President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, has long faced heated criticism for being such a critical player in the Republican’s administration. He struggled to get a top security clearance because of his business conflicts of interest and has, perhaps not coincidentally, profited immensely since joining his father-in-law’s second administration.
Now Kushner was humiliated at a press conference by a reporter who bluntly confronted him about his lack of qualifications — and his lack of results.
“This is for Mr. Witkoff and Jared Kushner. You have been involved in numerous negotiations around the world. Why should people have any confidence in your capacity to succeed here?” NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel asked Kushner according to a report by Mediate. The question was also posed to Trump’s longtime business partner and Kushner’s fellow foreign policy adviser, Steve Witkoff.
He continued, “You were involved in the Gaza negotiations, but Gaza remains a wasteland. There’s been really no progress there. Iran, you were involved in those negotiations. The war is still going on. You’ve been involved in several rounds of negotiations in this conflict. It’s only getting more intense. So you’re relaunching negotiations now. What’s the likelihood they will succeed, when other negotiations you’ve been involved in have not?”
In his reply, Kushner told Engel that “these are some of the hardest problem sets in the world, and I think that you have to try and you have to bring to it. Obviously, Steve and I bring different approaches to these things, but we work very well together as partners. But we’re not bringing our approaches. We’re really representing President Trump, and we’re doing it the way that he wants to see these things done.”
This is not the first recent occasion when Kushner’s actions in the Trump administration raised eyebrows. In August, he was criticized when it was revealed he had a secret meeting with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries about working together in case the Republicans lose control of Congress during the midterm elections.
“Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, met privately in recent weeks with Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and top outside adviser, and discussed potential areas of common ground, according to five people with knowledge of the meeting,” reported The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman and Annie Karni at the time. “The rare engagement was held in a private space in New York City, offered up by a mutual friend of the two men, according to two people with knowledge of the meeting and a third who was briefed on it. They and others were granted anonymity to discuss a meeting about which they were not authorized to speak publicly.”
They continued, “Through aides, neither man would comment on the session, which was described by one person with knowledge of it as a broad conversation on a range of topics. Still, its timing underscored that those around Mr. Trump were well aware of the likelihood of a Democratic-led House, and trying to foster as much of a working relationship as possible before any change. Mr. Jeffries is in line to be the speaker, were Democrats to win the majority.”