E153: In conversation with Jared Kushner: Israel-Hamas War, paths forward, macro picture, AI
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Sucks. What essay were you writing last night till three in the morning?
Oh, I was blasting people on Twitter yesterday. I was collecting scalps. I keep these receipts, uh, of people who attack me on Ukraine. And then, like, six months later, they all write a tweet admitting they were wrong. I'll rub it in their face.
You have a little Google Doc and you just go, no, I just, like, bookmark them.
I just bookmark them.
You have, like, your kill Bill with.
Yeah.
You are so petty.
Uh, I love that about you.
Some would say that's a good defense mechanism.
Right this way.
Yeah, they got to know they're not going to take any free shots, because if they do, invariably I'm proven correct.
Then, uh, you're going to clap back.
I'm going to smack them. Very trumpian, isn't it?
Yeah.
It's a very hard burden for you to carry, just being right all the time. I respect the way you do it with such grace and magnanimity.
Let your winners ride, rain man.
David sat.
We open sources to the fans, and.
They'Ve just gone crazy with it.
Love you, queen of kin.
All right, welcome back to the all in pod. Really excited to have a guest with us today, Jared kushner. I'm, um, sure everyone knows who he is. We obviously talked about Jared's interview with lex Friedman on the pod a couple.
Of weeks ago, and what happened.
Chamath, you dm Jared and started chatting and said, hey, would you be interested.
In coming to talk with us?
Yeah.
About these matters.
Jared very kindly agreed to do it.
So we're really excited to have, uh.
Jared join us today.
Jared, welcome. Thank you for having me.
So, I don't think you need much of an introduction, obviously, you, uh, were a senior advisor to, uh, President Trump from 2017 to 2021, and, uh, you worked on the US Mexico relationship, as well as led the Middle east peace.
Efforts, which I think is going to.
Make up the bulk of what we're.
Excited to talk about today.
Just really briefly. Since leaving office, um, you've been investing, running a firm called Affinity Partners. Is that right? Um, maybe you can share with us just a little bit about what you've been up to, and then we'll kind of get into it here.
Perfect. Affinity partners is a private equity firm that I started when we left, uh.
Doing growth investing, private equity investing globally.
We raised just over 3.1 billion, uh.
Doing a lot of investments, trying to.
Uh, bring Gulf money into Israel, into the US, trying to figure out how, through investments, uh, you could bring countries.
Closer together, people closer together, looking, uh.
At a lot of areas where there's, uh, structural transitions happening at, uh, large in the global economy, whether it's near shoring from offline to online, uh, software, a lot of, uh, different interesting areas, a lot in the fintech space and.
Financial services right now, uh, but enjoying it.
And uh, the goal is really to.
Bring the experience that we had from previously, uh, being an investor and um, then the time in government and then.
Thinking through how you could use those.
Macro, uh, learnings and connections and relationships, uh, and navigational skills to the investing side. Great.
So we're going to try and talk later in the show, uh, about macro markets a bit, talk a little bit about some of the activity in AI this week. We think it's all pretty prescient and hopefully we can all dialogue about that. I think it'd be helpful when you and I talked just to get ready for the show today, you mentioned that you had a very liberal upbringing in the Upper east side in New York, and your perspective began to shift as you started to travel the country. Then you were in the Trump White.
House and have become very active since.
Would love to hear a little bit about how your perspective shifted in the time you spent, because you mentioned you started traveling the country and seeing things that you otherwise hadn't seen living in.
The Upper east side.
Would love to hear that part of your story before we kind of get.
Into things, if you wouldn't mind sharing.
Yeah, sure. So, uh, one thing about my life.
Is that nothing, uh, has gone according to the plan.
Uh, I grew up in New Jersey.
Really, uh, nice place in Livingston.
Uh, my father was an entrepreneur in the real estate business. Banking, insurance, did a lot of different.
Things, really, uh, brought up, um, me.
And my siblings to be focused on business. And it really, for us, was a.
Good, uh, experience growing up, obviously.
Went to, uh, Harvard, and then after.
That chose to go to law, uh.
School and business school, uh, where I was at NYU. During that time, my father had a legal issue and I was forced to.
Take over the business.
Um, and so I got into the.
Real estate business and then after that.
Uh, bought a media company in New York. And that's really where I got exposure.
To a lot of what I would.
Call New York society.
Um, my wife and I, uh, we.
Met, got married, and, uh, through that experience, thought, uh, we had a very expanded worldview. Uh, at our house in the Upper east side, we'd have dinner parties, we'd have heads of banks and hedge funds.
And technology companies and fashion, um, and.
Then it was just a really nice life.
And then her father announced, uh, he.
Was running for office. And that was, ah, an interesting experience for us as a Republican.
We didn't know too many Republicans. Um, were you a registered Democrat prior?
Uh, I was registered Democrat growing up. Uh, my father was a big Democrat donor we'd have in our house, whether it be Chuck Schumer or Hillary Clinton.
I think my father gave Corey, uh.
Booker his first campaign donation. So I know Corey since I'm 15.
Years old, uh, so really grew up.
Around Democrat politics all of our life.
But over time, I think during the.
Obama years, I, uh, changed my registration to an independent.
I didn't feel like, uh, the Democrat.
Party was fully representing my viewpoint, so.
I felt more independent minded. And then, um, during the time with.
Um, my father in law, when he.
Was running, uh, for office, he invited.
Me to go with him to a rally in Springfield, Illinois. We flew out there, I got off.
The plane and, um, we pull up.
To an arena and the guy comes.
Up to Trump and says, congratulations, uh.
Sir, you just broke the record for the arena, for attendance. Um, and he says, well, who had the record before? And he says, well, it's Elton John, 36 years earlier.
And he says, jared, look, I don't.
Even have a guitar or piano. This is impressive. So he gets up on stage, um, without really know, riffs for over an hour. And it was interesting for me because I was know, CNN and the New York Times and all my friends in the media basically were describing his rallies as almost like KKK conventions.
But I walked around the crowd, nobody.
Knew who I was then. And what I saw was that these.
Were, were people were old, young, male, female, uh, white, minority, um, um, and.
It was just people who were hardworking.
Americans who really felt like Trump was.
Giving them a voice. And what was interesting to me was.
A couple weeks earlier, we'd been at.
Uh, the Robin Hood foundation, which is the big philanthropy in New York, where.
A lot of the hedge fund managers, uh, support.
I remember the chairman of Robin Hood.
Getting up and know if we want.
To save, uh, the next generation, we want to save, uh, the kids in the inner cities, uh, uh, we have to support common core.
That's the way that we can save people. And I remember Trump gets up there and he, um, know if we want.
To save education, we have to end common core and send it to the states. And I'm saying, wait, I thought common core was this great thing, but why are all these people against it?
And so it really just kind of.
Piqued my interest and made me realize that maybe my aperture was way smaller, um, way more closed than I thought it was. And it really led me to seek out a lot of people who had differing points of view than the people I'd been around before.
I really opened my aperture, explored a lot.
And over the years, I really got the chance to meet with people from both sides.
So I have a lot of friends.
Who are independent, friends who are liberal.
Friends who are very republican. Uh, and, uh, my personal view is I thought of myself more as a pragmatist, uh, fact based and data driven.
And based on that, I tried to.
Pursue, uh, the different policies that I.
Thought made the most sense, uh, in as unemotional a way as possible.
How did you figure out that that moment in Springfield could translate all throughout the country? Like, was there a process that you guys went through to validate? Like, hold on. Is this just a moment in time, or is this just a specific area? Or how did you guys get to the ground truth of what the scalable, marketable candidate looked like? Because I'm sure that was part of the calculus in what you did, because I think to, um, your point, maybe the media's perspective was. Hold on a second. This guy is riffing. But it clearly went very quickly from riffing to a methodical plan. And I don't think that's ever really been talked about. Do you want to just tell us a little bit about that?
Sure. Well, uh, I would say it was less planned and way more entrepreneurial. And I say entrepreneurial in two different senses. One is the campaign was run incredibly entrepreneurially.
People were told that if you work.
For Trump, you'll never get a job in Washington again. Which is why he really wasn't able.
To hire a lot of people initially.
And why a lot of the responsibility for the campaign fell to people like.
Myself, who, uh, really just cared about.
Him personally and wanted to make sure.
That he was able to do a competent job.
With, uh, the operations of a campaign.
That led to us doing a lot.
Of things in an untraditional way, but we actually were able to make the dollars go a lot further. Whether it was building a data operation.
Or how we targeted advertisers or how we, um, did our events, we were able to just do it in a much different way.
But from a viability of the candidate perspective, uh, I really give all the credit to him, because what I saw.
With politicians is a lot of politicians will take polls and then moderate their perspectives.
Uh, this is somebody who, without pollsters.
And without any political experience, um, really.
Put forward a lot of points of view. And keep in mind, in a republican.
Primary, a lot of his viewpoints on.
Trade were very heterodoxical. They were not what was conventionally thought of.
And what I saw with Trump was.
That he was able to move the polls to him. And, uh, that was a talent and.
Just a skill, persuasion, and, uh, his.
Willingness to kind of stick to the issues at that point in time.
I remember seeing polls that illegal immigration.
Was not like a top five issue when he started the campaign.
And by the middle to end of the campaign, people were really seeing the.
Uh, craziness that was happening at the southern border and why that was, uh, critical to our national security.
And so, um, I think that for.
Him, he found a lot of his message, and with him, he was not a perfectly, uh, always on message candidate, but what he did do was he.
Was constantly evolving and learning,
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