Jared Kushner: recommendation

Transcript context

…So for the listeners, Mohammed bin Salman is now the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. He has risen to that position over the last couple of years and he’s been a tremendous reformer for the country. He’s gone in and he’s really modernized the economy. He’s put a lot more investment into the country. He’s marginalized the religious police and he’s really done a good job to bring modernization, a lot of reform. So he is been a great reformer. What he’s like as a person is he’s very high energy. He’s got tremendous candor power, very, very smart, incredibly well-read. When he was younger, his father would give him a book a week and make him report on it on the weekend. He was trained as a leader and as a politician, really, by his father. He’s not western educated, so he grew up in the Saudi culture and he’s a real Saudi nationalist. He loves their history, loves their heritage, has a steep understanding of the tribal nature of the region. His father was actually known to be a tremendous politician, so when he was governor of Riyadh, people who I speak to today about him say that if they had a full election, he would’ve won in a landslide. They say every time somebody went to the hospital, he was the first person to call. Anytime there was a funeral, he was the first person to show up. He’s a very, very beloved leader. Mohammed bin Salman, he was a businessman before he got into Crown Prince. So he thinks really with a business mindset about how he runs the country, and he’s brought I think a different mindset and energy to the Middle East. One thing I’ll say that maybe that comes to mind here is that I remember early on talking with him about all the different initiatives he was taking on. He’s building a big city called Neo in the desert in a place where there really was nothing on the Red Sea, and a lot of people were criticizing the ambition of the plan. And I was sitting with him one night and I said, ‘Why are you taking on all these things? You’ve got a lot of different programs, but what most politicians do is they set lower expectations and then they exceed the expectations.” And he looked at me without hesitation. He says, “Jared, the way I look at it is that in five years from now, if I set five goals and I achieve five goals, I’ll achieve five things. If I set a hundred goals and I fail at 50 of them, then five years I’ll accomplish 50 things.” And so it’s a very different mindset as a leader. The way I got to work with him was Saudi Arabia was a big topic in the campaign. President Trump was basically saying during the campaign that they’ve got to pay for their fair share, they haven’t been a great partner in the region. He’s very critical of Saudi. And then during the transition, I was asked by several friends to meet with a representative of Saudi Arabia. I said, “I don’t want to meet with them.” tner 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.” 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 to how you treat women.” Then women couldn’t drive, they had guardianship laws. So you got to start working with Israel, you have to be paying more of your fair share and you have to be stopping the Wahhabism that’s being spread. Again, I had no knowledge these were just kind of the traditional talking points about Saudi Arabia. So the guy I was with basically said, this guy Fahad Toonsi, who’s a very respected minister there, he says, “Jared,” he says, “You don’t know much about Saudi Arabia, do you?” I said, “No, no, no, I don’t. It’s just really what I’ve kind of been told or what I read.” And he says, “Okay, let me do this. We want to be great allies with America. We’ve traditionally been great allies with America. Can I come back to you with a proposal on ways that we can make progress on all of the different areas where we have joint interests?” Keep in mind at that point in time, the Middle East was a mess, and probably the single biggest issue we had after ISIS was the ideological battle. If you remember in 2016, there was the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, you had the San Bernardino shooting and people were being radicalized online with the extremism, and then there was a lot of crimes that were happening because of that. It was a big topic in the campaign, and so that when I was thinking about 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 as the custodian of the two holiest sites in Islam, the Mecca Medina, that that would be the best partner to work with if they were willing to. But for years, they really hadn’t been willing to kind of lean into this fight. So I said, “Sure, give a proposal.” So they come back, give a proposal, and they said, “Look, if you make President Trump’s first trip to Saudi Arabia, we will do all these different things. We’ll increase our military spending and cooperation, we’ll counter all the terror financing.” Unbelievable layer. So I took the proposal, I went to the National, then it was General Flynn. I said, “If Saudi Arabia did these things, would this be considered a big…” “Unbelievable, but it’ll never happen.” I said, “Well, they’re telling me they want to do these things. Again, having no foreign policy experience, I’m just saying I’ve got somebody telling me they want to do it and that’s kind of where we started.” Again, to office I don’t think much more about it. gs. Again, having no foreign policy experience, I’m just saying I’ve got somebody telling me they want to do it and that’s kind of where we started.” Again, to office I don’t think much more about it. And then I think it was like maybe a month in President Trump has a call with King Salman and before the call we’re in the Oval Office and the president’s basically saying, “Well, this is what we want to go through.” And I have Secretary Mattis and Secretary Tillerson, the Minister of Defense and the Secretary of State basically saying, “You have to deal with MBN. MBN is the guy who’s been our partner for all these years. He’s the head of intelligence and he’s been a great partner.” I said, “Well, 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, President Trump says, “Okay, we’ll go through all these things. These are the things we want to get done.” He says, “Well, who should we deal with?” King Salman says, “Deal with my son, the Deputy Crown Prince MBS.” So President Trump said on the phone, “Have him deal with Jared.” Because I think he knew that if he would’ve 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. A lot of people were betting against that trip, they thought it wasn’t going to be successful, and they’ve been betting against him and he’s been underestimated, but he’s been doing an incredible job and the whole Middle East is different today because of the work that he’s done.…

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