Jared Kushner: belief

Transcript context

…As you’ve said, you’ve traveled all across the world. Do you think most people are good, most people have love in their heart? I do believe that, yeah. And you have some bad people. You have some real evil people. A big part of the work I did was on prison reform. 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 we’re going to throw you out and we’re going to make the rest of your life incredibly difficult. Because you’re going to have a criminal record, you’re not going to have access to jobs. But what I found is, when I would sit with people in prison, the people I’ve met through my father’s experience and who I met along the way is that people make mistakes. We’re all human. I think it’s the right thing from a religious perspective to give people second chances. I always believe you shouldn’t judge people by the worst mistake they make in their life. Unfortunately now, in the era of social media, people will say one wrong thing, it sticks with them forever. They get canceled or they get put out. We’re all humans. We grow from our mistakes, we learn from our mistakes. And I think that some people are just evil. There are some evil people. But I do think the vast, vast, vast majority of people are good. And I do think that people sometimes also can be in a bad place, and then society can push them to a worse and worse place. But we all have the power to make them feel loved, make them feel heard. I think there’s also tremendous power that we have as people to help people get to a better place. My wife and I, we’ve always tried to be a force for good. We’ve always tried to provide a place where people can discuss with each other. When we were in Washington, we would host dinners at our house all the time, or we would have Democrats and Republicans sitting together. I saw Senator Feinstein just passed away. We had a great dinner at her house when she was a senator, with her and her husband and Mark Meadows when he was on the Freedom Caucus. And we had actually a fascinating discussion about Iran. Mark was much more hard line than me. I had to actually bite my tongue. I was impressed at how much he did. Whereas Feinstein and her husband were super into… They knew the Iranians well. They thought they were peace loving. And it was an incredibly robust and respectful debate. I don’t think we maybe concluded anything that night, but it was interesting for people to get together. Having a dinner at my house where I had Dick Durbin, the number two ranking Democrat in the Senate, Lindsey Graham and Steven Miller, who’s known to be a very hard line on immigration, discussing what an immigration reform could look like. Dick Durbin, the number two ranking Democrat in the Senate, Lindsey Graham and Steven Miller, who’s known to be a very hard line on immigration, discussing what an immigration reform could look like. They left that dinner saying, “Wow, we hadn’t spoken to people on the other side and we actually agree on 85% of things. Maybe something is possible.” So I believe that we should always be trying to push to make the world a better place. And you only do that by listening to people and connecting with people and by respecting people. And finally, I’ll just say on this is that, I meet people all the time who have so much confidence in their perspectives. I’m very jealous that these people are able to be so confident about every single thing. Because, for me, I have some degree of confidence in the things that I’ve studied and what I’ve learned, but I’m always trying to find people who disagree to sharpen my perspectives and to help me grow and to help me learn further. I think that’s the beauty of the world, is that the knowledge base continues to grow, the facts continue to change, and what’s possible tomorrow continues to become different. So as humans, we have to continue to thrive, to learn, and to grow and to connect. And if we do that, everything’s possible.…

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