{"id":462318,"date":"2025-12-21T14:14:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-21T14:14:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/462318\/"},"modified":"2025-12-21T14:14:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-21T14:14:12","slug":"jared-kushner-becomes-key-to-trumps-second-term-diplomacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/462318\/","title":{"rendered":"Jared Kushner becomes key to Trump’s second-term diplomacy"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 As the dawn rose on President Donald Trump\u2019s<\/a> second term, one key figure from his first administration stood back, content to focus on his personal business interests and not retake a formal government role.<\/p>\n

Now, nearly a year into Trump 2.0, Trump\u2019s son-in-law Jared Kushner has been drawn back into the foreign policy fold<\/a> and is taking a greater role in delicate peace negotiations. Talks had initially been led almost solo by special envoy Steve Witkoff<\/a>, a real estate mogul who had no government experience before this year.<\/p>\n

The shift reflects a sense among Trump\u2019s inner circle that Kushner, who has diplomatic experience, complements Witkoff\u2019s negotiating style and can bridge seemingly intractable differences<\/a> to close a deal, according to several current and former administration officials who, like others, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the internal deliberations.<\/p>\n

That role was on display this weekend as Kushner and Witkoff hosted Russian negotiator Kirill Dmitriev<\/a> in Miami for talks on the latest proposals<\/a> to end Russia\u2019s war in Ukraine<\/a> and they also met with Turkish and Qatari officials to discuss the fragile truce between Israel and Hamas in Gaza as they look to implement the second phase of Trump\u2019s ceasefire plan. <\/p>\n

The lengthy session Saturday with Dmitriev followed several weeks of shuttle diplomacy<\/a>, with Witkoff and Kushner meeting most recently with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow and Ukrainian and European diplomats in Germany. The American envoys were set to hold further talks with Dmitriev on Sunday, according to a White House official.<\/p>\n

Kushner and Witkoff employ contrasting styles<\/p>\n

Witkoff, a longtime pal of Trump\u2019s<\/a>, is seen by some inside the administration as an oversize character who has traveled the world for diplomatic negotiations on his private jet and does not miss an opportunity to publicly praise the president for his foreign policy acumen, the officials say.<\/p>\n

Kushner has his own complicated business interests in the Middle East<\/a> and a sometimes transactional outlook to diplomacy that has distressed some officials in European capitals, a Western diplomat said.<\/p>\n

Still, Kushner is seen as a more credible negotiator than Witkoff, who is viewed by many Ukrainian and European officials as overly deferential to Russian interests<\/a> during the war that began with Moscow\u2019s invasion in February 2022, the diplomat said.<\/p>\n

\u201cKushner has a bit more of a track record from the first administration,\u201d said Ian Kelly, a retired career diplomat and former U.S. ambassador to Georgia who now teaches diplomacy at Northwestern University. Kelly stressed, however, that the jury is still out on Kushner\u2019s intervention.<\/p>\n

Trump views Kushner as a \u201ctrusted\u2004family member\u2004and talented\u2004adviser\u201d who has played a pivotal role\u2004in some of his biggest foreign policy successes, said White House deputy press secretary Anna Kelly.<\/p>\n

Trump and Witkoff \u201coften seek\u2004Mr.\u2004Kushner\u2019s input given\u2004his experience with complex negotiations, and\u2004Mr.\u2004Kushner has been generous in\u2004lending his\u2004valuable expertise\u2004when asked,\u201d Kelly added.<\/p>\n

State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott called Kushner \u201ca world-class negotiator.\u201d Pigott noted that Secretary of State Marco Rubio is grateful for Kushner\u2019s \u201cwillingness to serve our country and help President Trump solve some of the world\u2019s most complex challenges.\u201d<\/p>\n

In an interview with CBS\u2019 \u201c60 Minutes\u201d in October, Kushner spoke about his unconventional approach to diplomacy. <\/p>\n

\u201cI was trained in foreign policy really in President Trump\u2019s 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,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

But some Democrats and government oversight groups have expressed skepticism about Kushner\u2019s role in shaping the administration policies in the Middle East while he manages billions of dollars in investments, including from Saudi Arabia and Qatar\u2019s sovereign wealth funds through his firm, Affinity Partners. <\/p>\n

Similarly, Witkoff has faced scrutiny for his and his family\u2019s deep business ties to Gulf nations. Witkoff last year partnered with members of Trump\u2019s family to launch a cryptocurrency company, World Liberty Financial, which received a $2 billion investment<\/a> from a United Arab Emirates-controlled wealth fund.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat people call conflicts of interests, Steve and I call experience and trusted relationships that we have throughout the world,\u201d said Kushner, who is not drawing a salary from the White House for his advisory role.<\/p>\n

White House counsel David Warrington said in a statement that Kushner\u2019s efforts for Trump \u201care undertaken in full compliance with the law.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven that Jared Kushner was a critical part of the efforts leading to the historic Abraham Accords and other diplomatic successes in the first Trump Administration, the President asked Mr. Kushner to be available as the President engages in similar efforts to bring peace to the world,\u201d Warrington said in a statement, referring to Trump\u2019s first-term effort that normalized relations between Israel and several Arab nations. \u201cMr. Kushner has agreed to do so in his capacity as a private citizen.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kelly and other veterans of U.S. diplomatic encounters with the Russians over many years are also skeptical about Kushner\u2019s ability to secure a Russia-Ukraine deal<\/a> because Witkoff technically remains in the lead.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t see that the Witkoff approach is going to work,\u201d Kelly said. \u201cHe doesn\u2019t really read the Russians well. He misunderstands what they say and reports the misunderstandings back to Washington and the Europeans.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThey seem to have this idea that the magic key is money: investment and development,\u201d Kelly said. \u201cBut these guys don\u2019t care about that, they are not real estate guys except in the sense that they want the land, period.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kushner was out of the spotlight until he wasn\u2019t<\/p>\n

For the first half of the year, Kushner stayed out of the spotlight, even as he pushed, unsuccessfully in some cases, to install some former associates \u2014 those with whom he worked on negotiating the Abraham Accords<\/a> \u2014 into powerful roles in the new administration, according to the current and former administration officials.<\/p>\n

Kushner had told Trump and others that while he would not be joining the second-term White House, he stood ready to offer his counsel if it was desired. That is a role he also played on a few occasions during the Biden years as the Democratic administration tried, without success, to expand the Abraham Accords.<\/p>\n

Although Kushner remained an informal sounding board for Trump and top advisers, he resisted getting directly involved, even as the president expanded his peacemaking pursuits, until it became clear to him and others that the job might be too much for Witkoff to seal on his own, the officials said.<\/p>\n

As Trump\u2019s efforts to forge an agreement to end the Israel-Hamas war<\/a> in Gaza faltered over the summer, Kushner came in, trading on his experience and contacts in negotiating the Abraham Accords to help Witkoff push Trump\u2019s plan over the finish line<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Agreed to in late September after frantic talks surrounding the annual U.N. General Assembly, the 20-point plan is still a work in progress, but its implementation is being coordinated by Kushner and numerous members of his Abraham Accords team.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe always bring Jared when we want to get that deal closed,\u201d Trump told Israel\u2019s parliament, the Knesset, shortly after the agreement. \u201cWe need that brain on occasion.\u201d<\/p>\n

As soon as the Gaza plan was finalized, Kushner said he was returning to his family and day job in Miami, where he heads a multibillion-dollar private equity firm. His involvement in high-stakes peacemaking was only temporary, Kushner said, joking that his wife, Ivanka, might change the locks if he did not get home soon.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m gonna try to help set it up, and then I\u2019m gonna hopefully go back to my normal life,\u201d Kushner said in October.<\/p>\n

But within weeks of shepherding the Gaza ceasefire, Trump turned again to his fixer-in-law to dive into the Russia-Ukraine negotiations. They had been deadlocked for months despite persistent efforts by the White House to lure both Putin and Ukraine\u2019s Volodymyr Zelenskyy into an agreement.<\/p>\n

Trump hinted then that he would continue to lean on Kushner when the stakes are highest, just as he has done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 As the dawn rose on President Donald Trump\u2019s second term, one key figure from his…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":462319,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[97,33602,26563,3881,210824,7838,84,69,57,86,4527,85878,99,373,17966,164729,410,3097,50,80,3658,3657,13226,59770,273,370,274,3656,96,93,103,107],"class_list":{"0":"post-462318","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-2024-2025-mideast-wars","9":"tag-abraham-accords","10":"tag-anna-kelly","11":"tag-ap-top-news","12":"tag-david-warrington","13":"tag-diplomacy","14":"tag-district-of-columbia","15":"tag-donald-trump","16":"tag-general-news","17":"tag-government-policy","18":"tag-hamas","19":"tag-ian-kelly","20":"tag-israel","21":"tag-israel-hamas-war","22":"tag-jared-kushner","23":"tag-kirill-dmitriev","24":"tag-marco-rubio","25":"tag-middle-east","26":"tag-news","27":"tag-politics","28":"tag-russia-government","29":"tag-russia-ukraine-war","30":"tag-steve-witkoff","31":"tag-tommy-pigott","32":"tag-ukraine","33":"tag-united-states-government","34":"tag-vladimir-putin","35":"tag-volodymyr-zelenskyy","36":"tag-war-and-unrest","37":"tag-washington-news","38":"tag-world","39":"tag-world-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462318","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=462318"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/462318\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/462319"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=462318"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=462318"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=462318"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}