Who is Jared Kushner?
Who Is?
iHeartRadio + NowThis
4.1 • 803 Ratings
🗓️ 28 January 2020
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Jared Kushner, husband of Ivanka Trump, is probably the most powerful person in the United States who we know the least about. The grandchild of immigrants who escaped the Holocaust, Kushner is the beneficiary of his family’s meteoric rise, and the quintessential rich kid: before his donation-based admission to Harvard, Kushner hobnobbed with politicians and managed segments of his family’s vast real estate holdings. In graduate school, he bought a newspaper--and ran it into the ground--and a billion-dollar Manhattan office tower--which, until the election of President Donald Trump, nearly bankrupted the family business. But once his father-in-law is elected president, Kushner finds himself--or maneuvers his way into--the middle of everything, whether it’s building the wall, devising a solution to the Israel-Palestine imbroglio, or negotiating a trade deal with China. Featuring Andrea Bernstein, author of the newly released book American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power.
- Andrea Bernstein, co-host of the Trump Inc. podcast from WNYC and ProPublica, and author of American Oligarchs: The Kushners, the Trumps, and the Marriage of Money and Power
- Daniel Golden, Senior Editor at ProPublica and author of The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges—and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates
- Vanessa Grigoriadis, host of Tabloid: The Making of Ivanka Trump and author of Blurred Lines: Rethinking Sex, Power and Consent on Campus
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I don't think they're that into money, which is so weird about the two of them. |
| 0:04.2 | They're after power. |
| 0:05.5 | Hold on a minute. |
| 0:07.0 | I talk about power a lot on this show. |
| 0:10.4 | But this is a love story. |
| 0:13.4 | A story of boy meets girl. |
| 0:15.8 | Girl converts to boy's religion. |
| 0:18.4 | Boy's dad is released from federal prison. Girl's dad uses their wedding to advertise' religion. Boy's dad is released from federal prison. |
| 0:21.6 | Girl's dad uses their wedding to advertise his properties. |
| 0:25.6 | Boy takes control of a newspaper. |
| 0:27.6 | Girl's dad takes control of the United States. |
| 0:31.6 | Boy texts with the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. |
| 0:34.6 | Girl violates the Hatch Act. |
| 0:41.1 | Boy gets put in charge of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. |
| 0:47.0 | I'm Sean Morrow, and this is Who Is, a podcast from Now This. |
| 0:49.7 | Let's dig a bit more into that boy. |
| 0:53.8 | He's been called the Shadow Chief of staff at the White House. |
| 0:59.6 | And really, his only qualification is being the president's son-in-law. |
| 1:03.3 | So, who is Jared Kushner? |
| 1:15.6 | Let's begin in the Soviet Union, immediately after World War II, with the story of a young Jew, Joseph Berkowitz. |
| 1:22.3 | Joseph and his wife Ray are refugees, much of their family killed by the Nazis. |
| 1:27.4 | And the post-war USSR isn't a great place to be Jewish. |
... |
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