The Kushner QuestionWhy Jared Kushner’s record cannot be judged only by unfinished dealsA response to Brian Kilmeade’s criticism of Trump’s foreign policy negotiatorsBy Luis GonzálezThe Last Wire | July 10, 2026Politics 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 IgnoredBefore 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 ScorekeepingOne 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 LedgerThe 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 DiplomacyIran 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 ResponsibilityThis 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 QuestionThe 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.
— GonzoLuis González writes on power, politics, and the systems that quietly shape everyday life.
