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Language: en
the following is a conversation with
Jared Kushner former senior adviser 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 advisers 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 5th we recorded
conversation on topics of War and Peace
history and Power in 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 9th and add a discussion
on the current situation we open 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 this is Alex Freedman podcast and
now dear friends here's Jared
Krishna 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 SU omiz
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 militans
went door too in 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 the situation is still developing
the IDF is ordering civilian residents
of Gaza to evacuate their homes for
their safety Benjamin n yahu 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
uh so as I said the events are rapidly
unfolding so these numbers will sadly
increase uh but hopefully our words here
can at least in part speak to the the
Timeless underlying currents of the
history and uh as you write about the
power dynamics of the region so for
people who don't know Gaza is a 25 mil
long 6 Mi 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 his Charter it's SW War to the
destruction of Israel and it is
designated by the United States European
Union UK and of course Israel as a
terrorist group so given that context
what are your feelings as a human being
uh 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 I think you did an excellent job of
summarizing a lot of the 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
uh on X of um you know militants
terrorists going door too with machine
guns gunting down innocent civilians uh
seeing beheaded Israeli soldiers seeing
uh young 20-year-olds at a rave uh a
dance party to celebrate peace uh with
militants flying in and then you know
shooting machine guns to to kill people
indiscriminately uh seeing uh young
children uh captive and then held
prisoner seeing 80-year-old grandmothers
a holocaust Survivor also being taken
captive uh these are just
images and actions that we have not seen
in this world since uh 911 this is a
terror
attack on the scale of which uh we have
not seen and it's been incredibly hard
for a lot of people to
comprehend um my heart goes out
obviously to uh all of the the families
of the victims uh to the families of
those who are held uh in captive now and
uh 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
uh it's a shame that it's taking an
action like this to unify the nation but
I have seen uh incredibly
uh beautiful signs over the last 48
hours of a country coming together uh
the Jewish people have been under
oppression before uh the Jewish people
know what it's like and seeing people
rally together to uh fight for their
Homeland to to to try to reestablish
safety uh is is um is a very beautiful
thing to watch I wish it wasn't
something we had to watch but it is uh
with that being said though the backdrop
I've been speaking to friends over the
last couple days I have one friend I
spoke with um last night who was saying
that uh you know a good friend messaged
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 kutes
messaged 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 uh get
these terrorists out of Israel
trying to free innocent civilians who
unfortunately are risking their lives to
do it and um you know they're all heroes
but some will have a less good fate than
others uh sadly so it's a very very
heartbreaking moment um 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 uh the entire world who they
really are I think what they're is what
they're willing to do um and you know
all of the uh 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 um that there was a real
threat that they were looking to deter
so um short answer is my heart is broken
uh praying for peace praying for
strength praying for um 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's capabilities uh there
there cannot be peace in Israel and in
the Middle East while there is a terror
group um that is being funded by Iran
that is allowed to uh 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 uh was intimately
involved with Israel with uh the
strategies to to minimize uh attacks
from Hamas and to try to uh turn the
region around and 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 uh Isis uh in 2016 Isis had to
califate the size of Ohio they were
beheading journalists they were um they
were they were killing Christians um
they controlled 8 million people they
were planning attacks um uh all over the
world from their their Cali F they
were uh using the internet to radicalize
people we had the San Bernardino
shooting in America we had the Pulse
Nightclub shooting uh in in in
Orlando and there was real threat and
then you had Iran which was given $150
billion in a Glide path to a nuclear
weapon and they were using their new
found riches to fund Hamas hasbalah the
houthis uh different Rebels uh all over
the the region that were looking to dest
further Syria was in a civil war where
500,000 people were killed Yemen was
destabilized syri Libya was destabilized
and it was just a mess and all of
America's allies had felt betrayed
president Trump came into power we
rebuilt the the trust and the
relationships with all of our
traditional allies and we were able to
eliminate Isis the Cal territorial
caliphate and then we were able to
project strength in the region really go
after Iran's uh wallet uh we were able
to stop uh through through crushing
sanctions a lot of their financial
resources which they were using to fund
all these Terror groups and so we left
the Middle East uh with six piece deals
and and a fairly uh peaceful world so
seeing what's happening I think it was
completely avoidable I think it's
horrible to see that it's occurring uh
and I pray that those in power will make
the right decisions to uh to to to
restore safety but also to potentially
create uh a better Paradigm uh for peace
in the future so I have a lot of
questions to ask uh you about the
journey towards this historic progress
towards peace with the Abraham Accords
but first on this situation to step back
at some of the history uh 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 I
think you did an excellent job Lex of of
really giving the summary just a couple
things maybe I'll add to it is that
Hamas was originally found did from the
Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt uh which is
a group that's caused a lot of issues uh
in the region um they've uh they've
attacked Israel many times in the past
there's a lot of discussion about how
Israel uh is an occupying power well in
Gaza in 2005 they withdrew from all the
land and then they say Israel's an
apartheid state well Israel then gave
governance of the region to the
Palestinians and then what's happened is
is the Palestinian people's lives have
now gone down not up since then uh I
will say that under uh hamas's
leadership uh in in Gaza the people who
have suffered the most are the
Palestinian people and I see I've I've
watched cries uh 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 uh in Gaza you
have basically 2. you know two million
people that are being held hostage by
30,000 Hamas a terrorists and that's
really the problem and I would just
encourage people to uh 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 uh 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 you
know 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 you know 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 turn
it into bombs so um it was very very
hard to figure out how do you get the
resour resources into Gaza to help
people live 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 it can
you speak to the connection between
Hamas and Iran that's important 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 has
thanked Iran for their support and um
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 uh
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
peaceloving people who don't want to see
this focus on destruction and
Annihilation but uh you saw this in 2015
2016 when the Iranian government had
resources the region was less safe and
since you know now uh there's been more
resources allowed to go to the Iranian
regime uh by lack of enforcement of
sanctions and as a result Iran is
funding Hezbollah Hamas um they were
funding the houthis now there's a little
bit of a Daton 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 had
been saying for years and Iran was
denying so there's a very strong um
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 Hamas has been
a proxy for Iran who wanted to obviously
see the destruction of Israel but also
does not want to see the Israelis and
the Saudis uh come together for a peace
agreement so the name of this operation
of the Hamas operation ation is alaa
flood referring to the aloa mosque how
much of this attack is about the alaa
mosque in actuality I don't think any of
it is but the aloa mosque is is
something that uh all of the uh Shia
jihadists have used for years in order
to justify their actions that are
aggressive towards Israel so uh this is
something I'll maybe even take a step
back and go through when I was working
uh 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 uh sovereignty over ala mosque the
Ala mosque is a mosque that's built in
the holy of holies the Haram Al Sharif
uh in Israel where the the Jewish betam
mdash the Holy Temple was built in a
very religious place about after the
temple was destroyed um then there was a
big mosque built there and it's one of
the more uh holy places in Islam uh now
so uh so the big uh 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 you know 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 um 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 in Aman one in Cairo One in Dubai
and one in rala and I asked you know
people U
Muslims what is the is Arab 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 SES to come and pray
sometimes they have security issues when
there's provocations um but by and large
since 1967 when Israel um was able to
take back Jerusalem in a defensive War
just to be very clear they were attacked
um in the South and they were attacked
uh uh from from the East and they
basically were able to beat back the
jordanians and the Egyptians and and
then reconquer uh the old city of
Jerusalem and during that time
immediately after uh 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
uh restore the Christian sites the
Muslim sites the the Jewish sites and
they worked to allow everyone access to
the mosque so today um any Muslim who
wants to come can come and pray at the
mosque the mosque is um Israel's
acknowledge that King Abdullah uh the
King of Jordan uh is uh is the custodian
of 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 uh
to recruit um uh terrorists or to
justify their incursions they often say
they're doing it in the name of
liberating the aloa mosque but from an
operational and pragmatic uh 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 and 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 uh in order to se
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 alaka
mosque is there something you can speak
to why that message hasn't disseminated
across the the Arab world so Israel is
good at a lot of things they're not very
good traditionally with public relations
um you know after the Abraham Accords
you know we made the first Abraham
Accords deal in August 2020 and then we
made uh five other deals we first did uh
United AB Emirates then we did a deal
with Bahrain then we did a deal with uh
Kosovo then we did a deal with um with
Sudan then we did a deal with Morocco um
and then we got the GCC deal done as
well the deal the 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 uh 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 uh 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
in spreading the anti-Semitism and the
violence and uh in Israel in the 1920s
was a guy named Haj Amin Al husseini who
was a known as the grand Muti of
Jerusalem he was uh very close with
Hitler and melini 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
shtick only it was before you had
smartphones and YouTube where he would
say the mosque is under intact 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 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 its 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
or as a justification for violence uh
those are people who I think are are
really um they are disrespecting the the
Islam religion as you said you helped
make major strides towards peace in the
Middle East with the 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 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 uh 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 uh the biggest piece
of what president Trump did during his
uh four years in office was uh he really
strengthened the relationship with
Israel number one and he did things like
uh recognizing Jerusalem as the capital
of of Israel he moved the embassy to
Jerusalem he recognized the Goan Heights
he got out of the Iran deal um we did an
economic conference in Bahrain where we
brought Israelis uh to meet with you
know Saudi and Emira and Qatari
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 sun set and things
moved on and so by doing that what
president Trump did was he 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 where they were able to do it
and we did that in the backdrop the way
we're 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 um the the way you get to
peace is obviously number one 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 are trying to solve
those problems in that context uh often
we're we're 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 uh 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 were not very many it
basically was you had a land dispute yes
you had to figure out where do you put
borders ultimately uh you had a security
uh Paradigm which I was much more
favorable to Israel's perspective on uh
and obviously the events of the past 48
Hours have fully Justified that um that
that that bias um and then uh in
addition to 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 I
felt that the Palestinian leadership was
fairly disincentivized to make a deal
because there was just this Paradigm
where for they had been millions 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
you know my my Approach when I would get
into a hard problem say how do I
understand all the different Escape
patches how do I try to eliminate them
and then build a golden bridge that
becomes really the the only but also the
most desirable pathway for the uh
decision makers to walk through and it
wasn't always hard and sometimes have to
go and you know hold their hand or you
try to pick them up and walk them across
but but but a lot of these leaders are
very reluctant to change um and the
Dynamics of the Palestinians also were
such that uh I think they were fairly
stuck where they were so we developed a
business plan for uh Gaza the West Bank
uh we threw in some some uh improvements
for Jordan and Egypt as well I was based
it off of the vision 2030 uh that they
did in Saudi Arabia which I thought was
a Visionary document I went back through
this process and I studied uh basically
every um 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 uh 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 uh 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 you know it's it's
not that that hard right in the sense
that between the West Bank and Gaza you
had 5 million people and um and we put
together a plan I think it was about $27
billion uh we got together a conference
I had the head of AT&T we had Steve
schwarzman from Blackstone came which
was very gracious of them with had all
the leading Arabic businessmen the
leading Builders leading developers and
the general consensus of that um of that
of that uh of that conference was that
this is very doable you know we think
that for Gau in particular cost maybe
maybe 7 to to8 billion doar to rebuild
the entire Place uh we felt we could
reduce the poverty rate in half we can
create over a million jobs there um 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 uh with the rule that uh that Hamas
was 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 uh each project
is costed out
uh 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 Community is willing
to fund it because they've just been
throwing so much money at the
Palestinians for years that's never been
outcomes based or conditions based it's
just been you know 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 too rebuilding Gaza you know could
be easy but like I said you know the
problem that's held Palestinian people
back and that's made their lives
terrible uh 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 in the
current approach of Hamas the more
violence they perpetrate the more they
can hold on to power versus improving
the lives of people so they as you said
maybe can comment on they do not propose
an economics plan I mean Hamas has been
running it now for 16 years um 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 um
it's actually not that complicated it's
you know there's no territorial disputes
right the border is the Border there's
no religious issues uh there as well you
know you're not dealing with Jerusalem
uh you're basically just dealing with
the fact that um 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 um from a
credible Source where Israel doesn't
feel like Gaza can be used to Stage
attacks into Israel or to uh fire
Rockets into Israel and by the way these
are things I was saying you know three
four years ago uh that that was the
objective and that was really the fear
now that's been proven you know
unfortunately the fear has has
manifested um and in exchange you can
rebuild the place and you can give the
people a much better life but Hamas has
not shown a 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
Karm circumstances if you do want to
have peace there Hamas has to be either
eliminated or severely degraded uh in
terms of their milit military
capabilities I would love to ask you
about leadership especially in the on
the side of the United
States what is um the current
Administration the Biden Administration
done different than the Trump
Administration as you understand uh that
may have contributed to the events we
saw this week so all I can talk about
are are where we left them right we left
them a place where they had tremendous
momentum in the Middle East uh I met
with them during the transition and said
you know look you know we even got the
um 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 uh in in
our lame duck period and um and they
came in and they said look we want to
focus on the three C's which is coid
climate change and China and I said
that's that's great but you know the
Middle East we have an amazing place
right now at stable there's momentum uh
Iran is is basically broke uh 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 uh to um to about 100,000 under
Trump so their their foreign Cur foreign
currency reserves were basically
depleted and they were broke uh same
with the Palestinians we stopped funding
to uh to to to the to to unra the UN
agency which is totally corrupt it's
it's you know we've put $1 billion in
there over time I did a poll um in the
Middle East in uh Gaza to say okay we've
invested $1 billion do here as a country
are we popular right uh the US had a 7%
approval rating us Aid had a 70%
approval rating but it just felt like a
waste of our taxpayer dollars and again
we wanted to make it conditions based
the Biden Administration came in uh
number one uh they they they they
started insulting uh you know Saudi and
Russia oil prices went up at the same
time what they did was they stopped
domestic production of oil uh they made
it they disincentivized a lot of oil and
Shale uh uh production uh with
regulations they they stopped pipelines
oil prices went up um 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 uh
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 I respect that
again elections have consequences and uh
you can take a different policy but what
I would recommend is get some conditions
make them do some reforms make them uh
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
not enforcing the sanctions uh and then
overall just projecting a lot of
weakness uh in the region so uh one of
the the most um embarrassing examples is
what happened in the United Arab
Emirates again an amazing probably one
of America's best allies over the last
you know 20 30 years uh they fought with
us in in Afghanistan they were the first
Muslim country to stand up and do that
after 911 because they didn't want it to
be a war of the West against uh against
uh the Muslim uh Muslim religion so they
joined the fight because they saw it as
a fight between right and wrong uh they
have rocket shot into their country uh
from from from uh from uh from 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
it restocked 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 with Saudi and Israel uh which I
think was good you know I think that
they realized after uh stint that maybe
the 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 uh that I
was working on was very strongly
criticized uh during the first three
years before we're 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
appease Iran um let's criticize Saudi
Arabia then they started embracing and
working on the Israel Saudi deal which I
was was was really exciting I think
we're all very excited about it um but
they did it in public and I think that
that also was something and I didn't
have access to their intelligence so
assumed that by doing it so publicly
they thought that they'd either had to
deal with Iran because they were letting
them get all this Revenue where 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 uh UAE Saudi
Israel altogether Israel's uh nuclear
power you have you know other strong
economies it Iran seeks instability they
seek looking to create uh division in
the region and if you can create that
economic sphere where you have security
from hia to Muscat from Israel to Oman
all the way through with Saudi Jordan
UAE Qatar um 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
thrives 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 um the uh the 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 uh 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 uh they just you know
basically gave $6 billion doar to Iran
uh in exchange for hostages and then
Iran's basically funding these Terror
attacks are killing American citizens
you have uh in Israel and um and it's
just it's a heartbreaking situation
again totally avoidable and one that I
think has been uh very badly mismanaged
to date 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 the various allies
that you mentioned in the Middle East
over this tragedy and um not let it be a
thing that divides the Middle East but
uh make it a thing that catalyzes
progress towards peace further progress
towards Peace So I want to say one thing
Lex I have a lot of friends who are fans
of trump we not fans of trump but one
thing I want to say with absolute
certainty is that if president Trump
Trump was in office this never would
have happened and uh when President
Trump was in office anyone who supports
Israel uh or who wants to see you know
Jewish people not be innocen slaughtered
uh he would never have allowed that to
happen it did not happen when he was in
power and I hope people recognize that
um as as something that's that's very
very true um how I would play the ball
where it lies right now keep in mind we
we transferred the ball it was on the
green now it's almost like it's gone
back you know 15 yards and it's in a
sand trap I think the way that I would
play the ball right now is uh number one
is you have to show strength I actually
think uh President Biden's words were
the right words I see that they're
moving uh aircraft carriers to the
region again the purpose of having a
strong military uh 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 um I don't know what kind of
credibility the Biden Administration has
uh to show the strength but right now
you have to um support Israel completely
you have to really um let people in the
region know that there'll be
consequences if they uh if they if they
try to escalate again we saw a little
bit of Rocket Skirmish from Lebanon from
Hezbollah um 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 uh 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 um
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
um 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 uh
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 it was
something like $45 billion in Revenue
this year I think it'll be even more
that's a combination of them driving up
oil prices but also allowing much more
sales uh 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 uh Israel Saud
normalization there's been a lot of
promising progress towards this what
does it take to uh not allow this
tragedy uh damage the progress towards
Israel solity 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 uh fully regain uh
Security in the country and then number
two is to figure out how you can like I
said eliminate or degrade uh 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 uh
with that and I don't think that they
should be thinking about normalization
with Saudi at this moment um my instinct
and I've been watching this Israeli
Saudi uh normalization play out
obviously just speaking with people and
seeing what I've been reading um and
watching with great excitement I think
it would be a game Cher for the region I
think it's uh it's one of Iran's worst
nightmares to have Israel and Saudi uh
Interlink together I think it'd be great
for the Saudi people from a security
perspective what they're discussing with
America would be uh very strong the
ability to you know get uh different
elements across would be incredible so
what I would say with it is that the
industrial logic um held yesterday and I
think it will hold again tomorrow so um
you know I always expect countries to
act in their interests I think that uh
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 interest
uh what's going to happen now though is
uh the political Dynamics are going to
shift and I think that you know as we've
seen with political Dynamics they come
and go I think um let's get through this
moment um and then I hope at the right
time that those talks will be able to
resume and conclude in an appropriate
way and you know it's funny Lex when I
was working on the US
Mexico uh agreement for the trade you
know we would have every day there'd be
a you know TW that would go out or there
would be an issue I mean people forget
how how intense it was between um
America and Mexico and I would speak to
my counterpart of Mexico after a rough
day and you know we're working on
something we're making progress it'd get
blown up and I'd speak to them and say
you know what look they're not moving
America they're not move in Mexico let's
just you know let's stop for today let's
pick up tomorrow and let's find a new
way to bring this forward so I would
just encourage everyone working on that
not to give up uh to keep working hard
at it um and to find a way but like I
said I would take a little bit of a
pause for the for the time being let's
let the current situation play out and
then hopefully uh 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 uh UAE Saudi Arabia just as
human beings as friends as allies and
just keeping that channel communication
going cuz I uh maybe you can correct me
but I just feel like there's just simple
human dynamics that play out here the
divisions can form and just run away
from you over simple
misunderstandings over
um just inability to see a
tragedy uh from the same perspective
because of conversations that could have
happened but didn't happen I think
there'll definitely be communication but
you know words on phone calls is is only
worth so much it's really you know trust
between people and power and obviously
when you're in a position of power you
represent your country country and your
country's interests but the ability to
have trusting relationships where people
feel like they're okay taking you know
more risks to help each other uh that's
actually what's most important so
communication I hope for but uh you know
deepening and trusting relationships uh
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 war
can take in your view uh what are some
of the end States as you've said which
are
desirable and are
achievable I 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
governments always rush to talk about
but I do think here number one Israel
has to have a secure environment where
they don't feel threatened from uh from
from Gaza and number two is the people
in Gaza need to have an environment
where they feel uh 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 uh 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 an
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 um misrepresenting uh
the history uh 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 uh their National Security
threats um 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 uh 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 uh as we stand here today
there's a lot of different ways that
this war can evolve if a ground Invasion
happens uh 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 uh of
the consequences that might have of of
an
unprecedented ground troop attack yeah
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 uh fundamental I mean
that that's true for all of us not just
leaders but you know we saw with uh with
911 how America was caught off guard uh
by terrorist attack we acted um you know
somewhat rationally somewhat emotionally
uh which led to a 20-year war with
trillions of dollars lost you know that
I think almost a million lives lost not
just American but all lives and it was a
total tragedy what occurred um I think
right now the Temptation is to 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 um this attack
was very well planned uh not to walk
into another trap I think you have to be
very smart very cautious I've been happy
to see that uh what they've been doing
uh in retaliation so far has been uh
somewhat measured and they've taken
their time to try to assess uh what's
achievable again I don't have access to
the intelligence and you know we're
talking at a very early stage uh in this
conflict so a lot could happen even by
the time this is published but um but my
My Hope Is that um 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 uh the the attacks
were so um heinous and so um 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 um and I do hope
that the international community
supports the objective and they can work
together to achieve
it Benjamin and yahu BB somebody you've
gotten to know well in negotiation in
conversation uh he has made statements
he has declared war he has uh spoken
about this potentially being a long and
difficult War uh what have you learned
about the mind and Benjamin and yahu
that might be important to understand
here in this current War BB is
definitely a historic figure you 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 um 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 BB's the leader
you want if you're Israel to be um to be
in that seat I think he's um he's
ambitious in what he's going to look to
achieve um 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 um and not um create more
risk than than needed and that's easy to
say you know the two of us sitting here
having a conversation when you're
sitting in that chair as a leader um in
the fog of War it's a very very um it's
a very hard decision to make uh he's
been here before he um he he knows the
weight of the situation I'm sure he
knows the moment and I pray that uh that
he'll do uh what's right here to bring
the best outcome possible I wonder if
you can comment on the uh internal
political turmoil that BB has been
operating in and how that relates to the
uh the tragedy that we
saw on the one hand the political
turmoil is um
it's a sign of a vibrant democracy I
think it's been um 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 um you
know you can't disagree with uh with the
leadership um you know in Israel um if
you want to you know be uh you know if
you want to be homosexual you can have a
uh you can have a go to a parade and
live your life and in in Gaza they'll
throw you off building and kill you it's
um so so 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 you know the times
in Jewish history where the Jewish
people have been most vulnerable have
been when there's been Division and
that's when uh the temple was destroyed
uh but that's not just with the Jewish
people and with Israel that's in all
societies so I definitely believe that
this division has left them um less
prepared for the situation than it would
I do think think there's real lessons we
should be taking from this here in
America where we're in a time where
we're very divided but I do think that
uh it'd be very wise for our leaders to
find the areas where we do agree and
find ways to you know secure our
Southern border to make sure that we
know who's in our country what risks uh
we all face um and I do think that um
that division definitely creates risk
for countries let me switch gears here
and just uh 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 the
situation this is something I I've
observed over the years uh since I got
involved with the Israeli Palestinian
issue um with a lot of interest um I
think a lot of the people who
are pledging support for the Palestinian
people uh I think that they want to see
the Palestinian people live a better
life and 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
the people who are advocating online for
the Palestinian people uh who who are
you know going to these marches and
support of them I think they'd be best
served if they really care about AFF
effectuating the outcome of joining with
uh 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 these people are angry about is
Hamas and 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 them
that's calling for their destruction I
think that that recognition of finding a
way for Israel to be secure and then
having um 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
in 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 of 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 uh 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
um you know now more and more people are
starting to recognize that again under
President Biden this is the second war
that's broken out in the world and when
you have a weak American leadership the
world World becomes a less safe place
and so U My Hope and prayers are are
that um that that President Trump is
reelected and that he's able to then
restore uh 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 what 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 uh they spent
all their money on bullets and bombs um
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 uh
Silicon Valley knock 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 and if it could 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 and and knowhow and so
uh I think that if it's managed
correctly and if Iran is is is able to
be restrained and and and suppressed
with their Ambitions to cause
um 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 Iraq
into it if you could bring Iran into it
uh 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
you know when President Trump left
office in you know 200 um 2021
uh the Middle East was really on a very
very positive trajectory and if the
right things happen it can continue to
be so so you know I'm praying at this
moment in time that uh 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 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 is a
very powerful force and it's much easier
to hate people you don't know um 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
uh Tru between the Bloods and the Crips
uh two of the notorious gangs in America
in prison and I was very excited to meet
him and when I met him I said well well
how'd you do it and he said it was very
simple he says I got all the guys
together and I I had a tremendous amount
of barbecue brought in he says and I got
them meating 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 yeah
look I've traveled all over the world
now I've I've I've been very fortunate
to meet people from different states in
America I have 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 wronged or you feel like
somebody disrespected you or somebody
did something um from hatred and and 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 youve 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 uh 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 uh 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
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 uh I always believe you
shouldn't judge people by the worst
mistake they make in their life and un
fortunately now in the era of social
media people will say one wrong thing it
sticks with them forever they get
cancelled or they get put out we're all
humans we grow from our mistakes we
learn from our mistakes and I think that
um some people are just just evil there
are some evil people but I do think the
vast vast vast majority of people are
good um 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 loved make them feel heard and um
and I think there's also tremendous
power that we have as people to uh 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 um you know we've
always tried to provide a place where
people can discuss with each other when
we were in Washington uh we would host
dinners at our house all the time or we
would have Democrats and Republicans
sitting together you know uh know we
just had I saw Senator Feinstein just
passed away we had great uh dinner at
her house when she was a Senator with
her and her husband and uh Mark Meadows
when he was on the freedom caucus and we
had actually a fascinating discussion
about ran Mark was much more Hardline
than me I had to actually bite my tongue
I was impressed at how much he did
whereas you know FY and her husband were
like super into you know they knew the
Iranians well they thought they were
peaceloving and it was an incredibly
robust and respectful debate and so um I
don't think we maybe concluded anything
that night but it was interesting for
people to get together uh having a
dinner my house where I had dick Durban
uh you know the number two ranking
Democrat in the Senate uh Lindsey Graham
and Steven Miller who's known to be a
very Hardline in Immigration discussing
what an immigration reform could look
like I mean they left that dinner saying
wow you know we 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 by listening to people
and and connecting with each with people
and by respecting people and finally
I'll just say on this is that you know I
I meet people all the time who have so
much confidence in their perspectives
and um I'm very jealous that that these
people are able to be so confident about
every single thing because for me uh I
have you know some degree of confidence
in 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
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 uh continues to
become different and so uh as humans we
have to continue to to thrive to to
learn and to grow and to connect and if
we do that everything's
possible well Jared thank you for uh
your compassion first of all but also
your wisdom today on this very difficult
this tragic set of uh events these
difficult days for the world um it's a
big honor to speak with you again uh
every time I speak to you uh I learn a
lot about the world and I I deeply
appreciate like I said like your
humility and your understanding of the
details uh 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 uh my thoughts and prayers
are really with all the people people in
Israel and uh and the innocent civilians
as well uh on the Palestinian side and
my prayers are with the IDF soldiers
that they should be safe and they should
be um really uh watched by God to uh
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 a 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 uh really trying to create a
road map and so once you understand the
destination you want to get to the end
point 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 uh most of the
time you have 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 to do that and how 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 um 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 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 that I live
through with that obviously negotiating
uh in Congress for for prison reform I
had to form a lot of trust with uh
Democrats whether it was Hakeem Jeff or
dick Durban and then also on the
Republican side with um I had Mike Lee I
had Lindsey grah I had Tim Scott uh
Senator Grassley and then also Doug
Collins in the house was tremendous and
you know every time we maneuvered
something we would get attacked either
from the left uh you know there was a
time we were being attacked by you know
Nancy Pelosi John Lewis uh for not being
you know inclusive enough and then there
were times that we maneuvered it we'd be
attacked from the right for 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 uh
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 uh hard to do and both
of them in a divided time of the Trump
Administration uh were bipartisan wins
with with big big votes in the Senate
and the house uh you have a lot of stor
of this kind sometimes a soft approach
sometimes a hard approach like there's I
think this story where with BB there was
uh a potential like a dramatic election
coming up and you have to say no no
excuses no delaying you have to we have
to make this agreement I know BB cares
about Israel more than the particular
dynamics of the election like you have
to draw a hard line there yeah but In
fairness too like you know for him
during the time that we were dealing
with him he was always an election
versus election and then election and
and you know what he was saying wasn't
wrong and I think he was more expressing
his concerns given the Dynamics and you
know 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 right I'm my job was to
represent America his job was to
represent Israel and you had other
parties representing their own interests
and as long as you assume that you know
people were acting mostly in good faith
you were able to navigate areas where
you didn't have you know complete
overlap of 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 screw over the other person
when they're talking and
so not having that I think is a really
powerful thing for earning trust like
that 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 man 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 um
my father uh you know again a lot of my
my childhood was I was exposed to
business my father uh you know on
Sundays he would take us to to job sites
into the office with him instead of to
football games like my friends you know
fathers would do and so we're exposed to
business and what he would say about his
father who was an immigrant uh to
America came over with nothing had no
formal education but he would always say
a good 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
in that I had in my life early on
whether it was uh 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 um
encourage catalyze like the goodness in
the human yeah so so lead leaders are
generally chosen by their country
country and so um 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 uh you know interact with
them in government is 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 advisers 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 do I
deal 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 ianka and
the 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 I and I went down a
whole Rabbit Hole there he like an
incredible historian but anyway the
there's a bunch of stuff you 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 uh strategizing just
pick up the phone yeah so 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 I started where
you had um 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 um
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 I 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 as I was reading the book
I remember thinking to 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 in
government and have uh 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 uh you can do that and one of
the great examples uh that I speak about
in the book is with North Korea where 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 uh the
Middle East was on fire Isis was the
heading journalists and killing
Christians they to califate the size of
Ohio Libya was destabilized Yemen was
destabilized Syria was in a civil war
where 500,000 people were killed Iran
was on a Glide path to a nuclear weapon
yet the single biggest fear he had was
North Korea
then it got compounded by the fact that
we get into office and president Trump
brings his generals around and he's you
know learning how to interact with all
the generals and says okay what are my
options and they said calm 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's not let that be
due public let's try to restock and come
up with a plan yeah and at the time
there was a lot of banter back and forth
and uh you know I was able to I got a
call from a friend who was a 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 a vacation should I not
be going is it not safe I mean we forget
we forget the psychology of how intense
that was at the time and then through
that interaction he caught 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 the
deescalation the meeting between Trump
and Kim Jung good 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 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 in 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 we 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 uh 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 I think there's something in
in the human Spirit like in the public
that desires politicians to take
big take on the big bold problems right
like why why is it the politicians need
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 the Trump Administration and he
brought a lot of people from the
business world into government uh 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 from
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 and I think
that in the business world it's it's
outcome oriented it's results oriented
and you know what we would see in 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 of 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 lingered on the
North Korea and the deescalation 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 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 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 try
all these different things and not all
of them worked but some of them did and
you know 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 uh you
know over over Japan I mean you had a
lot of uh very CH 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 Jung gun
and then all of a sudden there's there's
a framework um to try and move things
forward um and again I think that
there's a lot of possibil there for what
could happen if it's worked in the right
way I just want to know like how you
word that first email or text message
like what emojis to use like the hugging
Emoji I it's just personally I've gotten
to know a lot of powerful and uh 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 and
people want to be successful and people
want to be good and and you're right too
there's there's way more emojis involved
in diplomacy than I ever would have
expected but and every leader I'm sure
has their favorite emoj this is also I
learned about people they use like they
there's the everybody has their go-to
Emoji like I usually go to the heart
very quickly Emoji there's some people
who go the hugging whatever that where
you're like do the hugging thing anyway
uh this conversation quickly turn to the
ridiculous but to do another book
reference you mentioned the book 13 days
in September by Lawrence Wright well in
discussing all the work you've done in
in Israel in 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 do the personalities matter in this
so going from North Korea to the Middle
East here to within Congress and all
that kind of stuff yeah completely in
every way I mean that that that's an
incredible book and it's a very
entertaining read it has obviously a lot
of good historical uh context on some of
the key players whether it was on Mor
sadad or Manan ban or Jimmy Carter and
and and sance and 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 and again one of
my favorite stories from that book was
how anir sadad who was a big big leader
he had a Mystic who was according to
this book again history I I I like
reading it but I always you know realize
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
adviser who was a Mystic and the Mystic
was having a back Channel with the
Israelis and the Mystic told saddat if
you go to Israel and you make a speech
at the knesset bean is ready to give you
the Sinai and so um he goes to Israel
they set this whole thing up he goes and
gives the knesset they go for their
meeting after and Sadat says okay well
are we going do this thing and Pagan
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 Anar sedat 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 uh the first step of the Accords
was really a phone call between
President Trump uh prime minister
Netanyahu and Muhammad Ben zad who at
that point was the Crown Prince and and
de facto ruler of the
UAE but all we had was a 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 then
we're go to UAE and then a young
gentleman who worked with me named AI
burkowitz says well if we're flying from
Israel to UAE instead of flying on a
government plane why don't we see if we
can get an L 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 Alba Yousef who was
a tremendous uh player in the Abraham
Accord is working behind the scenes you
know day and night and was really a big
um a big catalyst so he calls youf and
he said sure no problem let's give it a
shot so so we go and we do it and he
says if we can work out these issues
what we'll do so we go to Israel we do
our meetings we get everything back into
a good place we set up this this this
trip over we fly an LL plane we fill it
up at the time it was during coid with a
health delegation we had the the
financial Ministry because we had to
open up uh uh you know banking
relationships they could wire money
between countries uh we want to get you
know Health Partnerships then we just
had a lot of legal things and National
Security things we wanted to start
putting together so we do this flight
and we end up uh Landing in UAE and the
picture of Us coming off the plane being
greeted by um you know Emirates and toes
with a l plane with an Israeli flag on
it just captured everyone's imagination
and so was one of these things where
it's like you work so hard on the
details the negotiation I mean hundreds
of hours to kind of make sure
everything's perfect and 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 the different methodologies that
they tried uh 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
uh more stability in the Middle East and
so amazing book I would highly recommend
it a very entertaining read and and
something that at least gave me
encouragement to to keep going when the
task I was pursuing seemed so so so
large I mean if we could just Linger on
the
personalities you you write in the book
that words matter or you you write in
the context of saying uh in the
diplomacy business words matter and then
you said that we're in the results
business is a badass line but um but if
we just stick to the diplomacy business
and uh 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 um
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 take action he was
very unpredictable in 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 were 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 then you're unemployed
you know so it's it's it's a different
kind of notion and um and it was just
understanding the mentality and trying
to adjust and and Bridging the divides
uh between the different trainings is
that the biggest thing you took from
your business background is that just be
really result focused it was just the
only way to be I mean if I was giving up
uh you know a nice life in New York and
if I was giving up you know the the
stuff that I really enjoyed the company
that i' I'd help build and you know the
the the the the life that I was enjoying
in order to do government I was going
there to make a difference and you know
we had to focus on it the other skill
set so there was a couple skill sets
that I found were quite deficient in
government uh first of all there was a
ton of amazing people I mean people talk
about the bureaucracy uh what I found
was is you had incredibly committed uh
passionate intelligent capable people
all throughout the government and what
they were waiting for though was
Direction um and then cover in order to
get there and so there were a lot of
tasks that I worked on whether it was
you know building the wall at the
southern border where I was able to work
with uh you know Customs border patrol
um you know Army core of engineers uh
military DHS professionals uh DOD and 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
mies of uh border barrier in about two
years basically and that was very that
worked very well because we basically
brought private sector project
management skill sets which uh which
were quite often missing in government
the second one is just you know 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 um 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 I mean George
Washington and all the the founding
fathers they they're working on their
Farms they they left their Farm serving
government then they went back to the
farm and that was kind of the design of
you know the representative government
it wasn't a career political class it
was you know people coming in to you
know show gratitude for the freedoms and
the Liberties that they enjoyed and then
you know you know do their best to kind
of you know help others have those same
opportunities that they had and then
they'd go back and live their lives and
so um 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 uh perspective go and serve is
that one of the main problems here so
you you also mentioned the book The
Great degeneration by uh Neil Ferguson
an awesome historian he's 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 uh the
negative aspects of the bureaucracy so
we don't have enough time on this
podcast to go into it but it's uh
there's there's a lot of aspects that
work as well right but I do think we've
gotten too big you know Neil's book that
you mentioned you know one of the things
that I took from that I read it I think
in in 2012 right kind of in the middle
of the great financial crisis was he was
talking about how government regulation
uh 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 uh one
thing I was very proud of 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 6 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 this
objective 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 in the beginning of the
administration and then what I saw with
regulation was anytime either there was
legislation or regulation coming the
people pushing for it were usually the
people who would benefit from the
regulatory capture so you had these you
know you look at you know the great
financial crisis where you had these 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 uh 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 uh 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 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 and 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 uh they would take off too and
in the first year they limited eight
regulations for everyone and so um so
that was just something I took from it
which which was uh I thought very
interesting and you had to really I
think you just 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 uh you wrote In
the book about your experience with some
very low points in government
uh you've been attacked quite a bit uh
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 a
personal level on a sort of big
political level uh can you tell me some
aspects of the story sure so to give the
listeners some context um and people
remember this now it's been kind of
Swept Away uh because it turned out not
to be true was that after president
Trump uh won the election
2016 instead of the media saying we were
wrong because again everyone thought he
had zero chance of 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 I was very
intimately involved with the operations
of the campaign I was running the finan
of the campaign I was running the
digital media of the campaign I was
running the the the the the the schedule
for the campaign and I knew that on most
days we had trouble like you know work
working coordinating with ourselves you
know let alone you know you know
collaborating with another government
and or colluding as they called it and
so um 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 um 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 um in order to just cover it for two
years then as a result you had a special
counsel you had a a house investigation
a senate investigation and I personally
spent about I think over 20 hours uh
just you know testifying before uh these
different committees uh again spent
millions of dollars of out of my own
pocket on my legal fees uh to make sure
I was well represented and the reason I
did that was because I saw Washington it
was like a sick game right it's almost
like you know even though there was no
underlying problems to the
accusation um 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 worse you know and
so for me that was a big concern so and
it was amazing I mean my my my poor mom
you know I told her to stop you know
reading whatever I said 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 on the upper
side were talking with Chuck Schumer
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 1,000% 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
um you know it was all over CNN you know
the people they 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
and and Isis and a lot of different
things so it was quite a crazy time in
that regard but luckily again we we were
able to fight through it it was a major
distraction for our Administration U I
think we were able to kind of stay
focused on the objectives and the
policies uh but it was a crazy time and
I I learned a lot uh 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 on your mind the psychology of it
to make sure it doesn't make you cynical
like people that 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 who kind of
rolled in from the business world and
all of a sudden the the entire world
from CNN to everybody is accusing you of
colluding with the Russians like what do
you uh like when you're sitting at
home how do you keep a Calm Mind a clear
mind an optimistic one that doesn't
become cynical and actually just keep
trying to push on and do stuff in the
world yeah so it was a surreal
experience um I would say number one is
I I felt very confident that I hadn't
done anything wrong so you know 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 a good
lawyer to get me through it but it's
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 I didn't believe that I
had any legal liability helped me kind
of intellectually separate the challenge
I needed to do to fight through it from
it and then I just basically said like
you know 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 do is spend your time and energy
worrying about what you can control and
then how you react to the things that
you have there and so it took a lot of
uh a lot of discipline it took a lot of
strength and again I give my wife uh
vonka and even Donald a lot of credit
for um 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 um 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 um 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
fought through it and um wasn't always
fun but we we got through and and thank
God it's um 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 uh 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 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 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
I 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 you
kind of waved 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 just on the psychology
side how did you
stay uh 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
or complaining or saying things aren't
fair but the the general way I I looked
at it was that in life every opportunity
has a cost and you know you could look
at it and say maybe this was a massive
cost either in in dollars or in time or
in reputation or in or in um or in 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 try and to fail more and
to you know to to go and to uh to take
on big things knowing that there's risk
of failing obviously want them to
succeed not to fail but but let's take
on the big things let's try to do that
um 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 I think i' I'd chosen
very good friends in life and my friends
were with me I had one friend who who
you know my lowest moment uh you know
got on the plane you lived in Arizona
got on a plane and came just 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 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 um and I tried to just get
get tougher and I tried to just get
better and work through it yeah you said
that you and Ivanka it this this this
intense time brought you to together and
helped you kind of deal with the
intensity with 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 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 uh but then there's also
a lot that I've learned from her uh
always um you know getting me to to read
different books or or learn different
things which I love but uh she's also I
think an amazing role model and I I go
through our time in Washington where uh
there were so many people who were I
thought very um 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 um you know on
Twitter different places go after and
she always stayed elegant and I 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 um and she has a very
strong uh moral compass and and I I feel
very lucky to have her as a partner and
I 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's she has an an
incredible a fascinating mind so uh but
one thing that jumped out to me is you
both love diners Jersey diners so I I
lived in Philly for a while and I've you
know I traveled quite a bit and
traveling from Boston down to Philly
maybe to DC you can drive through Jersey
that's something about Jersey I don't
know what it is it's the best you listen
to Bruce Springsteen there's a uh Lucy K
has 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's
uses that story to tell where he's just
driving and the Bruce Springsteen's song
comes on and he just wants to pull over
to the side of the road and just like
weep for no unexplainable reason um and
I think that's true because life is
difficult life is full of suffering or
struggle or challenge or so there some
sometimes it's Bruce Springstein but
like some kind of song like this can
really make you reflect on life that
Melancholy feeling but that Melancholy
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
that's the sort of the point Lucy K
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
familyfriendly there's a nice waitress
and this a sweetness a kindness like
hello sweetheart that kind of thing
there's also like the 3:00 a.m. Diner
where you're like the ones that are open
24 hours mhm that has a romantic helmet
when you're a young man or young woman
you're like traveling the loneliness of
that it's all of it mm the American
Diner is like from like Jack caroak on
represents something I'm not sure what
that is but it's like a real beautiful
experience and the food itself too oh
always fresh yeah the thing with Diner
there's so much to love about it and I
grew up obviously in New Jersey when I'd
go uh you know with my father to to
business he'd always stop we'd eat at a
diner late night I'd be coming back with
my friends we'd stop at a diner and it's
a tradition that aanka and I love doing
as well and I think there's there's a
notion of it's very egalitarian and that
you know people from all places are
there uh you could order basically
whatever you want I mean the the the
menus at the diners look like the phone
book great and it's amazing how they
keep you know so much fresh ingredients
to do it at least the good ones do uh I
love as a jersey guy you get mozzarella
sticks and uh and an omelet you know at
any hour of the day because most of them
are open 24 hours and that's uh
basically my my ianka and my go-to will
throw in a milkshake or two as well but
for for me as a kid you know 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' give me a bunch of
quarters to put in the the music machine
that they would have on the the wall and
it was always just a great experience uh
doing it in Jersey and I joke that you
know if you grow up in Jersey you grow
up with just just enough of a chip on
your shoulder that you have to go and
make something of yourself in life it's
a it's a special place I had an amazing
childhood there and uh very very proud
to be from the state and I I will just
give a little bit of a plug now because
the state has now actually turned the
corner and and they had A1 billion
budget surplus for many years um you
know it was a state that was basically
bankrupt and uh and now actually under a
pretty Progressive Democrat Governor
Phil Murphy uh he's turned the state
around and it's actually has a very uh
bright future ahead and it's it's
probably one of the best places uh to
raise a family in the country right it's
got very low crime one of the best
public school systems in the country uh
pretty good Healthcare System a lot of
uh green Parks people know the turnpike
but it's got a lot to it uh that's
really great so I'm a big big fan of
Jersey in I like how this is the first
for this particular podcast you
literally gave a plug to a state so New
Jersey
everybody go it's where it's at it's
there South Jersey there North Jersey I
mean all there's all kinds of jerseys
too I mean the whole thing it just I and
don't get me started on the Jersey Shore
Lex that's Jersey Shore is whole thing
and I'm not talking about the snooky
part I'm talking about the real nice
parts
great food great people me 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 travel across the world
there's always to meet somebody from New
Jersey and you kind of give a knot of
deep understanding it's the cradle of
civilization manys 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 we could just return
there uh even just the personal story
of uh your father of that you write
about that of the Betrayal that happened
in his life and then how he responded to
that betrayal and he was after that
arrested can you just tell the story
sure um so my father uh is an amazing
person and uh we grew up in New Jersey
my father was a big developer a great
entrepreneur built an amazing business
um he got into a dispute with uh two of
his siblings
and through that dispute they basically
took all of the documents in his company
went to the US attorney's office and um
and uh you know turned into from a a
civil dispute into a real public dispute
my father did something you know wrong
in that process and you know when he got
arrested for that he basically said you
know what what I did was wrong and he he
took his medicine and he he did it like
a man and he said I'm going to go to
prison and and he did that for a year
and so uh for me uh that that was a very
uh challenging time uh in the family
obviously you know I it was a shock it
it was a total change I mean I grew up
my my childhood was I think a very nice
childhood you know my parents always
said you know do good in school work
hard um you know I was very um uh very
focused on my Athletics I was captain of
the basketball team captain of the
hockey team uh you know I ran a marathon
with my father and it was always about
pursuing went uh went to Harvard
graduated with honors and then 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 um 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 uh
because this is the best 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
always pushed us to make the most of
ourselves and when we did that um 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 uh the newspapers writing all
these things about my father that I
didn't think were representative of the
person that I knew um it was uh a big
change for our family and you know I was
angry I was angry I said you know I
could be angry at at the prosecutor I
could be angry at uh my father's brother
I could be angry at my father's lawyers
I could be angry at my father for 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 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 uh older brother slash you know
substitute father for my 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 to to battle mode and I put my I my
my my I put my armor on and I just you
know ran into it and for the next two
years it was uh every day was painful I
mean I was dealing with banks I was
dealing the company was still at
subpoenas I was still in law school I I
tell my father I wanted 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
that if my professors wanted to fail me
the the 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 um and uh 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 in a
prison in Alabama I met the other
inmates I met their families um 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 learn 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 uh 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 I
learned a tremendous amount uh through
that experience you're right that your
father told you about being humbl I'd
love to ask you about this that in life
sometimes you get so powerful that we
start to think we're the dealers of our
own fate we're not the dealers God is
the dealer sometimes we have to be
brought back down to earth to get
perspective on what is really important
what do you think he meant by that what
did what did you learn from that
experience
what 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 AR
arraignment I drove him down I drove the
car and my father and I are very very
close and he didn't say a word for the
whole time and I think he was
processing um number one what was
happening to him and I 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 is like
did I let my family down did I let my
kids down and I do think he felt at that
moment like his life was over uh he
couldn't really see
past what this challenge was going to
bring and if there would be a life for
him after it so I I could see that he
had a lot of fear and he really wasn't
saying much and then I didn't know what
to do and so I just stood by him and
stood close and you know later that that
that day or the next day he got up and
started walking he had an ankle monitor
for whatever reason the prosecutor was
such a so aggressive he was a Flight
Risk so they made him wear an ankle
monitor they were very very aggressive
and nasty and at the time my father was
the biggest uh donor to Democrats the
prosecutor was a republican it was a
very political thing and um and what
happened was is uh he was walking around
the pool and I just started walking with
him and he said to me you know Jared in
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 and we have to you know come down
to earth to understand like you said so
what I took from that was that my father
with all of his success had started to
believe
that that maybe certain rules didn't
apply to him and I think that that's
where he made a mistake and I think he
had a lot of regret that he made the
mistake and you know my father is a very
humble person he's a very moral person
um you know for me with my humility my
my brother and I joke that we give our
credit for being humble number one to
being Mets fans because uh every year
you have a lot of promise and then it
never ends up paying off although now
with Steve Cohen hopefully we on a
different trajectory but the other thing
is also our mother you know our mother
really raised us um to be very humble to
be um you know we had we knew we had a
lot but every Sunday morning my mom was
there clipping the coupons the cereal we
ate in our house was based on um you
know was based on what was on sale
versus what we liked you know when we
would have a problem with our teachers
in school and I'd say well the teacher
doesn't like me she'd say well I'm not
calling them it's your job to make the
teacher like you and so my mother gave
us a lot of that my father gave us a lot
of the in and I think during that time
my father was just realizing that maybe
he had gotten disconnected
from the the grounding and the values
and and again I think he also accepted
maybe he could have you know 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 and
um as I go on the next Journeys in my
life and I I go to government I go to
Washington I mean I I even think through
the the craziness of going from you know
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 and like I think about
that story and that it's it's a story
that only God could write and I 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
moment ments 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 um is there some deeper wisdom
you can draw from that have have you
seen money or perhaps power cloud
people's judgment oh 100 100% 100% is
there some kind
of
optimistic thing you can take from that
about about human nature of how to
escape that clouding of judgment when
you're talking about leaders when you're
talking
about uh government even business as you
mentioned there's a power dynamics at
Play Always when you're negotiating mhm
is there a way to see the common
humanity and not see the sort of Will To
Power in the whole thing definitely you
know you mentioned about power money
corrupting there's a great uh quote I
heard a friend of mine is a guy Michael
Harris who was one of the founders of
Death Row Records and you know he was
being interviewed recently and they
asked him about what happened with shook
Knight and his line was you know money
just makes you more of what you already
are which I thought was a very elegant
way of saying it and I I would see this
time and 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 they they
acted very crazily and um maybe didn't
act in a way that I thought was always
conducive to the objective so I think
it's a very big problem that you have uh
whether it's it's something that's
solvable I think it's about having the
right leaders and and hopefully for the
leaders having good friends I mean I'm
still friends with a lot of the people I
interacted with when I was in government
and you know 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 um you know or or and I think
that that's a big thing is that people
just need friends and they need
conversation and 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 uh uh helping the the
bipartisan Bill get pasted just working
on prison reform in the White House in
general how you made that happen how you
help make that happen sure um so uh we
passed a 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
and so uh 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 uh
probability of going back so you know
stepping back you look at the prison
system you say what's the purpose is it
to punish is it to Warehouse is it to
rehabilitate and I do think that you
know we're a country that believes in
second chances I saw firsthand uh when
my father was a client of the system how
inefficient it was and how much better
it could be and you know when my father
got out we didn't run from that
experience he started hiring people from
Riker's Island and and U you know
different prisons into the company into
a second chance uh program which we're
very very proud of doing and what we saw
through our micro experience was that if
you give people mentorship if you give
them go job training uh a lot of people
you know leave they have addiction
issues um and they can't find housing
and so you know people leave prison with
a criminal record and they're less
likely to go back and reintegrate in
society without help from from from
different institutions that can help
them do that so we modeled the reforms
off of what they did in Texas and
Georgia and 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
re-enter Society uh it's turned out to
be very successful so far they just had
a report that showed that uh the general
population has had a 47% re 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 Community safer because if
people are going to now get a job and
enter Society instead of committing
future crimes you're avoiding future
crimes and number two um you're giving
people a second chance at life and so
that was the first part of it the second
thing we did was there was a rule pass
in the 90s that basically penalized uh
crack cocaine at 100 times the penalty
of what uh regular cocaine was and I
think a lot of the motivations what
people say in retrospect was that was
more of a black drug 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 um they they then
revised that to make it 18 to1 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 um you know being re
abilitate 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 other
things in there we did as well which
were also uh quite good so uh we did it
um worked very closely with the
Democrats Republicans uh to do it at
first president Trump was a little bit
skeptical of it because he's a big
strong Law and Order uh 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 uh 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 um you know this was happened for
me at a time um it was while the Russia
investigation stuff was still happening
uh new Chief of Staff came in John Kelly
he basically marginalized me in 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
uh 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
uh 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 uh and I
built a lot of trust again I would deal
with whether it's hem Jeff or Cedric
Richmond we built a lot of trust we'd
speak three times a day these guys had
my back uh the 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're able to work
together and um 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 uh it was a
great uh effort and I was very very
proud that we're able to get it done
under President Trump how did you con
convince the Republicans so they were
skeptical at first are we talking about
like just phone conversations going out
to lunch just the back to the Emojis or
what hand toand combat meetings you know
like the cool thing about this so
everyone always says I always get
frustrated when I hear a lawmaker say oh
the Senate's not what it used to be or
congress isn't what it used to be uh
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 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's
just making calls using the phone going
walking in the Halls going to lunches
you know 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
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 you
know a whole Coalition so it was really
a balancing act but it was a an amazing
thing and uh worked very closely on that
with Van Jones and Jessica Jackson who
also gave me a lot of help on the left
and um and it was an amazing thing had a
great team too so you mentioned the
importance of trust at the very
beginning of the
conversation uh from The Outsider
perspective just the maybe a dark
question which is like how much trust is
there in Washington how how much 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
screwed over manipulated for again going
back to the old money and
power yeah the answer is yes and the
answer is no so I I made some incredible
friends lifelong friends through my time
in Washington but the way I I 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 I did make some
tremendous friends and again I'd go back
to what I said about negotiation where
you know when you're in a situation
where there's really nothing in it for
any of you personally but you're in a
fox all together and nobody in
Washington can 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 everyday 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 have about you know 100 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 uh so
I guess the answer is yes it it 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 um I
didn't have as much respect for
politicians till I got 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 who 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 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 you know try to do the right thing
if there's somebody back home that does
manipulative stuff screws you over and
takes power from you it's okay I feel
like that kind
of humility is 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 uh
I'd like to say that's true Lex I I
think it's just way more complicated I
mean you look what happened this week
with with Kevin McCarthy right he did
what he thought was morally right um he
thought you know he did a bipartisan
deal uh he was told that you know they
would have his back and then the moment
things got tough they they cut him loose
so again I don't know if that's that's
if that was the right thing or the wrong
thing right I've also seen leaders on
the other ends say I'm going to do
things that are shortterm more selfish
but the way they justify to themselves
is to say I believe that myelf 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 it's complicated I 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 maybe I I do just
wish people zoomed out when people in
politics zoomed out a bit and just ask
themselves what are we all doing this
for you know like sometimes you can get
like 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 of
money or little gains in power in the
long term just 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 a little too hard MH 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 and
I wish there was a kind of Machinery of
government would inspire people to be
their best selves in their last days or
versus the war cells right when that
system gets invented you know you'll
you'll share with me what it is but it's
uh look let me give you another way to
frame it which is and this was kind of
the the revelation we spoke before about
you know kind of when I was getting my
butt kicked by the russan investigation
and all the different areas but kind of
the basic framework I looked at was I
said okay you know this all feels tough
but I said the game's the game The
Game's been here you know way longer you
know 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 or I can go and I can try to
play the game as hard as possible and I
think that there's two different things
right 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 um I have a lot of respect for the
people who who suit up and go play and
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 pads and get
hit and hit others I 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 that's a really
discouraging thing for for people maybe
it's the way it has to be but it's it's
it seems like a disincentive people uh
to participate it 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 Happ 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 gate holders
they were The Gatekeepers and then you
had these 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 a
democratization of of information then
you would think that the marketplace of
ideas would surface the real ones and
discredit the non-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 in don't deserve our
faith and some of them you know will
actually reform and maybe earn our faith
so I think that there there there could
be an optimistic tone again the the
years of trump I think that you know he
was an
outsider and you know he represented
something that was existential for this
to 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
blue shirt 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 NBS Muhammad B
Salman the Crown Prince so you've got to
know him pretty well youve become
friends with him what's he like as a
human being just on a basic human level
what's he like so for for the listeners
Muhammad Ben Salman is now the Crown
Prince of Saudi Arabia uh he has risen
to that position over the last couple of
years and uh he's been a tremendous
reformer for the country he's gone in
and he's uh really modernized the econ
economy he's he's put a lot more
investment into the country he's um
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 uh what he's like
as a person is he's um very high energy
uh he's got uh tremendous uh candle
power very very smart uh incredibly well
read when he was younger uh his father
would would give him a book a week and
make him report on it on on the weekend
uh he was trained as a as a leader and
as a
politician uh really by his father he's
not Western educated so he grew up um in
the Saudi culture and he's a real Saudi
nationalist he he loves their history
loves their Heritage uh has a deep
understanding of of of the tribal nature
of the region and um you know his father
was actually known to be a tremendous
politician so when he was governor of
Riad people who I speak to today about
him say that if they had a full election
he would have won in a landslide they
say every time some 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 was a very
very beloved leader um uh Muhammad Ben
Salman he was a businessman before he
got into uh Crown Prince so he uh thinks
really with a business mindset about how
he runs the country and he's brought I
think a different mindset and energy uh
to the Middle East um you know one thing
I'll I'll I'll say maybe that comes to
mind here is that I remember early on
um talking with him about all the
different initiatives he was taking on
he's building a big city called neom in
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 you know
why why are you taking on all these
things you know you've got a lot of
different programs but you know 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 you know 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 a 100 goals and I fail
at 50 of them then five years I've
accomplished 50 things and so it's a
very different mindset as a leader the
way I I got to work with him was um
Saudi Arabia was a big uh Topic in the
campaign president Trump was basically
saying during the campaign that you know
we're gonna you know they've got to pay
for their fair share they haven't been a
great partner in 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 said 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 uh you know to how you treat
women then women couldn't drive they had
guardianship laws so you got to start
working with Israel um you know you have
to be paying more of your fair share and
you have to be you know stopping the
wahhabism um 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
was with basically said it was a guy F
El tuni um who's a very respected
Minister there he says uh Jared says you
know you don't know much about s Arabia
do you I said no no no I don't just
really what I really what I I've 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 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 and probably the single biggest
issue we had um after Isis was the
ideological battle if you remember in
2016 there was the Pulse Nightclub
shooting in Orlando you had the San
Bernardo shooting and people were being
radicalized online uh with the extremism
and then there was a lot of crimes that
were being H 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 um
Mecca Med uh 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 um we will do all these different
things we'll increase our military
spending and cooperation we'll counter
all the teror 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 deal
unbelievable but it will never happen I
said well they're telling me they want
to do these things again 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 we get into office I don't
think much more about it and then I
think it was like maybe a month in
president Trump has a call with King
salon and before the call we're in the
oville office and the president's
basically saying well you know this is
what we want to go through and I have uh
secretary Mattis and secretary Tillerson
the minister of defense and the
Secretary of State basically saying um
you have to deal with mbn mbn is 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 if
he's been a great partner then 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 um 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 saman says uh deal with my son the
deputy Crown Prince MPS and so president
Trump said on the phone have him deal
with Jared because I think he knew knew
that if he would have 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 um and
they've been betting against him and uh
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
jour Journey that you went on from like
the talking points the basic narratives
the the very basic talking points
understanding of Saudi Arabia
to making that human connection with
NBS and making the policy connection and
it'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 um but my
desire to listen and hear people so you
know I had this proposal I was told that
all 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 uh CEO of on so he dealt with all
these play 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 them a
chance to try to do it like why do we
want to
predetermine their their 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 you
know they basically deferred and uh 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 uh would be coming up and I said
look I really need to get these things
in writing he sent over a guy Dr mad El
iban uh who's a tremendous Diplomat for
them and he came to Washington stayed
for 3 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 I even believed that they
could be possible but the answer is 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 uh you sent me a great
essay from from Paul Graham I'm a big
fan of that 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 uh 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 M um
there's a lot of interesting things here
to talk about this aspect of doing the
seemingly simple that seems to be so
hard to do uh 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 be
indifferent to the rules uh 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 sheare of audacity
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
their ignorance of a field ignorance
maybe in quotes of a Field's assumptions
act as a source of temporary passive
independent mindedness aspies also seem
to have a kind of immunity to
Conventional beliefs several I know say
that this helps them to have new ideas
so the aggressive and the passive this
such an interesting way of looking at it
um perhaps some aspect of this at least
in the story you tell is 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 it's funny 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 uh into my new career
now and I just loved it but when we were
talking about uh 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 of that essay which is why I
shared it and I I think that in the
context of the work that I was doing
here uh perhaps not having the
historical context uh became an
advantage and obviously went back and
then tried to study it but you if you go
into a problem I always find that
especially in the political realm my
favorite um political issues are ones
where they're contrarian by being
obvious and you know 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 um as the way that you're
supposed to do things um and I came to
learn over the course of my time in
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 I think that um
you know 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 and really work 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 principal's 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
uh a safer and and and more prosperous
place tomorrow so if we can uh go back
to MPS for a little bit uh from the
person to the vision uh 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 you know 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 you know 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 kpi 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 um 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 uh the
Allison Wonderland where uh 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 uh really helped
set them on a good path and they've been
very successful with it uh 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
BNS 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 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 uh an
economic and security cor Corridor all
the way from H to Muscat from Oman to
Israel where basically you go through
and if you can create a a security area
where people can live you know free of
fear of of terrorism and of conflict the
Middle East for the last 20 years has
been a sinkhole for for for for arms for
death uh for terrorism it's been you
know awful it's been a big national
security threat for America a big uh
place where our you know our our
treasure is gone we've had a lot of our
our young uh amazing American soldiers
killed in in action there and uh and the
same thing for the Arab countries as
well so if we can create a 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 not connected to the rest of
California you have 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 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 and think about ways to be a
positive influence in the world so a
difficult question uh one big source of
tension between the United States and
Saudi is the case of Jamal kogi I
wondering if you can comment on what NBS
has said about it to you You' spoken to
him about it and what NBS 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 as
as somebody helping lead this country uh
I bear responsibility and um and I'm
going to make sure that those who are
involved are brought to Justice and I'm
going to make sure that um that we put
in place reforms to make sure things
like this don't happen again it was a
horrible situ situation uh that occurred
uh what I saw from him after that was
just a doubling and a tripling down on
on the positive things he was doing
figuring out ways to kind of continue to
modernize his Society uh build
opportunity in in 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 and the
possibility of connection between the
bridges that are built between different
nations MH 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 narratives the stories they
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
it's just sad to see that yes
this uh 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
the
that somehow s's not a friend but is
against the ideals and the values of the
United States yeah so it it definitely
created massive tension and it became a
very
high-profile uh 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
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 you know
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 you know Safety and
Security for for my people um and and
for 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 you know there are certain
reactions that are appropriate um 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 than 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 set you finish a
deal you either have you know a company
or a property or if you sell it you have
you know less to do and and and more
Capital hopefully if it's successful
right
in a political deal it's always about
Paradigm 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 you know bad things
happen um you know a lot in the world
and um you have to make sure that when
those happen you know people are held
accountable for it but you o 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 and
U Israel in the Middle East first the
big question about
peace why is it so difficult to achieve
peace in this part of the world between
between Israel and Palestine and between
Israel and the other countries in the
Middle East or any sort of peac likee
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 and the
Palestinians um 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
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 in Po in 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 Hezbollah and and 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 uh a negotiation failed
Israel was able to get more land and
every 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 some of it would make its way down
but most of it was going to the
politicians you had leadership of the
Palestinians who was basically I think
at that point was in like the 16th year
of a four-year term so he 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 uh envoys to date were basically
trained to go and do the same things and
I again I got massively criticized by
all the previous envoys 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 you know
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 camp and I was
just like I don't need a headache and I
don't need a history lesson just 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 they're
double secret I was like this whole
thing is like it's a process created
where nobody wants to talk about
uh 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 Arab world to stay with the
line of the Arab peace initiative and so
I went back and I read the air peace
initiative it was 10 lines and it didn't
have any detail so it was a concept and
so they likeed that concept because it
allowed them to reject everything they
kept getting more money I mean BB
Netanyahu who runs uh one of the most
incredible economies in the world who
runs an incredible superpower uh
militarily for the size of of their
country he would fly to Washington to
meet us and he'd be taking a commercial
LOL plane MH a boss 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 year
eight every year from the global
Community would fly in a $60 million
Boeing BBJ so the whole thing was just
very corrupt and off and I do think that
that's why it um 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 uh Abraham Accords if there is a
peace plan that works between Israel and
Palestine what is it 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 I I 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 kaboose who was the
Sultan of Oman and we fly out there
because he'd had a secret meeting with
BB and I thought maybe he was open to uh
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 I again I tell the story it
was a crazy you know night in all these
different areas but when I was talking
to him um 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 aloa 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 and the
Muslim World which really was the issue
of the aloa mosque and then you had just
a territorial dispute which throughout
history you have lots of territorial
disputes and they're 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
right you need to figure out where do
you draw the lines and that's something
that you know 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 right and that's
kind of what we did I we literally spent
months and months drawing a map and we
put something out probably change a
couple lines here and there but by and
large it was a very pragmatic solution
um that I think could work and I think
it could work for the Safety and
Security of Israel which was number one
um so first issue is drawing a map
second issue is security again
Israel um and again this is one issue we
were incredibly sympathetic with Israel
which is you can't expect a 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
closely with them on a security
apparatus we laid something out that I
think would keep the whole area safer
and it would it would make sure Israel
was safe and also keep the Palestinian
Shu 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 uh the
aloa mosque because you basically have
Haram Al Sharif which is a place where
the mosque was built in the sth OR 8th
Century um but originally it was where
the the holy of holies were in the betam
mdash 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
has become a place where you have you
know Wars and and and and 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 B said 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 shortcomings and
a lot of the Arab leaders did that as
well kind of in the pre- Abraham mord
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 outed plan was
we said okay um what are the reasons why
the Palestinian people are not having
the lives that they deserve and I'll
give you a couple things one is I
studied the economies of you know Jordan
uh 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 of GDP that the
Palestinians had was like 30 40%
compared to Egypt which was at like 130%
and Jordan which was at 110% and Lebanon
which is at 200% 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 uh you know to the
people let them have jobs let them have
opportunity and then let all Muslims
from throughout the world 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 to have strong
you know security control there to
prevent the radicalists and the
extremist from coming you could have
peace there very easily so there's a lot
of things to say here one is just to
emphasize uh alaa mque says this this
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 uh but
that's kind of a religious component
that's a a dignity in the religious
practice and Faith component but then
the other thing you mentioned so
um uh simply which is you have money
flow past the leadership ranks
how do you have money flow past the
leadership ranks in uh in Palestine so
uh 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 the money and there's no
expectations it's very simple you make
the aid conditions based you fight for
transparency 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 which is the leadership
it's not hard to do it just takes people
who actually want to do it but I think
the the the mindset of the International
Community has not been let solve this
problem it's like let's just throw a
little bit of money the money's Novacane
let's put a little Novacane 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 dollars
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 it's it's an
incredibly corrupt organization unra you
think about the postor 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 is existential they value
their safety they've been under attack
for a long time I do think having a
where we can say how do you know the
Jews and the Muslims Chris come together
I think King Abdullah from Jordan's been
an incredible custodian for the mosque I
think everyone in my travels recognized
that he's the right guy for that that
the King of Jordan should be the
custodian of of the mosque um 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 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 uh
tremendous tourism industry because of
all the Christian Muslim uh and Jewish
holy sites that they have there so
there's a lot of potential there we just
have to like get unstuck 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 uh to Hamas and and
in the West Bank they're just they're
just held back because their leadership
just is afraid or 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 um it's 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 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 uh being able to
establish an economy where the
entrepreneurs can flourish in the West
Bank and so on in Palestine uh
once the uh the relationship across the
Arab world is normalized so so one thing
on that which is very interesting is
when I got into my job in in in on the
Middle East all the conventional
thinkers said to me the separation in
the Muslim world is between the S sunnis
and the Shia 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 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 um is the in
general the idea of uh Arab Israeli
normal ation so that's where Abraham
McCords come in can you tell the story
of that sure so um it's an amazing thing
and I I sit here today you know somebody
not in government and you know every day
I see you know another you know flight
that goes between or I I see you know an
Israeli student studying at a university
in Dubai or a new synagogue opening up
in in Abu Dhabi and it it just gives me
such or Bahrain gives me such tremendous
uh Pride to see all of the progress
that's been made how it occurred um part
of why I wrote the book was to put this
down for for history's sake to go
through all the different intentional
unintentional circumstantial things that
occurred um it's fine we left government
there's a lot of people saying well this
is why it 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 a 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 he made
that's probably the best place to start
so uh what we did is we we made a piece
deal between um Israel and the United
Arab Emirates and then Israel and
Bahrain then we did a deal with Israel
and Sudan and then Israel and Kosovo
Israel and Morocco were basically
countries that didn't recognize each
other before ended up recognizing each
other uh all these were Muslim majority
countries and getting them to integrate
with Israel was a very big thing um the
traditional thinking had always been was
that Muslim Arab countries would not
make peace with Israel until um the
Israeli palestin issue was solved and
what we were able to do is separate the
issues and then make these make these
connections which are leading to amazing
interaction between Jews and Muslims so
when I think about kind of obviously you
have National Security you have
emotional um benefits from these things
but the the single biggest benefit that
I've seen from the Accords is that if
you were uh an Arab or a Muslim and you
were um and you were willing to say
positive things about Israel or the Jews
before this came out you would been
viciously attacked by the media or the
hordes of influencers or the uh
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 culturist can live together
in peace so just to Ling on
this it's it's like once subtle
and uh in another sense like
transformative so normalization means
you're allowed to travel for one place
to the other 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 uh traveling communicating
doing business with socializing so the
cultures mix uh conversations mix all of
this and this kind of has a ripple
effect on
the basic connection between these
previously disper worlds I don't know if
there's
a 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 it's just a mindset and it's almost
like you're taught all your
life we're 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 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 uh from post Holocaust to now again
in 1948 after uh the that war of
independence you had Jews living in
Baghdad and Cairo uh then they became so
anti- Jewish that they then expelled all
of the Jews from all these capitals of
those cities 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 BC
when nanzer 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 that
that place the Jews actually flourished
and had a good uh life there so for
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 is an aberration
I actually think it's not 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 of 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 on the topic of Saudi
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 dollar a year can you respond to
these recent set of attacks sure so uh
left government obviously worked for
four years I uh you know 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 right so my
previous uh career I'd been in real
estate I I'd worked my brother on some
technology uh businesses that I'd
started and then I um got into
government so I I kind of had a career
shift right um in my previous career
obviously was very successful uh the New
York Times uh the violated and they
published my financial um uh 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
um you know I volunteered I didn't take
a salary I I paid my own health
insurance for four years my wife and I
and then we went and I was thinking
should I go back to my old company or
should I start something new and my
thinking was is that I'd um through my
time in government I'd met so many
people I'd learned so much about the
world I I had a big understanding now
for how the macroeconomic uh picture
worked and 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 you
know can you help me with this company
can you help me with that company you're
knowledge could be helpful to uh help
this company navigate this challenge or
to expand internationally and so I said
you know what 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 in
growing things and help with my
navigation skills and relationships so
that was kind of the thesis of what I
thought could make sense as kind of a
Next Step um I I called you know
different friends they were very excited
to to back uh the effort uh obviously
this was coming off the success that I
just had in the Middle East where I did
you know six uh peace deals there and
you know 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 it 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 is is less likely and then
in addition to that I wanted to figure
out how do you bring the entrepreneurs
together from both of those countries so
that was really the mission of what I
set out to do so far I've been enjoying
it it's been a lot of fun i' I've been
learning a ton I think we're doing very
well with it um in terms of the
criticisms I think that I've been
criticized in every step of everything
I've always done in my life and so uh
what I would say is you know this
business is actually an objective metric
business right it's about returns so you
know in three four years from now five
years from now see how I do hopefully
I'll do uh very well and Judge Me based
on that in terms of any of the nefarious
things uh you I haven't been accused of
Any of of of violating any laws and uh
you know I haven't violated any of the
ethics rules either when I was in
government I I every year submitted all
my financial uh to the office of
government ethics they certified it
every year and I followed every Rule and
every law possible so um so to my
critics I'll say criticize me before
you'll criticize me now I'm going to
keep doing me and uh going to keep
pursuing things that I think are
worthwhile um and I'm very excited about
this chapter of my career maybe this is
a good place to ask uh in working
closely with Donald Trump what in your
sense looking into the mind of of the
man uh what's the biggest strength of uh
of Donald Trump as a leader I would say
his
unpredictability I think that as a
leader he's um he consumes a ton of
information he doesn't like to be
managed or have his information filtered
so he'll speak to a lot of people to
draw his information himself uh 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 um and I think
ultimately I mean he he's an incredible
fighter he's he's a big counter puncher
uh but he also wants to get along with
people and that's probably the biggest
surprise that people found with him I
mean you know you look at even
situations like uh I would always tell
people if you disagree with him don't go
on television and criticize him just
pick up the phone and call him and go
see him and he'll talk to you about it
he not agree with you but 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 so we spent about eight
months uh quietly working through the
case working through the details to make
sure that it really was a worthy case um
I brought it to president Trump said you
know she'd like to come meet with you to
to talk about this case and he said how
come in so she came in we went through
the case and president Trump ultim Ely
granted the clemency to Alice Johnson
who was a a woman who was accused of
being part of a drug ring uh she had a
basically a life sentence uh for doing
it she'd served 22 years in prison while
in prison I mean she's basically was a
grandmother and she um she was you know
putting on the prison plays she was
mentoring you know young women in prison
somebody who again there's always a risk
but by and large had a very very very
low risk of of committing a crime in the
future and then it goes back to the
notion of are we going to judge people
by the worst decision they make in their
life and so president Trump uh was
willing to Grant the climate scene went
and I think that it just goes to the
notion of like 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 so 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 kind of
cross America and what I would tell
people who don't like Trump is I would
say think about how crazy he's making
you and and his enemies you know he did
that to the enemies of America and um
and yeah so he was a very very strong
president and I think did a great job so
in some of these agreements I've been
talking about and and speaking with
leaders how do you think the
unpredictability helps so in all the
agreements that I was negotiating I
wasn't doing it as a principal I was
doing it on behalf of President Trump
and people knew that I had 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 and one of the biggest
instances was on the usmca trade deal
where um 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 would was
actually real but they were smart to
read that it was real and ultimately we
created a great uh win-win deal um tell
you a funny story just popped into my
mind from 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 I thought about this because
we also negotiated them with Canada and
there was a very funny phone call where
Trudeau is calling uh Trump and again
they got along you know decently well
and um Trudeau's calling saying you
can't put National Security tariffs on
us in Canada you know we're we're we're
your NATO Ally we we fought Wars with
you we do military together and Trump
says to him didn't you burn the White
House Down in 1812 and TR says that was
the French no it was the
Canadians and so it was just you know
like I said he's always keeping everyone
on their toes yeah and um but he was he
he he he wasn't Afra 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 II
meanwhile We inherited a world filled
with Wars no new Wars right three years
he made peace deals no new Wars he was
tough he was strong people respected him
he built relationships and uh 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 uh Donald Trump won the
presidency what the the current
situation in Ukraine would look like but
let me just ask you zoom out and ask you
broadly um do you think the war in
Ukraine could 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 uh 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 and 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 or we can
collaborate together I think Russia you
know we thought it was in their
strategic advantage to play uh 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 um under Bush they took
Georgia under Obama they took Crimea
under Trump there was no problems and
then under Biden U unfortunately I think
they misplayed a couple of things uh
which I think provoked uh you know
Russia to to go forward um still no
excuse to do what they did I think that
the invasion was a terrible thing and
and should not have occurred um but with
that being said um I think 100% if Trump
was President there would not be a war
in Ukraine today coming to the table and
negoti ating a
piece whether it's Donald Trump whether
it's Biden whether it's anybody what do
you think it takes uh do you think it's
possible uh and if you're in a room if
jerck Krishna is in the room with
Vladimir Putin and Vladimir zalinski
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 offramp is without
fearing it's going to leak to the public
so if you go to the posture of zalinsky
right now and by the way president
zalinsky I have a lot of respect for the
courage he showed uh especially
initially um you know you saw what ghani
did in Afghanistan they 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 a long time uh 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 Bloodshed we're
going to stop the risk of nuclear war
for the world we're going to stop um
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
part 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
it to get worse for both parties you
have to 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 um it's a big task to
get it done but for the sake of the
world it'd be amazing in if we were able
to reach a conclusion to that conflict
just going back to the your earlier
mention of North
Korea what do you think it takes to
bring Vladimir Putin and Vladimir
zalinsky to the table together
leadership so you you you're saying like
it has to be a US
president it has to be somebody who's
willing to put thems on the line yeah to
go and do it and you know again if
you're the US president and you're the
most powerful Nation in the world you
should be trying yeah but I do think
again the posture that the US has taken
has probably been in a place where they
it would be very hard for them to get
the trust of Russia based on the way
that they've played their moves to date
you know I always thought from the
beginning that Putin would try to bring
in president X and China to resolve it
to basically give a big screwy youu to
America to say you know China's now the
one you know in charge of this but that
hasn't seemed to manifest itself to date
either but it takes leadership you know
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 on a more people are dying
um and B you know we do risk 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 uh 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 yeah so I didn't deal with Russia
a ton but in my interaction with with
Putin and with uh Russia you know I I
would kind of point out a couple of
things number one is when America was
hit with coid 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 plain 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
Goodwill 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
in World War II we worked together to to
defeat the Nazis right and now we're
great allies with Germany who basically
was our great enemy in 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 um so number
one as 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 of oil production
so during coid demand just shut off like
crazy and it was it was stopping very
quickly uh Saudi and Russia at that time
were having conflict they created this
thing called OPEC plus which goes back
again history between the two countries
where U 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 cut so Saudi
actually increased production so you had
two things hitting at once where 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 um I said look
president 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 then I can
try to intervene but uh but right now
he's not inclined to intervene after a
little bit uh he said you know what it's
time get involved go do it it was right
over Passover this was during coid I
spent three days non-stop on the phone
with carel demitria from Russia and with
uh with NBS directly and I was deal with
Dan Bret who was our energy Minister uh
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
Salon uh Vladimir Putin and uh president
Trump to announce the deal I'm like oh
this is great this so president Trump
can congratulations we have a deal and
then King SM says we don't have a deal
uh Mexico hasn't agreed to their Cuts he
say 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 dealing they're
saying we're not doing any Cuts said why
I said we're hedged to $55 I said why
didn't you tell us that in the beginning
so I'm telling the Saudis are 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 so 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 zalinsky and Putin any
conversation with both of them is about
understanding their perspective I think
with Putin he's a a student of history
from the things that I I saw with him if
you look at Russia over the last 500
years I think they were attacked by uh
the polish in in early 1600 I think they
were attacked by uh the swedes in in 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 you know in the early days of Russia
uh 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 and 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 um
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 you
know 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 who want to
be sympathetic to him will say well if
you think about it the Russian
perception of the NATO arrange
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 was were or weren't but
what I do know from his perspective is
allowing Ukraine into 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 just calm
down we don't want any conflicts there
we have bigger issues and opportunities
to work for him so I do think you have
to think through what's a paradigm that
he can accept um and I do think that you
know 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 geogy graphy one of the 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 from a geography
perspective and um also for China in the
second chapter and there's a lot of
understanding of why the expansion of
NATO is such a concern for Russia
because geography still even in the 21st
century less and less so because of
technology and so on but it's still
plays a major role in conflicts between
nations rivers mountains yeah and
understanding the DNA of countries it
was one of the most phenomenal books and
I I just found it on Amazon randomly but
I I loved every minute of it the chapter
on America is also incredible going
through the evolution of you know how we
became the country we are the different
Acquisitions the different changes why
we have all these Geographic graic
advantages and uh it's it's an
unbelievable book for anyone who's
interested in
geopolitics so I I have to ask on
several aspects of China first on the
president uh the meeting you help set up
a first call and first meeting between
Donald Trump and uh Xin ping can you
tell the story of that because that's
also interesting again that first phone
call the reaching out the 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 the head of Taiwan
and that sent the Chinese into a a real
Tail Spin and he didn't do it I think to
be provocative to them as much as just
as a businessman he felt you answer your
call somebody wants to speak to you you
speak to them like you you want to have
conversations hear their point of view
and but it was taken as a very big
insult and it was against tradition and
Norm um and so that was something that
set us off in 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 when 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 uh but there's a lot that they
probably could agree on which could lead
to um resolutions to a lot of issues uh
in the world that that that was like my
most optimistic view um my my most more
pragmatic view is 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
were unfair they weren't following all
the global rules of trade uh 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 um the Chinese are very proud and a
lot of it is about fa Bas and so we in
order to negotiate for that first call
we we basically agreed on what would
happen in the call so now let's just
have a call say hi nice to meet you was
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
un acknowledge it the next day so yeah
I'll acknowledge it and then we'll go
and exchange uh president shei 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 logo which I also thought
was good cuz president Trump always felt
much more comfortable when he was
hosting uh 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 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 uh and um 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 just don't
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 started talking about
the trade issues they spent a lot of
time on North Korea uh president Trump
was trying to get the perspective from
uh 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 um
and they just had a good feeling for
each other it also helped that you know
uh my wife and I we actually had a
Chinese uh Nanny and teacher in our
house and our our kids learned fluent
Mandarin and our daughter actually
opened uh when uh president she and
president Trump were together with h
with Melania and with uh Madame Pang is
is um uh my daughter actually sang them
a couple of Chinese songs and uh 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
and in how um and how they do it and I
think that sign of respect also set
things off in a very warm way for
president Trump to say my granddaughter
speaks Chinese and and we're showing you
the respect um 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 uh at lunch where he just went
through
uh Chinese history from his perspective
and he talked about uh with particular
emphasis on on kind of the Treaty of
unequals and then the Hundred Years of
humiliation and then you go through from
now all the way to today and you had you
know 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
right so China today is different than
it was in 2017 in
2017 I remember president XI was at
Davos and he was FedEd by all the top
business people in the world as the you
know 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 and and
fighting for climate change and um and
what occurred was President Trump came
in and basically said like I think China
has not been following the rules based
order uh took very very drastic
approaches with tariffs every time he
would do the tariffs again you know I
had uh minuchin our treasury sector come
to Von my 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 lighthiser
Robert lighthiser he was really the the
tip of the spear on all of our our trade
negotiations he worked very well with
secretary minuchin and they ended up we
ended up increasing tariffs to numbers
that hadn't
um even been thought could happen so we
did the first round of tariffs then uh
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 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 uh
experience to be a part of it and the
role I played was really working for
secretary minuchin and Ambassador
lighthiser as a as a back Channel with
the Chinese to make sure we can just
deescalate things and get to Solutions
in a uh in the best way possible and so
um 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 could have more economic parity
so you mentioned to me the book The 100y
Year Marathon by Michael
Pillsbury uh when we discussed
China and uh I've gotten a chance to
read parts of it and i' highly recommend
people read it because there's a few
it's a an eye openening
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 and you said it was instructive to
how you thought how Donald Trump thought
about
China uh can you describe the main
thesis of the book and maybe with a
hopeful view how it's possible to have a
trajectory of these two superpowers
working together in the 21st
century uh versus fighting against each
other perfect so um it's a very very big
book and I I I think it's a book
definitely worth reading uh Michael is
uh is is is tremendous he speaks fluent
uh Mandarin and so he 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 uh in 2016 but it really I
think came to represent the underpinning
of what uh the collective thought was of
the Trump
Administration and um and maybe you
could argue that it was even more
cynical the the whole thesis of the book
was that China from 1949 to 2049 was
working to reclaim their position as the
global leader right so you had the the
Chinese Empire um you know 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 an industrial uh
the Industrial Revolution and basically
no we're fine we're the great Chinese
Empire we don't we don't need any of
these things we're we're better than
that and by rejecting that the rest of
the world got stronger China remained
weaker uh then you had the the the the
Opium Wars you know the the Chinese had
big opium problems through all the trade
back and forth and then China from about
1840 to to 1940 at 100 years where they
really after all these uh 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 um you know would fight
their way back and and build Brick by
Brick and you know he propers 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 then they talk about
how under Carter they were able to get
the US to contribute to a lot of their
uh they were able to kind of start
borrowing the us knowhow from our
University Systems from our medical from
our science from our research and the
whole notion that was the conventional
thinking of America 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
uh they were doing Espionage to 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 became 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 tra 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 um the real question is if
they actually did achieve this full
objective of becoming the world
uh dominant country what they would have
done with it whether they would have
been nefarious 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
L World daughter than a Chinese L World
daughter um but the notion was is that
they were playing a very Zero Sum game
and really going to be the dominant
leader in this new world order so um so
that really framed the perspective and
it wasn't necessarily you know people
asked me was was and the Chinese were
always fearing is Trump trying to stop
our rise right and you have a great book
also by Graham Allison that he writes
about you know are we destined for war
between us and China and he goes through
different historical times where you
have a power and a rising superpower and
I think you know more than half the time
it ends up leading to war so the
question is is what's going to happen
here and I I do think that Trump's
perspective and this is my
interpretation because everything was
always tactical dayto day and you know
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 you know his
General view was that America is the
best private sector in the world we have
a lot of the best Minds uh in the world
and if we can 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 sted subsidies get rid of make
them follow some of these International
rules of trade and um and not allowing
them to do predatory um Investments That
Then undercut different industries that
we had so that they can have global
market dominance or monopolies on
different Industries and then have
pricing power but also um you know
geopolitical power so like 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 went they they they subsidize
solar panels a lot of the American solar
panel players were put out of business
so now I think it's 90 plus% 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
uh there's this SNL skit where Jimmy
Fallon plays you and you're walking into
the Oval Office uh looking cool wearing
wearing Shades and a bulletproof vest to
the song Unbelievable by EMF I don't
know if you've seen it but it's pretty
epic and then uh 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 but one of them is
can you introspect why you choose this
lowkey approach
uh of kind of operating behind the
scenes and not speaking much to the
public at least at the time he you
spoken a little bit more and today
you've spoken for a really long time
which I deeply appreciate no it's been a
pleasure to do this and and thank you
for the opportunity to to talk about
these things and so so that was a really
funny skit and um you know it's funny
the the thing I got made fun of the most
for that was the Wardrobe and that came
from after you know three months in the
administration we would were having
dinner with all the generals and they
were saying you know updating us on the
war with ISIS and general Dumford 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 you know what 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 what's actually
happening so I said no problem I 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 what do you my blood type
is you're going to an active war zone
like okay so I guess I'm going to war
zone I I didn't really think this thing
fully through so I get on the plane with
Dumford and uh we land in in Iraq and he
looks like gi. Joe he's you know he's a
great uh great General he's very very
well respected in the military and we we
go in and we uh we get on Blackhawk
helicopter they said you know today's a
nice day let's take the uh the sides off
and so I get on the plane and there's a
guy uh you know military service uh
officer who then takes a machine gun
locks it into 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 there's like three other
helicopters with guys one 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
experence 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 Saddam
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
what what is happening so meanwhile we
end up going to the front lines um to be
with the service uh 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 War what
do you wear it at the front lines in a
battle Zone and uh and also me the
president so I put a sports jacket on we
land at the um at the front line and
they give me a bulletproof vest that
says cusher on it I tape it I just I I
put it on I go out and uh I cover the N
so it just said cush and uh and I went
and I didn't realize they were taking
pictures and so I think the picture
looks pretty epic you was sunglasses I
think I love it so anyway so that was
the funny story behind that and then uh
actually my brother was at some Society
event in New York and uh ran into Jimmy
Fallon so the two of them took a selfie
together and uh Josh writes me he says
uh 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 uh for me just gave me more
maneuverability in the sense that you
know 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 too like communicating is a
very important skill uh luckily in
Washington there's no shortage of
amazing communicators I think there were
a lot of people who are much better at
me than being communicators so I was
very uh 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 and just focused on
getting things done uh so 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 uh you just
have to work hard at everything you do
um 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 um 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 9 o00
I said I'll leave at 8 o'clock he says
well what if there's traffic I said Dad
I've done this drive a thousand times
like there's never traffic said 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 I'll I'll read
everything I I can get my hands on I if
I fail at one the door closes I'll try
the window if the window closes I'll try
the chimney if the chimney choses I'll
try di a tunnel it's just if you want to
accomplish something you just have to go
at it and um you know I think the most
important thing I'll say sorry I'm kind
of thinking my way into this answer is
um is 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 it it does
pay off maybe not in politics but in uh
in the World At 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 cuz he
took on so many new interesting problems
and approached them with a first
principles kind of approach MH 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 taking on the problem in a
very
pragmatic uh perspective so what was uh
how did 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
of this that you've taken on and were
extremely effective that it 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
um 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 talk
to somebody and I'd ask advice and then
the next thing i' know is the Washington
Post would call and say Jared's an idiot
doesn't know what he'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 ianka 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
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 muhamad Benin zad who I spoke about
earlier 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 was shocked because I mean
first of all he was you know at the time
I think some 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
know 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 have been 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 has just
asked questions he says why why have you
done that I said because I figure you
know this problem's been going 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 were having
sign significant impact on their lives
yeah there's a lot of power to the sort
of the the Simplicity of that human
approach where you're just listening
yeah and one of my wishes for society is
I I leave government you know I uh 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
a time scale of many decades maybe
centuries what gives you hope about
human civilization everything you've
seen you've traveled the world you've
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 or or religion
or you know or who wronged 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 uh 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 uh 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
multiplanetary uh we can we can explore
the wonders of the world we can find
things we know um so I think that if 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 um all I
really had was was the faith of 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 uh thank you for
talking today this was fascinating eye
opening 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
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let me leave you with some words from
aot
mandhi an eye for an eye will only make
the whole world
blind thank you for listening and hope
to see you next
time