The following is a conversation with Jared Kushner, former senior advisor to the president during the Donald Trump administration, and author of Breaking History, a White House memoir. He's one of the most influential and effective presidential advisors in modern history, helping conduct negotiations with some of the most powerful leaders in the world and deliver results on trade, criminal justice reform, and historic progress towards peace in the Middle East.
On Thursday, October 5, we recorded a conversation on topics of war and peace, history, and power, and the Middle East and beyond. This was about a day and a half before the Hamas attack on Israel, and then we felt we must sit down again on Monday, October 9, and add a discussion on the current situation. We opened the podcast with the second newly recorded part. My heart goes out to everyone who has and is suffering in this war. I pray for your strength and for the long term peace
and flourishing of the Israeli and Palestinian people. I love you all. And now, a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. We've got Inside Tracker for biological data, BetterHelp, from Outta Health, 8 Sleep for Naps, and 8G1 for Health. Choose wisely, my friends. And now, onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I try to make this interesting,
but if you must skip them, please still check out our sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. This show is brought to you by Inside Tracker. A service I use to track biological data that comes from my body and gives me lifestyle, advice, based on the very data that came from my body. It's hard to do these ad reads if I'm being honest as I'm thinking about everything that's happening in the Middle East today and all the people who are suffering. These railings in the
Palestinians. I've traveled to that region recently and I will return to that region. And if there's any one thing I could say about those travels, I got to see just how beautiful people are. And I got to see, as clichés in my sound, the common humanity, the culture might be different. The perspectives might be different, but the hope and the pain and the anger and the love and the full spectrum of the human condition was all there in their eyes. In the eyes of Israelis and
eyes of Palestinians. So my heart goes out to the people suffering there now. In some fundamental sense, I'm deeply grateful for having these sponsors, for having people that supported this podcast for several years now and it's been an honor and it's been a gift. Anyway, go check them out at insidetracker.com slash Lex. This episode was also brought to you by BetterHelp spelled H-E-L-P-Help. I remember the first time
a sponsor reached out wanting to support the podcast. It was hard for me to believe that anyone would care enough because with a lot of these sponsors, you know, the first step is believing in whatever the hekticism is and it just means the world that they would support it. It allows me to take big risks without any restrictions, without any constraints. Just the fact
that we have way more sponsors that no one can possibly have on the podcast. I get to be picky and I get to really choose great partners and it just means the world that they they care enough to support. There's a lot of people that's been donating money and forget don't any money even just sending love through emails and messages through all kinds of ways running to me on the street and just you know giving me a hug
sending some love my way. Yeah, it means the world. Anyway, this is BetterHelp, you know, talk therapy. Really important to take care of your mental health and BetterHelp is really accessible way of doing that. You do it online with a licensed professional therapist. You can check them out at BetterHelp.com slash Lex and save on your first month. That's BetterHelp.com slash Lex.
This episode is also brought to you by A3 sleep and it's pod 3 mattress. It might be silly to say, but it's one of the things I thought about that I missed when I was traveling in the Middle East and thinking about America because the A3 mattress symbolizes home. The ridiculous comforts of home. It just cools down nicely put on warm blanket and it just allows you to escape
whether in a nap or a full night sleep from the chaos of the world. And I'll take a nap no matter what's on my mind, no matter how heavy the events of the world or just the events of my life are a nap will just allow all that stuff to dissipate for a few moments. And as I slowly return to the waking state, I have this feeling of deep gratitude just to be alive. They currently ship to the United States of America, Canada, the UK, Australia and select countries in the EU.
Check it out, think of special savings when you go to 8sleep.com slash Lex. This show is also brought to you by AG1. A drink I drink twice a day for nutrition for health. It replaced multivitiveness for me. I just drink it. I don't even know if I drink it just for the health or for the spiritual boost that it provides. I don't know. Like I mentioned with 8sleep, AG1 is a kind of forced break from the intensity of the work I do. I'll walk over
to the fridge. I'll make myself a cold AG1 and I'll sit on the couch and just sit on it for like five minutes and think about life. I don't know. There's something about the couch with cold drink. I think just silence. A lot of you really reflect on once again how amazing this damn life is. And you're still listening to this. I just want to say thank you. Thank you. Thank you for caring enough to listen to this silly dude in the suit. I love you all. You can get the
AG1 thing at drinkag1.com slash Lex. This is a Lex treatment podcast. I know dear friends. Here's Jared Kushner. We did a lot of this conversation before the Hamas attack on Israel. And we decided to sit down again and finish the discussion to address the current situation which is still developing. If I may allow me to summarize the situation as it stands today, it's morning Monday October 9th on Saturday October 7th at 6.30 a.m. Israel time Hamas fired
thousands of rockets into southern Israel. The rocket attack served as cover for a multi-pronged infiltration of Israel territory by over 1,000 Hamas militants. This is shortly after at 7.40 a.m. The Hamas militants went door to door and border towns killing civilians and taking captives including women and children. In response to this, Israeli Air Force began carrying out strikes
in Gaza. Also fighting on the ground in Israel to clear out Hamas militants from Israel territory and preparing to mobilize Israeli troops for potential ground attack on Hamas and Gaza. Now of course this is what it appears to be right now and this along with other things might change because the situation is still developing. The IDF is ordering civilian residents of Gaza to
evacuate their homes for their safety. Benjamin Netanyahu declared war in several statements and warned Israelis to brace themselves for a long and difficult war. Just today, Israeli ministers ordered a quote, complete siege of Gaza interrupting supplies of electricity, food, water and fuel from Israel to Gaza. As of now October 9th, the death toll is over 1,200 people and over 130 hostages taken to Gaza by Hamas. As I said, the events are
rapidly unfolding. These numbers will sadly increase. Hopefully our words here can at least in part speak to the timeless underlying currents of the history and as you write about the power dynamics of the region. So for people who don't know, Gaza is a 25 miles long six miles wide strip of territory along the Mediterranean Sea. It borders Israel on the east and north and Egypt on the southwest. It's densely populated about 2.3 million people and there's been a blockade
of Gaza by Israel and Egypt since 2007 when Hamas took power. I could just summarize that Hamas is a Palestinian militant group which rules the Gaza Strip. It originated in 1988 and it came to power in Gaza in 2006. As part of its charter, it's sworn to the destruction of Israel and it is designated by the United States, the European Union, UK and of course Israel as a terrorist group.
So given that context, what are your feelings as a human being and what is your analysis as the former senior advisor to the President, under the Trump administration of the current situation in Israel and Gaza? So I think you did an excellent job of summarizing a lot of the context but
watching what's unfolded over the last 48 hours has been truly heartbreaking to see. We're still in the early stages of what's developing but seeing the images on X of militants, terrorists going door to door with machine guns, gunning down innocent civilians, seeing beheaded Israeli soldiers, seeing young 20-year-olds at a rave, dance party to celebrate peace with militants flying in and then shooting machine guns to kill people indiscriminately, seeing young children captive
and and held prisoner, seeing 80-year-old grandmother's, a Holocaust survivor, also being taken captive. These are just images and actions that we have not seen in this world since 9-11. This is a terror attack on the scale of which we have not seen and it's been incredibly hard for a lot of people
to comprehend. My heart goes out obviously to all of the families of the victims, to the families of those who are held in captive now and to all of Israel because one of the beautiful things about the state of Israel is that when one Israeli is hurting the entire nation comes together, it's a shame that it's taking an action like this to unify the nation but I have seen
incredibly beautiful signs over the last 48 hours of a country coming together. The Jewish people have been under oppression before, the Jewish people know what it's like and seeing people rally together to fight for their homeland, to try to reestablish safety is a very beautiful thing to
watch. I wish it wasn't something we had to watch but it is. With that being said though, the backdrop, I've been speaking to friends over the last couple days, I've one friend I spoke with last night who was saying that a good friend, a message to him saying I'm going in, we're going to do some operations to try to free some of the hostages, held in one of the keep-ups's, message to him the
next morning. He was one of the first through the door to try to free these hostages and he was killed by a Hamas militant and sadly we're going to be hearing many, many more stories of brave Israeli soldiers trying to get these terrorists out of Israel, trying to free innocent civilians who unfortunately are risking their lives to do it and they're all heroes but some will have a less good fate than others sadly. It's a very, very heartbreaking moment and I do think that it's
very important at this moment in time for the entire world to stand behind Israel. I think that Hamas has shown the entire world who they really are. I think what their aim is, what they're willing to do and all of the strong security that Israel's put in place over the last years which in some instances was criticized, I think is now being validated that there was a real threat that they
were looking to deter. So short answer as my heart is broken, praying for peace, praying for strength, praying for Israel to do what it needs to do to avoid being in this situation again which is either eliminating or severely degrading Hamas' capabilities. There cannot be peace in Israel in the Middle East while there is a terror group that is being funded by Iran that is allowed to flourish and is allowed to plan operations that are going to aim to kill innocent civilians.
And so as somebody who was formerly in this position who was intimately involved with Israel with the strategies to minimize attacks from Hamas and to try to turn the region around. Then I think we did do a very substantial job under President Trump. The Middle East went from one of the most chaotic regions in the world. You had ISIS in 2016. ISIS had to caliphate the size of Ohio. They were beheading journalists. They were killing Christians. They controlled 8 million people.
They were planning attacks all over the world from their caliphate. They were using the internet to radicalize people. We had the San Bernardino shooting in America. We had the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando. There was real threat. Then you had Iran which was given $150 billion in a glide path to a nuclear weapon. They were using their newfound riches to fund Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, different rebels all over the region that were looking to destabilize
further. Syria was in a civil war where 500,000 people were killed. Yemen was destabilized. Libya was destabilized. It was just a mess. All of America's allies had felt betrayed. President Trump came into power. We rebuilt the trust and the relationships with all of our traditional allies. We were able to eliminate ISIS, the territorial caliphate. Then we were able to project strength in the region. We really go after Iran's wallet. We were able to stop through crushing sanctions. A lot of
their financial resources which they were using to fund all these terror groups. We left the Middle East with six peace deals and a fairly peaceful world. Seeing what's happening, I think it was completely avoidable. I think it's horrible to see that it's occurring. I pray that those in power will make the right decisions to restore safety but also to potentially create a better paradigm for peace in the future. I have a lot of questions to ask. You about
the journey towards the historic progress towards peace with the Abraham Accords. But first on the situation, to step back and some of the history, is there things about the history of Hamas and Gaza that's important to understand what is happening now? Just your comments, your thoughts, your understanding of Hamas. I think you did an excellent job of really giving the summary. Just a couple of things, maybe a lot to it, is that Hamas was originally founded from the Muslim
Brotherhood in Egypt, which is a group that's caused a lot of issues in the region. They've attacked Israel many times in the past. There's a lot of discussion about how Israel is an occupying power. Well, in Gaza in 2005, they withdrew from all the land and then they say Israel is in a apartheid state. Well, Israel then gave governance of the region to the Palestinians. And then what's
happened is the Palestinian people's lives have now gone down, not up since then. I will say that under Hamas's leadership in Gaza, the people have suffered the most are the Palestinian people. And I see, I've watched cries throughout my time in government from people saying we want to see the Palestinian people live a better life. I agree with those people. I think that the Palestinian people in Gaza are essentially hostages. In Gaza, you have basically 2.2 million
people that are being held hostage by 30,000 Hamas terrorists. And that's really the problem. And I would just encourage people to push their attention and energy in this moment and their anger towards Hamas. Those are the people who are killing innocent civilians who are murdering indiscriminately. And those are the people who have held back the Palestinians from having a better life. And just finally, what I would say is, what we saw with Hamas was that if you go back
to 2007, they basically had just one plan that they did over and over. And we were very careful to try to monitor very closely and stop the Iranian money and the resources from coming in. And again, we took a little bit of criticism from the international community from keeping the border tight, but unfortunately, every time you'd allow construction materials to go into Gaza, they'd use them to build tunnels, not homes. You would have equipment that would come in to build pipes, they'd turn it
into bombs. So it was very, very hard to figure out how do you get the resources into Gaza to help people of a better life while at the same time the leadership in Gaza was taking all those resources and turning it into military equipment to attack Israel. What role does Iran play in this war? In this connection to Hamas, can you speak to the connection between Hamas and Iran that's in point to understand, especially as this most recent attack unfolds? Sure. So the correlation,
I mean, there's reports that Iran is behind the attack. Hamas has thanked Iran for their support. And it's been very well known that Iran supports the destruction of the state of Israel. And I won't say Iran as a country. I'll talk about Iran in the leadership. There's actually a beautiful thing I saw on the internet where at one of the soccer games in Iran, they were trying to,
you know, rally support for the Hamas terror attacks. And a lot of people in the crowds were chanting, you know, FU to the regime because I think the Iranian people, the Persian people generally are peace-loving people who don't want to see this focus on destruction and annihilation. But you saw this in 2015, 2016, when the Iranian government had resources, the region was less safe. And since, you know, now there's been more resources allowed to go to the Iranian regime
by lack of enforcement of sanctions. And as a result, Iran is funding Hasbalah, Hamas. They were funding the Houthis. Now there's a little bit of a detente between Saudi and Iran, which has led to that going down, which only further proves that Iran was behind the Houthis, which is what the Saudis have been saying for years and Iran was denying. So there's a very strong relationship between the two. And we always knew that the way that Iran fights wars or fights
conflicts is never directly. It's usually through its proxies. And in this case, a Hamas has been a proxie for Iran who wanted to obviously see the destruction of Israel, but also does not want to see the Israelis and the Saudis come together for peace agreement. So the name of this operation, of the Hamas operation is Al-Aqsa flood, referring to the Al-Aqsa mosque. How much of this attack
is about the Al-Aqsa mosque? In actuality, I don't think any of it is, but the Al-Aqsa mosque is something that all of the Shia jihadists have used for years in order to justify their actions. That are aggressive towards Israel. So this is something I'll maybe even take a step back and go through when I was working initially in my first year on the peace plan. I was doing a lot of listening. And quite frankly, a lot of what people were saying to me didn't make sense. And the reason why I was
trying to figure out they were talking about sovereignty over Al-Aqsa mosque. The Al-Aqsa mosque is a mosque that's built in the Holy of Holies, the Haram al-Sharif in Israel, where the Jewish beta-mehdash, the Holy Temple was built in a very religious place about after the temple was destroyed. Then there was a big mosque built there. And it's one of the more holy places in Islam now. So the big thing everyone was saying is what do you do with this land where you have a mosque
built over a very big Jewish site. And I was hearing all of the experts. And I always say experts with quotes because only in Washington can you work on something for a decade and continue to fail. And then you basically leave and are considered an expert. But that's one of the problems with Washington, which maybe we could talk about later. But the notion here was I went and I said, let me try to understand what the issue is with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict with the people.
Right. I always felt the politicians were a little disconnected. So I commissioned several focus groups one in a man, one in Cairo, one in Dubai, and one in Ramallah. And I asked people, Muslims, what is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict about? And time and time again, the most popular thing that they said was that Israel was not allowing access to the mosque for Muslims to pray. And what was interesting was is that Israel's policy is to allow anyone who wants to come and pray peacefully
at the sites to come and pray. Sometimes they have security issues when there's provocations. But by and large, since 1967, when Israel was able to take back Jerusalem in a defensive war, just to be very clear, they were attacked in the south and they were attacked from the east. And they basically were able to beat back the Jordanians and the Egyptians and then reconquer the old city of Jerusalem. And during that time, immediately after Israel then passed the protection
of holy places law, which was they basically took resources they didn't have. And they said, we're going to restore the Christian sites, the Muslim sites, the Jewish sites. And they've worked to allow everyone access to the mosque. So today, any Muslim who wants to come and pray at the mosque, the mosque is Israel's acknowledged that King Abdullah, the King of Jordan, is the custodian of the mosque. And as long as people want to come to the country and pray peacefully,
they're able to do that. But if you look at a lot of the propaganda that's been used by ISIS or Iran to recruit terrorists or to justify their incursions, they often say they're doing it in the name of liberating the al-Axim mosque. But from an operational and pragmatic perspective today, any Muslim who wants to go to the mosque, you can book a flight to Israel now through Dubai because there's flights between Israel and Dubai. And as long as your country has relations with Israel,
they'll accept your passport in there, you can come and pray. And that's what Israel wants. Israel wants Jerusalem to be a place where all religions can come and celebrate together. But you have a lot of actors that look to find ways to use these religious tensions in order to sow division and justify violent behavior. I wonder how it's possible to lessen the effectiveness of that propaganda
message that a lot of the war, a lot of the attacks about access to the al-Axim mosque. Is there something you can speak to why that message hasn't disseminated across the Arab world? So Israel's good at a lot of things. They're not very good traditionally with public relations. After the Abraham Accords, we made the first Abraham Accords deal in August 2020. And then we made five other deals. We first did United Arab Emirates, then we did a deal with Bahrain, then we did
a deal with Kosovo, then we did a deal with Sudan, then we did a deal with Morocco. And then we got the GCC deal done as well, the tension between Qatar, Saudi, UAE, Egypt, and Bahrain. And that was allowing us to create a pathway to then pursue the Israeli-Saudi normalization. So we had so much momentum then that the goal was just keep getting more countries to normalize relations with Israel.
Once you create the connection between people and create the ability for people to do business together, the ability for flights to fly between, then you would just start naturally having people coming. And everyone has a smartphone today so they can then post and combat the misinformation that's been out there. But this misinformation is not something that's new. You know, one of the characters who played a very big role in spreading the anti-Semitism and the violence in Israel,
in the 1920s was a guy named Hajj Amin al-Husayni who was known as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. He was very close with Hitler and Mussolini and he was working with them to try to get some claims to the Middle East once the Jewish people were annihilated. And what he did for a very long time was he did the same stack only it was before yet smartphones in YouTube where he would say the mosque is under attack these imperialist Zionists are coming in to try to destroy the mosque and he would use
that to raise money from Indonesia from Pakistan from all over the world and then use that that threat to justify recruiting, you know, groups of young vulnerable Muslim men and then, you know, getting them in the name of religious rights to go and kill people which is not, which really is
more of a perversion of the religion than I think the true essence of what Islam is. I think Islam at his core is a peaceful religion and I think that's where a lot of the great leaders in Islam want to take it but the people who use Islam or the the Mosque as a justification for violence. Those are people who I think are really they are disrespecting the the Islam religion. As you said you helped make major strised-tourist peace in the Middle East with Abraham Accords.
Can you describe what it took to accomplish this? And maybe this will help us understand what broke down and led to the tragedy this week. Yeah, so you know, I always believed in foreign policy. I learned very quickly that the difference between a political deal and a business deal is that in a business deal you have a problem set. You come to a conclusion and then if you buy or sell something you either have, you know, more cash or you have a company. So more to do less to do.
Political problem set is very different where, you know, the conclusion of a problem set is essentially the beginning of a new paradigm. So when I would think about how do you how do you move pieces around the board? You couldn't say let me just solve the problem. You have to think about what happens the day after the signing and how do you create a paradigm that has positivity to it. So the biggest piece of what President Trump did during his four years in office was he really
strengthened the relationship with Israel. Number one, and he did things like recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. He moved the embassy to Jerusalem. He recognized the goal on heights. He got out of the Iran deal. We did an economic conference in Bahrain where we brought Israelis to meet with, you know, Saudi and Emirati and Qatar, businessmen and everyone
came together and and each one of these instances were unthinkable previously. And everyone said that if you did it, the world was going to end and every time President Trump did one the next morning,
the sun rose, the next evening, the sunset and things moved on. And so by doing that, what President Trump did was he slaughtered a lot of the sacred cows of these these false barriers that people had erected and showed people that the vast majority of the people in the Middle East, whether they're Jewish, Muslim, Christian, whatever religion they are, they just want to live better lives. And so what we basically did was create a paradigm where the voices for peace, the voices
for together now finally had a forum in it where they were able to do it. And we did that in the backdrop. The way we were able to be successful was we severely limited the resources of Iran and they were focused more internally and they couldn't cause the trouble that they were causing everywhere else. Since we've left obviously the dynamics have changed, but the way you get to peace is obviously number one's through strength and number two, by finding a way for people to
be better off tomorrow than they are today. And what I found was that most of the voices looking for violence or trouble were people who were just focused on what happened two years ago, 20 years ago, 70 years ago, a thousand years ago, people who were trying to solve those problems in that context, often were looking more to use those past grievances as a justification for their
power and for the bad behavior that they were looking to perpetuate. So managing as we have talked about extensively, managing the power dynamics of the region and providing a plan. This is something you did with the economic plan titled Peace to Prosperity, a vision to improve the lives of the Palestinian and Israeli people. Can you first of all describe what's in the plan?
Sure. So this was something I took on. I was working on the political framework between the Israelis and the Palestinians and trying to understand what were the issues and the issues were not very many. It basically was you had a land dispute. You had to figure out where do you put borders, ultimately, you had a security paradigm, which I was much more favorable to Israel's perspective on.
And obviously the events of the past 48 hours have fully justified that bias. And then in addition, that you had to deal with the religious sites, but I felt operationally that wasn't actually as complicated as people made it because you wanted to just leave it open for everybody. Then I went through and I felt that the Palestinian leadership was fairly disincentivized to make a deal because there was just this paradigm where for the billions of dollars coming in from the
international community. And I think that they feared that if they made a deal, they would lose their relevancy internationally and the money would stop flowing into the country. So what I tried to do is to say, my approach when I would get into a hard problem, say, how do I understand all the different escape hatches? How do I try to eliminate them and then build a golden bridge that becomes really the only but also the most desirable pathway for the decision-makers to walk through.
And it wasn't always hard, and sometimes you have to go and hold their hand or you try to pick them up and walk them across. But a lot of these leaders are very reluctant to change. And the dynamics of the Palestinians also were such that I think they were fairly stuck where they were. So we developed a business plan for Gaza, the West Bank. We threw in some improvements for Jordan and Egypt as well. I was based it off of the Vision 2030 that they didn't study
Arabia, which I thought was a visionary document. I went back through this process and I studied basically every economic project in the post-World War II period. So we looked at what they did in South Korea, why it was successful with some strong industrial planning. We looked at Japan, we looked at Singapore, we looked at Poland, why it was successful. We spent a lot of time
on the Ukraine plan for the country and why it wasn't successful. And that was mostly because of governance and corruption, which actually resembles a lot of what's gone wrong with the Palestinians, where there's no property rights, there's no rule of law. And what we did is we built a plan to show, it's not that hard in the sense that between the West Bank and Gaza, you had 5 million people.
We put together a plan, I think it was about $27 billion. We got together a conference, I had the head of AT&T, we had Steve Schwartzman from Blackstone came, which was very gracious of them, we had all the leading Arabic businessmen, the leading builders, leading developers. And the general consensus of that conference was that this is very doable. We think that for Gaza and particular, it would cost maybe $7 to $8 billion to rebuild the entire place. We felt we could
reduce the poverty rate in half, we can create over a million jobs there. The only thing that people said was holding it back wasn't Israel, what was holding it back was governance. And people wouldn't have confidence investing there with the rule that Hamas was perpetuating. So I encourage people actually to look at the plan, it was very thoughtful, it was 181 pages, we went project by project, each project is costed out. It's a real plan that could be implemented, but you need the
right governance. And all of the different Arabic countries were willing to fund it, the international communities were willing to fund it because they've just been throwing so much money at the Palestinians for years that's never been outcomes based, there are conditions based. It's just been entitlement money. And unfortunately, it hasn't really achieved any outcomes that have been successful. So
it's a great business plan. It just shows to rebuilding Gaza, you know, could be easy, but like I said, you know, the problem that's held the Palestinian people back and that's made their lives terrible in Gaza has not been Israel. It's really been Hamas's leadership or lack of leadership and their desire to focus on trying to kill Israelis and start war with Israel over improving the lives of the Palestinian people. And the current approach of Hamas, the more violence they perpetrate,
the more they can hold onto power versus improving the lives of people. So they, as you said, maybe you can comment on, they do not propose an economic plan. I mean, Hamas has been running it now for 16 years and they don't have a lot to show for it. And you know, our posture with them was basically a very simple deal. You know, if you think about what's the end state in Gaza, it's actually not that complicated. It's, you know, there's no territorial disputes, right? The borders, the border,
there's no religious issues there as well. You know, you're not dealing with Jerusalem. You're basically just dealing with the fact that, you know, Israel wants to make sure that there's no threat from Gaza. So it's a demilitarization or some kind of security guarantee from a credible source, where Israel doesn't feel like Gaza can be used to stage attacks into Israel or to fire rockets into Israel. And by the way, these are things I was saying, you know, three, four years ago that
that was the objective and that was really the fear. Now that's been proven, you know, unfortunately, the fear has has manifested. And in exchange, you can rebuild the place and you can give the people a much better life. But Hamas has not shown desire for that or a capability for that. And I don't think there's enough trust to allow them to do that, which is why, you know, under the calm circumstances, if you do want to have peace there, Hamas has to be either eliminated
or severely degraded in terms of their military capabilities. I would love to ask you about leadership, especially on the side of the United States. What is the current administration, the Biden administration done different than the Trump administration, as you understand, that may have contributed to the events we saw this week. So all I can talk about are where we
left them. Right. We left them a place where they had tremendous momentum in the Middle East. I met with them during the transition and said, you know, look, you know, we even got the the Qatar Saudi conflict done, which was a big no peace between Israel and Saudi would have been possible without that. So we even got that done in our lame duck period. And they came in and they said, look, we want to focus on the three Cs, which is COVID climate change in China. And I said,
that's great. But the Middle East, we have an amazing place right now at stable. There's momentum. Iran is basically broke. We put such crippling sanctions on Iran that they went from about, I think it was 2.6 million barrels a day of oil. They were selling to about 100,000 under Trump. So their foreign currency reserves were basically depleted and they were broke. Same with the Palestinians, we stopped the funding to to to to to to unra the UN agency, which is
totally corrupt. It's it's, you know, we've put $10 billion in there over time. I did a poll in the Middle East in Gaza to say, okay, we've invested $10 billion here as a country. Are we popular? Right. The US had a 7% approval rating. USAID had a 70% approval rating. But it just felt like a waste of our taxpayer dollars. And again, we want to make a conditions based. The Biden administration came in. Number one, they they they started insulting, you know, Saudi
and Russia. Oil prices went up at the same time. What they did was they stopped domestic production of oil. They made it they disincentivized a lot of oil and shell production with regulations. They they stopped pipelines. Oil prices went up. They stopped enforcing the sanctions against Iran, probably to get the oil prices lower to make up for what they were doing. They ran to Iran to try to make a deal. They started funding the Palestinians again right away. And I even said, you know,
if you're going to fund them, if that's your policy, I respect that again. Elections have consequences and you can take a different policy. But what I would recommend is get some conditions, make them do some reforms, make them give property rights to people, make them, you know, do real economic investments for people. But they just went right away. So they were funding the Palestinians, non forcing the sanctions. And then overall just projecting a lot of weakness
in the region. So one of the most embarrassing examples is what happened in the United Arab Emirates again. And amazing. Probably one of America's best allies. Over the last, you know, 20, 30 years, they fall with us in Afghanistan. They were the first Muslim country to stand up and do that after 9-11 because they didn't want it to be a war of the West against against the Muslim Muslim religions. So they joined the fight because they saw it as a fight between right and wrong.
They have rocket shot into their country from the Houthis. And they basically don't get a call from the US for 17 days. They need their equipment that they buy from the US, which creates job in the US. They need to restock. We don't call. So they've severely degraded the trust that we had to rebuild with our allies. I think they've been working now to get it back. They
after two years started working with Saudi and Israel, which I think was good. You know, I think that they realized after a stint that maybe the process that President Trump had created in the region was the right policy. And keep in mind, you know, President Trump's policy was that I was working on was very strongly criticized during the first three years before we were able to achieve the results because it was departure from the failed policies of the past. And so first there was
return to those policies of Peace Iran. Let's criticize Saudi Arabia. Then they started embracing and working on the Israel-Sadi deal, which I was was was really exciting. I think we're all very excited about it. But they did it in public. And I think that that also was something and I didn't have access to their intelligence. So I assumed that by doing it so publicly, they thought that they'd either had a deal with Iran because they were letting them get all this revenue or Iran
wouldn't be a problem. But one of the reasons with the Abraham Accords, we kept it so quiet during the whole time was because we always felt like the troublemakers in the region, particularly Iran, who we thought would would be disadvantaged by having UAE, Saudi, Israel all together. Israel's a nuclear power. You have, you know, other strong economies. Iran seeks instability. They seek
looking to create division in the region. And if you can create that economic sphere where you have security from HIFA to Moussqat, from Israel to Oman all the way through with Saudi Jordan, UAE Qatar, Egypt, that's an incredibly powerful block. If you can make it secure and then get economic integration, that really could be a Middle East that thrived. So Iran obviously wanted nothing to do with that. And that's why they've been working to disrupt. So I think the administration has,
they took an incredibly stable situation with momentum. I think they underestimated the way that Iran would approach the region to undermine. I think they gave way too much rope to Iran. And I think that they didn't seize when they had an opportunity of strength with the Palestinians to try to drive to a conclusion that I believe could have prevented us being where we are today. Not to mention that, you know, even just three weeks ago, I mean, it's a bad look
that they just, you know, basically gave $6 billion to Iran in exchange for hostages. And then Iran's basically funding these terror attacks are killing American citizens, you have in Israel, and it's just it's a heartbreaking situation. Again, totally avoidable. And one that I think has been very badly mismanaged today. If Trump was currently president, you were still working with him
on this part of the world. What actions would you take? What conversations would you have? What ideas would you be working with in order to unite the various allies that you mentioned in the Middle East over this tragedy and not let it be a thing that divides the Middle East, but make it a thing that catalyzes progress towards peace for the progress towards peace. So I want to say one thing, Lex, I have a lot of friends who are fans of Trump or not fans of
Trump. But one thing I want to say with absolute certainty is that if President Trump was in office, this never would have happened. And when President Trump was in office, anyone who supports Israel or who wants to see, you know, Jewish people not be innocently slaughtered, he would never have allowed that to happen. It did not happen when he was in power. And I hope people recognize that as something that's that's very, very true. How I would play the ball where it lies right now,
keep in mind we transferred the ball that was on the green now. It's almost like it's gone back, you know, 150 yards and it's in a sand trap. I think the way that I would play the ball right now is number one is you have to show strength. I actually think President Biden's words were the right words. I see that they're moving aircraft carriers to the region. Again, the purpose of having a strong military, I believe obviously, you know, if you get into a war, you want to win the
war, but the purpose of a very strong military primarily is to avoid a war. I don't know what kind of credibility the Biden administration has to show the strength, but right now you have to support Israel completely. You have to really let people in the region know that there'll be consequences if they if they if they try to escalate. Again, we saw a little bit of rocket skirmish from Lebanon from Hezbollah. But again, this is the type of thing that they have to know.
There'll be severe consequences if they make this a multi-party fight. And I think sending a strong message to Iran, I think that they have to see some consequences from this and know that they're not going to be allowed to have a free reign to cause instability and that, you know, Iran doesn't usually fight face to face. They usually do it through proxies. But let's just all be honest about where this is coming from and let them know that there will be a consequence if they
if they instigate these actions. And again, at least with the Biden administration, they've had contact with Iran. They've been talking with Iran. But they've allowed Iran. I mean, again, the number I saw last year, I think under Trump, the number was maybe like four or five billion dollars of oil revenue. And in total, I think last year was something like 45 billion dollars in revenue. This year, I think it'll be even more that's a combination of them driving a boil
prices, but also allowing much more sales. You would think that they would find a way to get them to behave and allow them to to have this happen. Or if that's not the case, then be tough. Go back to being tough. That's what you have to do. Building off of Abraham Accords, as you mentioned, Israel Saudi normalization. There's been a lot of promising progress towards this. What does it take to not allow this tragedy damage the progress towards Israel Saudi normalization?
I think right now it's probably not the best to think about that. I think that we want to think about that after whatever is going to happen is going to happen now. I think right now, the number one priority for Israel has to be to fully regain security in the country. And then number two is to figure out how you can, like I said, eliminate or degrade the Hamas capability or other Iranian threats to make sure that you have your security apparatus. I think that the Israeli leadership
right now should proceed with that. And I don't think that they should be thinking about normalization with Saudi at this moment. My instinct, and I've been watching this Israeli Saudi normalization play out, obviously just speaking with people and seeing what I've been reading and watching with great excitement. I think it would be a game changer for the region. I think it's
one of Iran's worst nightmare is to have Israel and Saudi interlink together. They could be great for the Saudi people from a security perspective what they're discussing with America would be a very strong the ability to get different elements across would be incredible. So what I would say with it is that the industrial logic held yesterday and I think it will hold again tomorrow. So you know, I always expect countries to act in their interests. I think that the deal that's on the
table right now between Saudi Israel and America is in Saudi's interests. It's in America's interests and it's in Israel's interests. What's going to happen now though is the political dynamics are going to shift. And I think that as we've seen with political dynamics they come and go. I think let's get through this moment. And then I hope at the right time that those talks will be able to
resume and conclude in an appropriate way. And it's funny, Lex, when I was working on the US-Mexico agreement for the trade, we would have every day there'd be a tweet that would go out or there would be an issue. I mean people forget how intense it was between America and Mexico. And I would speak to my counterpart in Mexico after a rough day and we were working on something we were making progress. It'd get blown up. And I'd speak to him and say, you know what look, they're not
moving America. They're not moving Mexico. Let's just stop for today. Let's pick up tomorrow. Let's find a new way to bring this forward. So I would just encourage everyone working on that not to give up to keep working hard at it and to find a way. But like I said, I would take a little bit of a pause for the time being. Let's let the current situation play out. And then hopefully,
there'll be a way for it to move forward. I just hope there's still people on the US side picking up the phone and calling, UAE, Saudi Arabia, just as human beings, as friends, as allies, and just keeping that channel communication going. Because maybe you can correct me, but I just
feel like there's just simple human dynamics that play out here. The divisions conform and just run away from you over simple misunderstandings over just inability to see a tragedy from the same perspective because of conversations that could have happened but didn't happen. I think there'll definitely be communication, but words on phone calls is only worth so much. It's really trust between people and power. And obviously, when you're in a position of power,
you represent your country and your country's interests. But the ability to have trusting relationships where people feel like they're okay taking more risks to help each other, that's actually what's most important. So communication, I hope for, but deepening and trusting relationships, that's what I believe makes progress and keeps people safe. And we talk quite extensively about the value of trust and negotiation and just working with leaders, which I think
is a fascinating conversation. And you've taught me a lot about that. Let me ask you about the end here. What are the various trajectories this work can take in your view? What are some of the end states, as you've said, which are desirable and are achievable? I mentioned this earlier, but whenever I would get a problem set in government, I'd always think through from a first principles perspective, what's the logical outcome, right? And forget about all the reasons why it
can't happen. That's what everyone in government's always rushed to talk about. But I do think here, number one, Israel has to have a secure environment where they don't feel threatened from Gaza. And number two, is the people in Gaza need to have an environment where they feel like they can live a better life and have opportunities. So that's the end state. And so I think that the international community should come together. I do think that the people who are usually
putting blame on Israel should now realize that maybe they've been a little bit of harsh here. And that Hamas has been as big a threat, if not even bigger threat, than Israel has been saying. And I do think that if the international community comes together and unites behind Israel and really forces Hamas and their Iranian backers to stop hostilities, to stop saber rattling, to stop misrepresenting the history in order to justify their violent behavior. And if they say instead,
we want to hold you accountable, no more money. And they all say that they're going to stand behind Israel's efforts to eliminate their national security threats. And then we will all come together and only fund again into a framework that we believe can be a long-term solution where the Palestinian people really have a chance to live a better life. That's really the best way to get there. There's tons of complicated factors. But that's the end state that the global community should be looking
to come together. And it's very achievable. It's very, very achievable. So there's a, as we're standing here today, there's a lot of different ways that this work can evolve. If a ground invasion happens by Israeli forces of Gaza, and if the number is correct, of 100,000 Israeli soldiers, do you worry about various trajectories that can take of the consequences that might have of an unprecedented ground troop attack? So I think as a leader, you know, you can't change
yesterday, but you have the ability to change tomorrow. And that's a very important fundamental. I mean, that's true for all of us, not just leaders. But, you know, we saw with 9-11 how America was caught off guard by terrorist attack. We acted somewhat rationally, somewhat emotionally, which led to a 20-year war with trillions of dollars lost, you know, I think almost a million lives lost, not just American, but all lives. And it was a total tragedy. What occurred? I think
right now, the temptation is to be strong. I think that that's, that's a necessity. I do think eliminating risk is the right objective. I think the goal should be to stay very clear about what the objective is. But also this attack was very well planned, not to walk into another trap. I think you have to be very smart, very cautious. I've been happy to see that what they've been doing in retaliation so far has been somewhat measured and they've taken their time to try to assess
what's achievable. Again, I don't have access to the intelligence and, you know, we're talking at a very early stage in this conflict. So a locket happened even by the time this is published. But but my, my hope is that they'll just stay very focused on what the objective is and try to make
sure that they're acting appropriately in order to do that. And I will say this too that this has been different than what I've seen in the past and that the the attacks were so heinous and so so disgusting that I've seen the international community rally around Israel more so than I ever have. And I hope that Israel continues to keep the moral high ground and continue to communicate what they're fighting for, why they're fighting. And I do hope that the international community
supports the objective and they can work together to achieve it. Benjamin Anyahu, BB, somebody you've gotten to know well in negotiation in conversation. He has made statements, his declared war. He has spoken about this potentially being a long and difficult war. What have you learned about the mind and Benjamin Anyahu that might be important to understand
here in this current war? BB is definitely a historic figure. And I meet with a lot of different world leaders and some of them I would say they're they're very, very special transformational figures and some I would say how the hell is this person running a country. And BB, somebody who has has done a lot for the state of Israel, he has a tremendous understanding of the security apparatus,
he has tremendous global relations. So for a crisis like this, I think BBs, the leader you want if you're Israel to be in that seat, I think he's ambitious in what he's going to look to achieve. He understands his role in history as somebody who's helped strengthen Israel economically, militarily. And I don't think he wants to see his legacy be somebody who left Israel more vulnerable than it had to be. So I think in that regard he'll be incredibly strong. But I also think that he'll
hopefully be calculating in the risk that he takes and not create more risk than is needed. And that's easy to say the two of us sitting here having a conversation when you're sitting in that chair as a leader in the fog of war. It's a very, very hard decision to make. He's been here before. He knows the weight of the situation. I'm sure he knows the moment. And I pray that he'll do
what's right here to bring the best out, impossible. I wonder if you can comment on the internal political turmoil that BB has been operating in and how that relates to the tragedy that we saw. On the one hand, the political turmoil is it's a sign of a vibrant democracy. I think it's been actually nice to see how people have fought for their country and their beliefs in a democratic way. You compare that to the Palestinians where there's no democracy. There's no
free speech. There's no free press. You know, you can't disagree with the leadership in Israel. If you want to be homosexual, you can have a go to a parade and live your life. In Gaza, they'll throw you off a building and kill you. In Israel, you have the freedoms which I think make it a special place and you have a very vibrant democracy with that being said. The times in Jewish history where the Jewish people have been most vulnerable have been when there's been
division and that's when the temple is destroyed. But that's not just with the Jewish people and with Israel. That's in all societies. I definitely believe that this division has left them less prepared for the situation than it would. I do think there's real lessons we should be taking from this here in America where in a time we're very divided, but I do think that it'd be very wise for our leaders to find the areas where we do agree and find ways to secure our southern border,
to make sure that we know who's in our country, what risks we all face. I do think that division definitely creates risk for countries. Let me switch gears here and just zoom out and look at our society and our public discourse at the moment. What do you make of the scale and nature of the Palestinian support online in response to this situation? This is something I've observed over
the years since I got involved with the Israeli-Palestinian issue with a lot of interest. I think a lot of the people who are pledging support for the Palestinian people, I think that they want to see the Palestinian people live a better life. I actually agree with them in that regard. Unfortunately,
I think many of them are incredibly ill-informed as to the facts on the ground. I think all of the people who are advocating online for the Palestinian people who are going to these marches and support of them, I think they'd be best served if they really care about effectuating the outcome of joining with Israel right now and directing their anger towards the Hamas leadership. I think that it's very clear that the group that's responsible for the Palestinian people
living the lives that all of these people are angry about is Hamas. If they direct their anger towards Hamas and put the attention on the failings of Hamas and put forth a vision for what they'd like to see leadership in Gaza do and they respect that there's a real fear that Israel has and any country would have of having a group of terrorists next to them that's calling for their
destruction. I think that that recognition of finding a way for Israel to be secure and then having an opportunity for the Palestinian people to live a better life is the right pathway to try and pursue. So to you there's a clear distinction between Hamas and the Palestinian people and that Hamas is
the enemy of progress and the flourishing of the Palestinian people. 100%. It's very, very clear and I think that if people were honest about the situation, if they spent a time to really understand it again, you know, if you follow the conference I did in Bahrain we had all the leading businessmen there and they said we can rebuild Gaza very easily. We all want to. The leading Arab businessmen,
the leading American businessmen, everyone wants to. They're just held back by Hamas and so I do think having an honest conversation about this at this point in time has really only one logical conclusion and my hope is that maybe this conflict leads to that conversation being had and if it is then maybe that brings more unity and understanding and we kind of get to a conclusion better that could improve the lives of the Palestinian people.
Pragmatic question about the future. Do you hope Donald Trump wins in 2024 and how can his administration help bring peace to the Middle East? I think when Donald Trump was president, we had a peaceful world. Everyone said if he was elected, we would have World War III. Meanwhile, he gets elected and he not only is the first president in decades to not start any wars. He's making peace deals. He's making trade deals. He's working with our allies,
getting them to pay their fair share in NATO. He's, you know, having a dialogue with China, with Russia, he's weakening Iran and so I do think that the job he did as a foreign policy president was tremendous. I think, you know, now more and more people are starting to recognize that. Again, under President Biden, this is the second war that's broken down the world and when you
have a weak American leadership, the world becomes a less safe place. And so my hope in prayers are that that that President Trump is reelected and that he's able to then restore order and calm and peace and prosperity to the world from a place of strength. That's the only way he knows how to do it. Well, it gives you hope about the future of this region of Israel and of the Middle East. The Middle East for 20 years was an area of conflict. They spent all their money on bullets
and bombs. You have young leadership now in Saudi Arabia and UAE and Qatar and there's a much more ambitious agenda now for the region to make it an economic superpower and hub of the world. Israel is one of the most burgeoning and exciting tech economies in the world. And if you think about it, it's almost like having Silicon Valley not connected to California. The thing that's held the region back for all these years has just been the conflict and the division and the lack
of connectivity. But if you have that region, if it can all come together, if you can create a security architecture, you have an incredibly young population, you have a lot of wealth and resources
and a lot of capabilities and know how. And so I think that if it's managed correctly and if Iran is able to be restrained and suppressed with their ambitions to cause destabilization, I don't mean Iran, the country, I mean the Iranian regime because actually once you have this economic sphere, if you could bring a rack into it, if you could bring a ran into it, that makes it even bigger and stronger and the Persian people are incredibly entrepreneurial
and incredibly industrious. So I do think that the region has tremendous potential. It's just been held back by bad policy, bad leadership, bad objectives. And again, when President Trump left office in 2021, the Middle East was really on a very, very positive trajectory. And if the right
things happen, it can continue to be so. So I'm praying at this moment in time that we navigate the current crisis, that the important objectives are achieved of eliminating the terrorists and their threats and then allowing the leaders who are focused on giving their citizens and their neighbors the opportunity to live a better life are able to work together and and and really dream and be ambitious and find ways to create a paradigm where humans can flourish. What is the best
way to defeat hate in the world? Hate is a very powerful force and it's much easier to hate people. You don't know. It's funny when I was working on prison reform, one of the most interesting people I met was a Reverend, actually down in Texas, who negotiated the first truce between the bloods and the crypts, two of the notorious gangs in America and prison. And I was very excited to meet him. And when I met him, I said, well, how'd you do it? And he
said, it was very simple. He says, I got all the guys together and I had a tremendous amount of barbecue brought in. He says, and I got the meeting, says no drinking, says drinking sometimes gets people a little bit more against each other. He says, but I got a meeting and they started sitting down together and they started saying, you know what, you're just like me. And all of a sudden they started finding areas where they were more together. Look, I've traveled all over the
world now. I've been very fortunate to meet people from different states in America. I've different political persuasions, different ages, different classes. And what I found is that there's a fundamental driving amongst all of us where we all want to live a better life. And you know, people don't want to fight naturally, but it's easy to fight when you feel wrong, or you feel like somebody disrespected you or somebody did something from hatred. And hatred
leads to more hatred, which sometimes just pushes that cycle further and further. So I believe that each and every one of us has the power to stop that cycle. And we don't do it by, you know, being on Twitter and yelling at people. We don't do it by just being critical. We do it by finding the people we disagree with, by listening to them, by asking questions, by sitting with them.
And then if we each take responsibility to try to make the world better, then I think that there's no limits to the incredible place that this world can be. So as you've said, you've traveled all across the world. Do you think most people are good? Most people have love in their heart. I do believe that. Yeah, and you have some bad people. I mean, you have some real evil people. I mean, a big part of the work I did was on
prison reform. And, you know, previously, the mentality was, is that the prison should basically be a warehouse for human trash. And if you've made a mistake in this world, then, you know, we're going to throw you out and we're going to make the rest of your life incredibly difficult because you're going to have a criminal record. You're not going to have access to jobs. But what I found is when I would sit with people in prison, the people I've met through my
father's experience and who I met along the way is that, you know, people make mistakes. We're all human. I think it's the right thing from a religious perspective to give people second chances. I always believe you shouldn't judge people by the worst mistake they make in their life. Unfortunately, now in the air of social media, people will say one wrong thing. It sticks with them forever. They get canceled or they get put out. Well, humans, we grow from our mistakes. We
learn from our mistakes. And I think that some people are just just evil. There are some evil people. But I do think the vast, vast, vast majority of people are good. And I do think that people sometimes also can be in a bad place and then society can push them to a worse and worse place. But we all have the power to make them feel love, make them feel heard. And I think there's also a tremendous power that we have as people to help people get to a better place. And so, you know, my wife and I,
we've always tried to be a force for good. We've always tried to be, you know, we've always tried to provide a place where people can discuss with each other when we were in Washington. We would host dinners at our house all the time or we would have Democrats and Republicans sitting together. You know, we just had a, I saw a Senator Feinstein just passed away. We had a great dinner at our house when she was a senator with her and her husband and Mark Meadows when he was on
the Freedom Caucus. And we had actually a fascinating discussion about a rant. Mark was much more hard-line than me. I had to actually bite my tongue. I was impressed at how much he did. Whereas, you know, Feinstein and her husband were like super into, you know, they knew the Iranians well. They thought they were peace-loving and it was an incredibly robust and respectful debate. And so, I don't think we maybe concluded anything that night, but it was interesting for people to get
together. Having a dinner at my house where I had a Dicturb in, you know, the number two ranking Democrat in the Senate, Lindsey Graham and Stephen Miller, who's known to be a very hard-line in immigration, discussing what an immigration reform could look like. I mean, they left that dinner saying, wow, you know, we hadn't spoken to people on the other side. And we actually agree on like 85% of things, like maybe something is possible. And so, I believe that we should always be trying
to push to make the world a better place. And you only do that by listening to people and connecting with people and by respecting people. And finally, I'll just say on this is that, you know, I meet people all the time who have so much confidence in their perspectives. And I'm very jealous that these people are able to be so confident about every single thing. Because for me, I have, you know, some degree of confidence and the things that I've studied and what I've
learned. But I'm always trying to find, you know, people who disagree to kind of sharpen my perspectives and to help me grow and to help me learn further. And so I think that's kind of the beauty of the world. Is that, you know, the knowledge base continues to grow. The facts continue to change. And what's possible tomorrow continues to become different. And so as humans, we have to continue to thrive to learn and to grow and to connect. And if we do that, everything's possible.
Well, Jared, thank you for your compassion, first of all, but also your wisdom today. And this very difficult, this tragic set of events, these difficult days for the world. It's a big honor to speak with you again. Every time I speak to you, I learned a lot about the world. And I deeply appreciate, like I said, your humility and your understanding of the details of all the complex power dynamics and human dynamics that are going on in the world. Once again, thank you for talking
today. Thank you. And Lex, if I could say just one final thing, which is that my thoughts and prayers are really with all the people in Israel and the innocence of aliens as well on the Palestinian side. And my prayers are with the idea of soldiers that they should be safe and they should be really watched by God to accomplish whatever mission will enable to make the world a safer place. Thank you for listening to this newly recorded segment of the conversation that addresses
the current situation in Israel and Gaza. And now we go on to the second part of the conversation recorded on Thursday, October 5th. Given your experience in negotiating with some of the most powerful and influential leaders in the world, what's the key to negotiating difficult agreements
in geopolitics? Let's start with a big question. If I look back on the different negotiations I had when I was in government, either with leaders of countries, with representatives of leaders, or even with members of Congress to pass legislation, the most important thing I would draw back to
would be trust. I think getting to know each other, understanding what was motivating the other party to get to the outcome and making them feel like you weren't going to use whatever information they gave you to benefit yourself at the expense of them is probably what I would call table stakes to have a shot at accomplishing anything that was hard in negotiation. After that, I would say taking maybe a first principles approach to what the outcome of whatever problem you're looking
to solve should be. Now you have different kinds of negotiations. I always tried to create a framework in the negotiation where it wasn't me against you. It was always let's agree on what the outcome is that we're trying to accomplish. Let's all sit on the same side of the table and say we want to
get to this outcome. How do we get there? Really trying to create a roadmap. And so once you understand the destination you want to get to the endpoint, then you'd have to work backwards and really try to put yourself in their shoes and try to understand what were their motivations macro. Most of the time you had to assume that a leader's primary objective was to stay in power. And so all decisions made would be made through the framework of what it would take to do that and how
it would impact their ability to do that. And then finally, I would just say that in any negotiation, you have to understand the power dynamics as well. And you have to then wait your approach in order to maneuver pieces to accomplish the objective. And so in areas where we had stronger power dynamics, I'd always look at it and say, what are the potential escape routes where a politician would say, this is just the reason why we can't get there. And I'd always think how can you try to
eliminate those escape routes or make them much harder to accomplish? And then ultimately think about what's the golden bridge that you want to create for them in order to get to the other side where they were motivated to get there because it was in their self interest to get there, but also because it helped accomplish the different objective. And I have many examples that I
lived through with that, obviously, negotiating in Congress for prison reform. I had to form a lot of trust with Democrats, whether it was Hakeem Jeffries or Dick Durbin, and then also on the Republican side with I had Mike Lee, I had Lindsey Graham, I had Tim Scott, Senator Grassley, and then also Doug Collins in the House was tremendous. And every time we maneuvered something, we would get attacked either from the left. There's a time we were being attacked by Nancy Pelosi,
John Lewis, for not being inclusive enough. And then there were times that we maneuvered it, we'd be attacked from the right from maybe going too far. And ultimately we had to find just the right place where we can get it done. And the same thing happened with USMCA where we were negotiating the biggest trade deal in the history of the world, which was $1.3 trillion in annual trade between Mexico, Canada, the United States of America. And we were able to form good trust with the other side
and try to say, how do we create win-win outcomes? And ultimately we're able to do something in a record time that people thought was very hard to do. And both of them in a divided time of the Trump administration were bipartisan wins with big, big votes in the Senate and the House. You have a lot of stories of this kind. Sometimes a soft approach, sometimes a hard approach. Like I think the story where it would be, there was a potential, like a dramatic election coming
up and you have to say no, no excuses, no delaying, we have to make the agreement. I know BB cares about Israel more than the particular dynamics of the election. Like you have to draw a hard line there. But in fairness to, for him, during the time that we were dealing with him, he was always in election versus election and then election. And what he was saying wasn't wrong. And I think he was more expressing his concerns given the dynamics. And we never held those concerns against
him. We just said those are real concerns he had. We respected those concerns. But then we helped him prioritize to help accomplish the right things. And that's ultimately what the partnership is. My job was to represent America, his job was to represent Israel and do other parties representing their own interests. And as long as you assume that people were acting mostly in good faith, you were able to navigate areas where you didn't have complete overlap of priorities and objectives.
Just to go back to the trust thing, you sometimes see that with leaders where they're kind of, it looks like they're trying to go over the other person when they're talking. And so not having that, I think is a really powerful thing for earning trust. Like people actually can believe that your results driven are and are working towards a certain end. Is there like a skill to that? Like what is that genetics? You're born with that or is that something like you develop?
So basically it requires you to look at the game of politics and not have a kind of cynicism about it to where everybody's trying to manipulate and manipulate you and actually just go in with a kind of open mind and open heart and actually speak truthfully to people, like on a basic human level. I would say that I always would think about how can I be a partner to others? Like I would want somebody to be a partner to me. And a lot of it comes from just my different experiences.
In business, I've had great partners. I've had terrible partners. My father, you know, again, a lot of my childhood was I was exposed to business. My father, you know, on Sundays, he would take us to job sites into the office with him instead of football games like my friends. You know, fathers would do. And so we were exposed to business. And what he would say about his
father, who was an immigrant to America, came over with nothing and no formal education. But he would always say a good deal with a bad partner will always be a bad deal and a bad deal with a good partner. You'll figure it out. And so going through some of the challenges and that I had in my life early on, whether it was the issue with with my father that we'll, I'm sure we'll talk about, or even going through some, you know, tougher financial times during the great financial crisis.
I really learned a lot about partnership. And I always thought, how can I act in a way where I could be the type of partner or friend to others that I wish others would be to me? So when you look for a good partner, don't you think there's the capacity for both good and bad in every person? So when you talk, when you negotiate with all these leaders, aren't there like multiple people you're speaking to inside one person that you're trying to encourage,
catalyze like the goodness in the human? Yeah. So so a lead leaders are generally chosen by their country. And so my view was, if I had an objective, I didn't get to choose who was the leader of other countries. My job was to deal with that leader, understand their strengths, understand their weaknesses, understand their power dynamics as well. You know, one of my greatest takeaways when I grew up, I'd read the newspapers about all these powerful, famous people. And then as I got older and had
the chance to meet them and do business with them. And then ultimately, you know, interact with them and government as I realized that they're just like you and me. They wake up every morning, you know, their kids are pissed at them. Their wife doesn't want to talk with them, you know, and they've got, you know, a set of advisors around them. One saying, you know, let's go to war, one saying, let's make peace, one saying, do the deal, one saying, don't do the deal. And they're
all thinking, where do I get advice? How do I make decisions? And so understanding the true human nature of them and then the different power dynamics around them, I thought was very key. And so I didn't have a choice to ideal with them or not. It was a function of how do you deal with them effectively in order to find areas where you have common interests and then work well together to pursue those common interests in order to achieve a certain goal. You, uh, first of all,
you're incredibly well read. I've gotten to know you and I've gotten to know of Avaqa and the book recommendation list is just incredible. So first of all, thank you for that. You told me about the guns of August by Barbara Tuckman. It's a, it's a book on World War One and I won down a whole rabbit hole there because I can incredible historian. But anyway, there's a bunch of stuff you'll learn from that. But one of the things you told me is it influenced your general approach to
diplomacy of just picking up the phone and giving it a try. So as opposed to planning and strategizing, just pick up the phone. So this was a book I read, uh, way before the notion of
serving in government, uh, was ever even on my mind or, or reality. And I remember thinking about it reading it and thinking how World War One started where you had, uh, you know, somebody was assassinated and then you had all these different alliances that were created and then in order to accomplish objectives, it triggered all of these, uh, people getting in bed with everyone else because of documents that were created without the intent of going to a massive war.
And I think in the course of World War One, it was one of the greatest, uh, atrocities that we've seen as humanity. We've had 16 million people killed in that war. And I was, I was reading the book. I remember thinking myself, even though, you know, things are set in a certain way, go sit with somebody, go talk to them and say, this doesn't make sense. This is wrong. How do we create a better pathway? And as a civilian, all my life, you know, I would read the newspapers. I would,
I would, I would, you know, observe how different leaders would act. But when we had the opportunity to serve and government and have the position, you realize you're not a civilian. You don't have the luxury of sitting back and letting the world happen the way it's happening. You have agency and you have, uh, the potential to influence the outcome of things. And one thing I've seen is, you know, most political prognosticators are wrong. Anyone who tells you what's going to happen
really has no clue. And it's not because they're bad or they're not intelligent. It's because nobody knows. And at the end of the day, the outcomes in the world are usually driven by the decisions of, of humans. And if you're able to come together, form relationships, listen to each other, you can do that. And one of the great examples that I speak about in the book is with North Korea.
Whereas if you remember in 2017, it was very intense. When President Obama was leaving office, he told President Trump that the single biggest fear that he had, and this is a time when the world was a mess, you had the Middle East was on fire. ISIS was the heading journalists and killing Christians. They had to caliphate the size of Ohio. Libya was to stabilize. Yemen was to stabilize. Syria was in a civil war. We're 500,000 people were killed. Iran was on a quiet path
to a nuclear weapon. Yet the single biggest fear he had was North Korea. And then it got compounded by the fact that we get into office and President Trump brings his generals around and he's learning how to interact with all the generals and says, okay, what are my options? And they said, come down. We've been using all of our ammunition in the Middle East. We don't have enough ammunition to go to war over there. And he says, let's not let that be too public. Let's try to restock and come
up with a plan. And at the time, there was a lot of banter back and forth. And I was able to, I got a call from a friend who was an old business contact who actually had done business in North Korea. And he said, you know, I'd love to find a way to solve this. And I was getting calls from friends at the time saying, I'm trying to go to Hawaii for vacation. Should I not be going? Is it not safe? I mean, we forget, we forget this psychology of how intense that was at the time.
And then through that interaction, he called some of his contacts in North Korea. And then we were able with the CIA to open up a back channel that ultimately led to the deescalation, the meeting between Trump and King Djong-Gud, which led to a deescalation. So that was really the mindset, which was whenever there's a problem, just pick up the phone and try. And I think President Trump had a very similar approach, which was, let's give it a shot. And he wasn't afraid to go
after the hard ones too. And I'll say one final thing on this, which is that in politics, the incentive structure is just much different than in the real world, right? And the sense that you have a hard problem, then if you try to solve a hard problem, the likelihood of failure is great, whereas in the business world, if you're going after a hard problem, we celebrate those people, right? We want our entrepreneurs and our great people to go after solving the big hard problems.
But in politics, if you try to take on a hard problem, you have a high likelihood of failure. You'll get a lot of criticism on your pathway to trying to accomplish that if you fail. And then if you fail, it has a higher probability of leading to you losing your opportunity to serve. And so it's just one of these things where people want to play it safe, which is not the notion that that that really was taken during the time that President Trump was in office.
Do you think it has to be that way? I think there's something in the human spirit, like in the public that desires politicians to take on the big bold problems, right? Like, why is it the politician needs to be so afraid of failure? I don't think it has to be that way. And that's, I think, one of the great lessons from the time of the Trump administration. He brought a lot of people from the business world into government. The business people have a much different mindset than government people.
And there was a lot of resistance. And I think part of why there was so much resistance was because, you know, I think about it, for my personal sense, was that if I was successful with no traditional qualifications to do diplomacy, it meant that all the people with traditional qualifications and diplomacy didn't necessarily need those qualifications in order to be successful. And that same that same sentiment manifested itself in many areas in government. And I think that in the
business world, it's outcome oriented, it's results oriented. And, you know, what we would see in New York is there they would stab you in the eye and DC, they would stab you in the back. And it just became a whole different dynamic of how you work through these different areas. So the
answer is it doesn't have to be that way. You just need the right courageous leader. And that's why I'm so optimistic about what the future of America and the world could be if you have the right people in power who are willing to take on the right challenges and do it in the right way. So if we just linger on the North Korea and the de-escalation and the meeting, what's the trajectory from this could be the most catastrophic thing that destroys the world to
you find back channels, you start talking and start arranging the meeting. Like, is there some insights you can give to how difficult that is to do in that in the North Korea case, which seems like to be one of the more closed off parts of the world and in the other cases that you worked on. Yeah, it's always very challenging. And especially when you're going against the grain of what's established, right? We did something different to think that an old business contact that I had
could then do it. I mean, that's the type of thing that, you know, if the press knew what we were doing, they would have, you know, derided it and criticized it in every which way. But that was one of the benefits of operating very much below the radar is that we were able to trial these different things and not all of them worked, but some of them did. And, you know, but that is what's amazing about the world, right? This could be the biggest story on the front page of every paper
and they're inciting fear and everyone. And it's not illegitimate fear. I mean, there were missile tests, you know, over over Japan. I mean, you had a lot of very champ big challenges with that file. And then all of a sudden, we make contact. We go through negotiations to set a meeting. There's a meeting between President Trump and Kim Jong-un. And then all of a sudden, there's there's a framework to try and move things forward. And again, I think that there's a lot of possibility
there for what could happen if it's worked in the right way. I just want to know like how you were that first email or text message like what emojis to use like the hugging emoji. I think it's just personally, I've gotten to know a lot of powerful and rich people and just it's funny that they're all human just like you're saying. And like a lot of the drama, a lot of the problems can be resolved with just like a little camaraderie, a little kindness, a little like just actually
just reaching out. We're all human beings. And people want to be successful and people want to be good. And you're right too. There's way more emojis involved in diplomacy than I ever would have expected. And every leader, I'm sure, has their favorite emoji. This is also I learned about people they use like they there's the everybody has their go-to emoji. Like as you go to the heart very quickly, the emoji, there's some people who go the hugging, whatever that what you're like doing
the hugging thing. Anyway, this conversation quickly turned to the ridiculous, but to do another book reference, you mentioned the book 13 days in September by Lawrence Wright while in discussing all the work you've done in Israel and the Middle East. I just want to ask you sort of the interesting aspect of that book, which is the influence of the personalities and personal relationships on
these negotiations. You kind of started to allude to that with the trust, but how much to the personalities matter in this to go from North Korea to the Middle East here to within Congress and all that kind of stuff. Completely in every way. I mean, that's an incredible book. And it's a very entertaining read. It has obviously a lot of good historical context on some of the key players, whether it's on more sedat or minachem bacon or Jimmy Carter and and Syvance and a lot of the
others who were involved with those negotiations. And the thing that I kind of took from that experience was just how personal it was. And again, one of my favorite stories from that book was how on Marsadad, who was a big, big leader, he had a mystic who was according to this book. Again, history, I like reading it, but I always realized that you have to notice that this is just the
perspective of a given author that's writing it. But the way that they write this book was that he had an advisor who was a mystic and the mystic was having a back channel with the Israelis. And the mystic told Sydat, if you go to Israel and you make a speech at the Kineset, bacon is ready to give you the Sinai. And so he goes to Israel, they set this whole thing up, he goes and gives the Kineset, they go for their meeting after and Sydat says, okay, well, we're going to
do this thing. And Bagan says, what are you talking about? I'm not giving you an inch of our land. And it was just one of these things where it was a miscommunication that brought about the symbolic visit of Anwar Sadat to Israel. And that was one of these notions that just made everyone think that something was possible, that they thought was impossible a moment before. Actually, we had an
example like that during our time in government. When we did the Abraham Accords, the first step of the Accords was really a phone call between President Trump, Prime Minister Netanyahu and Mohammed Benzayah, who at that point was the Crown Prince and the Factor ruler of the UAE. But all we had was a phone call and then a statement that was released. And what was interesting after that is we said, okay, well, how do we integrate countries? Nobody's done this in a long time.
And we were trying to figure out all the issues. And there's big miscommunications between Israel and UAE. And we were navigating through all the issues. And so after a couple weeks, I said, you know, I've got to go over there and try to sort through these issues. So we make a plan to
go to Israel and then we go to UAE. And then a young gentleman who worked with me named Bavvy Berkowitz says, well, for flying from Israel to UAE, instead of flying on a government plane, why don't we see if we can get an LL plane and we'll do the first official commercial flight. And so I said, that's a great idea. Let's call, you know, Ambassador Al-Tayba Yusuf, who was a tremendous player in the Abraham Accords working behind the scenes, you know, day and night.
And was really a big catalyst. So he calls Yusuf and he said, sure, no problem. Let's give it a shot. So we go and we do it. He says, if we can work at these issues, what will do it? So we go to Israel, we do our meetings, we get everything back into a good place. We set up this trip over. We fly on an LL plane. We fill it up at the time. It was during COVID with a health delegation. We had the financial ministry because we had to open up, you know, banking relationships. They could
wire money between countries. We want to get, you know, health partnerships. Then we just had a lot of legal things and national security things. We want to start putting together. So we do this flight. And we end up landing in UAE. And the picture of us coming off the plane being greeted by, you know, Emirates and Tobes with an LL plane with an Israeli flag on it just captured everyone's imagination. And so it was one of these things where it's like, you work so hard on the details
and the negotiation. I mean, hundreds of hours to kind of make sure everything's perfect. Then the one thing that you do kind of, you know, yeah, let's give it a shot. That image ended up capturing everyone's heart. So going back to Sadad, that visit was very critical. And what was interesting was is according to this book, it happened because of a miscommunication. That was the first part.
The second part of the book, that's just amazing theater. And actually the book was based on a play was just going back and forth with all of the different methodologies that they tried that failed. But they kept trying out it. And then ultimately seeing how the personalities were able to find ways to make the compromise that ultimately was a very, very big thing for more stability in the
Middle East. And so amazing book. I would highly recommend it. A very entertaining read and something that at least gave me encouragement to keep going when the task I was pursuing seemed so so so large. I mean, if you could just linger on the personalities, you write in the book that words matter or you write in the context of saying in the diplomacy business words matter. And
then you said that we're in the results business is a badass line. But if we just stick to the diplomacy business and words mattering, it seems like one of the things you really highlight that individual words can really have like you can fight over individual words. So like how do you operate in a world where like single words matter? I think you have to be respectful to the craft
that you're in where words matter, but then realize that they don't matter as much. And then also focus on the fact that you know, the actions are actually what's going to matter more than the words. And so you have a difference between leaders and politicians, you know, politicians are there to say the right thing and to hold the power. Leaders are people who are willing to do things that will be transformational from my perspective. And so when I would think about diplomacy,
words without actions or without the threat of actions. And that was something that President Trump did very well was that people knew that he was willing to take action. He was very unpredictable and how he would act. And that made our words much more effective in what they did. So it's all a combination. But you know, coming from the private sector, we are all about results, right? If you're in government, you can work on something for 10 years and fail and then retire and they consider
you an expert in the private sector. If you work on something for 10 weeks and you don't have a success and you're unemployed, you know, so it's a different kind of notion. And it was just understanding the mentality and trying to adjust and bridging the divides between the different trainings. Is that the biggest thing you took from your business background? Is that just be really
a result focused? It was just the only way to be. I mean, if I was giving up a nice life into your work and if I was giving up the stuff that I really enjoyed, the company that I'd helped build and the life that I was enjoying in order to do government, I was going there to make a difference. And we had to focus on it. The other skill sets, so there was a couple skill sets that I found were quite deficient in government. First of all, there was a ton of amazing people. I mean,
people talk about the bureaucracy. What I found was is you had incredibly committed, passionate, intelligent, capable people all throughout the government. And what they were waiting for though was direction and then cover in order to get there. And so there were a lot of tasks that I worked on, whether it was building the wall of the Southern border where I was able to work with a customs border patrol, Army Corps of Engineers, military, DHS professionals, DOD. We basically
all came together. And then once we had a good project management plan, we were able to kind of move very, very quickly. I think we built about 470 miles of border barrier in about two years, basically. And that worked very well because we basically brought private sector project management skill sets, which were quite often missing in government. The second one is just, we spoke about negotiation
earlier. I would say that most people in government, it's just a different form of negotiation than you see in the private sector and way less effective in that regard, which is why I think it's good the more we can encourage more people with private sector experience to do a stint in government and
to really try to contribute and serve their country. That's how our founders, George Washington and all the founding fathers, they were working on their farms, they left their farms, serving government and they went back to the farm. And that was kind of the design of the representative government. It wasn't a career political class. It was people coming in to show gratitude for the freedoms and the liberties that they enjoyed and then do their best to kind of help others have those same
opportunities that they had and then they'd go back and live their lives. So I think that there's a lot of opportunity with our government of people with more business mindsets who are going to think about things from a solutions perspective go and serve. Is that one of the main problems here? So you also mentioned the book The Great Degeneration by Neil Ferguson. An awesome historian has been on this podcast. It helped you understand the inefficiencies of government regulation.
I'd love it if you can give an insight into why government is so inefficient at times. Like when it is inefficient, when it doesn't work, why is that the case? The bureaucracy that you spoke to, the negative aspects of the bureaucracy. So we don't have enough time on this podcast to go into it. But it's, look, there's a lot of aspects that work as well. But I do think we've gotten too
big. You know, Neil's book that you mentioned, one of the things that I took from that, I read it I think in 2012, right, kind of in the middle of the great financial crisis was he was talking about how government regulation often was put in place to deal with old crises, right? So it was never going to solve future problems. It was more to kind of create, to solve for problems that had
happened in the past. And I remember thinking about that. One thing I was very proud of the work of the Trump administration was that you had four years consecutively where there was a net decrease in the cost of regulations. So to give you a context in the last year of Obama in 2016, there were six million man hours spent by the private sector, complying with new federal regulations. And that's not really what the intent of our government was, right? If we have rules or regulations,
those should be legislated by Congress. They shouldn't be put in by, you know, by bureaucrats who are basically saying, I want to follow the subjective. So using kind of the power of the pen in order to do that. So the deregulatory effort was actually very critical to Trump's economic success that happened at the beginning of the administration. And then what I saw with regulation was any time either there was legislation or regulation coming. The people pushing forward were usually the people
who would benefit from the regulatory captures. So you had these, you know, you look at, you know, the great financial crisis where you had this big banking reforms. Well, what happened during the big banking reforms? Then you had a big reduction in the amount of banks that occurred and the big banks became even bigger. Whereas I don't think that was the intention of the legislation, but the people who were writing the legislation and influencing it had a lot of the constituencies from
those larger institutions. And then what happened as a result of that, a lot of these smaller institutions didn't have the ability to be as competitive. They had more restrictions, more costs. They became less profitable. But these were the banks that were serving small business, which is the biggest creator of jobs in our country. And then as a result, the bigger banks got more powerful. And what happened in the country as a result of the regulations that they put in place, the wealth
gap in the country grew. It didn't shrink. And so I think often times what they say these regulations are intended to be, the result often becomes the opposite. And so, you know, what what President Trump did in his administration was they did a massive deregulatory effort. And I think they pledged that for every one regulation they put on, because you do need some regulation in an economy and in a society, they would take off to. And in the first year, they eliminated eight regulations
for everyone. And so, so that was just something I took from it, which, which was, I thought, very interesting. And you had to really, I think you have to think through what are the consequences going to be of the different actions you take. And often government gets it wrong by taking an action that feels right, but has big negative consequences down the road. Let's go to some difficult topics. You've wrote in the book by your experience with some very
low points in government. You've been attacked quite a bit. One of the ones that stands out is the accusations of collusion with Russia. And you tell in the book, in general, this whole story, this whole journey on the personal level on a sort of big political level. Can you tell me some aspects of this story? Sure. So to give the listeners some context. And people remember this now, it's been kind of swept away because it turned out not to be true was that after President Trump
won the election in 2016, instead of the media saying, we were wrong. Because again, everyone thought he had zero chance of winning. They said, okay, well, we couldn't have been wrong. It must have been the Russians who worked with him. And so at first, when this started coming up, I thought this was ridiculous. I mean, I was very intimately involved with the operations of the campaign. I was running the finance of the campaign. I was running the digital media of the campaign. I was
running the schedule for the campaign. And I knew that on most days, we had trouble like, you know, working, coordinating with ourselves, you know, let alone, you know, collaborating with another government and colluding as they called it. And so we did a great job, I think, as an underdog campaign, very leanly staffed. And then they said that, you know, we were working with the Russians. And so at the time, I didn't take it too seriously because I knew there was no truth
to it. But it was amazing to me to start seeing all of these institutions, whether it was CNN, the Washington Post, New York Times, these were news organizations that I grew up having a lot of respect for taking these accusations so seriously. And then working themselves up in order to, in order to just cover it for two years. And then as a result, you had a special counsel, you had
a house investigation, a Senate investigation. And I personally spent about, I think, over 20 hours just, you know, testifying before these different committees again spent millions of dollars of out of my own pocket on my legal fees to make sure I was well represented. And the reason I did that was because I saw on to Washington, it was like a sick game, right? It's almost like, you know, even though there was no underlying problems to the accusation, I felt like this is one of those
things where they're going to try to catch you. And then if you step on the line, they catch you with one misrepresentation, they're going to try to put you in jail or worst of, you know, bid bid bid bid bid bid. And so for me, that was a big concern. So, and it was amazing. Me, my, my poor mom, I told her to stop, you know, reading whatever I said, my I promise you, we didn't do anything wrong. It's good. But, you know, she'd call me and say, well, you know, our friends were,
you know, on the upper side, we're talking with Chuck Schumer. He says, Jared's going to jail. You know, we know for sure that he colluded with the Russians. And this is like a leading senator saying things like this. And so it was just interesting for me to see how the whole world could believe something and be talking about it that I knew with 1000% certainty was just not true. And so seeing that play out was very, very hard. Obviously, you know, I was accused of a lot of things. There were
times in Washington. I was radioactive. I remember one weekend, you know, it was all over CNN, you know, the people, the panels on CNN, like the news organization that I grew up thinking was like the number one trusted name for news in the world, talking about how I'd committed treason, because I met with an ambassador and said, we'd like to hear your perspective on what you think the policy should be in Syria, where there was a big civil war happening and ISIS and a lot of different
things. So it was quite a crazy time in that regard. But luckily, again, we were able to fight through it. It was a major distraction for administration. And I think we were able to kind of stay focused on the objectives and the policies. But it was a crazy time. And I learned a lot from that experience. It's crazy. How just an accusation can be viral and can just go. One of the things that worries me is the effect in your mind, the psychology of it, to make sure it doesn't make
you cynical. Like people that are trying to do stuff, those kinds of stories that can destroy their mind. So one of the things I'd love to sort of understand, you kind of rolled in from the business work. And also the entire world from CNN to everybody's accusing you of cleaning with Russians. Like what do you, like when you're sitting at home, how do you keep a calm mind? A clear mind, a optimistic one that doesn't become cynical and actually just keep trying to push on and do
stuff in the world. So it was a surreal experience. I would say number one is I felt very confident that I hadn't done anything wrong. So I'd always tell my lawyer, like, you know, the good news is I've got a good fact problem, right? Like I need a good lawyer to get me through it, but it's much easier to be a good lawyer if you have a very innocent client. And so, you know, the fact that I knew that I didn't have, I didn't believe that I had any legal liability helped me kind of intellectually
separate the challenge I need to do to fight through it from it. And then I just basically said, like, and I'd had hardship earlier in my life where I dealt with the situation with my father. And what I realized there is that you can't really spend energy on the things that you don't control. All you can do is spend your time and energy worrying about what you can control. And then how do you react to the things that you have there? And so it took a lot of discipline. It took a lot
of strength. And again, I give my wife, Ivanka, and even Donald, a lot of credit for, you know, for kind of having my back during that time and, and, and, you know, encouraging me just to kind of fight through it. And then I also had to make sure that I didn't allow that to distract me from my job. I felt like I had an amazing opportunity in the White House to make a difference in the world. And if I would have spent all my time playing defense, you know, in politics, it's a time duration
game. In business, you have whatever duration you set for yourself. In politics, it's time duration. We had four years. Every day with sand through an hourglass, my mindset was, I need to accomplish as much as I can in these four years. And I guess the traditional game that's played in Washington is whether it's the media, the opposition, their job is to distract you and then try to stop you from being as successful as you want to be. And so just thought through it. And it wasn't always
fun, but we got through and, and thank God it's, it's something people don't talk about. And it has been amazing to me, just the lack of self-awareness and, and reflection of a lot of the people who hyped this up for, for two years. They don't think there was anything wrong with it. And, and that's interesting. But, you know, my view is we got through it. It's good. So it's in the past. And then I
started moving to the future. And that's really where I spent my time. Yeah. But I want to linger on it because to me, that has a really discouraging effect on anyone who's trying to do positive in the world. Like these kinds of attacks are intense. Yeah. I mean, you say kind of one of the lessons you learned is that you really have to be perfect. But I hate that to be the lesson. Like, I feel like you should be able to do stupid stuff, take big risks. And like people celebrate
the big risks and not try to weave gigantic stories over, over nothing. They just want to kind of understand the two aspects of this. How to not have such stories of so much legs. And the other is how to stay psychologically strong. So you kind of wave it off that you didn't have a fact problem. But it can just have a effect on your psyche. Yeah. You seem to be pretty stoic about the whole thing. But like how, I mean, just on the psychology side, how did you stay calm and
not become cynical where you can continue to do stuff and take big risks? I didn't have a choice. What do you mean? I mean, I could have spent every day feeling sorry for myself for complaining or saying things aren't fair. But the general way I looked at it was that in life, every opportunity as a cost. And you know, you could look at it and say, maybe this was a massive cost either in
dollars or in time or in reputation or in or in or in emotional drain. But you could also say that, you know, I had an opportunity to work in the White House and I had an opportunity to work on some of the hardest challenges. And you talk about how that's not celebrated. That is something very different in the private sector when you take on big challenges that is celebrated in government. When you take on big challenges, people want to see it fail or they want to criticize those
people who are trying to take that on. And I think that's wrong. And I think that, you know, as a country, we should be thinking big, we should be dreaming big and we should be encouraging our politicians to trying to fail more and to, you know, to go and to take on big things knowing that there's risk of failing. I want them to succeed not to fail, but let's take on the big things. Let's try to do that. So I think it's just very basic that, you know, you're in a situation. I've
made decisions. I can't go back and change decisions in the past. I still felt, you know, very blessed to be in the position I was in. And I knew that I just had to work through it. And like I said, I was very lucky to have, you know, support from my wife and from my family and from good friends. Again, I think I'd chosen very good friends in life and my friends were with me. I had one friend who, you know, my lowest moment, you know, got on the plane. You lived in Arizona,
got on a plane and came just to have dinner with me to say, just just pick your head up. I know you're down now. You're going to be fine. Just just fight through. That meant a lot to me. And again, I always think in my life, you know, you don't learn as much from your successes. You don't learn as much from your high points. You learn the most about who you want to be and how the world works from your lowest moments. And at those lowest moments, it just, it made me better. And it
taught me how to be a better friend to people who are in tough situations. And I tried to just get tougher and I tried to just get better and work through it. Yeah, you said that you and Ivanka, this, this, this, this intense time brought you to together and helped you kind of deal with the intensity of the chaos of it all. So I think it was just number one knowing that you had a partner and knowing that you had somebody who loved you and believed in you. I think that was
definitely by far the biggest of anything. And love is the answer. Love is very important. But then there's also a lot that I've learned from her always, you're getting me to read different books or learn different things which I love. But she's also, I think, an amazing role model. And I go through our time in Washington where there were so many people who were, I thought, very nasty to her unfoundedly. And I'm not talking about individually because again, you know,
most people interacted with her were super kind. But I would see people you know on Twitter or different places go after and she always stayed elegant. And I felt like that was something that she never stooped down to a lower level. She kept her elegance the whole time. And she really went to Washington wanting to be a force of good. And I see all the time that she she follows her heart. She does what's right. And she has a very strong moral compass. And I
feel very lucky to have her as a partner and I respect her tremendously. Yeah, she walks to the fire with grace, I would say. And she's recommended a bunch of amazing books to me. And she has an incredible, fascinating mind. So, but one thing that jumped out to me is you both love diners. Jersey diners. So I lived in Philly for a while. And I've, you know, I traveled quite a bit and traveling from Boston to Philly, maybe to DC. You can drive through Jersey. It's something about
Jersey. I don't know what it is. Listen to Bruce Springsteen. There's a Lucy Kay is this bit where I think it's part of criticizing cell phones today where people are too much on their phone. They don't just sit there be bored. But he uses that story to tell where he's just driving and Bruce Springsteen's song comes on. And he just wants to pull over to the side of the road and just like weep for an unexplainable reason. And I think that's true because life is difficult. Life is full
of suffering or struggle or challenges. Sometimes it's always Bruce Springsteen. But some kind of song like this can really make you reflect on life that melancholic feeling. But that melancholic feeling is the other side of the happiness coin where if you just allow yourself to feel that pain, you can also feel the highest joys as the sort of the point Lucy Kay makes. And there's something about Jersey with the diners often late at night. There's several diner experiences I should say.
Okay. There's like the family friendly. There's a nice waitress and this is sweetness. It's like a whole sweet heart. That kind of thing. There's also like the 3am diner where you're like the ones that are open 24 hours. That has a romantic element when you're a young man or young woman. You're like traveling the loneliness of that. All of it. The American diner is like from like Jack Harrowack on represents something. I'm not sure what that is, but it's like a real beautiful
experience and the food itself too. Always fresh. Yeah. The thing with diners, there's so much to love about it. But I grew up obviously in New Jersey when I'd go with my father to business. He'd always stop when he'd had a diner late night. I'd become back with my friends. We'd stop at a diner. It's a tradition that Ivanka and I love doing as well. I think there's a notion of it's very egalitarian in that people from all places are there. You could order basically whatever
you want. I mean, the menus at the diners look like the phone book. It's amazing how they keep so much fresh ingredients to do it. At least the good ones do. I'd love as a Jersey guy that you get mozzarella sticks and an omelet at any hour of the day because most of them are open 24 hours. Basically, by Ivanka, I go to, we'll throw in a milkshake or two as well. But for me as a kid, my father would take me. Sometimes I'd sit with him in the meeting. Sometimes I'd be at the table.
Next to him, he'd give me a bunch of quarters to put in the music machine that they would have on the wall. It was always just a great experience doing it in Jersey. I joke that if you grow up in Jersey, you grow up with just enough chip on your shoulder, you have to go and make something of yourself in life. It's a special place. I had an amazing childhood there and very, very proud to be from the state. I will just give a little bit of a plug now because the state has now actually
turned the corner and they had a $10 billion budget surplus for many years. It was a state that was basically bankrupt and now actually under a pretty progressive Democrat governor, Phil Murphy, he's turned the state around and it's actually has a very bright future ahead. It's probably one of the best places to raise a family in the country. It's got very low crime, one of the best public school systems in the country, pretty good healthcare system. A lot of green parks,
people know the term pike, but it's got a lot to it. That's really great. So I'm a big, big fan of Jersey. Like, this is the first for this particular podcast, you literally give a plug to a state. So New Jersey everybody. It's where it's at. The salt Jersey is not Jersey. I mean, there's all kinds of Jersey's too. I mean, the whole thing is just I and don't get me start on the Jersey Shore likes that. Sure. That's the whole thing. And I'm not talking about the snucky part.
I'm talking about the real nice parts where there's great food, great people, nice parts. It's all beautiful. The full range of human characters that are in New Jersey are all beautiful. I agree with that. And every time I try to across the world, there's always a mean somebody from New Jersey and you kind of give a nod of a deep understanding. It's the cradle of civilization. In many ways. Okay. So back. I don't know how we got there. Oh, all right. Going back to the
the low points, you mentioned your father if you could just return there. Even just the personal story of your father of that you write about that or the betrayal that happened in his life and then how he responds to that betrayal. And he was after that arrested. Can you just tell the story? Sure. So my father is an amazing person. And we grew up in New Jersey. My father was a big developer, great entrepreneur built an amazing business. He got into a dispute with two of his siblings.
And through that dispute, they basically took off the documents in his company, went to the US attorney's office and turned into from a civil dispute into a real public dispute. My father did something wrong in that process. And when he got arrested for that, he basically said, you know, what I did was wrong. And he took his medicine and he did it like a man. And he said, I'm going to go to prison and he did that for a year. And so for me, that was a very challenging time in the
family. Obviously, you know, it was a shock. It was a total change. I mean, I grew up. My childhood was, I think a very nice childhood. You know, my parents always said, you know, do good in school or card. You know, it was very very focused on my athletics. I was captain of the basketball team, captain of the hockey team, you know, ran a marathon on my father. And it was always about pursuing went to Harvard, graduated with honors. And that was in NYU, pursuing a law degree and a business
degree. And I was working at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office at the time actually thinking I wanted to go into public service. Because my father always taught us. We were always surrounded by politicians. And he always said, you know, my parents came to America. They lived in the land of opportunity. And they had these opportunities because this is the progress country in the world. And so you should, you know, be successful work hard. Don't ever let your opportunities become
your disadvantages because you have advantages in life. You have to work harder. And that's what he instilled in myself and my brother and you always pushed us to make the most of ourselves. And when we did that, you know, everything changed overnight. When my father got arrested, obviously it's very embarrassing for a family. When you're on the front page of the papers, I would see the newspapers writing all these things about my father that I didn't think were representative
of the person that I knew. It was a big change for our family. And you know, I was angry. I was angry. I said, I can be angry at the prosecutor. I could be angry at my father's brother. I could be angry at my father's lawyers. I could be angry at my father for making this mistake. And then I kind of said, that's not going to change anything. And I had a real shift. And I do think that that was a turning point in my life where I basically said, let me focus on the things I can control. Let me
focus on the positive things I can do. And from that moment forward, I said, how can I be a great son to my father? How could I be a great older brother slash substitute father for my two sisters, my younger brother? How could I be there for my mother? How could I be there for my father's business? And I just went into battle mode. And I put my arm around and I just ran into it. And for the next two years, it was every day it was painful. I mean, I was dealing with banks.
I was dealing with the company who's still at subpoenas. I was still in law school. I tell my father I want to drop out of law school and business school, but he said, please don't. So I would basically go to law school one day a week or maybe I'd skip it most days and I go to his office every day. And my friends would joke that if my professors wanted to fail me, the law professor would have to give me a test that had four pictures and say, circle who your professor is, you know,
but I would basically take a week off. I'd read the books and I did well and I got my degrees. And it was just a very, very challenging time. But like I said to you before, is that you learn the most about life and you learn the most about humanity and yourself when you're in your most challenging periods. And I'll say that, you know, that experience also changed, you know, the people I interacted with spending weekends with my father down in a prison in Alabama. I met
the other inmates. I met their families. I spent time then trying to advise the children of other people who were going through the same experience that I'd gone through on how to navigate it, you know, correctly. And you just learned a lot about the world and you see that, you know, in life, everything could get taken from you, your status, your money, your friends. I saw that certain people were very disloyal to my father at the time who he thought were friends. It was only
a handful, but again, I learned from those people, how can I be a true friend to people? How can I be better? And I learned a tremendous amount through that experience. You write that your father told you about being humble. I love to ask you about this. That in life, sometimes you get so powerful that we start to think where the dealers are going to fake. Where not the dealers, God is the dealer. Sometimes we have to be brought back down to earth to get perspective. I want
it's really important. What do you think he meant by that? What did you learn from that experience? The way I interpreted at the time, and those were very, very memorable words, and it occurred. I was down after I picked up my father from the rainman. I drove him down. I drove the car, and my father and I are very, very close. He didn't say a word for the whole time. I think he was processing number one, what was happening to him. I couldn't even imagine, but I actually think
the bigger pain for him because my father is such a committed person to the family. It's like, did I let my family down? Did I let my kids down? I do think he felt that that moment like his life was over. He couldn't really see past what this challenge was going to bring. If there would be a life for him after it. I could see that he had a lot of fear. He really wasn't saying much. Then I didn't know what to do. I just stood by him and stood close. Later that day or the next day,
he got him walking. He had an ankle monitor for whatever reason the prosecutor was such a so-aggressive, he was a flight risk. They made him wear an ankle monitor. They were very, very aggressive and nasty. At the time, my father was the biggest donor to Democrats. The prosecutor was a Republican. It was a very political thing. What happened was he was walking around the pool. I just started walking with him. He said to me, Jared and life, sometimes we get so powerful that
we believe that we're the dealer. He says, but we're not the dealer. God's the dealer. We have to come down to earth to understand, like you said. What I took from that was that my father, with all of his success, had started to believe that maybe certain rules didn't apply to him. I think that that's where he made a mistake. I think he had a lot of regret that he made the
mistake. My father is a very humble person. He's a very moral person. For me, with my humility, my brother and I joke that we give our credit for being humble, number one, to being Mets fans. Because every year, you have a lot of promise and it never ends up paying off, although now is Steve Cohen, hopefully, run a different trajectory. But the other thing is also our mother. Our mother really raised us to be very humble, to be... We knew we had a lot,
but every Sunday morning, my mom was there clipping the coupons. The surreal weight in our house was based on what was on sale versus what we liked. When we would have a problem with our teachers in school and I'd say, well, teachers and like me, she'd say, well, I'm not calling them. It's your job to make the teacher like you. My mother gave us a lot of that. My father gave us a lot of the grounding. I think during that time, my father was just realizing that maybe he had got
and disconnected from the grounding and the values. Again, I think he also accepted maybe he could have blamed others for acting inappropriately, but I respect the fact that he took responsibility himself and said, I can't control the actions of other people. I can't control what they do is right and wrong. I can just control my actions. As I go on the next journeys in my life and I go
to government, I go to Washington. I even think through the craziness of going from visiting my father in a prison to 10 years later, sitting in the office in the White House next to the president of the United States. I think about that story and that it's a story that only God could
write. I really believe that you have to have a lot of faith because the lows and the highs are both so extreme and unbelievable that I feel like those low moments in some ways allowed me to keep my grounding and to understand what was truly important in life for when I ended up going through those other moments. Your father was betrayed perhaps over money by siblings. Is there some deeper wisdom you can draw from that? Have you seen money or perhaps power cloud people's judgment?
100% 100% is there some kind of optimistic thing you can take from that about human nature of how to escape that clouding of judgment when you're talking about leaders, when you're talking about government, even business. As you mentioned, there's a power dynamics that play always when you're negotiating. Is there a way to see the common humanity and not see the sort of will to power in
the whole thing? Definitely. You mentioned about power, money corrupting. There's a great quote I heard a friend of mine say is a guy, Michael Harris, who was one of the founders of death row records. He was being interviewed recently and they asked him about what happened with shook night. His line was money just makes you more of what you already are, which I thought was a very elegant way
of saying it. I would see this time again in the White House where you had people who were now given a lot of responsibility and power and it went to their head and they acted very crazily. Maybe it didn't act in a way that I thought was always conducive to the objective. I think it's a very big problem that you have, whether it's something that's solvable, I think it's about having the right leaders and hopefully for the leaders having good friends. I'm still friends with a lot
of the people I interacted with when I was in government. The number one thing I try to be to to them is just a good friend. I try to be somebody who they can talk about things with. I don't go in trying to tell them what to do on different things or know or I think that that's a big thing. Is that people just need friends and they need conversation. If they have that, then hopefully that allows them to keep their head in the right place. I think this is a good place to ask
about one aspect of the fascinating work you've done which is on prison reform. Can you take me through your journey of helping the bipartisan bill get past just working on prison reform in the White House in general? How you made that happen? How you help make that happen? Sure. We passed a law called the First Step Act which was the largest prison and criminal justice reform bill that's been done maybe in 30, 40, 50 years in the US. What it basically did
was two things. Number one is it took the prison system and it took a certain class of offenders and allowed them to become eligible for earlier release if they go through the certain trainings that will allow them to have a lower probability of going back. Stepping back, you look at the prison system and you say, what's the purpose? Is it to punish? Is it to warehouse? Is it to
rehabilitate? I do think that we're a country that believes in second chances. I saw first hand when my father was a client of the system, how inefficient it was and how much better it could be. My father got out. We didn't run from that experience. He started hiring people from Rikers Island and different prisons into the company into a second chance program which we're
very proud of doing. What we saw through our micro experience was that if you give people mentorship, if you've given job training, a lot of people leave, they have addiction issues and they can't find housing. People leave prison with a criminal record and they're less likely to go back and
reintegrate in society without help from different institutions that can help them do that. We modeled the reforms of what they did in Texas and Georgia and other states where they basically put a lot of job training, alcohol and addiction treatment programs in the prisons as a way to incentivize the prisoners to work on themselves while they're there in order to allow them to
reenter society. It's turned out to be very successful so far. They just had a report that showed that the general population has had a 47% recidivism rate, meaning that people who leave federal prison half of them go back and people who have now taken this program only 12% of them go back. So number one, you're making communities safer because if people are going to now get a job in their society instead of committing future crimes, you're avoiding future crimes. And number two,
you're giving people a second chance at life. That was the first part of it. The second thing we did was there was a rule passed in the 90s that basically penalized a crack cocaine at 100 times the penalty of what regular cocaine was. And I think a lot of the motivations what people say in retrospect was that crack was more of a black drug and cocaine was more of a white drug. And so there was a really racial disparity in terms of what the application of these sentences were. So
they then revised that to make it 18 to 1. And what we did in this bill is we allowed it to go retroactive to allow people who were in prison with sentences under the what we thought was the racist law to be able to make an application to a judge in order to be dismissed and it was based on good behavior. You know, being rehabilitated and the fact that they would have a low probability of offending in the future. And so that was really the meat of it. And there was a
couple of other things in there. We did as well, which were also quite good. So we did it worked very closely with the Democrats, Republicans to do it. At first, President Trump was a little bit skeptical of it because he's a big strong law and order supporter, but he made me work very hard to put together a coalition of Republicans and Democrats and law enforcement. We had the support from the the the the the policemen. We had the support from the ACLU. And ultimately we were
able to get it together. And it was an amazing thing. We ended up getting 87 votes in the Senate. You know, this was happened for me at a time. It was while the Russia investigation stuff was still happening. A new chief of staff came in John Kelly. He basically marginalized me and the operations. So I had kind of less day-to-day responsibilities in the White House. And so for me, this effort became one of my full-time efforts along with negotiating the Mexico trade deal and along with
the Middle East efforts. And the reason why that was great was because it didn't have a lot of support from the Republican caucus originally. And people thought there was no way it would happen. So I really was able to be the chief executive, the middle executive, the low executive, the intern. And through that process, I really got an education on how Congress works on how to pass legislation.
I was negotiating text. I was negotiating back and forth. And I built a lot of trust, again, I would deal with whether it's a chem Jeffries or Cedric Richmond that we built a lot of trust. We'd speak three times a day. These guys had my back. The ACLU, again, I never thought they were suing our administration every day or every other day on something. But for whatever reason, we built trust and we were able to work together. And then also with the real conservative groups.
Because there was a lot, a big part of the conservative base that felt like we should be giving people a second chance. And in addition to that, this will keep our country safer. And it will reduce the cost of what we spend on prisons. And so it was a great effort. And I was very, very proud that we're able to get it done. The president Trump, how'd you convince their Republicans? So they were skeptical at first. I was talking about like just phone conversations,
going on to lunch, just the back to the emojis or what? Hand-to-hand combat meetings. You know, like the cool thing about this is so everyone always says they always get frustrated. And I hear a lawmaker say, oh, the Senate's not what it used to be. You're a congresses in what it used to be. Things are broken today. I don't think that's true. I think, you know, going through the process, I think that our founders were totally genius in the way that they
designed our system of government. And what I saw is you just have to work it. So everyone knows the power of their vote. Some would give it to me easily. Some wouldn't give it to me easily. Some would trade it for other things. Some would withhold it because they were pissed about other things. And it was just hand-to-hand combat. So it was just making calls, using the phone, going walk in the halls, going to lunches, hosting dinners at my house. It was just,
it was a non-stop lobbying effort. And by the way, it was also adjudicating issues and making people feel like they were heard, hearing their issues, and then trying to find solutions that you don't put something in that then tips off where you lose a whole coalition. So it was really a balancing act. But it was an amazing thing. And I was very close to that with Van Jones and Jessica Jackson, who also gave me a lot of help on the left. And it was an amazing thing. It had a great team too.
So you mentioned the importance of trust at the very beginning of the conversation. From the outside of perspective, just maybe a dark question, which is like how much trust is there in Washington? How much did the flip side of that? How much backstabbing is there? Can you form like long-term relationships with people on a basic human level, where you know you're not going to be betrayed, scoot over, manipulated for again,
going back to the old money and power? The answer is yes, and the answer is no. So I made some incredible friends, lifelong friends through my time in Washington. But the way I think about it from politics, and I think in geopolitics as well, is I would say that politicians really don't have friends. Politicians have interests. And as long as you kind of follow that rule, you should be able to know how to rate where your relationship with a given person falls in the spectrum. But I do
think I was the exception. I did make some tremendous friends. And again, I'd go back to what I said about negotiation, where when you're in a situation where there's really nothing in it for any of you personally, but you're in a fox hole together and nobody in Washington could get anything done by themselves. You have people coming from all different backgrounds, all different experiences, all different geographies coming together, agreeing on an objective, creating a plan, and then
every day rowing together in order to get it done, it's a beautiful thing. And you really learn what people are about. And so when you go through an experience like that, you learn who's in it
for themselves, you learn who's in it for the cause. And you know, for every, you know, thing you read about in the press of a fight I had with somebody because we were at odds, you know, I've about you know, a hundred people who have become lifelong friends because I respect the way that when we were under fire together, they got better, they were competent, and they were there to serve for the right reason. And so, so I guess the answer is yes, it is, it is possible. You have to be careful
because there are a lot of mercurial people there. I always say the politicians are like gladiators. I didn't have as much respect for politicians to like out there, but if you think about it, everyone who's got a congressional seat or a Senate seat, there's 25 people back at home who
want their job. We think they're smarter than them who are trying to backstab them. And so, I always say that the political dynamic, it's like in the private sector, you're standing on on flat ground, you choose which fights you take on when you take them on, how you fight them, in politics, it's like you're standing on a ball. And what you have to realize is that there's maybe like 10 things that you have to do, but there's a potential cost to taking on each one that
might destabilize you. You fall off the ball, and then you can lose your opportunity to pursue those. You have to always be kind of marking everything to market and going through your calculations to make sure you can accomplish what you want to without falling off the ball and losing your opportunity to make a difference. I guess people like power. And I just feel like to be a good politician, you should be willing, like good meaning good for humanity, be willing to let go of power.
Try to do the right thing. If there's somebody back home that doesn't manipulate if self-screws you over and takes power from you, it's okay. I feel like that kind of humility is required to be a great leader. And I feel like that's actually a good way to have long-term power because karma has a viral aspect to it, just doing good by others. I feel like is, I'd like to say that's true, Lacks. I think it's just way more complicated. I mean,
you look what happened this week with Kevin McCarthy. He did what he thought was morally right. He thought he did a bipartisan deal. He was told that they would have his back and then the moment things got tough, they cut him loose. So again, I don't know if that's if that was the right thing or the wrong thing. I've also seen leaders on the other end say, I'm going to do things that are short-term or selfish. But the way they justify to themselves is to say, I believe that myself
staying in power is existential to the greater good. So I will do things that maybe are not in the greater good now because I believe that my maintaining power is. And so it's complicated. In an idealized world, I'd love to believe that's the case, but it's just way more complicated than that. Yeah. I wish it wasn't, but it is. Yeah. Many, I do just wish people zoomed out, when people in politics zoomed out a bit and just asked themselves, what are we all doing this for?
You know, like sometimes you can get a little bit lost in the game of it. If you zoom out, you realize like integrity is way more important than like little gains in money or a little gains in power in the long term. Because when you look yourself in the mirror at the end of the day, and also how history remembers you, I just feel like people do some dark stuff when they're like in that moment when they're losing power and they try to hold on to it all too hard. This is when,
this is when they can do really dark things, like bring out the worst in themselves. And it's just sad to see it. I wish there was a kind of machinery of government would inspire people to be their best selves in their last days versus the worst selves. When that system gets invented, you'll share with me what it is. But it's, look, let me give you another way to frame it, which is, and this was kind of the revelation we spoke before about when I was getting my butt kicked by the
Russian investigation and all the different areas. But the basic framework I looked at was I said, okay, this all feels tough, but I said, the game's the game. The game's been here way longer, but way before I came, and it'll be here way long after I leave. And so I have two choices. I can complain that the game's tough. It's not fair. It's not moral. I can go and I can try to play
the game as hard as possible. And I think that there's two different things. You have people who are willing to kind of sit in the stands and they're willing to yell at the players or make their their their points known, or you have people who are willing to suit up and get in the arena and go play.
And I have a lot of respect for the people who who suit up and go play. And again, some of them, you know, I wish they would play for different means, but the fact that they're willing to put their name on the ballot, make the sacrifice and go put on the fads and get hit and hit others, I think that you need those people. And I wish more people who had maybe the moral wiring that you discussed would be putting on a helmet and going to play because it's hard. It's hard.
I agree with you. I just would love to fix the aspect of the the Russia collusion accusation, the virality, the power of that because that's a really discouraging thing for people. Maybe it's the way it has to be, but it seems like a disincentive to people to participate. It is. But I'll give you again, an optimistic side of it is that, you know, what you're seeing now with social media is I do think with what's happening at X, there is now more of a reversion
towards more egalitarian, right? And egalitarianism of information. And so for many years, the media publications were the gateholders, they were the gatekeepers. And then you had the social media companies that grew, they became so powerful, but then they were tilting the scales. Why they were doing it, you know, we can go through long explanations for that. But if there truly is a real forum and democratization of information, then you would think that the marketplace of ideas would surface
the real ones and discredit the not real ones. And I think that as a society, we're starting to kind of come to grips with the fact that the power dynamic is changing and that some of these institutions that we used to have a lot of faith and don't deserve our faith and some of them, you know, will actually reform and maybe re-earn our faith. So I think that there could be an optimistic tone. Again, the years of Trump, I think that, you know, he was an outsider and, you know, he
represented something that was existential for the system, right? You think about for the 30 years before you were either part of, you know, the Clinton dynasty or the Bush dynasty. I think a lot of people in the country felt like that whole class, whether you wearing a red shirt or a blusher, wasn't representing them. And Trump represented a true outsider to that system. And I do think that as he went in there, there was a lot of norms that were broken to try to stop him from
changing the traditional power structure. So I think that we're at a time where maybe there will be an optimistic breakthrough where you'll have institutions that will allow for a lot more transparency into what truth really is. I'd love to go back and talk to you about the Middle East because there's so many interesting components to this. Let's talk about Saudi Arabia. And first, let me ask you about MBS, Mohammed Basama, the conference. So you've gotten to know
him pretty well. He'd become friends with him. What's he like as a human being? Just at a basic human level. What's he like? So for the listeners, Mohammed Ben Salman is now the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. He has risen to that position over the last couple of years. And he's been a tremendous reformer for the country. He's gone in and he's really modernized the economy. He's put a lot more investment into the country. He's marginalized the religious police. And he's
really done a good job to bring modernization a lot of reform. So he's been a great reformer. What he's like as a person is he's very high energy. He's got tremendous candle power. Very, very smart, incredibly well-read when he was younger. His father would give him a book a week and make him report on it on the weekend. He was trained as a leader and as a politician, really by his father. He's not Western educated. So he grew up in the Saudi culture and he's a real
Saudi nationalist. He loves their history, loves their heritage. He has a deep understanding of the tribal nature of the region. And his father was actually known to be a tremendous politician. So when he was governor of Riyadh, people who I speak to today about him say that if they had a full election, he would have won in a landslide. Every time somebody went to the hospital, he was the first person to call. Anytime there was a funeral, he was the first person to show up.
He's a very, very beloved leader. Mahon Ben Salman, he was a businessman before he got into Crown Prince. So he thinks really with a business mindset about how he runs the country. And he's brought, I think, a different mindset and energy to the Middle East. You know, one thing I'll say that maybe that comes to mind here is that I remember early on talking with him about all the different initiatives he was taking on. He's building a big city
called Neum in the desert in a place where there really was nothing on the Red Sea. And a lot of people were criticizing the ambition of the plan. And I was sitting with him one night and I said, why are you taking on all these things? You've got a lot of different programs. But what most politicians do is they set lower expectations. And then they exceed the expectations. And he looked at me without hesitation. He says, Jared, the way I look at it is that in five years from now,
if I set five goals and I achieve five goals, I'll achieve five things. If I set 100 goals and I fail at 50 of them, then five years I'll accomplish 50 things. And so it's a very different mindset as a leader. The way I got to work with him was Saudi Arabia was a big topic in the campaign. President Trump was basically saying during the campaign that, you know, we're going to, you know, they've got to pay for their fair share. They haven't been a great partner in the region.
He's very critical of Saudi. And then during the transition, I was asked by several friends to meet with a representative of Saudi Arabia. I don't want to meet with them, you know, but I came over and I met and they said, well, we want to make changes. And I said, well, you have to make changes, you know, to how you treat women. Then women couldn't drive the guardianship laws. So you got to start working with Israel. You know, you have to be paying more if you're fair share
and you have to be, you know, stopping the willopism that that's being spread. And again, I know knowledge. These were just kind of the traditional talking points about Saudi Arabia. So the guy I always with basically said, as a guy, Fatal Tunzi was a very respected minister there. He says, Jared, he says, you know, you don't know much about Saudi Arabia. Do you? I said, no, no, I don't. Just really what I really what I have kind of been told or what I read. And he says, okay, let me
let me do this. We want to be great allies with America. We've traditionally been great allies with America. Can I come back to you with a proposal on ways that we can make progress on all of the different areas where we have joint interests and keep in mind at that point in time. The Middle East was a mess and probably the single biggest issue we had after ISIS was the ideological battle. If you remember in 2016, there was the Pulse Nightclub shooting in Orlando. You had the San
Bernadillo shooting and people were being radicalized online with the extremism. And then there was a lot of crimes that were being that were happening because of that. And it was a big topic in the campaign. And so that when I was thinking about, you know, talking different generals and what capabilities the US had to really combat the extremism and the ideological battle. What we realized was that Saudi Arabia is the custodian of the two holiest sites in Islam, the Mecca Medina,
that that would be the best partner to work with if they were willing to. But for years, they really hadn't been willing to kind of lean into this fight. So I said, sure, give a proposal. So they come back, give a proposal. And they said, look, if you make President Trump's first trip to Saudi Arabia, we will do all these different things. We'll increase our military spending and cooperation. We'll counter all the terror financing. Unbelievable layer. So I took the
proposal. I went to the National, then it was General Flynn. I said, if Saudi Arabia did these things, would this be considered a big, unbelievable, but it will never happen. I said, well, they're telling me they want to do these things. Get I having no foreign policy experience. I'm just saying I've got somebody telling me they want to do it. And that's kind of where we started. Again, to office, I don't think much more about it. And then I think it was like a baby a month
than President Trump has a call with King Salman. And before the call, we're in the Oval Office. And the President's basically saying, well, you know, this is what we want to go through. And I have a Secretary Mattis and Secretary Tillerson, the Minister of Defense and the Secretary of State, basically saying, you have to deal with MBN. MBN is the guy who's been our partner for
all these years. He's the head of intelligence and he's been a great partner. I said, well, he's been a great partner than why do we have all these problems that you guys are complaining about with Saudi? I said, I've been told that we have this proposal from MBS, who's the Deputy Crown Prince. And that's who we should be dealing with on this. And so the phone call starts. And President Trump listened to both of us. And on the phone call with King Salman,
President Trump says, okay, we'll go through all these things. These are the things we want to get done. And he says, well, who should we deal with? And King Salman says, deal with my son, the Deputy Crown Prince, MBS. And so President Trump's on the phone haven't deal with Jared. Because I think he knew that if he put him with the other guys, they were not believers in what he had the ability to do. And that's how I got assigned to work with him. I get back to my office
after that. Have an email from him, spoke to him for the first time. And then we just went to work. And you know, a lot of people were betting against that trip. They thought it wasn't going to be successful. And they've been betting against him. And he's been underestimated, but he's been doing an incredible job. And the whole Middle East is different today because of the work that he's
done. Maybe it's instructive to go through the mental journey that you went on from like the talking points, the basic narratives, the very basic talking points, understanding of Saudi Arabia, to make in that human connection with MBS and making the positive connection. That's actually possible to solve problems. Like, what was that journey like? Why was it so difficult to take for others? And why were you effective in being able to take that journey yourself?
Maybe some of it came from my inexperience, but my desire to listen and hear people. So, you know, I had this proposal. I was told that all of these things were good. Then we're trying to schedule this trip. And the National Security Council calls a meeting where we're in the situation room. And we have, you know, Homeland Security, Secretary of Defense, Secretary of State. And everyone's saying, this is going to be a disaster. They said, you know, if we go to Saudi
Arabia, the Saudis never keep their promises. And our Secretary of State at the time was a gentleman named Rex Tillerson, who'd been the CEO of Exxon. So, he dealt with all these people very extensively. And he basically said in my experience, the Saudis won't come through and Jared, you don't know what you're doing. You're wasting your time. And I basically was at a point where I said, look guys, but they're saying they want to do all these things. Shouldn't we at least give him a chance
to try to do it? Like, why do we want to predetermine their direction by not giving them a chance to change? Just because things in the past haven't gotten the way you want them to, that doesn't mean they can't go that way in the future. So we fought the battle. They basically deferred and let me go through with it. But when I do the planning meetings for the trip, nobody would show up because they all thought it was going to be an absolute disaster. And by the way,
they probably weren't wrong to think that because I'd never planned a foreign trip before. And I'd never done any foreign policy before. So during the planning, I'd speak to MBS almost every day. And I'd go through all the different details and the things that would be coming up. And I said, look, I really need to get these things in writing. He sent over a guy, Dr. Masato Iban, who's a tremendous diplomat for them. And he came to Washington, stayed for three weeks. And we
worked through all the different details of what we needed. And we ended up coming to an arrangement on what it should be. So, you know, I think about now in retrospect why I was so focused on getting things like this done and why I even believed that they could be possible. But the answer is really the people I was talking to on the other end were telling me that these things were
possible. And so just because they hadn't been done before. And just because others around me didn't believe that they could be done, I wasn't willing to just say, well, let's not try. It just seems like that cynicism that takes over is paralyzing. And you suddenly have a great essay from a from Paul Graham, from a big fan of, I think explains a lot of your success. The essay is called How to Do Great Work. And people should go definitely read the full
essay. There's a few things I could read from it. Some quotes, having new ideas is a strange game because it usually consists of seeing things that were right under your nose. Once you've seen a new idea, it tends to seem obvious. Why did no one think of this before? Seeing something obvious sounds easy and yet empirically having new ideas is hard. And like the steps you took seem trivial. And yet nobody was taking them or at least in the past, they weren't successful. So the successes
you've had were as simple as essentially picking up the phone or trying. There's a lot of interesting things here to talk about this aspect of doing this seemingly simple that seems to be so hard to do. It, as Paul describes, requires a willingness to break rules. There are two ways to be comfortable breaking rules. To enjoy breaking them and to be indifferent to them. That's an interesting distinction. I call these two cases being aggressively and passively independent minded. So again,
that's to enjoy breaking the rules or to be indifferent to the rules. The aggressively independent minded are the naughty ones. Rules don't merely fail to stop them. Breaking rules gives them additional energy for this sort of person delight at the share of a dacity of a project sometimes supplies enough activation energy to get it started. The other way to break the rules is not to care about them at all or perhaps even to know they exist. This is why novices and outsiders
often make new discoveries. They're ignorance of a field. Ignorance may be in quotes. A field of assumptions act as a source of temporary passive independent mindedness. Aspes also seem to have a kind of community to conventional beliefs. Several I know say that this helps them to have new ideas. So the aggressive and the passive is such an interesting way of looking at it.
Perhaps some aspect of this, at least in the story you told us some passive aspect where you're like not even acknowledging, not even caring that there was rules just kind of asking the simple question and taking the simple action. I think that was an essay I read and we're doing just a snippet of it. But I would encourage anyone listening to go and find it and read the entire thing because it's something that really spoke to me as I was transitioning into my new career now.
I just loved it. But when we were talking about why certain people who don't have traditional qualifications are able to come in and do incredible work and solve complex problems, it made me think of that essay, which is why I shared it. I think that in the context of the work that I was doing here, perhaps not having the historical context became an advantage and obviously went back
and then tried to study it. But if you go into a problem, I always find that especially in the political realm, my favorite political issues are ones where they're contrarian by being obvious. Sometimes they feel very intuitive and so you take them on. There's always a lot of resistance when you go against something that's been accepted as the way that you're supposed to do things.
And I came to learn over the course of my time and government that when everyone was agreeing with what I was doing, then it actually made me more nervous because I felt like you have these problems. They haven't been solved for a long time. And then if you take the same approach as others, you're going to fail just like they did. So taking a different approach doesn't mean you're going to succeed, but at least if you fail, you're going to fail in an original way. And so I did like
this a lot. And I think that what I saw was the people who were very good at getting things done that hadn't been done before were people who came with different qualifications, different perspectives. And they came in and really worked the problem in untraditional ways. And so I think in the Middle East, I came in with a very different approach than people before me, not because I came in deliberately trying to do it differently, but because I came in trying to listen and understand
from people why the problem hadn't been solved and then think from a first principles perspective on what's the right perspective today, not based on what happened 50 years ago or not based on what somebody's feelings who were hurt, but what's the right thing to make people's lives better, to make the world a safer and more prosperous place tomorrow. So if we can go back to MPS for a little bit, from the person to the vision, there's something called vision 2030 about his vision
for Saudi Arabia in the future. Can you maybe look from his perspective, what is his vision for the region? Sure. So, you know, it's funny, we were talking before about how we wish leaders would set big audacious goals and take on big things. Well, that's what he did with vision 2030. You know, when he was young, and again, this is something that was derided and a lot of people were very skeptical of it, but the people actually picked it up and read it, said this is a very thoughtful
plan that's very achievable. So he studied his country and said, what's our place in the world? What are our advantages? What are our disadvantages? And then he set publicly, KPIs that he wanted to hold his country to and then put in place plans and committees and really worked hard to push things in that direction, which was pretty remarkable. I think that it's something when I saw it, I thought it was very refreshing. I said, wait, in America, why don't we
have, you know, set goals? Why don't we have KPIs? And I do think that it's something that most countries, if not all countries, should have. Right? One of my favorite quotes was from the Allison Wonderland, where the the Cheshire cat says, if you don't know where you're going, it doesn't matter which path you take. And so I think that that's something that really helped set them on a good path. And they've been very successful with it.
One of the things he told me about putting that together was he said, you know, my father's generation, they created this country from almost nothing. They came here, they were a poor country, they were a Bedouins in the desert. And then they look back and see what they've done over 50 years, and they say, it's absolutely remarkable. He said, his generation, they come in and they say, we're very grateful for everything that's been done today. But we have so much opportunity
that we're not taking advantage of. And so, you know, he's now empowered the next generation to be ambitious and think big and grow with it. What that means for his vision for the Middle East is that, you know, the general architecture that should exist and now there's excitement in the discussions with Israel that have advanced was the general view of what we thought from a Trump perspective should be the new Middle East is having an economic and security corridor
all the way from Hypham to Muscat from Oman to Israel. Where basically you go through, and if you can create a security area where people can live, you know, free of fear of terrorism and of conflict, the Middle East for the last 20 years has been a sinkhole for for for for arms for death for terrorism. It's been, you know, awful. It's been a big national security threat for America, a big place where our, you know, our treasure is gone. We've had a lot of our our young amazing American
soldiers killed in action there. And the same thing for the Arab countries as well. So if we can create a security architecture for that region and then we can create economic integration between all the different countries. I mean, the amount of innovation happening in Israel is unbelievable. Think of it like Silicon Valley is not connected to the rest of California. Give a very young population, a very digital savvy population. You have a lot of resources. And so if you can get
that whole set, the potential for it is unbelievable. I do think that that's his ultimate vision is to become a really strong country economically and then to become a place where you could be funding advancements in science, advancements in humanity, advancements in artificial intelligence, and think about ways to be a positive influence in the world. So a difficult question, one big source of tension in the United States and Saudi is the case
of Jamal Kishoggi. I was wondering if you can comment on what MBS has said about it to you. You spoken to him about it and what MBS has said about it publicly on 60 minutes and after. Yeah. So what he said to me was was no different than what he ultimately said on 60 minutes, which was, you know, as somebody helping lead this country, I bear responsibility. And I'm going to make sure that those who were involved are brought to justice. And I'm going to make sure that we put in
place reforms to make sure things like this don't happen again. It was a horrible situation that occurred. What I saw from him after that was just a doubling and a tripling down on the positive things he was doing, figuring out ways to kind of continue to modernize society, build opportunity in the kingdom, and continue to be a better ally to all the different countries
that wanted to be aligned with them. One thing I learned from this case is how one particular situation, a tragedy, can destroy so much progress and the possibility of progress and the possibility of connection between the bridges that are built between different nations. And how narratives around that can take off and take such a long time to repair.
And you've worked with this in the Middle East with Israel and so on how the history, the narrative, the stories, they kind of have this momentum that's so hard to break. Even when you have new leaders, new blood, new new ideas that come in. And it's just sad to see
that yes, this tragedy happens, but it doesn't mean that you can't make progress. I don't know if you have kind of lessons from that, just how much of a dramatic impact it had on creating tension between the United States and Saudi and in general in the Middle East, like them, that somehow Saudi is not a friend, but is against the ideals and the values of the United States.
So it definitely created massive tension and it became a very high profile action that actually overshadowed a lot of the good work that was being done in the region and a lot of the progress we were making. But when you think about this or you think about the other issues that we've gone through today, I think the general framework that I always try to approach things with is you can't change what happened yesterday, you can only learn from it, and then you
can change how you deal with tomorrow. And when I think about the people in power, what do I hope that they're spending their time focused on? Number two basic things. Number one is how do I create safety and security for my people and for the world? And then how do I give people the opportunity to live a better life? And so when things like this happen, obviously, there are
certain reactions that are appropriate. But ultimately, you have to think through how do you not allow the paradigm that you're creating in the world to lead to worse outcomes, then would happen otherwise. And so when I would think about foreign policy in general, one of the differences between foreign policy and business is that in business, the conclusion of a problem said, you finish a deal, you either have a company or a property or if you sell it, you have less to do and more capital,
hopefully, if it's successful. In a political deal, it's always about paradigms. So the end of a problem set is always the beginning of a new paradigm. And you're always thinking through how do you create an environment that leads to hopefully the best amount of positive outcomes that could occur versus creating a paradigm that will lead to negative outcomes. So bad things happen, a lot in the world. And you have to make sure that when those happen, people are held accountable
for it. But you also don't want to make sure that in the process of making sure that there's accountability for these actions, you don't set a lot of progress that the world is making back that will lead to worse off situation for many more people. If we can go back to the incredible work with Abraham Accords in Israel and the Middle East, first a big question about peace.
Why is it so difficult to achieve peace in this part of the world between Israel and Palestine and between Israel and the other countries in the Middle East or any sort of peace-like agreements? If I had to give you the most simple answer, I would say that it's structural. And if you go back to the incentive structure of different leaders, this whole peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. And again, I've gotten criticized for saying this, but it's what I believe, so I'm
going to say it, is that the incentive structure was all wrong. And when I went before the United Nations Security Council to discuss the peace plan that I proposed, which again was more of an operational plan and it was a pragmatic plan. It was over 180 pages in detail and politics, people don't like putting forward detail because it just gives a lot of places for you to get
criticized on. Nobody actually criticized the detail of my plan. They just criticized the fact that it was coming from us and didn't want to debate the merits of the operational pieces of it. So I created a slide where I showed from the Oslo Accords till the day I was there, all the different peace discussions I put a dove in the slide for those. And then I put a tank for every time there was a war because there was always skirmishes between Hamas and
and Esbalad and the Palestinians. And then I showed two lines and they both went from the bottom of the page all the way up like this. One of the lines was Israeli settlements. So every time a negotiation failed, Israel was able to get more land. And then the other one was money to the Palestinians. And I said, every time a negotiation failed, the Palestinians would get more money. The problem with that money though was that it wasn't going to the people. You know, a lot of some
of it would make its way down, but most of it was going to the politicians. You had leadership of the Palestinians who were basically, I think that point was in like the 16th year of a four-year term. So it wasn't democratically elected. And a lot of what I tried to show was that there was no rule of law. There was no judicial system. There were no property rights. And there was no opportunity or hope for the people to live a better life. And so all of the on-voys to date were
basically trained to go and do the same things. And again, I got massively criticized by all the previous on-voys for not doing it the same way they did. But I thought the problem structurally just didn't make sense. And so I felt like the incentive structure was all wrong. And I took a different approach. And so what's what's the different approach? I started writing down a document.
These are the 11 issues, but there's really only three issues that matter. I said, just tell me what you think the compromise is that you think the other side could live with that you would accept. And it was very hard to get them talking about this. Oh, you have to go back to 1972. You have to go back to 1982. You have to go back to 2001. You have to go to campus. And I was just like, I don't need a headache and I don't need a history lesson. Just I want a very simple thing here today in
2017. What's the outcome that you would accept? And I was dealing with their their their negotiators, their back channel secret negotiators, their double secret. And I was just like, this whole thing is like it's a process created where nobody wants to talk about the actual solution. So coming from the business world, I said, okay, let me just write down a proposed solution that I think is fair. And let me have each side react. Like don't tell me about
theoretical things. Like tell me I want to move the line from here to here. I want to change this word. So I tried to make it much more tactical. And what I realized was like the Palestinians, they'd worked so hard to get the air world to stay with the line of the air piece initiative. And so I went back and I read the air piece initiative. It was 10 lines and it didn't have any detail. So it was a concept. And so they liked that concept because it allowed them to reject
everything. They kept getting more money. I mean, BB Netanyahu who runs one of the most incredible economies in the world who runs an incredible superpower militarily for the size of their country, he would fly to Washington to meet us and he'd be taking a commercial LL plane. Abbas who runs a refugee organization, a refugee group, right, that claims that they don't have a state that gets billions of dollars in eight years, eight every year from the global community,
would fly into $60 million Boeing BBJ. So the whole thing was just very corrupt and off. And I do think that that's why it, I don't think people were incentivized to solve it, to be honest. What do you think an actual plan on that part, if you can just before we talk about Abraham Accords, if there is a peace plan that works between Israel and Palestine, what do you
think it looks like? You have to separate it into two different issues. And I think that that's actually how we came to the Abraham Accords is that, you know, I was I tell the story in the book and it was one of my like favorite experiences during my time in diplomacy where I went to meet with Sultan Kaboos who was the Sultan of Omaha. And we fly out there because he'd had a secret meeting with BB. And I thought maybe he was open to normalizing with Israel. So after he meets with
BB, he calls me and says, I want you to come see me. So I go over to see him. And again, I tell the story. It was a crazy, you know, night and all these different areas. But when I was talking to him, he basically says to me, I feel badly for the Palestinian people that they carry with them the burden of the Muslim world. And that line just like stuck with me. And a couple days later, I was thinking about it. And I said, wait a minute, who elected the Palestinian people to represent the Muslim
world on the Al-Aksim mosque? And so the reason why I felt like it had never been solved was it was a riddle. A that I believed was designed to not be solved. But B, you were conflating two separate issues. You had the issue between Israel and the Muslim world, which really was the issue of the Al-Aksim mosque. And then you had just a territorial dispute, which throughout history, you have lots of territorial disputes. And they usually resolved in different ways. So if you go back to the Israeli
Palestinian issue, there's just a couple components you need to solve. Number one is territorial contiguity. You need to figure out where do you draw the lines? And that's something that you can talk about what people were owed 70 years ago. But it's much more productive to say this is what you can make work today. And that's kind of what we did. We literally spent months and months drawing a map. And we put something out, probably changed a couple lines here and there. But by and large,
it was a very pragmatic solution that I think could work. And I think it could work for the safety and security of Israel, which was number one. So first issue was drawing a map. Second issue was security. Again, Israel, and again, this is one issue we were incredibly sympathetic with Israel, which is you can expect, you know, a prime minister of Israel to make a deal where he's going to make his people less secure than before. So we worked very close to them on a security apparatus. We laid
something out that I think would keep the whole area safer. And it would make sure Israel was safe and also keep the Palestinian issue safe. So you need security. Number three was the religious sites. And that was one that was actually always made much more complicated by people, the Al-Aqsa mosque, because you basically have Haram al-Sharif, which is the place where the mosque was built in the seventh or eighth century. But originally it was where the the Holy of Holies were and the
beta-migdash for the Jewish people. So and then, you know, compounding by the fact that you have all the Christian holy sites in Jerusalem, it's a city that should be bringing everyone together. But in fact, it's become a place where you have, you know, wars and hatred and a lot of different conflicts that have risen because of it. But what I said was instead of fighting over concepts of sovereignty, which is interesting how I got to the notion that this wasn't really the big issue,
I basically just operationally, why don't we just make it simple? Let everyone come and be able to worship as long as they're being able to worship peacefully. So that's really the contours of it. And what the Palestinians have done is they've kind of deflected from a lot of their own short comings and a lot of the Arab leaders did that as well, kind of in the pre-Abraham Accord days,
by kind of allowing this issue to be so prevalent. So one thing I'll say on the Palestinians is that, you know, what we tried to do by laying out a plan was we said, okay, what are the reasons why the Palestinian people are not having the lives that they deserve? I'll give you a couple things. One is, I studied the economies of, you know, Jordan, West Bank, Gaza, Egypt, Morocco. This was, you know, numbers from like 2019. But what was interesting was the GDP per capita of somebody living in the
West Bank was actually the same as Jordan. And it was actually more than somebody living in Egypt. And the debt to GDP that the Palestinians had was like 30, 40 percent compared to Egypt, which was at like 130 percent. And Jordan, which was at 110 percent, then Lebanon was just at 200 percent.
And so, you know, you're in a situation where a lot of this stuff didn't make sense. But if you draw lines, create institutions where Palestinian people can now feel like they have property rights and have ownership over their place and let the money flow past the leadership ranks, you know, to the
people, let them have jobs, let them have opportunity, and then let all Muslims from throughout the world have access to the mosque and Israel making sure that they can control the security, which I think the Jordanians and a lot of others want Israel to have strong, you know, security control there to prevent the radicalists and the extremists from coming. You could have peace there very easily. So, there's a lot of things to say here. One is just to emphasize a lot of some mosque.
So, this is a holy place. And this is something in our conversations. And in my own travels, I've seen the importance of sort of frictionless access to those sites from the entirety of the Muslim world. And that's what Abraham, of course, took big leaps on. Okay. So, we'll talk about that a little bit more. But that's kind of a religious component. That's a dignity in the religious practice and faith component. But then the other thing you mentioned and so, simply, which is, you have
money flow past the leadership ranks. How do you have money flow past the leadership ranks in Palestine? So, make sure that the money that's invested in Palestine, the West Bank, gets to the people. So, to date, all of the aid that's been given to the Palestinians has been an entitlement. It's not conditions-based. It's always just, we give them money and there's no expectations.
It's very simple. You make the aid conditions-based. You fight for transparents. You do it through institutions other than the PA, or you put reformers into the PA that will allow it to go down that way. PA being the Palestinian Authority, which is the leadership. It's not hard to do. It just takes people who actually want to do it. But I think that the mindset of the international community has not been, let's solve this problem. It's like, let's just throw a little bit of money. The money's
novocaine. Let's put a little novocaine on the problem and let's not have to deal with it. But nobody's ever said, oh, let's do an accounting of the $20 billion we've given them and see how many jobs it's done and where it's gone. That just hasn't happened. Again, it's an incredibly corrupt organization, Unruh. You think about the post-World War II dynamic. You had a lot of refugees. My grandparents were refugees post-World War II. Every other refugee class has been resettled.
And you only have one permanent refugee organization ever created. Why was this done? It was done to perpetuate the conflict so that a lot of Arab leaders could basically deflect from a lot of their shortcomings at home. And so I think for Israel, they view all these things as existential. They value their safety. They've been under attack for a long time. I do think having a deal where we can say how to, you know, the Jews and the Muslims, Christ come together. I think King of
Dill from Jordan's been an incredible custodian for the mosque. I think everyone in my travels recognize that he's the right guy for that. That the King of Jordan should be the custodian of the mosque. We should have some kind of framework to make sure everyone has access. The more countries that have diplomatic relations with Israel, the more Muslims and Arabs that should be
able to come and visit. And by the way, the more you have these normalizations, think about what that will do to the economy of the West Bank, where they'll have, you know, great hotels, hospitality, tremendous tourism industry because of all the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish holy sites that they have there. So there's a lot of potential there. We just have to like get unstuck. And I believe that it's so possible if the leaders want to make tomorrow better that they can.
And unfortunately, the people who suffer the most are really are just the Palestinian people. And I think that, you know, in Gaza, they're hostages to Hamas and in the West Bank, they're just, they're just held back because their leadership just is afraid or too self-interested to give them the opportunity to change their paradigm and pursue the potential of what they have. And by the way, it's an incredibly well-educated population. It's an incredibly capable population.
And they're right next to Israel, where the economy, they need everything. And so the potential should be incredible if you can just move some of these pieces. But I'm again, there's still a lot of emotion and hatred you have to work through as well. But I do believe that you're not going to solve that by litigating the past. You're only going to solve that by creating an exciting paradigm
for the future and getting everyone to buy in and then move towards that. And maybe increase the chance of being able to establish an economy where the entrepreneurs can flourish in the West Bank and so on in Palestine, once the relationship across the Arab world is normalized. So one thing on that, which is very interesting, is when I got into my job in the Middle East, all the conventional thinkers said to me, the separation in the Muslim world is between the
Sines and the Sias. And that's really the big divide. And as I was traveling, I didn't think there was any divide in that regard. The divide that I saw was between leaders who wanted to give a better opportunity for their people and create economic reforms and opportunity. And leaders who wanted to use religion or fear to keep their stronghold on power. And so if you think about who's not creating the opportunity for their people, is the Palestinian leadership and the Iranian leadership.
All of the other Arab countries were focused on how do we give opportunity for our people to live a better life. And there is a big foundation on which that framework can succeed, which I think is the, in general, the idea of Arab-Israeli normalization. So that's where Abraham Accords come in. Can you tell the story of that? Sure. So it's an amazing thing. And I said here today,
you know, somebody not in government. And every day I see, you know, another, you know, flight that goes between, or I see, you know, an Israeli student studying at a university in Dubai or a new synagogue opening up in Abu Dhabi. And it just gives me such, or Bahrain, it gives me such tremendous pride to see all of the progress that's been made. How it occurred? Part of why I wrote the book was to put this down for history's sake to go through all the different intentional,
unintentional, circumstantial things that occurred. It's fine. We left government. There's a lot of people saying, well, this is why I said, I was kind of at the middle of it. And I couldn't even perfectly articulate why it happened because it was a, it was in evolution of a lot of things. And I joke that we made peace on plan C, but only because we went through the alphabet three times, failing at every letter. And by the time, but we didn't give up, we kept going and we got it done.
And maybe this is a good place to also step back and say, what is Arab Israeli normalization? Sure. What is the state of things for people who may not be aware before the progress you made? That's probably the best place to start. So what we did is we made a peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates and then Israel and Bahrain. Then we did a deal with Israel and Sudan, then Israel and Kosovo, Israel and Morocco, where basically countries that didn't recognize each
other before ended up recognize each other. All of these were Muslim majority countries. And getting them to integrate with Israel was a very big thing. The traditional thinking had always been was that Muslim Arab countries would not make peace with Israel until the Israeli Palestinian issue was solved. And what we were able to do is separate the issues and then make these
connections, which are leading to amazing interaction between Jews and Muslims. So when I think about obviously you have national security, you have emotional benefits from these things, but the single biggest benefit that I've seen from the Accords is that if you were an Arab or a Muslim, and you were willing to say positive things about Israel or the Jews before this came out, you would have been viciously attacked by the media or the hordes of influencers or the
extremists in these different countries. What this did was it brought out into the public, the fact that Jews and Muslims can be together and they can be respectful, they can have meals together and that the cultures can live together in peace. So just a link on this. It's like once subtle and in another sense like transformative. So normalization means you're allowed to travel for a place together. That has a kind of ripple effect of that. You can now start talking in a
little bit more accepting way. You can start integrating, traveling, communicating, doing business with socializing. So the cultures mix, conversations mix all of this. And this kind of has a ripple effect on the basic connection between these previously disparate worlds. I don't know if there's a nice way to kind of make clear why these agreements have such a transformative effect,
especially in the long term. I would say the simplest form is just a mindset. And it's almost like your thought all your life were enemies or we can't be friends with that tribe on the other side of the fence. And then like one day the leaders get up and say, no, it's okay now. And there was never an issue between the people. The people were just taught different things and they were separated from each other. But again, one of the things that I respect about the work you do is
you believe in the power of conversation and the power of human interaction. And you know, these issues and gaps between us feel so big when we think about them, when we're told about them, when we read about them. But when we go and sit with each other, all of a sudden we realize maybe we have a lot more in common than we have that divides us. For me, what I've seen about it that's made the biggest difference is I've seen people who wouldn't have the ability to be together,
be together. And that's now forming a nucleus of togetherness, which is a restoration. So you think about the modern Middle East from post holocaust to now. Again, in 1948, after that war of independence, you had Jews living in Baghdad and Cairo. Then they became so anti-Jewish that they then expelled all of the Jews from all these capitals of the city. So you think about the Jewish history in Baghdad. I mean, I think the Talmud was written in Baghdad. It was a place
where in Babylon, where the Jewish people thrived. I think in 570 BCE, when Nubu Khunetsir conquered Jerusalem, he took about 10,000 Jews back with him to Babylon because he thought it'd be good for his economy. And during that place, the Jews actually flourished and had a good life there. So for a thousand years before the Second World War, the Jews and the Muslims lived very peacefully together. So people say that what we're doing now is an aberration. I actually think it's not an
aberration. I think it's actually a return to the time where people can live together culturally. And so this is the beginning of the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict. And it's the beginning of togetherness, which again, you think about how much war, how much provocation, how much terrorism has been made in the name of religious conflict. This is, I think, the start of the process of religious respect and understanding. We've talked about you being attacked in the press for the Russian
collusion and other topics. One of the most recent set of attacks comes in the topic of Solidarity Public Investment Fund giving $2 billion to your investment firm after you left government. So that includes a 1.25% asset management fee of $25 million a year. Can you respond to these recent set of attacks? Sure. So left government obviously worked for four years. It was a very action-packed time. That's why I wrote the book. I wanted to put down all those
experiences. I started thinking, like, what do I want to do next? So my previous career, I'd been in real estate. I'd worked with my brother on some technology businesses that I'd started. Then I got into government. So I kind of had a career shift. In my previous career, obviously, was very successful. The New York Times violated and they've published my financial statements. They showed I was making about $50 million a year in the private sector before I
went to government. I went into government and I volunteered. I didn't take a salary. I paid my own health insurance for four years. My wife and I. Then we went and I was thinking, should I go back to my old company or should I start something new? My thinking was is that through my timing government, I'd met so many people. I'd learned so much about the world. I had a big understanding now for how the macroeconomic picture worked. I did feel like there was a lot more that I could
do than just going back to real estate. In the meantime, I was getting a lot of calls from different CEOs and companies saying, can you help me with this company? You help me with that company? Your knowledge could be helpful to help this company navigate this challenge or to expand internationally.
I said, maybe I should create a business to do an investment firm where I can do something different, where I'm putting together geopolitical expertise and traditional private equity and growth investing and figure out how to do that where I can do something differentiated, where I can invest in growing things and help with my navigation skills and relationships. That was the thesis of what I thought could make sense as a next step. I called different friends.
They were very excited to back the effort. Obviously, this was coming off the success that I just had in the Middle East where I did six peace deals there. One of the notions I wanted to be able to do with the firm was to be able to take money from the Gulf and then to be able to invest in Israel to continue to build the economic links between the countries. Again, if countries have more economic ties, I think war and fighting is less likely. In addition to that, I wanted to figure out
how do you bring the entrepreneurs together from both of those countries? That was really the mission of what I set out to do. As far as I've been enjoying it, it's been a lot of fun. I've been learning a ton. I think we're doing very well with it. In terms of the criticisms, I think that I've been criticized in every step of everything I've always done in my life. What I would say is this business is actually an objective metric business. It's about returns.
In three, four years from now, five years from now, see how I do. Hopefully, I'll do very well and judge me based on that. In terms of any of the nefarious things, I haven't been accused of violating any laws. I haven't violated any of the ethics rules either. When I was in government, I every year submitted all my financials to the Office of Government Ethics. They certified it every year and I followed every rule and every law possible. To my critics, I'll say,
criticized me before. You'll criticize me now. I'm going to keep doing me and I'm going to keep pursuing things that I think are worthwhile. I'm very excited about this chapter of my career. Maybe this is a good place to ask. Working closely with Donald Trump, what in your sense looking into the mind of the man, what's the biggest strength of Donald Trump as a leader? I would say his unpredictability. I think that as a leader, he consumes a ton of
information. He doesn't like to be managed or have his information filtered. He'll speak to a lot of people to draw his information himself. He's very pragmatic. I don't see him as terribly ideological. I see him as somebody who's about results. I think he wants to deliver results. I think ultimately, he's an incredible fighter. He's a big counter-puncher, but he also wants to get along with people. That's probably the biggest surprise that people
found with him. You look at even situations like, I would always tell people, if you disagree with him, don't go on television and criticize him. Pick up the phone and call him and go see him. He'll talk to you about it. He may not agree with you. Again, that's what Kim Kardashian did when she had a case of clemency with a woman Alice Johnson that she felt strongly about. We went
through the case. I wouldn't have had her call if I didn't think it was a legitimate case. We spent about eight months quietly working through the case, working through the details to make sure that it really was a worthy case. I brought it to President Trump, said she'd like to come meet with you to talk about this case. He said, how are you coming in? She came in. We went through the case and President Trump ultimately granted the clemency to Alice Johnson,
who was a woman who was accused of being part of a drug ring. She had basically a life sentence for doing it. She'd served 22 years in prison while in prison. She was a grandmother and she she was putting on the prison plays. She was mentoring young women in prison. Somebody who, again, there's always a risk, but by and large, had a very, very, very low risk of committing a crime in the future. Then it goes back to the notion of, are we going to judge people
by the worst decision they make in their life? President Trump was willing to grant the clemency. He went, and I think that it just goes to the notion of, maybe this goes back to his unpredictability in a positive way, which is, if you go sit with him and you make your case, he'll hear you, he'll listen to you, and he's not afraid to act, and he's not afraid to be controversial, which I think is a good thing. From a foreign policy point of view, in particular,
his unpredictability just meant that everyone was always on their back foot. People were afraid to cross America. What I would tell people who don't like Trump is I would say, think about how crazy he's making you and his enemies. He did that to the enemies of America. He was a very, very strong president and I think did a great job. In some of these agreements I've been talking about and speaking with leaders, how do you think the unpredictability helps? In all of the agreements
that I was negotiating, I wasn't doing it as a principle. I was doing it on behalf of President Trump and people knew that I'd access to President Trump and they knew that, you know, I could say, you may say this that we don't like, but I'm going to have to take it back to him and then we'll see what he does. One of the biggest instances was on the USMCA trade deal where
that deal happened because Mexico was legitimately concerned. And smartly so, that President Trump was going to impose tariffs on the car industry, which would have been decimating to their economy. And by the way, he was ready to do it. We were holding it back from doing it with every ounce of strength that we could. So it wasn't a bluff. I mean, that was actually real, but they were smart to read that it was real. And ultimately we created a great win-win deal.
I tell you a funny story. Just popped into my mind from the tariffs as we did. Also, we used a 232 national security exemption to protect our steel industry and we put tariffs on steel and aluminum. And again, I thought about this because we also negotiated them with Canada. And there was a very funny phone call where Trudeau was calling Trump. And again, they got along, you know, decently well. And Trudeau is calling saying, you can't put national security tariffs on us in
Canada. You know, we're you're NATO ally. We fall wars with you. We do military together. And Trump says to him, didn't you burn the White House down in 1812? And Trudeau said, that was the French. No, it was the Canadians. And so it was just like I said, he's always keeping everyone on their toes. Yeah. And but he was he he he he wasn't a he took very calculated risks. And like I said, you know, everyone was outraged all the time with everything. But if you look at his body of work,
people said if he was elected, he would start World War three. Meanwhile, we inherited a world filled with wars, no new wars, right? Yeah, three years he made peace deals, no new wars. He was tough, he was strong. People respected him. He built relationships and got trade deals done, got peace deals done. The economy was rocking. His body work, I think, was pretty strong as president. Like you said, no new wars. This makes me think if Donald Trump won the presidency, what the
the current situation in Ukraine would look like. But let me just ask you Zuma and ask you broadly, um, do you think the one you cranked have been avoided? And what do you think it takes to bring it to an end? I think 100% it would have been avoided, not 99%. You know, President Trump for four years had no problems with Russia. You know, we were we were arming Ukraine, but we were
working with Russia. And again, the first two years, we had a little bit of issue working with Russia because they were accused of colluding with us since we had to go through that investigation. But, um, but in the second two years, we were trying to focus Russia on what are the areas where we can collaborate together. I think Russia, you know, we thought it was in their strategic advantage to play a US and China against each other because of the way that everything was done
before. They were stuck with China, but not getting a lot for it. Under Bush, they took Georgia, under Obama, they took Crimea, under Trump. There was no problems. And then under Biden, unfortunately, I think they misplayed a couple of things, which I think provoked, you know, Russia to go forward. Still no excuse to do what they did. I think that the invasion was a terrible thing and should not
have occurred. But with that being said, I think 100% if Trump was president, there would not be a war in Ukraine today. Coming to the table and negotiating a piece. Whether it's Donald Trump, whether it's Biden, whether it's anybody, what do you think it takes? Do you think it's possible? And if you're in a room, if Jared Kushner is in the room, Van Robuden and Valdemir Zelensky, what does it take
to have a productive conversation? And what does it take for that conversation to fail? Like what are the trajectories that lead to success and failure? I think we go back to negotiations. Number one is trust, right? Both leaders have to have the ability to communicate what an off-ramp is without fearing it's going to lead to the public. So if you go to the posture of Zelensky right now, and by the way, president Zelensky, I have a lot of respect for the courage he showed, especially
initially. You saw what Ghani did in Afghanistan. They were getting attacked by the Taliban. He took the cash and got the hell out of there, staying in Kiev when he did how he did it was one of the most brave things we've seen in a long time. And he has a ton of my respect and admiration for doing that. But now he's promising his people. We're going to win the war. And the military action has not necessarily coincided with that sentiment. And so there has to be some form of
of off-ramp, but he can't say that publicly. So for him to be able to work privately with somebody who can help create a new paradigm where both leaders can say we're going to stop the blood shed. We're going to stop the risk of nuclear war for the world. We're going to stop what's happening. That's really what it will take. How that occurs. Again, it's not something I'm involved in now. So I don't know who the right broker is or how to put that together.
But essentially they need somebody in between them who can figure out how do you create a landing zone that that works because neither party is going to jump until the pool is filled with water. And you have to outline what the go forward looks like because you can't just stop it for then
to get worse for both parties. You have to move it forward into what happens next that hopefully can start to turn the tide to benefit both sides where they can focus on the future instead of being stuck into the old paradigm of who started what, who's to blame for what, who did what to who. It's just a lot of tough stuff now that that's occurred that's going to be hard to walk back. And it's a big task to get it done. But for the sake of the world it'd be amazing if we were
able to reach a conclusion to that conflict. Just going back to your earlier mention of North Korea. What do you think it takes to bring Vladimir Putin and Vladimir Zelensky to the table together? Leadership. So you're saying that it has to be a US president. It has to be somebody who's willing to put himself on the line to go and do it. And again, if you're the US president and you're the most powerful nation in the world, you should be trying.
But I do think again, the posture that the US has taken has probably been in a place where they would be very hard for them to get the trust of Russia based on the way that they've played their moves to date. And I always thought from the beginning that Putin would try to bring in President Xi and China to resolve it to basically give a big screw you to America to say, you know, China's now the one in charge of this. But that hasn't seemed to manifest itself
to date either. But it takes leadership. The leaders have to get it and say, you know, let's get everyone together and let's try to get this done because every day it goes wrong. A, more people are dying. And B, you know, we do risk a nuclear war for the world, which is not a good situation. Let me ask, since you helped set up phone calls between Donald Trump, Putin, and King of Saudi Arabia, if I were to interview Putin, what advice would you give on how to
get a deep understanding of the human being? So I didn't deal with Russia a ton, but in my interaction with Putin and with Russia, you know, I would kind of point out a couple of things. Number one is when America was hit with COVID and New York was looking like we were going to run out of ventilators and masks, Russia was the second country that sent us a plane load of supplies.
And they didn't send that because they hate America. They sent that because we were starting to make progress together as countries and they thought that they wanted to show good will to figure out how can we start working together? And again, people may attack me for saying that that sounds naive. Again, the past, you know, 15 years may show that that's not the case, but I don't believe that countries have permanent enemies and I don't believe countries have permanent allies.
Right. Again, you think about the US and Russia and World War II, we work together to defeat the Nazis. Right. And now we're great allies with Germany, who basically was our great enemy in World War II, we're great allies with Japan, who was our great enemy in World War II. So it goes back to the notion we discussed earlier of you shouldn't condemn tomorrow to be like yesterday if you're unhappy with yesterday. So number one is I would definitely
ask him about that. The phone call that you mentioned was after we did a pretty intense negotiation to create the largest oil cut in the history of oil production. So during COVID, demand just shut off like crazy. And it was stopping very quickly. Saudi and Russia at that time were having a conflict they created this thing called OPEC Plus, which goes back again, history between the two countries where they had conflicts and then all of a sudden they were
working together to try to stabilize the oil markets, but they couldn't agree on the cuts. So Saudi actually increased production. So you had two things hitting out one swear, Saudi and Russia were both increasing production and demand was dropping. So you were headed for a real crisis. And I was starting to get calls from a lot of the oil industry executives here in America saying you don't understand we can't just like flip a switch and turn off our oil wells like we're
running out of storage here. And I said look, I present Trump likes low oil prices. So he's not upset about what's happening. You have to call him and if he gives me permission or the instruction that I can try to intervene. But right now he's not inclined to intervene. After a little bit, he said, you know, it's time to get involved. Go do it. It was right over Passover. This was during COVID. I spent three days non-stop on the phone with a Creole to meet you from Russia and
with with MBS directly. And I was dealing with Dan Berlet who was our energy minister, you know, going back and forth. And it was like it was crazy. I mean, it was just one of the craziest negotiations. We ended up agreeing on the largest oil cut in the history of the world. But the story you went to before, which was pretty funny, was finally make the deal. And we set up a call between King Salman, Vladimir Putin, and President Trump to announce the deal. And I'm like,
this is great. So President Trump gets us. Congratulations. We have a deal. And then King Smasters, we don't have a deal. Mexico hasn't agreed to their cuts. And he's saying, what do you mean? So they were part of the OPEC Plus. And so I get a note saying you got to go call Mexico. So I'm calling Mexico. We're doing they're saying, we're not doing any cuts. So why is it? We're hedged at $55. I said, what do you tell us that in the beginning? So I'm telling the Saudis. So
we were working through this whole thing. So meanwhile, we were trying to find the compromise with Mexico. I set up a call with with Trump and Putin's they can kind of talk this through. And he was always trying to play the game of how do we get Russia away from China? He always thought that that was not the right strategic framework for US interests. And again, we had no problems with them during that time. What I would say is that for Zelensky and Putin,
any conversation with both of them is about understanding their perspective. I think with Putin, he's a student of history from the things that I saw with him. If you look at Russia over the last 500 years, I think they were attacked by the Polish in early 1600. I think they were attacked by the Swedes and the 1700s. I think they were attacked by Napoleon in the 1800s. And then in the 1900s, they were attacked by Germany twice. And so from his perspective, there is,
in the early days of Russia, they were attacked by the Mongols. They were very vulnerable. And a lot of the geography of Russia today is really designed for defensive purposes that they have natural barriers that makes them easier to defend. Then Russia is a massive landmass. It's twice the size of America. They have 11 time zones in the country. And so I do think that for Vladimir Putin, his biggest concern is how do we create a security paradigm in the west of his country that won't
be a creep? And I think that there's like two different parts of the mindset. The people who are most cynical of Putin will say, well, he's just trying to recreate the USSR. He's being expansionist. And the people want to be sympathetic to him will say, well, if you think about it, the Russian perception of the NATO arrangement was that they wouldn't be expanding westward over the last years. They've included all these countries that they said they promised they wouldn't
include who knows what the promises were or what or weren't. But what I do know from his perspective is allowing Ukraine and to NATO was always a red line. And that's why we never offered it. We never provoked it. We never brought it up. We said, we're going to arm them. And we basically said, just calm down. We don't want any conflicts there. We have bigger issues and bigger opportunities to work for them. So I do think you have to think through what's a paradigm that he can accept.
And I do think that he'll give the justification for why he's done what he's done. And then I think the framework for a solution is about how do we move both parties forward? Tough job. I hope you get the opportunity to do it because I think it's a conversation that will only help the world hopefully find a pathway forward. And I should mention because you mentioned geography, one of the many books you've recommended
to me that gives a very interesting perspective on history. It's called Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall. And it has a very interesting perspective on the geopolitical conflicts and perspective of Russia from a geography perspective. And also for China, the second chapter. And there's a lot of understanding of why the expansion of NATO is such a concern for Russia because geography is still even in the 21st century, less and less so because of technology
and so on. But it still plays a major role in conflicts between nations, rivers, mountains. And understanding the DNA of countries. It was one of the most phenomenal books. And I just found it on Amazon randomly. But I loved every minute of it. The chapter on America is also incredible. Going through the evolution of how we became the country we are, the different acquisitions, the different changes. Why we have all these geographic advantages. And it's an
unbelievable book for anyone who's interested in geopolitics. So I have to ask on several aspects of China. First on the president, the meeting. You helped set up a first call and first meeting between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping. Can you tell the story of that? Because that's also interesting. Again, that first phone call, the reaching out, the forming the human connection, which ultimately leads to the connection between nations and the possibility of collaboration. So during the
transition, President Trump took a call from the head of Taiwan. And that sent the Chinese into a real tailspin. And he didn't do it, I think, to be provocative to them as much as just as a businessman. He felt the answer to your call. Somebody wants to speak to you, you speak to him, like you, you want to have conversations here, their point of view. But it was taken as a very big insult. And it was against tradition and norm. And so that was something that set us off in a
wrong direction. My view at the time was that, you know, we are kind of entering a G2 world, whether people want to admit it or not. And that a lot of these countries in what I call the middle market countries were basically playing this one China was being aggressive with their one belt one road. They were basically playing US and China against each other. And I thought that
by the two leaders coming together, there were some things they wouldn't agree on. But there was a lot that they probably could agree on, which could lead to resolutions to a lot of issues in the world. That that was like my most optimistic view. My most more pragmatic view was that President Trump had very big issues on trade that he wanted to get to with China. You know, he felt like China, their trade practices run fair. They weren't following all the global rules of trade. He
was a little bit nervous that they would be provocative with Taiwan. And I felt like the two of them getting together would be the best way to try and resolve that. So the Chinese are very proud and a lot of it is about face. And so we in order to negotiate for that first call,
we basically read on what would happen in the call. So not let's just have a call say high nice to meet you as a question of President Trump basically agreed that he would acknowledge the one China policy, which he didn't see as a big concession because you could always unacknowlge it the next day. So yeah, like knowledge it and then we'll go and exchange. A president she was going to come over to the US for a visit so they could sit together.
And they want to do it outside the White House. And so we agreed on Mar-Lago, which also thought it was good because President Trump always felt much more comfortable when he was hosting at his properties. And he just felt at home. And so he liked having people as his guests. And he loved he loved it. He always felt really relaxed and it was great. So that was really what we did. Then the Chinese come over very much anticipated visit. And it was incredible. So they were supposed
to sit together for 15 minutes. And they sent about an hour and a half together. And during that meeting, President Trump, they said, look, let's just set some ground rules to this relationship. Like let's just not talk about Taiwan. Like, you know, just don't do anything. I don't want on the table. If it does, I'm going to have to do harsh things. I still want this to be a problem for four years. We got bigger issues. They basically just again, you notice four years of Trump administration,
no Taiwan talk whatsoever. It was a non-issue. Start to talk about the trade issues. They spent a lot of time on North Korea. President Trump was trying to get the perspective from President Xi about North Korea because that was again considered from Obama the biggest national security issue that we faced at the time. And they just had a good feeling for each other. It also helped that, you know, my wife and I, we actually had a Chinese nanny and teacher in our house and our kids learned
fluent Mandarin. And our daughter actually opened when President Xi and President Trump were together with with Melania and with Madame Peng is my daughter actually saying them a couple of Chinese songs. And I thought that was a nice way to show, you know, we're tough, but we respect your culture. Because the Chinese have an incredible culture that goes back thousands of years. They're
very proud in how in how they do it. And I think that sign of respect also set things off in a very warm way for President Trump, say my granddaughter speaks Chinese and we're showing you the respect, which I think is very important. And he did have respect for them. The next part about the visit, I mean, obviously we had a lot of discussions on trade, but the part that was probably most impactful to me was President Xi basically did an hour monologue at lunch where he just went through
Chinese history from his perspective. And he talked about with particular emphasis on kind of the treaty of unequals and then the hundred years of humiliation. And then you go through from Mao all the way to today and you had China coming back and rising. And you could tell that he was learned the lessons from the past and was very committed to kind of seeing China go through.
So that was a different time. So China today is different than it was in 2017. In 2017, I remember President Xi was at Davos and he was fetted by all the top business people in the world. As the Donald Trump was the threat to the global world order, President Xi was the champion of free trade and the biggest champion of environmentalism and fighting for climate change. And and what occurred was President Trump came in and basically said like I think China has not been
following the rules based order. It took very, very drastic approach with tariffs. Every time he would do the tariffs again, you know, I had a manuchin, our treasury sector come to vauncomy house. If he does this, this is going to crash the whole economy. I mean, these and by the way, he believed it. I mean, these were things that people were telling him would be very tough to do. You know, President Trump had a had a gentleman named Ambassador Lighthizer, Robert Lighthizer. He was really the
the tip of the spear on all of our our trade negotiations. He worked very well with Secretary Manuchin and they ended up we ended up increasing tariffs to numbers that hadn't even been thought could happen. So we did the first round of tariffs. Then, you know, the Chinese came back and retaliated very surgically trying to hit us in all the areas that politically would have been
difficult. And what Trump did was instead of backing down, he took some of the revenue from the tariffs, gave it to the farmers and said, I know that this is going to hurt your business, but I'm going to make sure you guys are made whole. And then he doubled down and basically went back at the Chinese with even more tariffs. So what we watched over a year and a half was probably the biggest hand of poker that was ever played. And it was an amazing experience to be a part of it.
And the role I played was really working for Secretary Manuchin and Ambassador Lighthizer as a as a back channel with the Chinese to make sure we can just de-escalate things and get to solutions in a in the best way possible. And so, so anyway, it was a fascinating time. But if you think about the global awareness of the the bad practices that China was putting in place today versus what they were in 2016, I think one of President Trump's most successful policies was
shifting the way the entire world understood the threat of China. And then putting in place the beginning of a regime to try and rebalance the world so that we can have more economic parity. So you mentioned to me the book, The Hundred Year Marathon by Michael Pillsbury, when we discuss China. And I've got a chance to read parts of it. And I highly recommend people read it because there's a few it's definitely an eye opening perspective. I don't know if I agree with all of it. I don't
know if you agree with all of it, but it certainly opens. It gives a very intense perspective on China. You said it was instructive to how you thought how Donald Trump thought about China. Can you describe the main thesis of the book and maybe with the hopeful view how it's possible to have a trajectory of these two superpowers working together in the 21st century versus fighting against each other? Perfect. So it's a very, very big book. And I think it's a book definitely
worth reading. Michael is tremendous. He speaks fluent Mandarin. So he spent a lot of time researching to do the book. So I highly recommend it to everyone. And it was considered more of a fringe perspective in 2016. But it really I think came to represent the underpinning of what the collective thought was of the Trump administration. And maybe you could argue that it was even more cynical. The whole thesis of the book was that China from 1949 to 2049 was working to reclaim their
position as the global leader. So you had the Chinese empire. One of the things, I don't know if it's from this book or a different book that I read that spoke about how in the late 1700s, basically the emperor of China was offered some of the industrial capability from England, which was basically now becoming industrial revolution. And basically, no, we're fine, we're the great Chinese empire. We don't need any of these things. We're better than that.
And by rejecting that, the rest of the world got stronger, China remained weaker. Then you had the the the opium wars. You know, the Chinese had big opium problems, they're all the trade back and forth. And then China from about 1840 to the 1940 at 100 years where they really, after all these treaties were really a second class country. And so then you have the people's revolution that comes in. And he talks about how China very strategically as a very, very poor
country, you know, would fight their way back and build brick by brick. And you know, he professed in the book that Nixon didn't go to China and open China. It was China that actually went to Nixon and was able to use Nixon in order to open up. And then they talk about how under Carter, they were able to get the US to contribute to a lot of their they were able to kind of start borrowing the US know how from our university systems, from our medical, from our science,
from our research. And the whole notion that was the conventional thinking of American leaders was that the more we helped China advance, the more they would become a free market economy. And it was a great market. The only difference was was that they weren't allowing us access. They were making our companies basically give them all of their technical knowledge. They were stealing our intellectual property. They were doing espionage to steal a lot of the patents. They were
just ignoring our patents. And they weren't following any of the rules of international trade. Then they started becoming the world's manufacturing hub. They basically came the world's factory. And then they started this whole initiative called the Belt and Road Initiative. In order to start locking in their lines of traits, they were buying up all the ports everywhere. They were building railways thinking how do we we lock in our distribution so that we can maintain the dominance
as the world's global factory. And so it was a brilliant long-term plan that they were doing. And by raising awareness, by putting the tariffs, Trump slowed them down a lot.
The real question is, is if they actually did achieve this full objective of becoming the world dominant country, what they would have done with it, whether they would have been a farious or not, I think from my perspective, even with some of the divisions and issues we have now in America, I still would rather an American-led world daughter than a Chinese-led world daughter. But the notion was that they were playing a very zero-sum game and really going to be the
dominant leader in this new world order. So that really framed the perspective. And it wasn't necessarily, and people asked me, and the Chinese were always fearing, is Trump trying to stop our rise. And you have a great book also by Graham Allison that he writes about, are we destined for war between the US and China? And he goes through different historical times where you have a power and a rising superpower. And I think more than half the time it ends up leading to war. So the
question is, is what's going to happen here? And I do think that Trump's perspective, and this is my interpretation, because everything was always tactical day to day, and he was unpredictable to the Chinese, which they couldn't deal with. And he was unpredictable, even to his team sometimes, because he was playing it day by day and issue by issue, and always changing and adjusting, which is how an entrepreneur thinks. He respected the job they did by building their country. They
moved 300 million people out of poverty into the middle class. They did it at the expense of a lot of other countries throughout the world, especially America. But Trump says, look, stupid politicians made deals. I respect China for doing what they did. But what I want to do is I want to change the paradigm so that for the next 20 years, we can maintain our advantage over them. We can maintain our competitive
dynamic. And his general view was that America has the best private sector in the world. We have a lot of the best minds in the world. And if we could just have a level playing field with set
rules, then America should be able to outperform. And so that's really what we were trying to do. We were trying to kind of get rid of some of their state subsidies, get rid of, make them follow some of these international rules of trade, and not allowing them to do predatory investments that then undercut different industries that we had so that they can have global market dominance or monopolies and different industries and then have pricing power, but also geopolitical power.
So one of the examples that people talk about now is China for the last 20 years was very advanced on seeing this electrification trend. They subsidized solar panels. A lot of the American solar panel players were put out of business. So now I think it's like 90 plus percent of solar panels in the world are manufactured in China. Then all the rare earths that you need in order to make these solar panels and to make these electric vehicles, China's bought up most of them and a lot
of the refining capacities in China. So thinking through strategically how do we create an even playing field so that we're not at the mercy of them and how you can have a rules-based world order, that was really kind of the thought of what we were trying to work towards. So there's this SNL skit where Jimmy Fallon plays you and you're walking into the old office looking cool wearing shades and a bulletproof vest to the song Unbleable by EMF. I don't know
if you've seen it but it's pretty epic. And then Trump says that you've traveled the world representing the administration but no one has ever heard you speak. So there's a lot of questions I can ask about that. One of them is can you interest back why you choose this low-key approach of kind of operating behind the scenes and not speaking much to the public at least at the time? You've spoken a little bit more. And today you've spoken for a really long time which I deeply
appreciate. Now it's been a pleasure to do this and thank you for the opportunity to talk about these things. So that was a really funny skit. And you know it's funny the thing I got made fun of the most for that was the wardrobe and that came from after three months in the administration we would have been having dinner with all the generals and they were saying you know updating
us on the war with ISIS. And General Dumpford said to me after look the president can't come to see how we're fighting this war but I'd like to invite you to come with me to Iraq and come see and would you come with me? I said no that's great I always learned in business. Now you can't make decisions from just an ivory tower you have to go to the front lines and see what's actually happening. So I said no problem I'd love to go. Meanwhile two days before I'm about to go the doc
from the white house stops by my office and says we need to get your blood type. So what do you my blood type is you're going to an active war zone? I'm like okay so I guess I go to a war is that I didn't really think this thing fully through. So I get on the plane with Dumpford and we land in Iraq and he looks like GI Joe he's you know he's a great great general he's very
very well respected in the military and we we go in and we we get on black hawk helicopter. They said you know today's a nice day let's take the the sides off and so I get on the plane and there's a guy you know military service officer who then takes a machine gun locks it in to a thing takes
the bullets puts them into the gun and it's sitting there saying we're ready to go and then I'm looking out and there's like three other helicopters with guys it was an osprey with a guy buckled in also with a machine gun looking out we take off and we're flying over Baghdad from the airport to the embassy and as we're going I'm sitting in an open air helicopter with the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff guys with machine guns everywhere. This is a new experience for you.
You have an experience. I would say slightly I mean I was doing real estate like three months ago you know now I'm flying over Iraq and and the chairman says that's the Dom Hussein's palace and I look down there's like a big bomb right through the middle then you see the area with the two
swords in the hands I'm saying to myself like how the hell did I get here like well what is happening so meanwhile we end up going to the front lines to be with the service the Iraqi military which the US military is working closely with and I had a meeting that night with the
president of Iraq and so I wore what are you wearing to the front lines in a battle zone and and also me the president so I put a sports jacket on we land at the at the front line and they give me a bull profess that says Kushner on it I tape it I just I put it on I go out and I cover the NER so just said Kush and and I went and I didn't realize they were taking pictures and so
I think the picture looks pretty epic you was so vast is it I think I love it. So anyway so that was the funny story behind that and then actually my brother was at some society event in New York and he ran into Jimmy Fallon so the two of them took a selfie together and Josh writes me he says
uh hanging out with my older brother in New York you know I'm trying to explain to him what your voice sounds like so so it was good so that was a funny one but I think just being behind the scenes for me just gave me more maneuverability in the sense that you know I again it goes back to trust
and people knowing that I wasn't going to try to publicize the things they were telling me I think it just gave me more ability to operate that way and I also realized to like communicating is a very important skill luckily in Washington there's no shortage of amazing communicators I think there
were a lot of people who were much better at me than being communicators so I was very happy that they were willing to do it because it wasn't something that I had a lot of experience with or necessarily I thought was very I was very good at and so I kind of just did my job and and just
focused on getting things done uh let me let me ask you you have a very interesting life uh if you were to give advice to young folks on how to have such an impactful life what would you say career and life how to have a successful career and a successful life.
Number one is I would say you just have to work hard at everything you do. Number two I would say never stop learning and always try to say yes more than you should go out of your comfort zone and I think just just you got to work hard at everything you do and and and if you're going to take
something on do it the best you can. You know one of the lessons I write about in the book from my father was I remember I was going for a job interview and he asked me he says well what time uh are you leaving to the job interview is at nine o'clock I saw a leave at eight o'clock he said
well what if there's traffic I said that I've done this drive a thousand times like there's never traffic so what if there's an accident I said I can't control that he said Jared the only excuse you ever have for being late is that you didn't leave early enough and I just think it's something where
if you want to accomplish something you know a lot of people I hear they complain about what other people do or why it's hard or why it's impossible and again I say this as somebody who's been so blessed with with with so many things in life but you know when I've had challenges or things I've
wanted to achieve I just focus and say what can I do and I'll read everything I can get my hands on I'll if I fail at one the door closes I'll try the window if the window closed I'll try the chimney if the chimney troze I'll try to dig a tunnel it's just if you want to accomplish
something you just have to go at it and you know I think the most important thing I'll say sorry I'm kind of thinking my way into this answer is um it's just do the right thing I think that's also right and I saw that in my career you know be good to people be honest do the right thing
and um and if you do that I think long term maybe it does pay off maybe not in politics but in uh in the world that large it does and my hope is in politics it will as well I wonder if you can comment on your process of learning in general because it took on so many new interesting problems
and approach them with uh first principles kind of approach so what was your source of information so because you didn't seem to be listening to the assumptions of the prior experts you were just taken on the problem in a very pragmatic uh perspective so what was uh how'd you learn about
the Middle East how did you learn about uh China how did you learn about Mexico how did you you know like all of these prison reform all this they've taken on and were extremely effective at you really started with just talking to people um I would I would try to reach out to people who
had been involved in different things and ask them you know what they did what they thought of the problem who they thought was smart on it what they read that helped them get a better understanding why they think something had failed um and then I would just you know read voraciously on every topic
you know Washington it was harder to get advice from from humans because I found humans had this weird tendency to talk to the media and so you know I talked to somebody and I'd ask advice and then the next thing I know is the Washington Post with Collins say Jared's an idiot does nobody's doing
and he's even going to this person to get advice I'm like yeah I'm asking everyone so so books really became an amazing guide for me um Ivanka she she's an incredible researcher uh she she's just voracious and so she gave me some of my best books um and some incredible advice as well but that
was really the the process and then I think that was kind of the first stage and then the second stage was just constant iteration and readjusting plan as you continue to get more learning and one story I tell in the book as well is that on my my first trip to the Middle East where I met with uh
Mohammed bin Zayed who I spoke about earlier uh the ruler of UAE I spent two hours with him asking him questions and really going through the Israeli Palestinian issue the Israeli Arab issue and he said to me at the end of the meeting he says Jared I think you're going to make peace here
in the Middle East and I have a shock because I mean first of all he was you know at the time I think so one of the most respected leaders in the region somebody who I found to be very wise and super thoughtful and experienced and I said to him why do you say that I was flattered obviously but but
not certain why he was saying that based on the fact that I didn't know what my plan was I didn't know what I was going to do and I had no pathway to make peace and he said well the US usually sends one of three different kinds of people to come see me he says the first are people who come and they
fall asleep in meetings he said the second are people who come and they basically read me notes but have no ability to interact on the message they're there to convey and then the third happened people who have come to convince me to do things that aren't in my interests
he says you're the first person who's ever come here and it's just ask questions he says why why have you done that I said because I figure you know this problem's gone on for a long time you live here I'll be gone at some point you're gonna have to live with the consequences of whatever
my work is and the US has a lot of power and my question is what would you do if you were me and how would you approach this and help me think about it and again I wasn't going to then take his plan and then execute it but I thought it would be very provocative to understand from the
people in the region and instructive how they would use the resource and the power that the US had to solve the problems that we're having significant impact on their lives yeah there's a lot of power to the sort of the simplicity of that human approach where you're just listening and one of my
wishes for society is I leave government you know I was living on the upper east side in a very liberal echo chamber I then traveled the country I met so many people who I never would have met otherwise on the conservative side on the independent side on so many different issues I think that people
benefit if you have such a strong point of view I would follow you know the John Stewart Mill marketplace of ideas and find people who disagree with you and don't call them names don't say they're a bad person say I want to understand why you feel the way you do let's have conversations in this country and I think that that's probably going to be our best way to work through the issues that we have currently when you zoom out and look at the 21st century from a human history perspective
across the timescale of many decades maybe centuries what gives you hope about human civilization everything you've seen you've traveled the world you talked to some of the most powerful and influential people and you look at the future what gives you hope about this little planet of ours what gives
me the most hope is that anything's possible if there's there's one lesson that I took from my time in government it's that people coming together to try to make tomorrow different than yesterday can succeed and if the right people in the right places focus on the right ideas I think the
advancement that we can have for human history and for society can be tremendous and I think that right now I see we're at a place in society where there's a lot of what I call squabbles between countries which are really man versus man issues and those are as old as time right you know we've
been fighting about borders or religion or you know we're or who wrong somebody a hundred or a thousand years ago and these are what I call more tribal battles but I do think that as we advance with artificial intelligence as energy becomes cheaper and it's more readily available I
think we're going to have massive industrialization I think we're going to have massive advancement I think in medical and science we're going to have cures for diseases we have the potential in 10 20 years from now to enter a dawn for humanity that could be incredible we could become
multi planetary we can we can explore the wonders of the world we can find things we didn't know so I think that if we we put our energy towards finding these advancements that will improve the lives of of everyone on this planet instead of figuring out ways to have these tensions between us
that for me is the most optimistic case for what's possible and the reason why I believe it's possible is because somebody with no experience somebody who all I really had was was the faith of a leader and I had the the courage to try and I went out there with other people and we took
on some of the most hopeless impossible problems and we succeeded and if we were able to do that then everyone else should be able to do that as well well Jared thank you for having the courage to try thank you for your friendship for your kindness most importantly for your book recommendations
and thank you for talking today this was fascinating I hope I hope to have many more conversations like this thank you very much Lex thank you for listening to this conversation with Jared Kushner to support this podcast please check out our sponsors in the description and now let me leave you some words from a hot macondi and I for an I will only make the whole world blind thank you for listening and hope to see you next time