General Category > The Last Wire
The Kushner Question — Why Jared Kushner’s record cannot be judged only by unfinished deals
Luis Gonzalez:
The Kushner Question
Why Jared Kushner’s record cannot be judged only by unfinished deals
A response to Brian Kilmeade’s criticism of Trump’s foreign policy negotiators
By Luis González
The Last Wire | July 10, 2026
Politics has a way of turning complicated records into simple verdicts.
A negotiation stalls.
Someone must be blamed.
A deal remains unfinished.
Someone must be declared ineffective.
But history rarely works that way.
The real question is not whether Jared Kushner has faced difficult negotiations.
He has.
The real question is whether a fair evaluation of his effectiveness can ignore the achievements that complicate the criticism.
That is the question raised by Brian Kilmeade’s recent comments about Kushner and Steve Witkoff.
On Fox News Channel’s “The Five,” Kilmeade argued that Kushner and Witkoff “have not been effective” and questioned whether they should continue handling major negotiations for the Trump administration involving Iran and other international conflicts.
His criticism focused on unfinished efforts.
Those issues deserve debate.
Diplomacy should be examined.
Officials should be held accountable.
But anyone evaluating a public figure has another responsibility.
The full record matters.
The Achievement That Cannot Be Ignored
Before judging Jared Kushner’s failures, one achievement must be placed at the center of the discussion.
The Abraham Accords.
Kushner was one of the principal architects and chief negotiators behind the diplomatic initiative that produced normalization agreements between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco, and Sudan.
The agreements represented one of the most significant shifts in Middle East diplomacy in decades.
For years, Washington operated under the assumption that Arab recognition of Israel would come only after a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The Abraham Accords challenged that framework.
They created a different diplomatic model based on shared security interests, economic cooperation, and regional alignment.
The significance was not theoretical.
Countries signed agreements.
Relations changed.
A diplomatic barrier that had shaped policy for decades was broken.
That achievement is not a minor footnote in Kushner’s record.
It is the central fact any serious evaluation must address.
The Problem With Selective Scorekeeping
One of Kilmeade’s central criticisms is that Kushner and Witkoff are businessmen, not traditional diplomats.
That criticism raises an important question.
How should diplomatic effectiveness be measured?
By résumé?
Or by results?
American presidents have often relied on trusted representatives outside the traditional diplomatic establishment when attempting difficult negotiations.
Diplomacy is not only about maintaining existing relationships.
Sometimes it requires creating new ones.
The Abraham Accords demonstrated that an unconventional approach could produce an outcome many believed unlikely.
That does not mean every later negotiation would succeed.
It does mean the record cannot honestly be reduced to failure.
A negotiator can have unfinished business and still have achieved historic breakthroughs.
Both things can be true.
The Full Ledger
The Abraham Accords are the defining accomplishment of Kushner’s public record.
They are also not the only accomplishment worth considering.
Kushner was a leading White House advocate for the First Step Act, a bipartisan criminal justice reform effort that became one of the most significant federal reforms of recent years.
He also played a role in the 2020 Serbia-Kosovo economic normalization initiative, which helped reopen dialogue between two nations with a long history of conflict.
These accomplishments do not make Kushner immune from criticism.
No public figure should be.
But they demonstrate why serious evaluations require more than a list of unresolved issues.
Every negotiator has unfinished work.
Every diplomat has setbacks.
Every administration has failures.
The question is whether those failures erase the achievements that came before them.
They do not.
The Reality of Diplomacy
Iran is not the United Arab Emirates.
Gaza is not a normalization agreement.
Ukraine is not a commercial negotiation.
Each situation involves different governments, different incentives, and different obstacles.
A negotiator cannot force an adversary to accept terms that the adversary believes threaten its own interests.
That is not how diplomacy works.
Special envoys operate within the strategy established by the president they represent.
They do not independently control military decisions, intelligence assessments, economic pressure campaigns, or the choices made by foreign governments.
Holding a negotiator responsible for every failure while ignoring every success creates an incomplete picture.
And incomplete pictures produce incomplete conclusions.
The Commentator’s Responsibility
This brings the discussion back to Brian Kilmeade.
The issue is not whether a commentator has the right to criticize public officials.
They do.
That is the purpose of commentary in a free society.
The same freedom that allows Kilmeade to question Jared Kushner’s effectiveness allows others to question the completeness of Kilmeade’s analysis.
That is not a personal attack.
It is the same standard being applied in both directions.
When a commentator evaluates someone’s ability to perform a difficult job, that evaluation should also be evaluated.
Was the relevant evidence considered?
Was the full record examined?
Were the facts that complicate the conclusion acknowledged?
In the case of Jared Kushner, that evidence includes unfinished negotiations.
It also includes the Abraham Accords.
A commentator does not have to praise every policy decision.
A commentator does not have to defend every outcome.
But credible analysis requires acknowledging the facts that make the argument more complicated.
The Abraham Accords are not a minor detail.
They are the most significant counterweight to the claim that Kushner has simply been ineffective.
The Kushner Question
The question is not whether every negotiation succeeds.
No serious observer would make that claim.
The question is whether a verdict was reached after considering the entire record.
Jared Kushner should be judged.
Brian Kilmeade should be judged.
Every public figure who shapes public understanding should be judged.
The standard is the same.
Look at the complete picture.
Consider the successes.
Consider the failures.
Consider what was achieved and what remains unresolved.
Because history is not written from one television segment, one negotiation, or one unfinished deal.
It is written from the full record.
That is the Kushner question.
— Gonzo
Luis González writes on power, politics, and the systems that quietly shape everyday life.
Timber Rattler:
Sorry, but Kushner is terribly conflicted in his interests, and has achieved nothing (outside of his likely personal "side deals") since the Abraham Accords. Other than being trump's son-in-law, he has no official status as a U.S. government official, is not subject to Congressional oversight, and is not covered by federal records preservation and disclosure laws. His whole involvement in these negotiations is, truthfully, illegal (Logan Act), and sleazy. And Witkoff too!
Right_in_Virginia:
--- Quote from: Timber Rattler on Saturday, Jul 11, 2026 04:04 am ---Sorry, but Kushner is terribly conflicted in his interests, and has achieved nothing (outside of his likely personal "side deals") since the Abraham Accords.
--- End quote ---
Nonsense. ⬆️
Kushner's efforts are the embodiment of the President's driving philosophy for the Middle East:
Kushner (and Witkoff) made enormous and unprecedented regional and European progress in Gaza, including: after years in captivity, their negotiations finally released all hostages (dead and alive) to Israel, they ushered in a ceasefire that had held, were thisclose to agreement on processes for Israeli retreat and Hamas disarmament, presented an accepted structure for regional/internstionsl management of a post-Hamas Gaza and had begun making inroads into financial investments from regional and European powers to support Gaza's reconstruction and revised economy.
The Kushner-led Gaza negotiations were so successful that the only way to interrupt the complete implementation of the Gaza peace plan was to start a wider war with Iran --- which happened at the urging of Israel.
As for war negotiations with Iran --- You need to decide if the Iranians are genetically untrustworthy as has been reported here daily, or if Kushner, Witkoff and the full US/Gulf States negotiating team are suddenly incompetent --- you honestly cannot claim both.
Luis Gonzalez:
--- Quote from: Timber Rattler on Saturday, Jul 11, 2026 04:04 am ---Sorry, but Kushner is terribly conflicted in his interests, and has achieved nothing (outside of his likely personal "side deals") since the Abraham Accords. Other than being trump's son-in-law, he has no official status as a U.S. government official, is not subject to Congressional oversight, and is not covered by federal records preservation and disclosure laws. His whole involvement in these negotiations is, truthfully, illegal (Logan Act), and sleazy. And Witkoff too!
--- End quote ---
You’re raising three separate issues that deserve to be treated separately.
If your argument is that Jared Kushner has potential conflicts of interest because of his private business activities, that would be a legitimate topic for discussion. But to date, there is no proof or appearance of any impropriety by Kushner.
If your argument is that Congress should exercise greater oversight over special envoys or presidential advisers, that is also a legitimate policy debate.
But neither of those is the point I addressed.
My article responds to Brian Kilmeade’s claim that Kushner “has not been effective.”
Effectiveness is measured by the record.
Any honest assessment of that record has to include the Abraham Accords because they remain one of the most significant diplomatic breakthroughs in the Middle East in decades. You may believe Kushner has accomplished little since then, but that does not erase what he did accomplish. We do not judge diplomats by looking only at their last negotiation while pretending their biggest success never happened.
As for the Logan Act, it generally prohibits unauthorized private citizens from conducting diplomacy against the interests of the United States. Kushner served as a senior adviser during the first Trump administration and, if he has participated in later diplomatic efforts, it has been as someone acting with the knowledge and authorization of the President, not as a rogue private citizen freelancing foreign policy. Whether one agrees with using special envoys is a separate constitutional and political question, but that is not the same thing as a Logan Act violation.
You may disagree with Kushner’s role. That is your prerogative.
My point remains unchanged: if we are going to evaluate someone’s effectiveness, we have an obligation to evaluate the entire record, not just the portion that supports our conclusion.
Timber Rattler:
--- Quote ---My point remains unchanged: if we are going to evaluate someone’s effectiveness, we have an obligation to evaluate the entire record, not just the portion that supports our conclusion.
--- End quote ---
All right then, if you want to whittle down the overall context of Kushner's dealings within Trump's two administrations, then I'll keep it simple.
1) The Abraham Accords was impressive but Kushner had his own interests in negotiating them, again outside the formal U.S. institutions of State. And this clear conflict of interest has been well-documented and reported on:
Jared Kushner Solicits Funds for His Firm While Working as Mideast Envoy
--- Quote ---Jared Kushner, one of the U.S. government’s chief negotiators in the Middle East, is trying to raise more money for his private equity firm from governments in the region.
Mr. Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law, has spoken with potential investors in recent weeks about raising $5 billion or more for Affinity Partners, his investment firm, according to five people with knowledge of the talks who were not permitted to speak publicly about the discussions.
As part of the fund-raising effort, Affinity’s representatives have already met with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which invests the proceeds of the kingdom’s vast oil reserves, two of the people briefed on the discussions said. PIF is led by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who has formed close ties with Mr. Kushner and the Trump administration.
PIF, which is already the largest and earliest investor in Affinity, invested $2 billion soon after the first Trump administration ended.
As part of that deal, the Saudis must be given the first chance to invest during any subsequent attempts by Affinity to raise funds, the two people said. Other Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds that invested earlier in Affinity, including those in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, are also expected to be asked for more, the people said.
--- End quote ---
Also:
Jared Kushner's new fund raises old questions
https://www.axios.com/2026/03/16/jared-kushner-affinity-partners
Jared Kushner builds a Middle East business empire
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-jared-kushner-builds-a-middle-east-business-empire-1001503692
--- Quote ---Now the largest shareholder in Israeli financial group The Phoenix Holdings, Kushner, who was instrumental in forging the Abraham Accords, has financial ties spanning regional friends and foes.
--- End quote ---
Jared Kushner defends controversial $2bn Saudi investment
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68296877
Gulf states linked to Israeli businesses on UN settlements blacklist
https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/gulf-states-linked-through-kushner-israeli-businesses-un-settlements-blacklist
--- Quote ---An investment firm headed by Jared Kushner and backed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates is the largest shareholder in an Israeli company which in turn holds shares in businesses accused by the United Nations of operating in illegal settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Affinity Partners has received several billion dollars in funding from the Gulf states’ sovereign wealth funds since it was launched by Kushner, US President Donald Trump’s son in law and former Middle East advisor, in 2021.
In January, just weeks after securing further funding from the Qatari Investment Authority (QIA) and an Abu Dhabi-based investment firm, Affinity completed the purchase of a near-10 percent stake in Phoenix Financial.
Phoenix, formerly known as Phoenix Holdings, is an Israeli financial services group that offers insurance and asset management services, and holds shares in other Israeli companies in its own name and through a subsidiary, Phoenix Investment House.
--- End quote ---
He's also in bed with the Pakistanis on Crypto-currency:
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/13/business/jared-kushner-affinity-mideast-funds.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/03/26/us/politics/trump-pakistan-iran.html
https://m.economictimes.com/markets/cryptocurrency/pakistan-strikes-deal-with-trump-family-backed-crypto-venture/articleshow/121179568.cms
https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/pakistan-trump-iran-war-84b8248e
2) As for Gaza, it is still unpacified, Hamas is still armed, the "Board of Peace" remains unfunded and has gone no where, and the transition into a resort destination will never happen.
https://www.france24.com/en/middle-east/20260527-trump-board-of-peace-official-gaza-fund-is-empty-despite-billions-pledged-source-says
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-897454
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/06/01/trumps-board-peace-stalls-out-gaza-reconstruction/
3) The Russia-Ukraine War continues, with the Ukrainians slowly turning back the tide using tactical and strategic drone strikes, and crippling Russia's oil refining capacity, despite both Kushner and Witkoff's best efforts at bullying Zelensky into capitulation, at their business partner Kirill Dmitriev's behest.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cd9v420y190o
https://kyivindependent.com/its-disrespectful-to-come-to-moscow-and-not-kyiv-zelensky-voices-doubts-as-witkoff-kushner-meeting-expected/
https://www.nbcnews.com/world/ukraine/ukraine-us-negotiators-discussed-peace-zelenskyy-says-rcna250944
So other than the Abraham Accords, which happened six years ago, what exactly has Kushner accomplished in U.S. diplomacy since then?
Answer: Nothing.
Navigation
[0] Message Index
[#] Next page
Go to full version