Jared Kushner Addressed Interns Who Were Warned Not to Leak His Speech. A Recording Was Immediately Leaked.

Respect Is Earned

White House Senior Advisor Jared Kushner on Monday gave a speech on his efforts to achieve peace in the Middle East. Before he began his remarks to a group of congressional interns, they were specifically warned to not leak any details of his speech.

“To record today’s session would be such a breach of trust, from my opinion,” Katie Patru, the deputy staff director for Member Services, Outreach & Communications, told the group, as WIRED reports. 

“This town is full of leakers and everyone knows who they are, and no one trusts them,” Patru continued. “In this business your reputation is everything, I’ve been on the hill for 15 years,” she said, referring to Capitol Hill. “I’ve sat in countless meetings with members of congress where important decisions were being made. During all those years in all those meetings, I never once leaked to a reporter. …. If someone in your office has asked you to break our protocol and give you a recording so they can leak it, as a manager, that bothers me at my core.”

A recording of Kushner’s speech was immediately leaked.

“WIRED has obtained a recording of Kushner’s talk, which lasted for just under an hour in total.”

Kushner’s speech to the interns, WIRED adds, “appears to center on how Kushner plans to negotiate peace between Israelis and Palestinians, as well as why he believes he’ll be successful where every other administration has failed.”

He doesn’t directly answer either question, but he does reveal that, from his extensive research, he’s learned that “not a whole lot has been accomplished over the last 40 or 50 years.” He also notes that he’s spoken to “a lot of people,” which has taught him that “this is a very emotionally charged situation.”

This is the essence of the Trump administration: Experts, people with actual knowledge, are unimportant. In a nutshell, the Trump administration mantra apparently is: “Why waste time letting a heart surgeon operate when your kid brother thinks he can do it?” or, something.

WIRED goes on to report:

Kushner expresses frustration at others’ attempts to teach him about the delicate situation he’s been inserted into, saying, “Everyone finds an issue, that, ‘You have to understand what they did then’ and ‘You have to understand that they did this.’ But how does that help us get peace? Let’s not focus on that. We don’t want a history lesson. We’ve read enough books. Let’s focus on how do you come up with a conclusion to the situation.”

Foreign Policy has more on Kushner’s speech. 

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DoD Photo by Navy Petty Officer 2nd Class Dominique A. Pineiro