Trump : For challenging diplomacy, is depending on son-in-law Jared Kushner

Trump : One important member of President Donald Trump’s first administration pulled aside as his second term began, happy to concentrate on his private business interests rather than accept a formal government position.

Now, over a year into Trump 2.0, Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, has returned to the foreign policy fold and is playing a bigger part in sensitive peace talks.

Prior to this year, special envoy Steve Witkoff, a real estate tycoon with no prior government experience, had overseen negotiations almost alone.

According to a number of current and former administration officials who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the internal discussions, the change reflects a sense among Trump’s inner circle that Kushner, who has diplomatic experience, complements Witkoff’s negotiating style and can bridge seemingly intractable differences to close a deal.

This weekend, Kushner and Witkoff engaged in a flurry of diplomatic activity in Miami, demonstrating that responsibility.

They wrapped up two days of discussions on the most recent measures to stop Russia’s conflict in Ukraine with Russian negotiator Kirill Dmitriev in Miami on Sunday.

The discussions with Dmitriev followed their meeting with top national security officials from Britain, France, and Germany on Friday in Florida, together with the Ukrainian negotiation team headed by Rustem Umerov. Assisted by Trump’s envoys, the Ukrainians and European officials remained in Florida for more discussions with U.S. government officials.

In an effort to carry out the second part of Trump’s ceasefire proposal, Witkoff and Kushner also managed to meet with Turkish and Qatari officials on Friday to discuss the precarious truce between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.

Witkoff and Kushner use different approaches.

Some within the administration see Witkoff, a longstanding friend of Trump, as an exaggerated figure who has used his own plane to travel the globe for diplomatic discussions and never misses a chance to publicly commend the president for his foreign policy savvy, according to the sources.

According to a Western diplomat, several officials in European capitals have been troubled by Kushner’s often transactional approach to diplomacy and his own complex business interests in the Middle East.

However, the diplomat said that Kushner is considered a more credible negotiator than Witkoff, who is seen by many Ukrainian and European officials as being too subservient to Russian interests during the conflict that started with Moscow’s invasion in February 2022.

“Kushner has a bit more of a track record from the first administration,” said Ian Kelly, a retired career diplomat who is now a professor of diplomacy at Northwestern University and was ambassador to Georgia. However, Kelly emphasized that opinions on Kushner’s involvement are still being debated.

According to White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly, Trump sees Kushner as a “trusted family member and talented adviser” who has been instrumental in some of his greatest foreign policy achievements.

The president and Witkoff “often seek Mr. Kushner’s input given his experience with complex negotiations, and Mr. Kushner has been generous in lending his valuable expertise when asked,” Kelly said.

Tommy Pigott, a spokesperson for the State Department, referred to Kushner as “a world-class negotiator.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio expressed gratitude for Kushner’s “willingness to serve our country and help President Trump solve some of the most complex challenges in the world,” according to Pigott.

Kushner discussed his unorthodox approach to diplomacy in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” in October.

“I was trained in foreign policy really in President Trump’s first term by seeing an outsider president come into Washington with a different school of foreign policy than had been brought in place for the 20 or 30 years prior,” he said.

However, while Kushner oversees billions of dollars in investments, including from Saudi Arabia and Qatar’s sovereign wealth funds through his company, Affinity Partners, some Democrats and government oversight groups have voiced doubts about his involvement in determining the administration’s Middle East policies.

In a similar vein, Witkoff’s family’s extensive economic connections to Gulf countries have drawn criticism. Last year, Witkoff and members of Trump’s family founded World Liberty Financial, a cryptocurrency business that was given a $2 billion investment by a wealth fund managed by the United Arab Emirates.

Kushner, who does not receive compensation from the White House for his advising position, said, “What people call conflicts of interest, Steve and I call experience and trusted relationships that we have throughout the world.”

According to a statement from White House lawyer David Warrington, Kushner’s work on Trump “is undertaken in full compliance with the law.”

In reference to Trump’s first-term initiative to normalize relations between Israel and a number of Arab countries, Warrington said in a statement, “The President asked Mr. Kushner to be available as the President engages in similar efforts to bring peace to the world, given that he was a critical part of the efforts leading to the historic Abraham Accords and other diplomatic successes in the first Trump Administration.” “Mr. Kushner has agreed to do so in his capacity as a private citizen.”

Because Witkoff is still nominally in the lead, Kelly and other veterans of years of U.S. diplomatic interactions with the Russians are also dubious about Kushner’s ability to broker a solution between Russia and Ukraine.

“I don’t see that the Witkoff approach is going to work,” Kelly said. “He’s not very good at reading Russians. He misinterprets what they say and informs Washington and the Europeans of this miscommunication.

“They seem to have this idea that the magic key is money: investment and development,” Kelly said. “But these guys don’t care about that, they are not real estate guys except in the sense that they want the land, period.”

Kushner didn’t have any attention until he didn’t

Despite pushing, sometimes unsuccessfully, to place some former associates — those with whom he worked on negotiating the Abraham Accords — in high positions in the new administration, Kushner remained out of the spotlight for the first half of the year, according to current and former administration officials.

Although he would not be entering the second-term White House, Kushner had informed Trump and others that he was prepared to provide his advice if asked. He also sometimes fulfilled that function during the Biden years when the Democratic government attempted, but failed, to broaden the Abraham Accords.

Even as Trump’s peacemaking efforts grew, Kushner continued to serve as an informal sounding board for Trump and his senior advisors, but he refused to get personally engaged until it became evident to him and others that Witkoff may not be able to complete the task on his own, according to the people.

Kushner entered the picture when Trump’s attempts to reach a deal to put an end to the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza stalled during the summer. Using his connections and expertise in negotiating the Abraham Accords, Kushner assisted Witkoff in completing Trump’s proposal.

Kushner and several of his Abraham Accords team members are coordinating the execution of the 20-point plan, which was agreed upon in late September after hectic negotiations around the annual U.N. General Assembly.

Trump said, “We always bring Jared when we want to get that deal closed,” to the Knesset, Israel’s parliament, soon after the deal was reached. “We need that brain on occasion.”

Kushner said that he was heading back to his family and his day job in Miami, where he leads a multibillion-dollar private equity business, as soon as the Gaza plan was approved. Kushner joked that his wife, Ivanka, may change the locks if he did not return home quickly, indicating that his engagement in high-stakes peacemaking was just temporary.

When Kushner said in October, “I’m going to try to help set it up, and then I’m gonna hopefully go back to my normal life,”

But after guiding the truce in Gaza for a few weeks, Trump once again resorted to his fixer-in-law to get right into the Russia-Ukraine talks. Despite the White House’s relentless attempts to persuade Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine and Russian President Vladimir Putin to reach a deal, they had been at a standstill for months.

At the time, Trump made a suggestion that, like he has done in the past, he would still rely on Kushner when the stakes are high.