The New Yorker has a lengthy detailed report on Jared Kushner, who “represents the kind of Washington figure for whom public office serves as a means to extraordinary wealth.”
Here are some excerpts. Please check out the full article for the sordid details. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2026/09/21/jared-kushners-dollar-diplomacy
The article starts with a story about a meeting in February followed by Kushner’s mind-boggling, arrogant and clueless approach to diplomacy and negotiations.
“Kushner, the boyish-looking son-in-law of Donald Trump, has been given an extraordinary brief in recent years. Along with Steve Witkoff, the President’s special envoy, he has been charged with ending wars in Gaza, Ukraine, and just about anywhere else they might break out. Kushner, who is forty-five, has little regard for the craft of diplomacy. In his view, it is less important to know a region’s history or the details of the partisans’ negotiating positions than to simply hear the sides out and split the difference. Peace deals are like real-estate deals, he has said. Both involve hard bargaining and, at times, bluffing. The fact that so many diplomats before him have struggled is a testament not to the intransigence of international problems but to the mediocrity of his predecessors. “I’ve been getting criticized for the last couple of years, by all the people who have tried and failed, for not doing this the same way that they have,” he said in 2020, after Trump unveiled his first Middle East peace plan. “If somebody was successful, I wouldn’t be dealing with this.””
A former diplomat briefed on the talks with Iran (before the war) told me that, when the Iranian foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, began offering concessions, the two Americans failed to grasp precisely what was on the table.
With the war under way, Kushner gave a surprising rationale for attacking the Iranians: “They basically could have been, you know, days or weeks away from a weapon, if they would have put the effort into it.” (This was total BS.)
This para captures the essence what these self-dealing so-called diplomats in the trump administration are doing –
Throughout the Trump era, Kushner has made a career of combining business and politics. He argues that being a businessman aids his diplomatic efforts, by allowing him to find inventive solutions to problems ordinarily handled by unimaginative bureaucrats. But, as he has traversed the globe for Trump, he has grown more entangled in the commercial affairs of countries where he works. He represents a new kind of Washington figure, for whom public office serves as a means to extraordinary wealth. In the past two years, an array of people linked to the White House—including Witkoff’s sons, the cryptocurrency adviser David Sacks, and other members of the Trump family—have used their official positions to bring in billions of dollars for themselves. “I know all these guys,” a former American official who served in the Middle East told me. “They go into these meetings, and they are doing business right alongside their diplomacy. ‘O.K., enough about the ceasefire. We have this hotel we want to build.’ That’s the kind of foreign policy America has now.”
The article then dives into details of Kushner’s life and career and how he came to be what he is today, an investor managing billions of dollars, most of it coming from his patrons from oil-rich countries in the Middle East.
Senator Ron Wyden, among others, suspected that Affinity was just a vehicle for Gulf leaders to enrich Kushner. (Kushner’s spokesman denied this.) Wyden noted in a letter to Mizelle that, if Trump was elected to a second term, the investments would give the Gulf states enormous leverage. The Administration “will have financial motives to make foreign policy decisions that may be counter to the national interest in order to ensure Kushner and Ivanka Trump continue to collect millions of dollars in fees,” he wrote.
On to trump’s 2nd term –
The deals Kushner has assembled in Trump’s second term have made little distinction between personal friends, government associates, and family connections. By the standards of this Administration, these conflicts are not extraordinary.
On Russia-Ukraine talks –
Witkoff told me that he and Kushner don’t mind navigating tense and uncertain circumstances. “Jared and I both know what we don’t know,” he said. “We’re going to be O.K. not knowing something and then getting curious and getting smart on the issue.” When the two began work on Ukraine, they had very little understanding of the war, a former senior Trump foreign-policy official told me. Both believed that Vladimir Putin was “a good guy,” and that “the Russian Army is invincible,” the former official said, adding, “They think this is a real-estate deal. They don’t seem to understand this is a war.”
On the so-called Russia-Ukraine peace plan –
But, when the plan became public, it collapsed under a wave of outrage. Even Rubio reportedly derided it as “Russia’s wish list.”
Some observers suspect that Russia has effectively offered the Americans business deals in exchange for a favorable peace agreement. A classified report produced by a European intelligence agency states that Trump and people around him have discussed several potential contracts in Russia.
The article then dives into details of many other projects and investments in foreign countries, including Israel, Gaza, Albania, Serbia, …
In 2025, new investments from the Middle East helped his fund grow by thirty per cent, to more than six billion dollars, meaning that it collects at least tens of millions of dollars a year in fees. Affinity estimates its annual internal rate of return at twenty-five per cent.
The article ends with what might happen if his patrons sour on him or if Democrats take control of Congress.
“If Kushner wasn’t the son-in-law of the President, he would be under investigation by the F.B.I.,” Virginia Canter, the ethics lawyer, said. “No one else could get away with this.”
Let’s make sure the electorate hears about this and feels as disgusted as the rest of us with the monumental level of corruption and self-dealing in this administration.