Is Jared Kushner a 'walking conflict of interest'?

On this American life, we tell stories about when things change.

“Like for this guy David, who's an entire life, took a sharp, unexpected and very unpleasant”

term.

And it did take me a while to realize it's basically because the monkey pressed the button.

That's right, because the monkey pressed the button. Sprising stories every week, where you get your podcasts. This is fresh air. I'm Tonya Mosley. Jared Kushner is once again playing an extraordinary role in American foreign policy.

He's president Trump's son-in-law. And during Trump's first term, he was a senior White House advisor who became one of the administration's central players in the Middle East. Today he's helping negotiate peace deals and some of the world's biggest conflicts from Israel and Gaza, the Russian Ukraine War, to the US, war with Iran.

At the same time, Kushner runs a private equity firm backed by billions of dollars from places like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. My guest, Dexter Filkins, spent months tracing how these two worlds overlap.

“And what happens when diplomacy and private business become difficult to separate?”

Filkins is a staff writer for the New Yorker and a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who's covered wars and foreign policy for more than 25 years. His new piece is called Jared Kushner's Dollar Diplomacy. And Dexter Filkins, welcome back to fresh air. Hi there.

Hi there. Okay, I want to start with this title because it uses the phrase dollar diplomacy and a century ago that essentially meant using American money and investment as an instrument of American power abroad. And so what does dollar diplomacy mean in Jared Kushner's hands?

That's back when we had money to throw around. Yeah. Well, you touched on it at the top there, Jared has, he's wearing two hats right now. He's a diplomat, he's unpaid, but he's an agent for American foreign policy and for the White House and for President Trump on one hand and on the other hand.

He is managing a large private equity fund with several billion dollars in it, nearly

all of which was gathered from foreign countries and foreign governments and their sovereign wealth funds. And so he's potentially a walking conflict of interest. Right. You mentioned that he doesn't take a salary, he's not a cabinet secretary, he's not a

confirmed ambassador. And the White House's position is that because he isn't paid, there is no conflict of interest. Yeah, I mean, that's what they say. I think that strains, it strains credulately, I sound like a lawyer in a courtroom, but

I mean, it strains kind of believability. And I think most of the lawyers that I talk to kind of work in the realm of government

ethics were pretty clear about this and basically what they said was it doesn't really

matter if he's taking a salary or he's taking a salary of a dollar a year or whatever.

“So nother, what matters is that he's acting as a government employee.”

He's acting as an agent of the United States government and that in every conceivable way, Jared Kushner is a government employee, whether he's making money out of it or not. I talk to any number of government ethics, professors, lawyers who said that and said it pretty clearly. This is the sort of thing that like wouldn't have come up for debate a decade ago.

It just wouldn't have come up. I mean, the practice of former government employees caching in on their former jobs in the private sector. I mean, that's a, you know, tried and true tradition, you know, you work at the Pentagon or whatever and then you leave and then you lobby the Pentagon.

Now, they've put a bunch of rules in place that have sought to separate those interests and slow the conflicts down so that when, when you leave the US government, if you leave, let's say the Treasury Department, like you can't lobby the Treasury Department or you can't lobby the executive branch for X number of years. It's not a long time.

It's like, you know, two or three years or something, but you can't, you can't like walk out of the building and then pick off the phone and say, hey, I'm available to, you know, lobby the Treasury Department and all my former colleagues that I was just sitting with like two days ago. You can't do that.

Right. There's a cooling off period. I want to get into, though, what this undefined role actually looks like and you write quite extensively about it in, in this piece, but first, I just want to lay the groundwork of what it looks like for Kushner out there.

There's someone else by his side and a lot of his work, specifically in Iran and Ukraine, Steve Whitkov, he's a real estate developer that President Trump has known for decades.

What does the President believe that these two Kushner and Whitkov can do that diplomats cannot?

“I think their titles are the peace on voice.”

So peace on voice. Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead and make peace and all the terrible places in the world. And God knows there's a lot of terrible places.

But the effectively Secretary of State, I mean, that's really what they're doing and Mark Rubio was wearing two hats of a different sort. He's the National Security Advisor in the Secretary of State, typically, say when it was Anthony Blinken, who was the Secretary of State on a button, he traveled all the time. He was just like on a plane, like 360 days out of here, that he was in.

And the National Security Advisor typically kind of sits right next to the President, kind of briefs him every morning. So in Rubio's case, he's really kind of acting like the now Security Advisor.

He basically works in the lighthouse.

“He travels a little bit and put not that much.”

So these guys, Whitkov and Kushner, they're effectively the Secretary of State. They're running around and they're trying to make peace in some of the really intractable areas around the globe. So they've done negotiations with Iran. They've done negotiations in Gaza.

They've done them in Ukraine. They've flown to places like that, places like where the United States is trying to sort itself and separate the warring parties, except that I should add in the case of Iran, where there wasn't a war going on until they got involved. But that's what we can talk about.

We will talk about, yes, we will talk about.

You know, Kushner's argument about their roles is basically the expert had decades and

they didn't solve many of the problems that we see. And so you've covered these wars and these diplomatic efforts for very long time. Does he have a point?

“I think the mostly unstated, but sometimes stated, premise of what they're doing is that the”

ordinary bureaucracy of the United States government and the diplomatic core of the United States government, the whole foreign policy apparatus of the US government is basically a big failure. And so these two very smart, real estate guys, not knowing the history, not knowing the complexities. They can parachute in and they can make peace because they're smart and they're quick

and they're not burdened by all the baggage of the past. Kushner has said this out loud. He's like, look, I wouldn't be here in Gaza in Ukraine. I wouldn't be here if you guys had succeeded. So the fact that I'm doing things a little bit differently, do you want me to just do the

same thing and keep failing so that's his argument, that's his argument, that's like that's why I'm here. I'm here to do things differently. Well, let's talk about what Kushner's work actually looks like.

So in his first term, President Trump handed his son-in-law, the Middle East portfolio,

when you write that Kushner built American policy in the region around Mohammed bin Salman, known as MBS, he's now the crown prince and ruler of Saudi Arabia. At the time, he was not next in line to the throne when this relationship started. Why him? Well, this is a very interesting story. This is back in 2017, so it was a long time ago, but President Trump

came in and he kind of looked at the map of the Middle East and said, you know, Iran is doing whatever the heck they want. We need it in their ally out there. Who is it? It's going to be Saudi Arabia.

And so what President Trump said was we're going to empower Saudi Arabia as a kind of as a counterweight to Iran and Jared, you're going to take the file here to all yours. There was a crown prince, Mohammed bin Nive. He was very, very close to the American national security establishment in the intelligence agency, because he was very cooperative, particularly in terrorism.

And so the buzz in the Middle East at the time was, yeah, but the really dynamic guy, he's not Mohammed bin Nive, it's Mohammed bin Salman and B.S., he's the young comor. He's the deputy crown prince. And so on top of all this is the king, King Salman, who's kind of very old and kind of, you know, gradually disengaging.

So who's going to run the country became kind of the the operating question. And what happened over the course of Trump's first term is that Jared became very close. I mean, they're friends. They play video games together, but Jared became close to Mohammed bin Salman. They're the same age.

They kind of see the world in the same way. I think it's fair to say, they were two young guys and more, you know, cutting through

And so he became very close to him. He forms this alliance.

“And I think, but there's a pivotal moment in I believe it's 2017, pretty early on.”

And that is they're talking on the phone, MBS and Jared, and MBS basically says, I'm going to make my move against Mohammed bin Nive. Do I have the backing of the White House in Jared said, yes, basically everybody is behind you. I think he said with the exception of the intelligence agencies, we're very, very close to MBS's

rival. But he said, basically, you've got the green light.

And it's always very long.

It's always very long. Yeah. So this was unknown until, you know, I talked to a lot of different people. And I've been kind of working in the Middle East for a long time and Jared denies all this, by the way.

But the telephone call was taped and it was recorded. And so officials that I spoke to had seen the intercept, basically had seen transcript the intercept. So basically, Jared gives the green light to MBS to basically take over because the father is kind of irrelevant at this point.

And so he does. And so MBS makes his move and ultimately, Mohammed bin Nive more or less disappears. He was this kind of staged, kind of ridiculous moment where Mohammed bin Nive kind of happily hands the reins of power to MBS, but then he kind of disappears. And he's been under house arrest for years.

And it's a mess. And it's, it's ugly.

“And I'm not sure if MBN has been seen, I think he still thought to be alive.”

But the pretty ugly moment there, but also potentially really dangerous. But basically what you had was Jared essentially backing what amount to a coup d'etat. In Kushner's spokesperson denies this, but then something else happens. So that spring, Jared Kushner's father asked Qatar's sovereign wealth fund to invest in a building in Manhattan.

The family was at the time struggling to hold on to this building. Qatar said no, then two months later, Saudi Arabia, blockaded Qatar, and a former official tells you that Jared Kushner knew about the blockade in equiest. In his spokesman denies this, what connection of anywhere you're able to establish between these two things?

One of the big, big, big, if not the largest, or at least the largest to date investments that the Kushner's had made was in an office building on Fifth Avenue, six, six, fifth out, and they paid an enormous amount of money for it.

I don't remember where it was, more than a billion dollars.

And they got in trouble, it was a bad investment, and the property markets collapsed at the time.

“And so Qatar is one of the world's wealthiest countries, and it's very, very small.”

It's a tiny place sitting on an ocean of natural gas. And so they have an enormous sovereign wealth fund. They have an enormous amount of money to invest. And every year in the New York, they come to New York, and they take all commerce, and they, you know, people line up at the St. Regis Hotel, to say, "Please, I want your money

to invest in my company." And one of those people, it was Charles Kushner, Jared's father, he was in line, he met with those officials, and he said, "I really need you to invest in my office building. I need a billion dollars." And so, the Qataris said, "No." And I spoke to one of the Qataris who was involved in

that whole negotiation, and he said, "Oh, my God," he said, "You know, they just they've been overpaid for the thing.

That building will never be worth what they've paid for."

So we just, you know, we said we could have bought it, but he said it was a bad investment, so we just walked away from it. And so, the next thing that happens is Saudi Arabia and UAE both very close allies the United States called the White House one night, and said, "We're going to block a Cade car, because we don't like what they're doing in the Middle East, they're a rival

of ours. They fund Al Jazeera, they're, you know, Muslim Brotherhood, bad guys, we're going to block aade them. And, as I was told by senior American official, Jared heard about that forehand, and he basically said, "Okay, God, God, and do it."

And so, what was supposed to me was the following question, and it was more of a question, but it was, if Kushner had gotten that money first, if he'd gotten a billion dollars, would there have been a blockade, and this person kind of answered the questions that I don't think so. And so, the person that I spoke to, Ketari, official, kind of posed the link between those

two events. It's very difficult to note, Jared flat out, denies all of it. Very clear about that. Yeah. Talk about some of Kushner's wins.

You call the Abraham Accords, Kushner's most substantial diplomatic achievement.

So in the first Trump term, the focus of the Middle East, apart from Saudi Arabia, was Israel,

“and it was Israel's going to get what it wants.”

So what that meant, and what it has meant over the past two Trump administrations, Israel's been very aggressive in the West Bank about settlements and about moving people in and kind of disregarding Palestinian rights. And so in 2020, Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, said, you made indications we're going to annex part of the West Bank, the occupied West Bank, we're going to annex

part of them where the settlements are, essentially, where a lot of the settlements are.

And so use of all a tie-up, a lot of your listeners probably never heard of them, but

he's a very influential thinker in Washington, D.C., he's the ambassador of the United Arab Emirates in long time ambassador in Washington. He's alarmed by this, and he tries to head it off, and he writes an op-ed in which he says, look, if B.V. will not do this, then we will recognize the state of Israel, United Arab Emirates, and he just put it in an op-ed, and it is Israeli newspaper.

“And I think basically what happens after that is Jared kind of sees us the moment.”

He sees that as a diplomatic opening, this potential disaster, you know, the annexation of parts of the West Bank, he sees an opportunity, and grabs it, and happens pretty quickly over the course of several weeks and months. The UAE recognizes Israel, Bahrain recognizes Israel, several states in the Middle East that

had never had diplomatic relations with Israel, decided to take the big step and do it,

and in exchange for B.V. basically holding off on annexing parts of the West Bank. And so it's pretty pretty big achievement, I mean if, you know, I've spent a lot of time in the Middle East and kind of the one thing that everybody in the Arab world always agreed on was like we hate Israel, you know, and so this kind of broke that, and it formed a kind of a new paradigm and a new template, and I think Jared's dream, and I think,

well, honestly, I think of any diplomat sense has been, well, we'll take this new paradigm of the countries that have recognized Israel in the Abraham Accords, and we'll kind of add countries to it. The big one would be Saudi Arabia, uh, MBS, but he didn't want to go along, so he was, you know, very tight with Jared at the time, but basically, in order to do the Abraham

Accords, they had to kind of blow off the Palestinians. They had to say like, we're not going to sit around and talk about Palestinian rights, we're just going to do this. And so MBS basically said we can't go along with that.

“And so the Abraham Accords is like this really big diplomatic achievement, and I think quite”

impressive. So is there, essentially, a straight line from the Abraham Accords to the way that Kushner operates now, essentially, find the people who can make a deal, figure out what each one wants and leave, I mean, essentially leave the ideology aside. I think in his favor, he would say like, yeah, we did this because we didn't do what all the

other diplomats, the American diplomats in the region had done for a million years, which

is to say, hold on, you know, let's talk about it for six months, and what about the Palestinians. Jared just went and did it. Last January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, that's the annual gathering of business and government leaders in Switzerland, Kushner gave a presentation on rebuilding Gaza. And we know that this is a place where millions of people are living in tents and rubble.

What was he actually proposing? Well, as you mentioned, there's an terrible war in Gaza, Gaza is mostly almost entirely in ruins. It's a place of two-minute people who are now living in the rubble, they're bathing in the ocean.

It's a horrible, horrible humanitarian catastrophe, which is continuing to this day. And so in January, it Davos, you know, were all the world leaders and big wigs like get together, Jared gave a presentation, and he was just echoing the president here, but he gave a kind of PowerPoint presentation in which he showed these pictures that look like Miami Beach, you know, gleaming hotels and office towers and high rises, and he said, "This

could be Gaza." You know, and we should plan for catastrophic success, but basically we can rebuild Gaza to look like this. And I talked to people who watched the presentation who said, "It was a kind of departure from reality and people were rolling their eyes going on earth and we're watching here."

basically another, another real estate deal, like this is a great economic opportunity for a time-for-a-raided comment and bring your money and get rich.

“And you know, it's so it, I think it's drug people as not serious.”

Our guest today is journalist Dexter Filkins, we'll be right back after a break. I'm Tonya Mosley and this is Fresh Air. We go inside the minds of the people who decide what goes on store shows, listen to planet money on the NPR app, or wherever you get your podcasts. This message comes from Sports in America with David Green.

The world of sports is filled with stories that go beyond the highlights of the game. Join former morning edition host David Green for Sports in America from W.H.Y.Y. and PRX. A weekly show featuring in-depth conversations with star athletes, coaches, parents, and the millions of fans whose lives are touched by the game.

Here about the personal and transformative moments that make fans want to stand up and share each week on Sports in America with David Green. Listen, wherever you get your podcasts. This is Fresh Air. I'm Tonya Mosley and my guest today is Dexter Filkins, a Pulitzer Prize winning staff

writer for the New Yorker who has covered the Middle East for 25 years. His new piece, Jared Kushner's Dollar Diplomacy, looks at Kushner, who is President Trump's son-in-law's growing role in American foreign policy from Iran and Ukraine to Gaza. While his private business is backed by billions of dollars from governments. Filkins examines what happens when diplomacy, personal relationships, and private money become

increasingly hard to separate. Let's talk a little bit about affinity. It is Jared Kushner's private equity firm and six months after leaving the White House, he started affinity partners.

This is after the first time, and he went to Saudi Arabia asking for $2 billion.

He had never run an investment fund before that. Can you tell us just a little bit about that fund and why were the Saudis willing to give him that kind of money? So basically, you have Trump's first term, 2017 to 2021. Jared is the point, man, for the Middle East.

He does the Abraham Accords, it becomes very close to MBS in the other monarchies in the Gulf. January 2021 comes, he leaves office, turns the right back around, and goes to the same leaders and raises several billion dollars. For his new private equity fund, and as you say, didn't have any experience and running a private equity fund.

“So it's called Affinity Partners, and I think at the moment it has several billion more”

than six billion dollars in it.

So what happens, and it's, again, it's fascinating story, Jared goes back out, goes to the same people, goes to MBS, goes to the leaders of Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. All the people he'd been dealing with him, he was in the White House, and basically with this hat out, and saying, like, I'm starting a private equity fund, can I have some money in the case of Saudi billions of dollars?

They may chip in, they say, yeah, sure, and there's a moment when Jared goes to Saudi Arabia, and with the hat out saying, like, I want some money, and the group of advisors that run the public investment fund, as it's called in Saudi Arabia, the PIF, it's enormous, it's just hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars, it's all the oil money. And they basically said, no, like, this is a bad idea, don't do it.

This guy doesn't have any experience, the fees are really high. We're taking on all this risk, and MBS, who at that point had become quite close to Jared,

“and I think, oh, Jared, quite a debt, says, I'm overruling you, I'm the, I'm the crown”

prince. We're going to do this.

And so pledges two billion dollars to infinity partners.

And then Qatar and the United Arab Emirates each pitch in, I think, 200 million dollars. And then on from there, they all kind of pitched in more money as time went on. But it does raise the question, why on earth did they do this?

of Representatives. And that's all he said.

He said, why did Saudi Arabia decide to pitch in two billion dollars to Jared Kushner

“for his private equity fund, even though he had no experience running on it?”

Well, we make a point to say, in your article, there's no direct evidence that the investment was a reward for what Kushner has done in office, but what was Saudi Arabia buying? I mean, what are some theories on, on, on why? Well, I think the best I could come up with, and it makes sense to me is they're making an investment.

It's just an investment of a, of a different sort. So they look at somebody like Jared, he's, he's young, he's going to be around for a long time, he's, he's influential, and he's the son and all the president. And so I think they looked at that, and I thought, well, this is a good place to put our money.

And if we can make him happy, we can make Trump happy, and we're going to bet on this horse for the future. And they didn't know, and it certainly didn't look at the time, until he won, that Trump was going to be president again. But here he is, like, the bad bait off.

“And so I think it raises or it brings us to a crucial moment for Jared, which is, so”

he had four years out of office.

So, you know, they had Trump's first term, then he starts the private equity fund, and

then Trump wins again. And, you know, Jared could have stayed out. I mean, he could have just said, you know, Mr. President, you know, my father-in-law, I helped you the first time around not going to do it this time. He could have done that.

He didn't do it. Or he could have said, I'm going to take all this money, just what people have done in the past. And I'm going to set up a blind trust, and I'm not going to touch it for the next four years.

He didn't do that either. So, he basically decided, I'm going to do both. I'm going to be effectively a secretary of state running around the globe, trying to put out wars. And in the very same countries, I'm going to be like doing financial deals.

So, so he's like flying in and out of Israel, and he's got investments in Israel. Like the private equity fund is, you know, bought big stakes in Israeli companies. And so it's a tangle. It's like, as somebody put it to me, Jared Kushner has a responsibility to advance the interests of his investors.

“What happens when those interests conflict with American foreign policy?”

Yeah. I mean, he manages billions of dollars, and much of it is coming from governments in a region where he is helping make American policy, can those two roles actually be separated? Yeah. Well, that's the question.

I want to go to Geneva this past February, and the last hours before the U.S. actually went into conflict with Iran, put us in that room, who was there, and who wasn't there? Well, if you can cast your minds back to February. So the United States and Iran are not, you know, they're not in a shooting war. They hate each other, but they're not in a shooting war.

And Kushner and Wikov, Steve Wikov, are dispatched to Geneva to talk to the Iranians about what's left of their nuclear program. And Trump was very, very clear about this. Give us what we want, or we're going to attack, and they made that very, very clear. But the negotiation basically falls apart.

And the Iranians kind of hold firm and say, no, we're not going to give you everything. And essentially what happens, as far as I can, it best as I can tell, is the Iranians start putting stuff on the table. They're clearly alarmed, you know, Trump has this giant Armada sailing their way. They start putting stuff down on the table.

So they say, we'll stop enriching, at least for a period of time.

And they've never done that before, like they've never let Obama's agreeing to do that.

They said, like, we'll stop enriching, we'll dilute the store of radioactive material that we have. And what happened, and this is the really remarkable thing to me, was it was made clear to me by people who were in the room, or were breached by people who were in the room, that Kushner Wikov were kind of over their heads, that they basically didn't understand

what was being put down in front of them. And part of the reason for that, I was told this by several people, neither Kushner Wikov brought a tactical advisor into the room. And this stuff is like really complicated, because you're dealing with like centrifuges and radioactivity and enrichment cycles, and essentially, they didn't know what was in front

of them, and they didn't have anyone they could ask. And I say this, I try to say this without naive to say about the Iranians. They've lied, cheated, bamboozled their way to like keeping their holding on to everything they have for, you know, four years, but it's possible that there was a real potential for a deal of some sort that was put down in front of them, and they didn't understand

it. And so the negotiation breaks up, this is basically the end of February.

do it. And the war starts, you know, hours later. And what somebody made clear to me, and this is somebody who worked with Kushner and Wikov knows that knows the nuclear file really, really well, is that when the negotiation was over, Kushner and Wikov gave a kind of press conference, and Wikov said, we had to

bomb them basically, we had no choice, because if we hadn't, the Iranians really days

away from making a nuclear weapon, and everyone that I talked to, including former officials who worked with Kushner and Wikov, said that was not the case, that as it was said to

“me, and this is really important, because this is like why we went to war, is it wasn't”

that urgent that they couldn't make a bomb in a matter of days that that was a kind of, you know, a misconception, it best of what was on the table and kind of what the Iranians have left, and but that that wasn't true, and that because of that, basically we went to war. I mean, it's astounding, it's astounding, and I do want to know, because I know it took

you quite a long time to produce this piece, and what you're reporting uncover that makes

you believe that that offer was real from Iran to suspend uranium enrichment entirely.

Well, if I could set the scene from the negotiations, they're taking place in Geneva inside the residents of the ambassador from Oman, and so there are people coming and going in the room and there are people who are kind of being briefed, you know, practically minute to minute on what's happening inside the room. So once I kind of figured out who these people were, then I kind of, you know, I reached out

to some of them, and some of them were brief, were brief, were brief, forthright about what happened in the room now. At the same time, this is something that you write about as Kushner and Whitkoff were negotiating with Iran.

You report that Kushner was raising $5 billion for his private investment firm affinity in

the Middle East, and one of your sources believed that Jared Kushner saw the diplomacy in the fundraising as connected.

“But evidence did you find that those two tracks actually intersected?”

Well, that's a tricky question, I mean, but it's, it's really important. So as you said, he's in Geneva Kushner, he's trying to make a deal with Iranians. More or less simultaneously, he's going around the Middle East, I think not physically, but he's basically inquiring of leaders in the Middle East, will you put some more money in my private equity fund, and I think as it was put to me, and I think more of a kind

of a thought experiment, because it's a hard question to answer, was Jared basically looking to get rewarded for what he was doing, in other words, okay, look, I've taken out the Iranian threat, now I want to be paid for it, and that's the way it was put to me, and it was put to me by somebody who is very close to works in the region, knows the leaders at the highest level in the Middle East, said that to me, was essentially like, wow, was

this all a little bit more closely connected than it initially appeared? Let's take a short break.

“If you're just joining us, my guest is Dexter Filkins of the New Yorker.”

We'll be right back after a short break, this is fresh air. I haven't seen my son since 2012. The case is Debra Tice, the disappearance of her son, Austin, is one of the biggest missing person cases in the world. What do you want from me?

Why should I have the mystery? I know that my son is somewhere alive. Listen to where is Austin Tice, from MPRs embedded, and BBC Radio 4, on the MPR app, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Emmys were a big night for a lot of shows we really love, the pit, and plurvers

picked up awards, and widows Bay really clean up, we'll tell you why we're quite happy with ears, crop of winners, and a recap on pop culture, happy hour, listen via the NPR app, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is fresh air, and today my guest is Dexter Filkins, a staff writer for the New Yorker, whose new piece, Jared Kushner's Dollar Diplomacy, looks at Kushner's role in

the Trump administration's wars and negotiations in the billions of dollars he's raised from Ford governments along the way. Let's talk a little bit about Steve Whitkoff and Jared Kushner as it relates to the war that Russia started when it invaded Ukraine in 2022. Neither men have any background in Russia or in Ukraine.

What do you know about how they're taking on these talks?

through this? Well, the diplomatic effort, the American diplomatic effort to and the war between Russia

“and Ukraine has been, I think it's fair to say, has been very unbalanced since the Trump”

administration, the second term began, and that is so, it was basically Whitkoff, Steve

Whitkoff, Jared stayed home, but it was Whitkoff making repeated trip one after the other to Russia, to meet Putin, time and time again, and at one point Whitkoff and Kushner came back with this diplomatic proposal that was essentially, it was essentially like Russia's wishlist, and that's actually what Marker Rubio called it, he said, well it was Putin's wishlist and the thing, you know, the thing collapsed, but it's been a very kind of

Russia's centric approach to the war. What do you want? What can we do for you? What can we do to get you to stop fighting? When in fact, it's Russia that started the war, and Russia could stop fighting anytime

it wanted to, and then the war would end. But so it's been a kind of, it's been kind of a strange effort, Jared stayed mostly out of it, at least out of the trips until just recently, just a couple of weeks ago, Jared and Whitkoff went to Kiev and Matt Zelensky and met the Ukrainian leadership. And what I'm told is that people, Americans, American officials are very encouraged by that,

and what I'm also told is that the Ukrainians are very encouraged by that. They're like, wow, we got somebody else in the room here who's like actually listens to what we're saying and like has some understanding of Ukraine. And so that, so that Jared has actually had, like, a positive effect on the American

“diplomatic effort in Ukraine, but I think the problem with the Trump approach to the war in”

Ukraine, and I mean, by problem, I mean, why they haven't been able to solve it, is that, you know, again, the war was started by Putin, he started it, and, you know, he could end it any day, wanted to end it. And there's like a disconnect there with the White House, you know, there's this kind

of incredible, they've made this incredible effort to, I hate these words of peace,

but I don't know what else to say to a peace Putin, like some, you know, one morning, he's going to wake up and say, I really love what the Americans are doing, and I'm going to stop the war. But what it's looked like from a distance is that the United States have been sort of dictating to Zelensky and Ukraine, give Russia what it wants, you know, if you want this war to end

and you want our help, then give them what he wants, and that's some, it hasn't worked. These two, Whitkoff and Kushner, I mean, they are real estate people, do you think they

“see Russia and Ukraine, and the war there as a potential real estate deal?”

Well, maybe, I mean, somebody who knows them and worked with them both said that, they said, like, look, the problem here is that, like, this is a war for God's sex, it's a war,

and people are fighting and dying, and these guys are looking at it, like, it's just basically

real estate deal, you're going to kind of split the differences in everybody else shake hands and be happy and go home, and that's kind of when you listen to Kushner and Whitkoff talk about the Ukraine negotiations, it's kind of the way they sound, you know, they say, well, it'll be win-win for everyone, and, you know, well, we'll kind of join hands and go happily together, and, you know, it's a bloody nasty, awful, hideous war, and so it's not going

to be a win-win, it's going to end inevitably and it's kind of, you know, terrible, ugly compromise, and then hopefully the killing will stop, but it's like, it's not a happy situation, you know, it's not a real estate deal. There was this reporting just this week from Pro-Publica that reported a Russian businessman with close ties to Putin paid for a large part of Donald Trump Jr.'s wedding celebration

in the Bahamas this past spring, it was on a private island, there was the lot going on there by a work show, hundreds of thousands of dollars, Jared Kushner was a guest, Don Jr. and his wife, they say that it was a gift from a friend and nothing more. When you read that story, you hear this, what do you see? Look, the Russian government and, say, the big businessmen, the oligarchs who are around

Putin have been awfully friendly to the Trump administration and to the members of his family and kind of people around him ever since 2016, I mean, we know that, you know, why they've been friendly, we don't know, and we don't know all the details of that, but that this is another example of that, it's like why did a Russian oligarch decide to get close and show me with one of Donald Trump's sons, how come, and it's the perpetual mystery

that has surrounded the Trump administration since 2016, so a decade. Right, I mean, because if Kushner is the one negotiating with Russia over Ukraine, how is

Well, I don't think we know the answer to that, but I think that, you know, you could

“say, well, this is meant to kind of curry favor the Trump administration, so they'll get”

a better deal from the Russians. Maybe, you know, maybe, I mean, it hasn't happened yet, there isn't a deal, it doesn't appear that they're anywhere close to a deal, so again, it's kind of hard, it's hard to kind of square that, it's kind of, it's just hard to close the circle on some of these things, because they're just so strange.

Dexter Filkins, thank you as always.

Thank you. Dexter Filkins is a staff writer for the New Yorker. His new piece is titled, Jared Kushner's Dollar Diplomacy. This is Fresh Air. On the next through line from NPR, let's listen to Josh Reddick's new walk-up song.

Whether you love it or you hate it, walk-up music has become a huge part of Major League Baseball. The need to secure and the attention of the fans is relentless. I've thought of my hearing things, I mean, I realize everybody's singing a lot. Listen to NPR's through line in the NPR app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi there, I'm Brittany Loose, and not to brag, but I host a really fabulous podcast. It's called, "It's been a Minute."

“I love making it, and I think you'll love listening to it.”

Over the last year, hundreds of thousands of listeners have been tuning in, and I gotta say, if you haven't yet, you're missing out. Listen to the "It's been a Minute Podcast" from NPR today.

Big news stories don't always break on your schedule, but with the NPR app, news culture

and podcasts are ready when you want them in your pocket. Download the NPR app today. This is Fresh Air, and novels like Life After Life, and a God in Ruins. Kate Atkinson has made World War II Arab Britain feel vivid and immediate, right down to the smallest details of everyday life.

Her new novel, "Our Noble Sells" turns to a post-war festival that was a major event in Britain, but one many Americans have probably never heard of.

“Our Book Critic Marine Corps again has a review.”

The fall publishing season is as always filled with such heavy weights that it seems like

a back-handed compliment to say that the big takeaway about Kate Atkinson's new novel

are noble selves, is that it's so much fun to read. Atkinson is known for her jittery historical novels that jump around in time, as well as for her Jackson Brody Detective series. Our Noble Sells cleverly melds both forms for a purpose. It's an escapeous novel that chronicles the need for escape in post-World War II Britain.

The centerpiece of our Noble Sells around which all the action and character spin is a real life event, the festival of Britain that took place in 1951. Intended to elevate the British people's spirits after the devastation of World War II, the chief festival site was located on the south bank of the Thames in London. Exhibits highlighted British arts, architecture, industry, history.

It also included as these Boosterish exhibitions tend to do a lot of random stuff, beauty pageants and cookery demonstrations in which exotic foods like spaghetti and hot dogs were introduced to the British public. In an author's note, Atkinson says that she came across so much material that was strange and quirky, that sometimes the things I was making up seemed quite dull in comparison

to. Among the actual oddities displayed at the festival were a collapsible rubber bus and a festival emblem composed of 64 gallstones and all from one patient. Our main character is a former reporter named Harry Flynn, who had the bad luck to be sent to Singapore in 1941 shortly before it fell to the Japanese.

Harry became a POW, working on the so-called Burma Railway of Bridge over the River Kwai fame, over 100,000 Asian civilian workers and Allied POWs would die building this railway before the wars end. Turning in 1945 to London, Harry makes a rash marriage to a zaftig war widow he meets in a pub one night.

It was not just the siren call of sex that drew him to her, Harry recalls she came complete

into that life without too much effort on his part.

“Harry slips just as easily out of that misbegotten marriage and falls into a job assembling”

a poetry anthology for the festival of Britain drawn from dreadful dog roll submitted by the British public, another real life detail that Atkinson has wicked fun describing here. But Harry's life already haunted by what we would call PTSD takes an ominous turn when a female coworker he's had drinks with disappears and he's set up to be the chief suspect. The suspense plot involving MI5 the British security service and a cluster of British

fascists is engrocing enough but the deeper pleasures of our noble selves are located in the workplace, specifically the offices where Harry and his co-workers bring the festival of Britain to fruition.

Here Atkinson's signature gift as a historical writer is on display as she seamlessly shifts

timeframes so that the past surfaces into the present.

“This is a scene where Harry Flynn is viewing the actual lion and unicorn pavilion.”

We're told the pavilion took its name from the creatures who were to be stationed at the entrance. Life-sized sculptures made of straw by a craftsman in Essex. One of Harry's co-workers had been out to Essex to view the sculptures' progress and found that they had already become home to a nest of field mice.

Once during the worst of his war working in the hellfire past Flynn had lucked upon a mouse and had unthinkingly popped it into his mouth and eaten it alive. He had been too hungry to care. He could still recall the sensation as he bit down on wiggling fur and delicate bones. The festival in reality was a popular success intended to turn the war weary British people's

eyes to the future.

“Atkinson's novel is also a success and affectionate testament to the futility of any”

such efforts to leave the past behind. Moring Corrigan is a professor of literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed our noble selves by Kate Atkinson. Tomorrow on fresh air, what Donald Trump learned from his mentor, the infamous lawyer Roy Cone, and how Cone served as legal counsel for Senator Joe McCarthy's subcommittee

that went after alleged communists and gay people, although Cone was a closeted gay man. We talk with Kai Bird, author of American Scoundrel. I hope you can join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at NPR Fresh Air.

You can also watch some of our interviews on our YouTube page at this is Fresh Air. Fresh Air's executive producer is Sam Bricker. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer today is Adam Stanaxeski. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Phyllis Meyers and Marie Boldenado,

Lauren Crenzel, Theresa Madden, Monique Nazareth, Thayachaliner, Susan Yacundee, Annabellman, and Nico Gonzalez-Wisler. Our digital media producer is Molly C.V. Nespar, Roberta Schorop directs the show. With Terry Gross, I'm Tanya Mosley. Hey, what's your problem?

No, seriously, are your grocery bills too high? Are you spending too much time on your phone? Maybe you're searching for a new job or you're trying to figure out how to set boundaries with your family. Whatever's on your mind, life kit has you covered with three episodes every week on

health, money, mental health, and so much more. Listen to the life kit podcast in the NPR app or wherever you get your podcasts. On NPR's wildcard podcast, actress Julian Anderson says she's looking forward to getting old.

There is part of me that has always slightly fantasized about being in a home.

Watch or listen to that wildcard conversation on the NPR app, YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.