Is Jared Kushner a 'walking conflict of interest'?

0:00This message comes from Workday, the Enterprise AI platform with a deep understanding of your organization's context and guardrails. So every AI action is permission-aware, giving you the ability to get work done right. It's a new Workday. This is Fresh Air, I'm Tonya Mosley. Jared Kushner is once again playing an extraordinary role in American foreign policy. He's President Trump's son-in-law, and during Trump's first term, he was a senior White House advisor who became one of the administration's central players in the Middle East. Today he's helping negotiate peace deals in some of the world's biggest conflicts from Israel and Gaza, the Russian Ukraine War, to the US War with Iran. At the same time, Kushner runs a private equity firm backed by billions of dollars from places like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. My guess, Dexter Filkins, spent months tracing how these two worlds overlap, and what happens when diplomacy and private business become difficult to separate.

1:04Filkins is a staff writer for the New Yorker, and a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist who's covered wars and foreign policy for more than 25 years. His new piece is called Jared Kushner's Dollar Diplomacy. And Dexter Filkins, welcome back to Fresh Air. I dare. Okay, I want to start with this title because it uses the phrase dollar diplomacy, and a century ago that essentially meant using American money and investment as an instrument of American power abroad. And so what does dollar diplomacy mean in Jared Kushner's hands? That is back when we had money to throw around. Yeah. Well, you touched on it at the top there. Jared has, he's wearing two hats right now. He's a diplomat, he's unpaid, but he's an agent for American foreign policy and for the White House and for President Trump on one hand and on the other hand. He is managing a large private equity fund with several billion dollars in it nearly all of which was gathered from foreign countries and foreign governments and their sovereign wealth funds.

2:13And so it's, he's potentially a walking conflict of interest. Right. You mentioned that he doesn't take a salary. He's not a cabinet secretary. He's not a confirmed ambassador. And the White House's position is that because he isn't paid, there is no conflict of interest. Yeah, I mean, that's what they say. I think that strains, it strains credulity. I sound like a lawyer in a courtroom, but I mean, it strains kind of believability. And I think most of the lawyers that I talk to kind of work in the realm of government ethics were pretty clear about this. Typically what they said was doesn't really matter if he's taking a salary or he's taking a salary of a dollar a year or whatever. It doesn't matter. What matters is that he's acting as a government employee. He's acting as an agent of the United States government and that in every conceivable way, Jared Kushner is a government employee, whether he's making money at it or not.

3:16I talked to any number of government ethics professors, lawyers who said that and said it pretty clearly. This is the sort of thing that like wouldn't have come up for debate a decade ago. It just wouldn't have come up. I mean, the practice of former government employees caching in on their former jobs in the private sector, I mean, that's a, you know, tried and true tradition. You know, you work at the Pentagon or whatever and then you leave and then you lobby the Pentagon. Now they've put a bunch of rules in place that have sought to separate those interests and slow the conflicts down. So that when you leave the US government, if you leave, let's say the Treasury Department, like you can't lobby the Treasury Department or you can't lobby the executive branch for X number of years. It's not a long time. It's like, you know, two or three years or something, but you can't, you can't like walk out of the building and then pick up the phone and say, hey, I'm available to, you know, lobby the Treasury Department and all my former colleagues that I was just sitting with like two days ago, you can't do that right.

4:24There's a cooling off period. I want to get into though what this undefined role actually looks like and you write quite extensively about it in this piece. But first, I just want to lay the groundwork of what it looks like for Kushner out there. There's someone else by his side and a lot of his work specifically in Iran and Ukraine. Steve Whitkov, he's a real estate developer that President Trump has known for decades. Presidents have always kept wealthy friends close often in ambassador roles. What does the president believe that these two Kushner and Whitkov can do that diplomats cannot? I think their titles are the peace on voice. Peace on voice, yeah. Go out and make peace in all the terrible places in the world. God knows there's a lot of terrible places. But they're effectively, the Secretary of State. I mean, that's really what they're doing. And you know, Marco Rubio was wearing two hats at a different sword. He's the National Security Advisor and the Secretary of State.

5:26Typically, you know, like say when it was Anthony Blinken who was Secretary of State on a Biden, he traveled all the time. Here's just like on a plane like 360 days out of here that he was in. And the National Security Advisor typically kind of sits right next to the President kind of briefs him every morning. And so in Rubio's case, he's really kind of acting like the National Security Advisor. He basically works in the lighthouse. He travels a little bit but not that much. So these guys, Whitkov and Kushner, they're effectively the Secretary of State. They're running around and they're trying to make peace in some of the really intractable areas around the globe. So they've done negotiations with Iran. They've done negotiations in Gaza. They've done them in Ukraine. They've flown to places like that. Places like where the United States is trying to kind of insert itself and separate the warring parties, except I should add in the case of Iran, where there wasn't a war going on until they got involved.

6:30But that's what we can talk about. What we'll talk about, yes, we will talk about. You know, Kushner's argument about their roles is basically the experts had decades and they didn't solve many of the problems that we see. And so you've covered these wars and these diplomatic efforts for a very long time. Does he have a point? I think that mostly unstated but sometimes stated premise of what they're doing is that the ordinary bureaucracy of the United States government and the diplomatic core of the United States government, the whole foreign policy apparatus of the US government is basically a big failure. And so these two very smart real estate guys, not knowing the history, not knowing the complexities. They can parachute in and they can make peace because they're smart and they're quick and they're not burdened by all the baggage of the past. Kushner has said this out loud. He's like, look, I wouldn't be here in Gaza in Ukraine.

7:36I wouldn't be here if you guys had succeeded. So the fact that I'm doing things a little bit differently, do you want me to just do the same thing and keep failing? So that's his argument. That's his argument. It's like, that's why I'm here. I'm here to do things differently. Well, let's talk about what Kushner's work actually looks like. So in his first term, President Trump handed his son-in-law, the Middle East portfolio, and you write that Kushner built American policy in the region around Muhammad bin Salman known as MBS. He's now the crown prince and ruler of Saudi Arabia. At the time, he was not next in line to the throne when this relationship started. Why him? Well, this is a very interesting story. This is back in 2017, so it was a long time ago, but President Trump came in and he kind of looked at the map of the Middle East and said, you know, Iran is doing whatever the heck they want.

8:37We need another ally out there. Who is it? It's going to be Saudi Arabia. And so what President Trump said was, we're going to empower Saudi Arabia as a counterweight to Iran. And Jared, you're going to take the file here. It's all yours. And there was a crown prince, Muhammad bin Naif. He was very, very close to the American national security establishment, the intelligence agency, because he was very cooperative, particularly on terrorism. And so the buzz in the Middle East at the time was, yeah, but the really dynamic guy is not Muhammad bin Naif. It's Muhammad bin Salman, NBS. He's the young comer. He's the deputy crown prince. And so on top of all this is the king, King Salman, who's kind of very old and kind of gradually disengaging. So who's going to run the country became kind of the operating question. And what happened over the course of Trump's first term is that Jared became very close.

9:39I mean, they're friends. They play video games together, but but Jared became close to Muhammad bin Salman. They're the same age. They kind of see the world in the same way. I think it's fair to say they were two young guys and were, you know, cutting through all the dead weight. And so he became very close to him. He forms this alliance. And I think, but there's a pivotal moment in, I believe it's 2017, pretty early on. And that is, they're talking on the phone, NBS and Jared. And NBS basically says, I'm going to make my move. Against Muhammad bin Nive. Do I have the backing of the White House? And Jared said, yes, basically everybody's behind you. I think he said with the exception of the intelligence agencies who were very, very close to NBS's rival, but he said, basically you've got the green light. And it's always important. Yeah. So, so this was unknown until, you know, I talked to a lot of different people. And I've been kind of working in the Middle East for a long time.

10:40And Jared denies all this, by the way. But the telephone call was taped. And it was recorded. And so officials that I spoke to had seen the intercept basically seen transcript of the intercept. So, so basically Jared gives the green light to M to MBS to basically take over because the father's kind of irrelevant at this point. And so, and so he does. And so MBS makes his move. And ultimately, Muhammad bin Nive, more or less disappears. There was this kind of staged kind of ridiculous moment where Muhammad bin Nive kind of happily hands the reins of power to MBS. But then he kind of disappears. And he's been under house arrest for years. And it's a mess. And it's, it's ugly. And I'm not sure if MBN has been seen. I think he still fought to be alive. But the pretty ugly moment there, but also potentially really dangerous. But basically what you had was Jared essentially backing what amount to a coup d'état.

11:45And Kushner spokesperson denies this. But then something else happens. So that spring, Jared Kushner's father asked Qatar's sovereign wealth fund to invest in a building in Manhattan. The family was at the time struggling to hold on to this building. Qatar said no. Then two months later Saudi Arabia blockaded Qatar. And a former official tells you that Jared Kushner knew about the blockade and acquiesced in his spokesman denies this. What connection if any were you able to establish between these two things? One of the big, big, big, if not the largest, at least the largest to date investments that the Kushners had made was in an office building on Fifth Avenue, 6665. I mean, they paid in enormous amount of money for it. And I don't remember what it was more than a billion dollars. And they got in trouble. It was a bad investment in the prop, I think the property market collapsed at the time. And so Qatar is one of the world's wealthiest countries and it's very, very small. It's a tiny place sitting on an ocean of natural gas. And so they have, they have an enormous sovereign wealth fund.

12:58They have an enormous amount of money to invest in every year in New York. They come to New York and they take all commerce and people line up at the St. Regis Hotel to say, please, I want your money to invest in my company. And one of those people, it was Charles Goshener, chair of the father, he was in line. He met with those officials and he said, I really need you to invest in my office building. I need a billion dollars. And so the Qataris said no. And I spoke to one of the Qataris who was involved in that whole negotiation. And he said, oh my god, he said, you know, they just, they overpaid for the thing. That building will never be worth what they paid for it. So we just, you know, we said we could have bought it, but you said it was a bad investment. So we just walked away from it. And so the next thing that happens is Saudi Arabia and UAE both very close to the United States called the White House one night and said, we're going to blockade color. Because we don't like what they're doing in the Middle East. They're arrival of ours. They fund Al Jazeera. They're, you know, Muslim brotherhood bad guys. We're going to blockade them. And as I was told by

14:08senior American official Jared heard about that beforehand. And he basically said, okay, go ahead, go ahead and do it. And so what was posed to me was the following question. And it was more of a question, but it was, if Kushner had gotten that money, first, if he'd gotten a billion dollars, would there have been a blockade. And this person kind of answered the questions that I don't think so. And so the person that I spoke to, Katari official kind of posed the link between those two events. It's very difficult to know Jared flat out. Denies all of it. Very clear about that. Yeah. Let's talk about some of Kushner's wins. You call the Abraham Accords. Kushner's most substantial diplomatic achievement. What did Kushner understand or do there that actually worked? So in the first Trump term, the focus of the Middle East, apart from Saudi Arabia, was Israel. And it was, Israel is going to get what it wants.

15:13And so what that meant and what it has meant over the past, you know, two Trump administrations is Israel has been very aggressive in the West Bank about settlements and about, you know, moving people in and kind of disregarding Palestinian rights. And so in 2020 Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister said, you made indications we're going to annex part of the West Bank, the occupied West Bank. We're going to annex part of them where the settlements are essentially where a lot of the settlements are. And so you saw all of Taiba, a lot of your listeners probably never heard of him, but he's a very influential figure in Washington DC. He is the ambassador of the United Arab Emirates in long time ambassador in Washington. He's alarmed by this and he tries to head it off and he writes an op ed in which he says, look, if Bibi will not do this, then we will recognize the state of Israel United Arab Emirates. And he just he just put it in an op ed in an Israeli newspaper.

16:17And I think basically what happens after that is Jared kind of ceases the moment. He sees that as a diplomatic opening this potential disaster. You know, the annexation of parts of the West Bank, he sees an opportunity and grabs it and happens pretty quickly over the course of several weeks and months. The UAE recognizes Israel, Bahrain recognizes Israel. Several states in the Middle East that had never had diplomatic relations with Israel decided to take the big step and do it. And in exchange for Bibi basically holding off on annexing parts of the West Bank. And so it's pretty, pretty big achievement. I mean, if you know, I've spent a lot of time in the Middle East and kind of the one thing that everybody in the Arab world always agreed on was like we hate Israel. And so this kind of broke that and it formed a kind of a new paradigm and a new template. And I think I think Jared's dream.

17:24And I think well, and I honestly, I think of any diplomat sense has been well, we'll take this new paradigm of the countries that have recognized Israel in the Abraham Accords and will kind of add countries to it. The big one would be Saudi Arabia, MBS, but he didn't want he didn't want to go along. So he was, you know, very tight with Jared at the time. But basically in order to do the Abraham Accords, they had to kind of blow off the Palestinians. They had to say like we're not going to sit around and talk about Palestinian rights. We're just going to do this. And so MBS basically said we can't go along with that. And so the Abraham Accords is like this really big diplomatic achievement. And I think quite impressive. So is there essentially a straight line from the Abraham Accords to the way that Kushner operates now essentially find the people who can make a deal figure out what each one wants and leave. I mean, essentially leave the ideology aside. I think in his favor, he would say like, yeah, we did this because we didn't do what all the other diplomats, the American diplomats in the region had done for a million years, which is to say hold on.

18:34You know, let's talk about it for six months. And what about the Palestinians? Jared just went and did it. Last January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, that's the annual gathering of business and government leaders in Switzerland. Kushner gave a presentation on rebuilding Gaza. And we know that this is a place where millions of people are living in tents and rubble. What was he actually proposing? Well, as you mentioned, there's a terrible war in Gaza. Gaza is mostly almost entirely in ruins. It's a place of two million people who are now living in the rubble. They're bathing in the ocean. It's a horrible, horrible humanitarian catastrophe, which is continuing to this day. And so in January at Davos, you know, we're all the world leaders in big wigs, I get together. Jared gave a presentation. And he was just echoing the president here. But he gave a kind of PowerPoint presentation in which he showed these pictures that look like Miami Beach, you know, these gleaming hotels and office towers and high rises. And he said, this could be Gaza.

19:45And we should plan for catastrophic success. But basically we can we can rebuild Gaza to look like this. And I talked to people who watch the presentation who said, it was a kind of departure from reality. And people were rolling their eyes going, what on earth are we watching here? You know, we have this horrible, horrible situation and Jared Christian treating it like basically another another real estate deal. Like this is a great economic opportunity for a time for everybody to come in and bring your money and and get rich. And you know, it's so I think it struck people as not serious. Our guest today is journalist Dexter Filkins will be right back after a break. I'm Tonya Mosley. And this is fresh air. This message comes from Schwab at Schwab. You can get everything from self directed investing to full service wealth management all in one place. No matter your investing goal, life stage amount to invest or know how you can invest your way with Schwab.

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21:49Free medications are subject to change terms apply savings vary based on provider service and geographical area. GoodRx is not insurance cut costs not care. Go to goodRx.com slash companion. This is fresh air. I'm Tony Mosley and my guest today is Dexter Filkins a Pulitzer Prize winning staff writer for the New Yorker was covered the Middle East for 25 years his new piece Jared Kushner's dollar diplomacy looks at Kushner who is president Trump's son in laws growing role in American foreign policy from Iran and Ukraine to Gaza while his private business is backed by billions of dollars from governments. Filkins examines what happens when diplomacy personal relationships and private money become increasingly hard to separate. Let's talk a little bit about affinity it is Jared Kushner's private equity firm and six months after leaving the White House he started affinity partners this is after the first time and he went to Saudi Arabia asking for two billion dollars he had never run an investment fund before that.

22:57Can you tell us just a little bit about that fund and why were the Saudis willing to give him that kind of money. So basically you have Trump's first term 2017 to 2021 Jared is the point man for the Middle East he does the Abraham Accords it becomes very close to MBS in the other monarchies in the Gulf. January 2021 comes he leaves office turns right back around and goes to the same leaders and raises several billion dollars for his new private equity fund and as you say didn't have any experience and running a private equity fund so it's called affinity partners and I think at the moment it has several billion more than six billion dollars in it. So what happens and it's again fascinating story Jared goes back out goes to the same people goes to MBS goes to the leaders of cutter and the United Arab Emirates all the people he'd been dealing with him when he was in the White House basically with this hat out and saying like I'm starting a private equity fund can I have some money in the case of Saudi billions of dollars.

24:07And they chip in they say yeah sure and what there's there's a moment when when Jared goes to Saudi Arabia and with him with this hat out saying like I want some money and the group of advisors that run the public investment fund as it's called in Saudi Arabia the PIF it's enormous it's just hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars it's all the oil money. And they basically said no like this is a bad idea don't do it this guy doesn't have any experience the fees are really high we're taking on all this risk and MBS you know who with that point it become quite close to Jared and I think Jared quite a debt says I'm overruling you I'm the crown prince we're going to do this and so pledges two billion dollars to affinity partners and then cutter and I'm going to do this. And the United Arab Emirates each pitch in I think $200 million and then on from there they they all kind of pitched in more money as time went on.

25:09But it does raise the question why on earth did they do this and Robert Garcia is a congressman from California and he was on the floor of the House of Representatives and that's all he said he said why did Saudi Arabia decide to pitch in two billion dollars to Jared Kushner for his private equity fund even though he had no experience running one. And then you make a point to say in your article there's no direct evidence that the investment was a reward for what Kushner has done in office but what was Saudi Arabia buying I mean what are some theories on on why. Well I think the best I could come up with and it makes sense to me is they they're making an investment it's just an investment of a different sort. So they look at somebody like Jared he's he's young he's going to be around for a long time he's he's influential and he's the sign along the president and so I think they looked at that and I thought well this is a good place to put our money and if we can make him happy we can make Trump happy and we're going to bet on this horse for the future and they didn't know and it certainly didn't look at the time 2021 the Trump was going to be president again.

26:19But here he is like the bed paid off and so I think it raises or it brings us to a crucial moment for Jared which is so he had four years out of office so you know the Trump's first term then he starts the private equity fund and then Trump wins again and you know Jared could state out I mean he could have just said you know Mr. President you know my father in law. I helped you the first time around not going to do it this time he could have done that you didn't do it or he could have said I'm going to take all this money I just what people have done the past and I'm going to set up a blind trust and I'm not going to touch it for the next four years he didn't do that either so he basically decided I'm going to do both I'm going to be effectively a secretary of state running around the globe trying to put our wars and in the very same countries I'm going to be like doing financial deals so so he's like flying in and out of Israel and he's got investments in it. Israel like the private equity fund is you know bought big stakes in Israeli companies and so it's a tangle it's like as somebody put it to me Jared Kushner has a responsibility to advance the interests of his investors what happens when those interests conflict with American foreign policy.

27:35Yeah I mean he manages billions of dollars and much of it is coming from governments in a region where he is helping make American policy can those two roles actually be separated. Yeah well that's the question. I want to go to Geneva this past February in the last hours before the US actually went into conflict with Iran put us in that room who was there and who wasn't there. Well if you can cast your minds back to February so the United States and Iran are not you know they're not in a shooting war they hate each other but they're not in a shooting war and Kushner and Wicoff Steve Wicoff are dispatched to Geneva to talk to the Iranians about what's left of their nuclear program and Trump was very very clear about this give us what we want or we're going to attack and they made that very very clear. But the negotiation basically falls apart the Iranians kind of hold firm and say no we're not going to give you everything and essentially what happens as far as I can it best as I can tell is the Ryan start putting stuff on the table they're clearly alarmed you know Trump has this giant Armada sailing their way they start putting stuff down the table so they say we'll stop enriching you're in at least for a period of time and they've never done that before like they've never like a lot of things.

29:02They've never like Obama's agreement into that and that so they said like we'll stop enriching we'll dilute the store of radioactive material that we have and what happened and this is the really remarkable thing to me was it was made clear to me by people who were in the room or were briefed by people who were in the room that Kushner Wicoff were kind of over their heads that they basically didn't understand what was being put down in front of them and part of the reason for that I was told us by several people. Either Kushner or no Wicoff brought a technical advisor into the room and you know this stuff is like really complicated because you're dealing with like centrifuges and radioactivity and the you know an enrichment cycles and and essentially they didn't know what was in front of them and they didn't have anyone they could ask and I say this I try to say this without naive you would say about the Iranians they've lied cheated bamboozled their way to like keeping their holding on to everything they have for you know four years.

30:02But it's possible that there was a real potential for a deal of some sort that was put down in front of them and they didn't understand it and so the negotiation breaks up this is basically the end of February and Wicoff and Kushner fly back to Washington to all the president nope you know couldn't do it and the war starts you know hours later and what somebody made clear to me and this is somebody who worked with with Kushner Wicoff knows the knows the nuclear file really really well is that when the negotiation was over Kushner and Wicoff gave a kind of press conference and Wicoff said we had to bomb them basically we had no choice because if we hadn't the Iranians really days away from making a nuclear weapon and everyone that I talked to including former officials who worked with with Kushner Wicoff said that that was not the case. It was said to me and this is this is really important because this is like why we went to war is it wasn't that urgent that they couldn't make a bomb in a matter of days that that was a kind of you know misconception at best of what was on the table and kind of what the Iranians have left and but that that wasn't true and that because of that basically we went to war.

31:26I mean it's a sounding it's a sounding and I do want to know because I know it took you quite a long time to produce this piece and what did you reporting uncover that makes you believe that that offer was real from Iran to suspend uranium enrichment entirely. Well if I could set the scene for the negotiations they're taking place in Geneva inside the residence of the ambassador from Oman and so there are people coming and going in the room and there are people who are kind of being briefed you know practically minute to minute on what's happening inside the room so once I kind of figured out who these people were then I kind of you know I reached out to some of them and some of them were we're pretty we're pretty forthright about about what happened in the room there. At the same time this is something that you write about as Kushner and Whitcoff were negotiating with Iran you report that Kushner was raising five billion dollars for his private investment firm affinity in the Middle East and one of your sources believed that Jared Kushner saw the diplomacy in the fundraising as connected what evidence did you find that those two tracks actually intersected.

32:44Well that's a tricky question I mean but it's it's it's really important so so as you said he's in Geneva Kushner he's trying to make a deal with the Iranians more or less simultaneously he's going around the Middle East I think not physically but he's he's basically inquiring of of leaders in the Middle East will you put some more money in my private equity fund and I think as it was put to me and I think more of a kind of a thought experiment because it's a hard time. This is a hard question to answer was Jared basically looking to get rewarded for what he was doing in other words okay look I've taken out the Iranian threat now I want to be paid for it and and that's the way it was put to me and it was put to me by somebody who is very close to works in the region knows the leaders at the highest level in the Middle East said that to me was was essentially like wow was this all a little bit more closely coming up.

33:44And then then it initially appeared. Let's take a short break if you're just joining us my guest is Dexter Filkins of the New Yorker will be right back after short break this is fresh air. This message comes from Schwab self directed investing trading full service wealth management automated investing financial planning thematic investing retirement planning and to think that's just a small taste of what Schwab offers because Schwab knows that when it comes to your finances choice matters no matter your goals investing style life stage or experience Schwab has everything you need all in one place so you can invest your way visit Schwab dot com to learn more. This message comes from NPR sponsor Carvana Carvana believes selling your car should be easy get a real offer down to the penny picked up from your driveway you may keep waiting for a catch there isn't one that's a day at Carvana dot com pick up fees may apply.

34:46This message comes from mattress firm sharing a bed doesn't have to mean restless nights mattress firm sleep experts can match you with a tempered explet king sleep system get a $300 instant gift with purchase they make sleep easy. This is fresh air and today my guest is Dexter filkins a staff writer for the New Yorker whose new piece Jared Kushner's dollar diplomacy looks at Kushner's role in the Trump administration's wars and negotiations in the billions of dollars he's raised from board governments along the way. Let's talk a little bit about Steve Whitcoff and Jared Kushner as it relates to the war that Russia started when it invaded Ukraine in 2022 neither men have any background in Russia or in Ukraine what do you know about how they're taking on these talks they're understanding of the conflict there and what their task is is as they're working through this. Well the diplomatic effort the American diplomatic effort to and the war between Russia and Ukraine has been I think it's fair to say has been very unbalanced since the Trump administration the second term began and that is so it was basically Whitcoff Steve Whitcoff Jared stayed home but it was with cough making repeated trip one after the other to Russia to meet Putin time and time again.

36:11And at one point Whitcoff and Kushner came back with this diplomatic proposal that was essentially it was essentially like Russia's wish list and that's actually what marker rubio call he said was Putin's wish list and the thing you know the thing collapsed but it's been it's been a very kind of Russia's centric approach to the war what do you want you know what what can we do for you what what can we do to get you to stop fighting when in fact it's Russia that started the war and you know Russia could stop fighting anytime. I wanted to and then the war would end but but so so it's been a kind of it's been kind of a strange effort Jared stayed mostly out of it at least out of the the trips until just recently just a couple of weeks ago Jared and Whitcoff went to Kiev and met Zelensky and met the Ukrainian leadership and what I'm told is that people Americans American officials are very encouraged by that and the and what I'm also told is the Ukrainians are very encouraged.

37:11By that they're like wow we got somebody else in the room here who's like actually listens to what we're saying and like has some understanding of Ukraine and so that so the Jared is actually had come like a positive effect on the American diplomatic effort in Ukraine but I think the problem with the Trump approach to the war in Ukraine and I mean by problem I mean why they haven't been able to solve it is that you know the game the war started by Putin he started it and you know he could end it. And then any day wanted and there's like a disconnect there with the White House. You know there's this kind of incredible they've made this incredible effort to I hate to use the word a piece but I don't know what else to say to a piece Putin like some you know one morning you know wake up and say I really love what the Americans are doing and I'm going to stop the war. But what it's look like from a distance is that the United States have been sort of dictating to Zalensky and Ukraine give Russia what it wants you know if you want this war to end and you want to help and give them what you want and that's some it hasn't worked.

38:20These two Whitkopf and Kushner I mean they are real estate people do you think they see Russian Ukraine and the war there as a potential real estate deal. Well maybe I mean somebody who knows them and worked with them both said that they said like look the problem here is that like this is a war forgot sex it's a war and people are fighting dying and these guys are looking at it like it's just basically real estate deal you can come split the differences in everybody shake hands and be happy and go home and that's kind of when you when you listen to. To Kushner and Wicoff talk about the Ukraine negotiations that kind of the way they sound you know they say well be win win for everyone and you know well we'll kind of join hands and go happily together and you know it's a bloody nasty awful hideous war and so it's not going to be a win win it's going to end inevitably some kind of you know terrible ugly compromise and then hopefully the killing stop but it's like it's not happy situation you know it's not real estate deal.

39:23There was this reporting this this week from pro public that reported a Russian businessman with close ties to Putin paid for a large part of Donald Trump juniors wedding celebration in the Bahamas this past spring it was on a private island there was the lot going on there by a work show hundreds of thousands of dollars Jared Kushner was a guest on junior and his wife they say that it was a gift from a friend and nothing more. When you read that story you hear this what do you see. Look the Russian government and say the big businessmen the oligarchs who are around Putin have been awfully friendly to the Trump administration and to the members of his family and kind of people around him ever since 2016 I mean we know that you know why they've been friendly we don't know and we don't know the details of that but that this is another example of that it's like why they're not going to be a real estate deal. But a Russian oligarch decide to get close and show me with one of Donald Trump's sons how come and it's the perpetual mystery that has surrounded the Trump administration since 2016 so a decade.

40:36Right I mean if Kushner is the one negotiating with rush over Ukraine how is a gift like this red in Moscow. Well I don't think we know the answer to that but I think that you know you could say well this is meant to kind of curry favor with the Trump administration so they'll get a better deal from the Russians maybe you know maybe I mean has happened yet there is no deal. Doesn't appear that there are anywhere close to a deal so so again it's kind of hard it's hard to kind of square that it's kind of it's just hard to close the circle on some of these things because they're just they're so strange. Dexter Filkins thank you as always thank you dexter filkins is a staff writer for the New Yorker his new pieces titled Jared Kushner's dollar diplomacy this is fresh air. This message comes from Schwab at Schwab you can get everything from self directed investing to full service wealth management all in one place no matter your investing goal life stage amount to invest or know how you can invest your way with Schwab.

41:44This message comes from better help imagine carrying a backpack every day inside it every conversation every mistake every expectation it is easy not to notice how heavy it is until someone asks if you want to put it down sometimes feeling better starts exactly like that better isn't one size fits all better is personal it's therapy tailored to the individual to help lighten what you carry match with a therapist who truly understands. Is it better help calm slash in PR. The fall publishing season is as always filled with such heavy weights that it seems like a backhanded compliment to say that the big takeaway about Kate Atkinson's new novel

43:13our noble selves is that it's so much fun to read Atkinson is known for her jittery historical novels that jump around in time as well as for her Jackson Brody detective series our noble selves cleverly melds both forms for a purpose it's an escapist novel that chronicles the need for escape in post World War two Britain. The centerpiece of our noble selves around which all the action and character spin is a real life event the festival of Britain that took place in 1951 intended to elevate the British people spirits after the devastation of World War two the chief festival site was located on the south bank of the Thames in London. Exhibits highlighted British arts architecture industry history it also included as these booster is exhibitions tend to do a lot of random stuff beauty pageants and cookery demonstrations in which exotic foods like spaghetti and hot dogs were introduced to the British public.

44:29In an author's note atkinson says that she came across so much material that was strange and quirky that sometimes the things I was making up seemed quite dull in comparison among the actual oddities displayed at the festival were a collapsible rubber bus and a festival emblem composed of 604 gallstones and all from one patient. Our main character is a former reporter named Harry Flynn who had the bad luck to be sent to Singapore in 1941 shortly before it fell to the Japanese Harry became a POW working on the so called Burma railway of bridge over the river Kwai fame over 100,000 Asian civilian workers and allied POWs would do the job.

45:29The guy building this railway before the war's end returning in 1945 to London Harry makes a rash marriage to a soft dig war widow he meets in a pub one night it was not just the siren call of sex that drew him to her Harry recalls she came complete with a ready life house child dog lawn and he had reckoned it would be easy to slip into that life. Harry slips just as easily out of that misspegotten marriage and falls into a job assembling a poetry anthology for the festival of Britain drawn from dreadful dog roll submitted by the British public another real life detail that atkinson has wicked fun describing here. The first life already haunted by what we would call PTSD takes an ominous turn when a female coworker he's had drinks with disappears and he set up to be the chief suspect.

46:44The first life of the British public was a dance plot involving MI5 the British security service and a cluster of British fascists is engrossing enough but the deeper pleasures of our noble selves are located in the workplace specifically the offices where Harry and his co-workers bring the festival of Britain to fruition. Here atkinson's signature gift as a historical writer is on display as she seamlessly shifts time frames so that the past surfaces into the present. This is a scene where Harry Flynn is viewing the actual lion and unicorn pavilion we're told the pavilion took its name from the creatures who were to be stationed at the entrance. Life-size sculptures made of straw by a craftsman in Essex one of Harry's co-workers had been out to Essex to view the sculptures progress and found that they had already become home to a nest of field mice.

47:52Once, during the worst of his war, working in the Hellfire Pass, Flynn had lucked upon a mouse and had unthinkingly popped it into his mouth and eaten it alive. He had been too hungry to care. He could still recall the sensation as he bit down on wiggling fur and delicate bones. The festival, in reality, was a popular success, intended to turn the war-weary British people's eyes to the future. Atkinson's novel is also a success, an affectionate testament to the futility of any such efforts to leave the past behind. Maureen Corrigan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed our Noble Cells by Kate Atkinson. Tomorrow on Fresh Air, what Donald Trump learned from his mentor, the infamous lawyer Roy Cohn. And how Cohn served as legal counsel for Senator Joe McCarthy's subcommittee that went

48:56after alleged communists and gay people, although Cohn was a closeted gay man. We talk with Kai Bird, author of American Scoundrel. I hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air. You can also watch some of our interviews on our YouTube page at This Is Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Brigger. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer today is Adam Stanishevsky. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Myers, Anne Marie Boldonato, Lauren Crenzel, Theresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thea Chaliner, Susan Yacundi, Anna Balman, and Nico Gonzalez-Whistler. Our digital media producer is Molly Cv Nesper, Roberta Shorak directs the show. With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley.

50:10This message comes from Schwab. At Schwab, you can get everything from self-directed investing to full service wealth management, all in one place. No matter your investing goal, life stage, amount to invest, or know how, you can invest your way with Schwab. This message comes from Designer shoe warehouse. You know that feeling when you find shoes you love at a great price and want to tell everyone about it? Find something to brag about at Designer shoe warehouse. With the latest styles from Brands You Love, the trends, everyone's obsessing over, and shoes that make you feel like you. Head to a DSW store, or dsw.com today, for shoes that get you at prices that get your budget. DSW, let us surprise you. The Emmys were a big night for a lot of shows we really love. The pit and pluribus picked up awards and widow's bay really cleaned up. We'll tell you why we're quite happy with year's crop of winners in a recap on pop culture happy hour. Then, via the NPR app, or wherever you get your podcasts.