) ===

[00:10:19]  And I don't know why.
[00:10:20]  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]  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]  And it just makes no sense to me.
[00:10:51]  So, you know, I have to think that common sense will prevail.
[00:10:53]  We have a lot of very smart people in this country.
[00:10:56]  And I anticipate that that will be registered in the upcoming elections.
[00:11:02]  Yeah, I certainly hope so.
[00:11:03]  You write in the book here on Trump's decision-making style.
[00:11:06]  Trump has a habit of seeking information and opinions from people whose views are often overlooked.
[00:11:11]  As a builder, he would visit construction sites and ask the frontline workers for their input on serious design questions.
[00:11:18]  Three rules of Trump, the first of many media crises, taught me what I later call the three rules of Trump.
[00:11:24]  Number one, controversy elevates message.
[00:11:26]  Number two, when you're right, fight.
[00:11:28]  And number three, never apologize.
[00:11:30]  Elaborate a little on that, Jared.
[00:11:32]  Yeah, so there's two different points there.
[00:11:35]  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]  And he is who he is.
[00:11:48]  He's been the same person for, he wouldn't like me to say his age, but for all those years.
[00:11:52]  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]  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]  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]  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]  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]  So he's a very, very successful president.
[00:13:07]  He increased the metabolism of government.
[00:13:10]  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]  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]  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.

=== Exposing the Palestinian Issue (09:45) ===

[00:13:42]  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]  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]  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]  They'd say well, you know.
[00:14:05]  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]  But you know, illegal immigration is wrong, we should have people coming into the country illegally, and so it stimulated debate.
[00:14:16]  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]  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]  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]  And I saw that from afar.
[00:14:51]  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]  But this was the deal that we were told that could never be done.
[00:15:04]  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]  President Trump used to joke about it and he used to say this is the impossible deal.
[00:15:15]  And I will say, Jared, I think in the debates, President Trump didn't focus on the Abraham Accords nearly enough.
[00:15:23]  I just, that was my one personal piece of feedback.
[00:15:25]  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]  Wait a second, we just brokered peace against Israel with Israel and the UAE.
[00:15:36]  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]  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]  Walk us through all that, please.
[00:15:59]  Sure.
[00:15:59]  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?
[00:16:07]  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]  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]  And the first president in many years that many decades that didn't bring new wars to the world.
[00:16:28]  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]  And I actually accepted that to be true because, you know, what the hell did I know?
[00:16:46]  And, you know, and I spent my first year really talking to people.
[00:16:50]  And I try in the book to take people through my journey of listening.
[00:16:53]  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]  First are people who come and fall asleep in meetings.
[00:17:04]  The second are people who come and basically read me talking points and have no ability to interact.
[00:17:09]  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]  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]  And so the first phase was listening.
[00:17:25]  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]  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]  And President Trump did it.
[00:17:53]  We, like a businessman, he mitigated the risks.
[00:17:56]  I talked about how we did that.
[00:17:57]  And, you know, he made the decision.
[00:17:59]  Lo and behold, the next morning, the sun rose, next evening, the sun set.
[00:18:02]  Then what we did is we basically exposed the Palestinian issue as being kind of full of crap.
[00:18:08]  And that the whole notion was that the leadership was existing to enrich themselves versus improving the lives of the people.
[00:18:15]  And then we worked to align the leadership from Israel and the Arab countries around their joint interests and joint opportunities.
[00:18:23]  Peace should be about the future, what you can get, not about being stuck in old grievances.
[00:18:27]  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]  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]  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.
[00:18:49]  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?
[00:18:57]  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]  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]  And then you had the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which is effectively a border dispute after the Arabs lost three offensive wars.
[00:19:23]  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]  And so, and I also note that most of the modern Middle East is essentially arbitrary lines drawn by foreigners anyway.
[00:19:37]  So, I think people through how it occurred.
[00:19:39]  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]  Ambassador Dermer, working through a lot of complicated issues, and then finding a way to make it happen.
[00:20:10]  And we kept it quiet, we kept it secret, and it really shocked everybody and has just changed the world.
[00:20:15]  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]  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]  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]  So, it's a real changing point in the Middle East, which is a changing point in the world.
[00:20:58]  You think about the last decades, how much blood and treasure has been spent in the Middle East.
[00:21:04]  And unfortunately, I think that that's in the past, but now the future is incredibly bright.
[00:21:11]  And this is a major, major turning point.
[00:21:13]  And President Trump and his diplomacy in the Middle East changed the world.
[00:21:16]  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]  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]  Is there any fear you have, Jared, that this administration might reverse some of these gains?
[00:21:40]  I mean, there's a pending nuclear deal with Iran potentially.
[00:21:45]  Do you have any fears that all the progress that you guys made could be upended?
[00:21:51]  So, initially, I was very nervous, right?
[00:21:53]  They were very young deals.
[00:21:55]  We had six peace deals in the last six months, and then we had a lot more ready to go.
[00:22:00]  I actually laid them out for the incoming administration how I would approach it.
[00:22:03]  I think they were very close to getting a deal with Israel and Saudi.
[00:22:06]  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]  And they wouldn't call the agreements by their name for the first year of the Abraham Accords.
[00:22:19]  And then, finally, after a year, they did.
[00:22:21]  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]  And so they're getting better in terms of what they're doing.
[00:22:41]  I do hope they can embrace it anytime.
[00:22:43]  And I think it would make a big difference.
[00:22:45]  The good news is they've endured despite that.
[00:22:47]  I think they're doing quite well.
[00:22:49]  I mean, every day you read about new business deals between the different countries or flights that are being opened.
[00:22:53]  You see things on social media of Jews and Muslims coming together for dinner or prayers or celebrations.
[00:23:00]  And so that's something that would have happened beforehand.
[00:23:02]  So they're doing really well.
[00:23:04]  And again, I really hope that they don't make another stupid deal with Iran.
[00:23:09]  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.
[00:23:19]  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.

=== Pushing to Reopen America (05:57) ===

[00:23:28]  I think they should focus on what works instead of going to what doesn't work.
[00:23:34]  Yeah, and I'm very worried about this potential Iran deal.
[00:23:37]  I think it could have some very serious implications in more ways than one.
[00:23:42]  So also, Jared, you worked on all these different sorts of things.
[00:23:45]  I want to talk just about one in particular, which was the virus and the lockdowns.
[00:23:51]  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]  It was actually the opposite.
[00:24:07]  You were one of the ones pushing to reopen America.
[00:24:10]  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]  Walk us through all that.
[00:24:23]  Yeah, so I have about four chapters in the book on this.
[00:24:26]  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]  A couple of things had started to go right.
[00:24:35]  A lot of things have started to go right.
[00:24:37]  And then we get hit with the virus.
[00:24:38]  Vice President Pence calls me in and asked me to help figure it out.
[00:24:42]  We were woefully undersupplied as a country.
[00:24:45]  The stockpile was bare.
[00:24:48]  And the right conclusion at the time was, I think, to lock down for two weeks and to slow the spread.
[00:24:53]  We had a situation where it was going out of control.
[00:24:55]  We didn't want to be like Italy.
[00:24:57]  But after that, I think the consensus was that we had to start opening it up.
[00:25:01]  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]  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]  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]  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]  We got to get people back in school.
[00:25:33]  And it was a real battle.
[00:25:34]  And I try to take people into what those battle lines were.
[00:25:37]  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]  Your job is to consider all these other things.
[00:25:45]  But I think he embraced the role of being a Trump antagonist.
[00:25:48]  The media was always looking to build people up if they were counter to Trump.
[00:25:52]  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]  And a lot of it was because we embraced certain good parts of bureaucracy.
[00:26:12]  We got all the bad parts of the bureaucracy out of the way.
[00:26:15]  We brought in the private sector.
[00:26:17]  Again, Trump was a businessman beforehand.
[00:26:19]  He brought in a lot of businessmen.
[00:26:20]  He was an outsider.
[00:26:21]  He thought about getting results.
[00:26:23]  And that was really what we did.
[00:26:25]  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]  And we just pulled off miracle after miracle to accomplish things that when we were initially passed with them look unsolvable.
[00:26:39]  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]  And I mean, COVID is a huge part of it.
[00:26:49]  And then on impeachment and all of that.
[00:26:52]  I want to ask you, though, what is the future for you?
[00:26:54]  And you think the future of the MAGA movement and President Trump?
[00:26:57]  I mean, there's a lot of whispers of whether Trump's going to run again.
[00:27:01]  This is quite, you know, an amazing portfolio of accomplishments.
[00:27:04]  But as you all know, that's only one term.
[00:27:07]  What do you think the future is in store for you?
[00:27:10]  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]  And I thought I was with a worldly crew.
[00:27:26]  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]  And the manager says to him, Congratulations, sir, you just broke Elton John's 36-year record beforehand.
[00:27:41]  Trump turns to me and says, Well, see, I don't even have a guitar badge if I had a guitar.
[00:27:45]  And I learned that the issues were much different than people thought.
[00:27:49]  And I think that what Trump did on policy was some of the most unbelievable pro-American policy.
[00:27:54]  I never thought of him as left or right.
[00:27:57]  I thought of him as a pragmatist primarily.
[00:27:59]  And a lot of his policies really resonated with me in that regard.
[00:28:03]  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]  We had a lot in our administration who were phenomenally capable and phenomenally competent and low ego.
[00:28:15]  What he also did is now a lot of people are taking his policies and building them out.
[00:28:19]  And I think that that's becoming the heart and soul of what's a new Republican Party.
[00:28:23]  And so you saw that we grew more diverse and picked up more votes in 2020 than at any time before.
[00:28:30]  And I do think that it's a growing party.
[00:28:32]  And if they focus on the policies and they do the right things, I think it will continue to grow.
[00:28:36]  So that to me is tremendously gratifying.
[00:28:38]  Like I said, I'm very long, our country.
[00:28:40]  I think we have tremendous potential with the right leadership and the right policy.
[00:28:44]  Unfortunately, that's not what's being implemented now, but it's very doable if people do it.
[00:28:48]  So I think the MAGA movement is really just early on.
[00:28:51]  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]  And so I think you're going to see a big difference in that regard.
[00:29:02]  For me, though, look, I never thought I would be in politics.
[00:29:05]  I kind of write about my journey getting there.
[00:29:08]  It was a thrilling journey.
[00:29:10]  It's an action book.
[00:29:11]  I mean, the book reads very fast.
[00:29:12]  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.

=== From Private Sector to Politics (04:36) ===

[00:29:26]  And then how we got things done.
[00:29:27]  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]  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]  And so I think that that's really where my head's at right now.
[00:29:57]  But it was absolutely an incredible experience.
[00:29:59]  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]  Well, very good.
[00:30:08]  In closing, Jared, I want to ask you: I defend you and I defend all that your team did.
[00:30:13]  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]  What's your response to that, just specifically or generally, or broadly, as you do this work?
[00:30:23]  As it must be frustrating to kind of get it from the right, but also from the left.
[00:30:27]  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]  And I can't remember the details of it.
[00:30:43]  I was like, that's who is in charge of that.
[00:30:45]  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]  Yeah, I would just encourage people, if you want to judge me, then now I've given you my story.
[00:31:00]  You can judge me.
[00:31:00]  I'll say what I'm for.
[00:31:01]  I'll say what I'm not for.
[00:31:03]  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]  And so I basically just went and I tried to get things done.
[00:31:13]  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]  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]  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]  And so, you know, I think that I am who I am.
[00:31:38]  I don't apologize for who I am.
[00:31:39]  I'm very proud of the things I've done.
[00:31:41]  It's been an absolutely amazing journey.
[00:31:44]  But I think now for the first time, I didn't do a lot of talking.
[00:31:47]  So other people were defining me and often based on not full information.
[00:31:52]  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]  But throughout the four years, I think I served the country well.
[00:32:03]  I think I served President Trump well.
[00:32:05]  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]  So very, very proud of the work that we did.
[00:32:36]  And I just hope that others learn from what was happening in the Trump administration.
[00:32:41]  I think the media tries to paint it different than it was.
[00:32:44]  They try to make it seem like every day was January 6th.
[00:32:47]  But the reality was that the results were phenomenal.
[00:32:50]  A lot of great things happened.
[00:32:52]  And I do think history will want to study how that occurred.
[00:32:55]  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]  Buy the book and judge for yourself, everybody.
[00:33:04]  Breaking History, a White House memoir by Jared Kushner.
[00:33:06]  And Jared, I loved working with you on some projects here and there.
[00:33:10]  It was fun.
[00:33:10]  And you were always really great to turning point and to me.
[00:33:13]  And I thank you for that.
[00:33:14]  And we'll see what the future holds.
[00:33:15]  Everyone, check out a copy, Breaking History, a White House memoir by Jared Kushner.
[00:33:19]  Jared, thanks so much.
[00:33:21]  Thank you.
[00:33:21]  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]  You capped into so many talented young people.
[00:33:31]  And every time we wanted to get something done, you guys were just absolutely phenomenal partners to work with.
[00:33:37]  So as much as we were enabling you to do many things, you were making our job a lot easier.
[00:33:42]  And that was what a great partnership was about.
[00:33:44]  So very grateful for all the great contributions that you and your organization have made.
[00:33:49]  Thank you.
[00:33:49]  Well, thank you, Jared.
[00:33:50]  And we'll see what the future holds.
[00:33:51]  Thanks so much, Jared.
[00:33:52]  Talk to you soon.
[00:33:53]  Thank you.
[00:33:54]  Thanks so much for listening, everybody.
[00:33:56]  Email me your thoughts as always freedom at charliekirk.com.
[00:33:58]  Thanks so much for listening.
[00:33:59]  God bless.
[00:34:01]  For more on many.