Breaking History: A White House Memoir

By Jared Kushner

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Jared Kushner was one of the most consequential presidential advisers in modern history. For the first time, he recounts what happened behind closed doors during the Trump presidency.

Few White House advisors have had such an expansive portfolio or constant access to the president. From his office next to Trump, senior adviser Jared Kushner operated quietly behind the scenes, preferring to leave the turf wars and television sparring to others. 

Now, Kushner finally tells his story—a fast-paced and surprisingly candid account of how an earnest businessman with no political ambitions found himself pulled into a presidency that no one saw coming. 

Breaking History takes readers inside debates in the Oval Office, double-crosses at the United Nations, tense meetings in Arab palaces, high-stakes negotiations, and the daily barrage of leaks, false allegations, investigations, and West Wing infighting.

A true historical thriller, this book is not your typical political memoir. Kushner details Washington’s intense resistance to change and reveals how he broke through the stalemates of the past. An outsider among outsiders, Kushner was a results-driven executive among beltway power brokers. He questioned old assumptions and delivered unprecedented results on trade, criminal justice reform, production of COVID-19 vaccines, and Middle East peace. His successful negotiation of the Abraham Accords, the most significant diplomatic breakthrough in 50 years, earned him a nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Written by one of the few people by Trump’s side from his trip down the golden escalator to his final departure from Andrews Air Force Base, Breaking History provides the most honest, nuanced, and definitive understanding of a presidency that will be studied for generations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Aug 23, 2022
• ISBN: 9780063221505

Jared Kushner

Jared Kushner is the founder of Affinity Partners, a global investment firm. Previously, he served as Senior Advisor to President Donald J. Trump, and before that, as CEO of Kushner Companies. He also co-founded two technology companies, Cadre and WiredScore. In 2015, he was named to Fortune's 40 under 40, and in 2017 was named one of Time’s 100 Most Influential People. In 2018, Jared received the Aztec Eagle Award, Mexico’s highest honor, for his work on the USMCA trade agreement. He was given a presidential citation for helping to architect Operation Warp Speed, which produced COVID vaccines in record time. In recognition of his success negotiating the Abraham Accords, Jared received the National Security Medal, the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, the Grand Cordon of the Order of Ouissam Alaouite from King Mohammed VI of Morocco, and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He lives in Florida with his wife Ivanka and three children.

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Preface

I never planned to write a book, but then again I never planned to work in the White House.

As my time in government was coming to an end, several friends encouraged me to record my memories while they were still fresh. After years of nonstop action, I paused long enough to see the panorama of all I had experienced inside one of the most consequential presidencies. While I thought this chapter of my life was closing, I realized that my service would not be complete until I captured this history.

The story that follows is not your typical White House memoir, because mine was not a typical Washington experience. My untraditional role as senior adviser to a unique president made for a journey that would be hard for a writer to script if it wasn’t true.

When Donald J. Trump announced his candidacy, I had no intention of getting involved in his campaign. Before long, however, I met men and women across the country who felt like Trump was finally giving them a voice, and they inspired me to play a bigger role than I had ever expected. After the 2016 election, Ivanka and I left behind our lives in New York and moved to Washington with our three young children. We knew we would face challenges, but we had no idea of the intensity of the storm that awaited us. It was probably better that we didn’t.

Nothing could have prepared us for the ferociousness of Washington—the attacks, the investigations, the false and salacious media reports, and perhaps worst of all, the backstabbing within the West Wing itself. On several occasions I wondered if Ivanka and I had made the wrong decision about working in government. Yet we had been given this unexpected chance to serve, and it was up to us to make it count.

Each day was a race against our limited time in office. In an environment of maximum pressure, I learned to ignore the noise and distractions and instead to push for results that would improve lives. Across four years, I helped renegotiate the largest trade deal in history, pass bipartisan criminal justice reform, and launch Operation Warp Speed to deliver a safe and effective COVID-19 vaccine in record time. Humbled by the complexity of the task, I orchestrated some of the most significant breakthroughs in diplomacy in the last fifty years. In what has become known as the Abraham Accords, five Muslim-majority countries—the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kosovo, Morocco, and Sudan—signed peace agreements with Israel. And Saudi Arabia and other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council resolved a bitter diplomatic and economic rift with Qatar, paving the way for additional peace deals in the future.

The Abraham Accords were a true turning point in history. If nurtured, they have the potential to bring about the complete end of the Arab-Israeli conflict that has existed ever since the founding of the State of Israel, seventy-five years ago. Already, hundreds of thousands of Arabs can make pilgrimages to the holy sites in Jerusalem. Israeli and Arab innovators, scientists, and business leaders are forging partnerships to create jobs, build infrastructure, and improve the lives of people throughout the Middle East and around the world.

As we advanced our strategy in the Middle East, we couldn’t publicly discuss our approach or the positive signs we were seeing from Arab leaders. Our negotiations progressed on a knife’s edge. A single untimely leak could have prompted traditionalists in the region to oppose Arab leaders who were bravely breaking with the past to make peace with Israel. Experts initially dismissed our goals as impossible, and critics delighted in my every stumble. Yet I pursued what I believed was the most logical pathway forward. Since I left government, people have often asked me how we reached these breakthroughs. I have done my best in this book to chronicle the surprising events that made them possible.

Throughout the Trump presidency, the media relied on leaks by officials who often had personal agendas. Until I saw high-stakes politics from the inside, I didn’t realize how much goes on that the press fails to capture. The gap between the media’s portrayal of events and the reality is far wider than I ever imagined. I eventually came to see that staff in the White House can spend their time trying to shape public perception, or they can spend it getting things done. Every administration wrestles with this challenge. It is the ticking clock in the background of every story in this book.

Many authors—including former senior administration officials—have tried to explain Trump through a conventional lens. Most of these accounts fail to convey how Trump thinks, why he acts the way he does, and what really happened in the Oval Office. The truth was often hiding in plain sight. Through his untraditional style, Trump delivered results that were previously unimaginable: five major trade deals, tax cuts for working families, massive deregulation, the lowest unemployment in fifty years, criminal justice reform, a COVID-19 vaccine in less than a year, confronting China, defeating ISIS, no new wars, and peace deals in the Middle East. In this book, I don’t try to speak for Trump, but I do share a lot of previously undisclosed personal interactions that will hopefully give readers a deeper understanding of Trump’s personality and management style.

During my four years in the White House, I learned countless lessons that changed my perspective about how the government—and the world—really works. Three stand out.

The first is that it’s easy to make promises, but it’s hard to achieve results. Trump came into office without an army of experienced bureaucrats and Washington insiders. Finding people who both believed in his agenda and knew how to operate the levers of power proved to be an ongoing challenge. At every turn, people within the government tried to prevent the president from keeping his promises to move the American embassy to Jerusalem, withdraw from the Iran deal, build the wall on the nation’s southern border, and renegotiate NAFTA, among many bold actions. I met hundreds of smart, competent, and patriotic people who worked tirelessly behind the scenes to get things done. Yet it takes only one bureaucratic barrier, congressional complication, or powerful individual to stop progress. Washington is programmed to resist change, even though change is what voters say they want most.

I remember one meeting that typified the resistance Trump faced in Washington from both Republicans and Democrats. A veteran of the George W. Bush administration came to see me to discuss US-China trade policy. While he fully agreed with our aims on China, he thought that using tariffs was a grave mistake. When I asked him what he would recommend instead, he suggested more rounds of talks. I said the first thing that came to mind: So you want us to accomplish something you couldn’t by doing it the same way you did it? For the Washington establishment, the answer to that question was a resounding yes. Many Beltway insiders are experts at pointing out problems, but they’re even better at shutting down solutions. When confronted with the potential risks of change, they play it safe for fear that any disruption to the current system will jeopardize their political careers. This explains why even some of Trump’s own cabinet members clashed with him and those of us who believed that it was time to take calibrated risks and deliver more opportunities for the American people. Instead of spending endless energy diagnosing the problem, I focused on clearly defining the optimal solution and then worked backwards to reach the best possible outcome.

Second, I learned that our political differences are not always as insurmountable as we think. Ordinarily, the Washington game revolves around the party out of power trying to stop the party in power from accomplishing its priorities. While initially I found this frustrating, I learned to keep moving ahead and to focus on the long game. Almost all of the greatest accomplishments of the administration involved former adversaries coming together to make the lives of normal people better. Rather than starting from two different sides of the table on any given issue—from criminal justice reform to peace deals in the Middle East—I tried to bring everyone to the same side of the table to agree on shared goals and search for win-win solutions. I wasn’t always successful, but it is the responsibility of those in power to try. We can’t solve problems by talking only to those who agree with us. For anyone who’s looking to advance bipartisanship, I hope this book provides insight into how it’s possible—and why it often fails.

Finally, we all have the ability to make a difference in the lives of others, whether it’s in our own families, communities, states, or on a national scale. In each case, the way to find solutions is by engaging with one another—not by criticizing each other or virtue signaling. If we try to understand the perspectives of others, and work to find common ground, we can move beyond the stalemates of the past and forge a new path forward. No problem is too big to solve.

As George Orwell once wrote, It is difficult to be certain about anything except what you have seen with your own eyes. On these pages, I recount my personal story. I do not detail every action of the president or the administration, of which there are enough to fill volumes. While this book is primarily about my time as senior adviser, I open with a few defining moments from my life that shaped and prepared me for this unexpected opportunity to serve my country. Many of the quotes in the book are drawn from published records, such as transcripts, but others come from private conversations. In these cases, I’ve relied on my memory and extensive interviews with colleagues and counterparts. In some instances, I recreated dialogue to help readers experience what it was like to be in the room.

In Washington, history books were often my best survival manuals. They helped me realize that my predecessors had confronted similar problems. I learned to contextualize my situation, shift my approach, and navigate complex challenges. I hope that through this story, other leaders, dreamers, and risk takers—from all backgrounds, political persuasions, and industries—will be inspired to go beyond what’s comfortable and chase the impossible.

My journey is a mostly unknown part of history. Now I am ready to share it in hopes that it enhances our shared journey.

1

Sentenced

I’m going to be arrested."

As my father told me the startling news over the phone, I was walking the block from my apartment in Lower Manhattan to the subway station on Astor Place. It was a muggy July morning in 2004. I had just completed my first year of law school at New York University, and I was on my way to my internship at the office of Robert Morgenthau, the legendary New York district attorney. I’d been working long days, carefully reviewing wiretap transcripts and helping to secure warrants for brave cops who had gone undercover to infiltrate a drug ring.

Across the Hudson River in New Jersey, my father was having a very different experience with a US attorney. He was ensnared in an investigation led by a brash, ambitious, and hard-charging federal prosecutor named Chris Christie.

The focus of Christie’s investigation was a private family feud that had boiled over into public view as my father battled with his brother Murray and brother-in-law Billy, who were attempting to dismantle his control of the company he had spent his life building. They coordinated with an accountant in my father’s company to surreptitiously access documents. Then they turned them over to the government and the media, alleging mismanagement and illegal avoidance of taxes.

It was an astonishing betrayal. In building his business into a billion-dollar enterprise, my father had made his siblings fabulously wealthy. The lawsuit and investigation had placed a heavy burden on him, and he reacted in anger. Billy’s infidelity was an open secret around the office, and to show his sister Esther what kind of man she had married, my father hired a prostitute who seduced Billy. He had their resulting tryst recorded and sent the tape to Esther, who turned it over to the Feds. Unbeknownst to my father, Esther was cooperating as a witness in their investigation. My father was arrested and charged with witness tampering and violating the Mann Act, a century-old statute against transporting a prostitute across state lines. He had gone too far in seeking revenge, and now he was paying dearly.

After hanging up with my father, I rushed down the stairs into the subway station and waited for a few minutes on the platform before entering the 6 train and riding to my stop on Canal Street. When I emerged from the subway, I walked my normal path to the DA’s office building and tried to turn my attention to the files on my desk. But my mind was racing. How could this really be happening to my dad? He had worked his whole life to build a great company and provide good-paying jobs to his employees. He had given generously of his time and money to serve the community. I also worried about my mother and what it would mean for her.

I stared at my computer screen for twenty minutes, but for the first time in my life, I couldn’t push myself to keep working. I wanted to be there for my dad, just as he had always been there for me. I left the office, drove to New Jersey, and picked him up after his arraignment. During the ninety-minute trip home, he looked out the window and didn’t utter a single word. It was the longest drive of my life. That afternoon he paced on the patio, adjusting his stride to account for his ankle tracker. I didn’t know what to say or do, so I walked with him in silence, trying to support him simply by being at his side. After what seemed like an eternity, my father paused, turned to me, and said, In life, sometimes we get so powerful that we start to think we’re the dealers of our own fate. We are not the dealers. God is the dealer. Sometimes we have to be brought back down to earth to get perspective on what is really important.

Two days later, I arrived back at my apartment on Mercer Street in the NoHo neighborhood of Manhattan. The moment I opened the door, the weight of reality hit me. I’d been strong for my father and my family, but now I sat alone on the floor, with my back against the wall. For the first time since I was a kid, I put my face in my hands and cried.

I tried to make sense of my emotions. I was angry at my uncles and aunt. I was angry at my father. I was angry at my father’s lawyers, who had known about his revenge plot and assured him that there was nothing illegal about it. I was angry at Chris Christie, who knew my father had been a major backer of his Democratic rivals in New Jersey.

When I woke up the next morning, I felt like I had a concrete block in my stomach. As I laid in bed staring at the popcorn ceiling of my apartment, I realized that my anger wasn’t going to lead to anything productive. I was at a critical crossroads and had to make a choice. I could choose to be angry about things I could not control, or I could choose to help. I knew the answer immediately. I had to help my father, who had been through a lot and who was about to suffer more. I had to help my mother, who was the kindest person I knew and didn’t deserve to have her husband of thirty years taken from her. I had to help my two sisters, Dara and Nikki, and my brother, Josh, who was about to begin his freshman year of college.

Despite my resolve, that first day back in the DA’s office was agonizing. That night, I boarded the subway to go home, but when I got to my stop, my legs froze. I couldn’t muster the strength to get up. I skipped my stop and rode the 6 train all the way to the end of the line in the Bronx and back downtown. For the next few hours, I watched New Yorkers get on and off the train—workers heading to the night shift, homeless people looking for their next meal, teenagers causing mischief, senior citizens trying to shuffle out of the train car before the doors shut on them. I studied their faces and saw, maybe for the first time, how much was weighing on everyone around me. Perhaps this woman had just lost her job, or that man couldn’t feed his family. Maybe the person sitting across from me had just received a diagnosis of cancer.

It made me realize a simple truth: everyone has difficulties, but it’s up to each of us to choose whether we are going to focus on ourselves or on helping those we love. I decided not to look back, but to look forward.

2

Improbable Existence

My family’s mere existence is improbable. I’m here today only because my grandparents survived the Holocaust and later came to America. They taught me one of the most important things that I’ve ever learned: life is a gift that can be taken from us in an instant.

My grandmother, Rae Kushner, was sixteen when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939. Her family of six lived in Novogrudok, a quiet town located in eastern Poland, now part of Belarus. In 1941 the Germans seized control of the area and relocated about thirty thousand Jewish people to a ghetto. Over the next two years, the Nazis systematically exterminated the occupants of the ghetto, including Rae’s mother and sister. In one round of killings, the Germans brought the remaining educated Jews—about 150 doctors, lawyers, professors, and teachers—down to the town square. While an orchestra played and my grandmother and the other occupants of the ghetto looked on, the Germans shot them in the head, one by one. The Nazis then forced fifty young Jewish girls, including my grandmother, to clean up the blood and stack the bodies on wagons to be hauled off to a mass grave. All the while, the Germans were dancing in the square. The music continued to play as the young women washed the blood off the stones.

By 1943, only a few hundred of the original thirty thousand Jews were left. Risking death, my grandmother and the remnant secretly dug a six-hundred-foot-long tunnel and waited patiently for a nighttime thunderstorm to cover their escape. About 250 people crawled through the narrow tunnel. The younger people went first, because they could move more quickly through the tunnel and had the best chance of escaping, but Rae chose to wait toward the back with her father. In a twist of fate, this decision likely saved her life. Her brother emerged from the tunnel with the rest of the young people only to be shot and killed by the Nazis. Of the 250 people who entered the tunnel, only 170 escaped into the nearby forest. Rae, her father, and her younger sister were among the survivors. They fled deep into the woods and found refuge with the partisans—a group of freedom fighters who created hidden camps deep in the forest and carried out daring acts of resistance against the Nazis. Among the partisans, Rae reconnected with a young man from a neighboring town, Joseph Berkowitz, the youngest of eight children born into an impoverished tailor’s family.

When the war came to an end, Rae and Joseph fled to Hungary, where they quickly married. The day after their wedding, they trekked through the Austrian Alps and snuck across the border into an Italian displaced persons camp. They applied to come to America, using my grandmother’s last name, Kushner, since my grandfather had accrued a rap sheet from smuggling cigarettes into the camp to provide for his family. As my grandmother recalled years later, We would go anywhere where we could live in freedom, but nobody wanted us.

They waited three and a half years in that refugee camp to come to America. Like so many others during that time, they knew they had finally made it when they spotted the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. Two days after arriving, my grandfather showed up early at a construction site in Brooklyn, willing to work hard, with one limitation: he was afraid of heights. The foreman told him that he should consider going to New Jersey, where the buildings were not as tall, so he began commuting two hours from their tiny Brooklyn apartment to jobsites in New Jersey. He worked seven days a week, sleeping at jobsites to maximize work and spare the daily bus fare. Only on major Jewish holidays would he go home. He earned the nickname Hatchet Joe by using the dull end of a hatchet—which required fewer, though much heavier blows—to hammer nails.

My grandfather was a simple, quiet man who had no formal schooling. But he spoke six languages, and he lived the American dream, starting a successful construction company that built thousands of homes. A lifelong smoker of Camel cigarettes, he died in 1985 from a stroke at the age of sixty-three. I was just four years old, so much of what I know about him is through my father and grandmother’s recollections. She was proud of their survival story.

In many ways Bubby Rae, as we called her, was a typical European immigrant, full of life, sharp in wit, and overflowing with love. When I was a young kid, I’d go over to her house on Saturday evenings and sit in her lap as she played gin rummy with her friends, placing five-cent bets. She promised us she had given up smoking, but the bathroom always smelled like smoke after she used it. When we confronted her about the smell, she retorted: Your dog really needs to stop smoking. She doted on her grandchildren, slipping us quarters to play games at the arcade or a piece of candy while my parents were looking in the other direction.

My dad met my mother, Seryl, when they were both eighteen. On their first Shabbat together, my mom still wasn’t old enough to buy wine. They were married by the time they were twenty. My parents raised us in Livingston, New Jersey, a middle-class suburb forty-five minutes west of Manhattan. My mom is an incredibly selfless and caring person, who taught us to treat others with respect and take responsibility for our actions. She never made excuses for me. When I got in trouble, she always sided with my teachers and told me that it was my responsibility to figure out how to get along and make things work.

Like my grandfather before him, my father worked all the time. After he briefly practiced law, he started a company with my grandfather. My dad purchased, financed, and managed the properties, and my grandfather ran construction of the new buildings. My dad had no experience in construction, and when my grandfather died unexpectedly, he had to find a way to finish a project that was in process. My grandfather’s close friend Eddie Mossberg, also a Holocaust survivor, sent workers from his own jobs to help my father complete the project. To this day, my father still recounts this act of kindness, and it has inspired him to help many others who face hardship. My father’s company grew quickly, and he began outcompeting the same companies that had employed my grandfather a decade earlier when he was Hatchet Joe.

On Sundays, my dad would take me to the office so we could spend time together. On the days we toured properties, we’d stop for a treat at a local farm stand and buy fresh bread, butter, and famous Jersey corn. Right on the side of the highway, we’d tear off the husks and eat the corn raw off the cob. My dad always treated me like an adult, asking what I thought about a potential deal or what I noticed about jobsites—which one was nicer, what the manager could be doing better, or why one commanded higher rent than another. I worked every summer once I turned thirteen. My first job was on a construction site, beginning at six o’clock in the morning. I worked under the scorching sun alongside carpenters, plumbers, and electricians, who taught me how to hammer, saw, wire, and clean. When I got home each night, I was so filthy my mom would hose me off before letting me into the house. Each summer I gained more knowledge and responsibility, eventually helping my father manage rental properties and creating financial models for projects.

During my senior year of high school, I woke up at 4:30 each morning to train with my dad for the New York City Marathon. I will never forget what he told me as we ran up the big hill at the north end of Central Park: Running is like life. When there’s a big hill at the end, don’t look up, keep your head down and watch your feet. Don’t think about the top of the hill, just think about your next step. Before you know it, you will achieve your goal and be at the top of the hill.

In 1999 I was thrilled to learn that I had been accepted into Harvard. Like most students on campus, I was initially nervous about how I would perform against the world’s top students, but I quickly learned that while many kids had high IQs, some didn’t work hard or have common sense.

I met my best friend while I was in the laundry room, switching loads. Nitin Saigal was from India and quipped that because I wasn’t taking economics professor Marty Feldstein’s legendary Economics 10 class my freshman year, one day I’d be working for him. We hit it off immediately and roomed together for nearly a decade, until I married Ivanka. Today, Nitin remains one of my closest friends. He manages a successful hedge fund and is one of the hardest workers I know.

My sophomore year, an acquaintance tried to sell me an apartment in Cambridge. I told her that I liked living on campus, but I asked a few questions and learned that apartments in Cambridge cost 30 percent more than apartments just across the street in Somerville. I saw an opportunity. The Somerville apartments were just as close to campus and, once retrofitted, could be listed very near to Cambridge prices. I called my dad and pitched him on purchasing a number of older apartments in Somerville. He agreed to put up half the capital if I could raise the rest. I began slipping off campus after class to show bankers potential investment sites. A few months later, I had posted my share of the financing. At the age of nineteen, I bought my first building. From that point on, I would go to class, then to the jobsites, where I would check on the progress, issue work orders to the contractors, and make deals with tenants.

I made plenty of mistakes. On one purchase—an historic apartment building at 82 Monroe Street—I took the seller at face value when he quoted the number of units in the building. But after I purchased it, I discovered that many of the apartment units were illegally constructed. The lower number of rentable units dramatically reduced the projected revenue and eliminated much of the return that I had told investors we would make. After looking at several scenarios, I concluded that to salvage the project, I had to convert the building into condominium units, a far more involved and extensive construction project than I was anticipating. It took us longer, but we ultimately made a nice profit. The experience taught me the importance of conducting due diligence on every detail of a business deal, even those typically taken for granted. Growing up so close to my dad’s business, I had been immersed in real estate, but I learned that nothing could replace the experience of being responsible for an entire project, where I had to answer to investors, manage contractors, and keep tenants happy. I graduated from Harvard with honors, while making millions of dollars from my real estate investments.

During my college years, I interned in New York each summer. The night before one interview, my dad asked me what time I planned to leave our house in the morning for an appointment at nine o’clock. I planned to leave at eight. What if there is traffic? he asked. I had accounted for that. But what if there is an accident in the tunnel? That seemed unlikely, but I would leave earlier just in case. The only excuse for being late is that you didn’t leave early enough, my father said. I left at six o’clock, breezed into the city, and waited in a Starbucks for two hours. I got the internship.

My most valuable experience was working at SL Green Realty Corporation, where I met Marc Holliday, who ran the company and was widely viewed as an up-and-coming star in the real estate business. One evening, he asked me to run a complex analysis for his negotiation the next day. I stayed up all night to get it done. When he reviewed it the next morning, he thought I had done a good job, but added that if I wanted to be great, I needed to internalize concepts around eight principles of real estate. He offered to extend my internship by several weeks and spend an hour on Fridays walking me through each principle. This education was better than any I received in school.

After interning at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, I realized that I did not want to go into investment banking. So I applied and was accepted to New York University’s dual JD/MBA program. During my first year, I was inspired by the public policy focus of the law program and wanted to start my career in public service as a prosecutor. After my father’s arrest, however, as I watched a prosecutor inflict havoc and hardship on our family, I began to have second thoughts. I didn’t think I could do that to others.

My father ultimately decided not to fight his case in court. He recognized that he had let his emotions get the better of him and felt that he had sinned before God and was ready to take responsibility for his actions. He knew that fighting the charges would be a painful five-year ordeal for our family and diminish morale at his company. He pleaded guilty and was willing to accept the consequences, which the judge decided would be two years in federal prison.

* * *

In April 2005, during my second year of graduate school, I traveled with my parents to the federal prison in Montgomery, Alabama. My mom and I gave my father one last hug before he walked inside. I later learned that as he entered, a prison guard smirked and whispered in his ear, Welcome. They love to fuck billionaires in here.

The prison tightly controlled his calls, and we had to split the time between my mom and the four kids. I got about three minutes a week, ninety seconds at a time. The timing was unpredictable, and if I missed the call, that was it. I kept my phone with me all the time, even when I showered.

I offered to drop out of grad school to help manage the company full-time, but my dad pleaded with me not to make that sacrifice. We compromised that I would stay enrolled, but spend the bulk of my time helping with the business. We were fortunate that my dad’s close friend and mentor Alan Hammer, a lawyer and experienced real estate executive, generously offered to run the company in his absence.

Every weekend I flew with my mom to Alabama for a six-hour visitation with my dad. The first time I saw him lined up with all of the other inmates in his green prison uniform, it was hard not to cry. We were always the first to arrive and the last to leave, and we spent countless hours sitting in the waiting room with the other families, eating popcorn and Pop- Tarts from the vending machine. For years after, I couldn’t stand the smell of either. We often became so engrossed in our conversations that we would forget we were inside a prison—until a siren rang, calling for my father to line up against a wall for the regular count of all the prisoners.

Prison is a great equalizer, and my dad’s fellow inmates grew to love him because he is down-to-earth. He spent time reading, exercising, and working in the cafeteria. At night, he sat in the library and doled out advice. One visitation day, we were surprised to see two mothers smother him with hugs. He explained that he was teaching their sons how to interview for a job.

On another trip, we were sitting on benches outside, soaking in the heat from the sun, when an inmate yelled across the yard, Hey, it’s Charles the Great! My dad turned to me and quipped, Maybe I don’t want to leave here—no one in my company ever called me that.

During this difficult period, Chris Christie sought to punish my father in a way that would hurt the most: by putting other Kushner Companies executives in jail, bankrupting the family business, and shutting it down for good. I often played the office psychologist to employees at every level of the company, who came to me worried that the company would collapse, and that they would lose their jobs. Every day felt like a kick in the gut. At the lowest points, I would tell myself that at least my dad wasn’t gone forever. I had to learn how to absorb bad news, put on a strong face, and keep moving forward. I couldn’t have known this at the time, but being thrust unexpectedly into a role leading our company prepared me for an equally unexpected, but much more consequential, role in the federal government.

Eleven and a half months after entering prison, my father was released to house arrest. It was the happiest day for our entire family. But it almost didn’t happen. Christie tried to invalidate my father’s earned time credits and block his release. Thanks to the brilliance of Washington lawyer Miguel Estrada, Christie’s cruel and punitive effort failed.

My father’s time in prison was the most humbling, difficult, and formative experience of my life. It had a way of uncluttering my thinking. I learned to separate the fleeting—money, power, and prestige—from the enduring: the way we react to difficult situations, the faith we hold on to, and the people we love. I had now seen for myself the truth of my grandparents’ maxim: life really can change in an instant.

3

Making It in Manhattan

Shortly after my father’s release from prison, we finished the biggest real estate deal in our company’s history, with what at the time was the highest price ever paid for a single real estate asset in the United States. For $1.8 billion, we bought a midcentury skyscraper located at 666 Fifth Avenue. Maybe the bad-luck street number should have given us pause: the purchase closed in early 2007, right before the market collapsed at the onset of the Great Recession. Twenty months later the major investment firm Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, and office vacancy rates in midtown Manhattan tripled overnight.

We thought 666 Fifth Avenue could be worth $2.5 billion, a valuation driven in large part by the building’s pristine commercial space and prime storefronts on New York’s iconic Fifth Avenue. In the lead-up to the crisis, the building was collecting rents of about $120 per square foot—a rate that soon dropped precipitously. I remember Steve Roth, founder of Vornado Realty Trust and one of the smartest real estate moguls in New York, remarking as the crisis hit, I’m getting sixty-dollar rents now in my best buildings. Do you know why I’m not getting fifty? Because the tenants aren’t asking for it. We had counted on the revenue from renters to service our debt payments, and we found that we were falling short of the amount we needed. Titans of finance and real estate began circling our investment like vultures. Plenty of people told me that there was no way to recover. I saw it differently. There was no way I was going to let the investment fail.

I had very little leverage, so I was willing to talk to anybody. To salvage the purchase, I restructured the debt to prevent foreclosure and raised more than $500 million by selling a 49 percent interest in the retail space to the Chera family and the Carlyle Group. I brought in a real estate investment firm to co-own the building, and modernized the retail and commercial space to attract more lucrative tenants. I gradually convinced Brooks Brothers to sell their lease, which we rented to Uniqlo for a record $300 million. For several years, I tried unsuccessfully to convince National Basketball Association commissioner David Stern to give up his prized lease for the NBA store, which was located in the ground-floor retail space. Then I met rising NBA executive Adam Silver, and enlisted his help to negotiate a deal. Stern used to call and rib me: Leave Adam alone! We are never leaving the store! Silver explained to me that Stern’s money-losing push for the NBA to open a retail store had initially been used by his antagonists at the owners meetings to embarrass him. After Stern dug into the operations and had the store turning a profit, he proudly opened every owners meeting, where the league announced billion-dollar deals, with an update about the couple hundred thousand dollars of profit generated by his beloved Fifth Avenue store. Silver and I ended up becoming close friends. I tried for three years to get them to sell the lease—Silver drove a hard bargain. Eventually, Stern made a good deal to give it up. We later sold the space to Inditex, the parent company of Zara, for $324 million—a record price per square foot.

Navigating the fallout of 666 was the biggest challenge and learning experience of my business career. Being thrust into complex, high-stakes negotiations at a young age gave me unique training. I forged relationships with many of the titans in the industry, which proved invaluable moving forward. I did not win every negotiation, but I gained credibility by being honest about our difficult situation, offering constructive solutions, and seeking successful outcomes for all parties. My goal was to increase the size of the pie rather than eliminate slices from it. Two of my creditors, with whom I developed close personal relationships, told me flat out over lunch meetings that friendship was separate from business and that they were going to do everything in their power to make sure I lost the building. Fortunately, others were more magnanimous and went out of their way to help find a win-win outcome. At one point I flew to California to meet with Tom Barrack, a real estate giant whose firm was one of our creditors. I expected him to be hostile and jockeying for the kill, but after our meeting, he became an ally. Most people in your position are looking to take advantage of their lenders, he said. I appreciate your pragmatism and I’ll work with you to figure this out.

After salvaging our investment in 666, I didn’t fear failure in business. I learned how to focus on important decisions and ignore petty distractions. I got better at mitigating potential downsides, taking calculated risks, identifying market trends, and developing in up-and-coming neighborhoods.

My first successful deal in New York City was the purchase of a building on 200 Lafayette Street from John Zaccaro. No one thought he would ever sell. I met with him and offered to put down money immediately and sign whatever contract he put in front of me. While the building was in terrible shape, I knew that if I achieved my business plan, I would make a substantial profit. At the time, I had been helping my brother start and build his venture investing business, Thrive Capital, and I saw that start-ups like his wanted more modern offices spaces that didn’t yet exist in New York. I thought this building could serve a new niche. After convincing Zaccaro to sell me the building for $50 million, I went looking for a partner. I found Avi Shemesh, an Israeli immigrant who started as a gardener and built a multibillion-dollar real estate firm. As Avi and I stood on the roof of 200 Lafayette Street, he asked, How large are the floors? Seventeen thousand rentable square feet, I replied. He inquired if this was the right floor size for the tenant I wanted. It’s what we’ve got. He liked my honesty and enthusiasm for the project. Jared, I’m making this investment, but not because of the building. I’m betting on you. After twenty months of executing my plan, we sold the building for nearly $150 million.

After that success, I went on a major buying spree, acquiring more than twelve thousand apartments across the country and completing $14 billion of transactions in roughly ten years. One of the best deals I made was purchasing the Jehovah’s Witnesses headquarters in Brooklyn. When I heard that they were selling, I called their representative, Dan Rice, and asked him to let me participate in their auction. Located on the river next to the Brooklyn Bridge, the properties were unbelievable. They were the best-run buildings I had ever toured—they were so clean you could eat off the floors. I went to the representative’s office that day and asked how much he wanted. He quoted $325 to $350 million. I told him I’d pay $375 million if he promised not to have an auction. He called his board, got approval, and shook my hand. The next day, a competitor offered him a higher number, but he said, Nope, we’re Jehovah’s Witnesses; we honor our word. He sold the property to me, and after renovations and rebranding, it is now worth close to a billion dollars.

With every new purchase, I focused not on the last dollar but on the next deal. I saw the potential in buildings that most people overlooked and learned how to make that vision into a reality through building consensus, motivating hundreds of people, making quick decisions, and solving problems as they arose. Before long, many of the big players started following me to the changing neighborhoods in which I was investing.

People found that they could make money by working with me, which led to many incredible opportunities. I never forgot what Greg Cuneo, a consultant who became a friend and mentor, advised while we negotiated with subcontractors on the 200 Lafayette Street project: in his thick Italian accent he urged, Tutti mangia—loosely translated, Everyone has to eat. He added, If you make too good of a deal, they will cut corners and not perform.

In addition to building a reputation through real estate deals, I also met New York’s top business leaders through another investment I had made in 2006. That July, I visited Arthur Carter, the owner and publisher of the New York Observer, a weekly newspaper read by New York’s elite. I told him that I wanted to buy the paper. He said that Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal were far along in negotiations but were raising new issues at the last minute. I put a check for $5 million on the table. He said if I closed by Monday, it was mine. I worked all weekend on the due diligence to finalize the deal. In the Observer, I saw an opportunity to bring a sophisticated paper into the digital age, while making helpful business connections in the process. I soon learned that, particularly in journalism, change is like heaven: everyone wants to go there, but nobody wants to die.

One of the real estate giants who noticed the paper was Donald J. Trump. I will never forget receiving a letter in the mail from him: upset about his placement on the Observer’s annual Power List, he asked to be removed. Interestingly, the name Trump is used prominently in your title and mentioned in the snippet along with the person ranked #1. I guess you’re trying to get people to read the article. It ended, P.S. Please stop sending me your paper, so I don’t have to read bullshit like this anymore! I’m sure I wasn’t the first to receive a message from Trump regarding a press article, and I certainly wouldn’t be the last.

* * *

Around the time of my 666 Fifth Avenue purchase, Donald Trump suggested to his daughter Ivanka that she talk to the guy who was actively buying buildings to see if I was interested in purchasing any of their properties. In the spring of 2007, we had lunch. We spoke about business, but the conversation soon turned to NASCAR, New Jersey diners, and other unlikely interests that we had in common. That led to a second lunch at my favorite Indian restaurant, the Tamarind Flatiron & Tea Room on Twenty-Second Street, where we talked for three hours. We both had to keep calling our assistants to reschedule our other meetings for the day.

Ivanka was not what I had expected. In addition to being arrestingly beautiful, which I knew before we met, she was warm, funny, and brilliant. She has a big heart and a tremendous zest for exploring new things. Soon I was taking Ivanka to parts of the city she had never seen before, using our dates to check out neighborhoods where I was looking to purchase property. We walked the streets, observed the people, and debated which neighborhoods would evolve over the next few years. On Sunday mornings we would take our backgammon board to a new restaurant and sit there for hours as we played games, read the papers, and sipped coffee. I loved how she always treated everyone with charm and respect, whether they were business leaders, waiters, or cabdrivers. She made everything fun. We also seemed to have a great deal in common. Both of us worked with our fathers in the family business, but we also had started our own companies. We were both driven and ambitious, with a healthy appetite for adventure.

When I realized that I was falling in love with Ivanka, I grew concerned about our different religions. As hard and painful as it was, I broke up with her. Ivanka told me it was the worst decision of my life. She was right. Several months later, our mutual friend Wendi Murdoch invited me away for a weekend with her and her husband, Rupert Murdoch—the owner of News Corp, then the parent company of Fox News and the Wall Street Journal—on their boat Rosehearty. I had first met Wendi and Rupert through my work with the Observer, and they had become good friends. To my surprise, Ivanka was there. She was equally shocked, but it wasn’t long before we got back together.

That same weekend, Rupert made the final offer to the Bancroft family to purchase the coveted Dow Jones Company. He shared with me a letter he had just sent to board members informing them that if they didn’t accept his offer by Monday, he was going to pull the offer, and the stock would fall. I was amazed by his negotiating style. Rupert struck me as an intellectual, in addition to being a brilliant businessman. When we spent time together, he started his days by reading every line of his company’s newspapers, as well as the competition’s. He devoured books and gave me his favorites. On that Sunday, we were having lunch at Bono’s house in the town of Eze on the French Riviera, when Rupert stepped out to take a call. He came back and whispered in my ear, "They blinked, they agreed to our terms, we have the Wall Street Journal." After lunch, Billy Joel, who had also been with us on the boat, played the piano while Bono sang with the Irish singer-songwriter Bob Geldof. Rupert joked to me that we were clearly the least talented people there.

As the months went on, Ivanka told me that she was open to exploring the possibility of converting to Judaism. We began meeting with a rabbi and studying and practicing Shabbat together. I saw that Ivanka was enjoying these rituals. After a few Friday evenings eating takeout from 2nd Ave Deli—my favorite New York deli—Ivanka decided she wanted to learn how to cook to make our Friday nights together more special. She loved it and quickly became an excellent chef.

As our relationship turned more serious, Ivanka suggested that I should try to get to know her father, so I called Trump and asked if I could see him. He suggested lunch the next day in the grill at Trump Tower—an unusual offer, as he rarely met people for lunch. As we sat down, I could feel my voice shake as I managed to say that Ivanka and I were getting more serious and that she was in the process of converting.

Well, let me ask you a question, he said. Why does she have to convert? Why can’t you convert?

I replied that it was a fair question, but Ivanka had made the decision on her own, and we were both comfortable with it.

That’s great, he said. Most people think I’m Jewish anyway. Most of my friends are Jewish. I have all these awards from the synagogues. They love me in Israel. Then he added, I just hope you’re serious because Ivanka is in an amazing place in her life right now. You know, Tom Brady is a good friend of mine and had been trying to take Ivanka out . . .

Before he got any further, I quipped, If I were Ivanka, I’d go with Tom Brady. He looked at me with complete seriousness. Yeah, I know, he sighed.

A few months later, I made a clandestine trip to Trump Tower to ask for Ivanka’s hand in marriage, and I mentioned that I had planned a surprise engagement. Later, I learned that right after I left, Trump picked up the intercom and alerted Ivanka that she should expect an imminent proposal. That night, I took her to see Wicked on Broadway. I had asked my brother Josh to scatter rose petals across my apartment and light candles right before we came home. But the show started late and ran long, which rarely happens. The engagement ring was in my pocket the entire time, and I was anxious that the candle wax would be melting all over the place. In the hallway outside my apartment door, I nervously pulled out the ring and proposed to Ivanka. Fortunately, she said yes.

We got married at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey—a majestic and serene getaway with lush trees and rolling hills an

Reviews for Breaking History

[thewanderingjew_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Breaking History-A White House Memoir, Jared Kushner. Author, Sean Pratt, NarratorI had both the print and audio of this book. I was very impressed with the information put forth, but thought Jared could use a bit of humility in his presentation. Still, he covered the time leading up to an through the Presidency of Donald Trump accurately, representing both sides of the aisle, often. Jared is more likely a liberal, as is Ivanka, at least in their daily lives. Still, as they both worked diligently to advance the policies they supported, President Trump encouraged their efforts, possibly showing that both sides of the aisle can be fairly represented when the desire to do so is present. However, what Jared showed a great deal of in his book, was the disinterest in, and active obstruction of, anything the Trump administration supported. Democrats denied the idea of Trump’s Presidency from the moment he earned the nomination and were not condemned for it, but actually they were actively supported even afterwards when they questioned and denied the election results. How different the Democrats feel today in the face of obvious chicanery in the last election which defeated him. In supporting the policies of Trump, Jared places himself front and center in most of the controversies Trump faced, riding in and solving the problems after everyone else messed up. If this is indeed true, he was a valuable asset to Trump and the country. In his effort to highlight his achievements, he does highlight Trump’s achievements very well, and proves what a good President he really was for the country, in spite of his rhetoric, which was often not politically correct and was insulting. Still, he has been targeted relentlessly and unfairly, so some slack has to be given when considering his over the top responses. After reading the book, and after realizing how much of the accomplishments have been rolled back to the detriment of America, one has to question the aim of the current administration. Is it to help America and American citizens, or is it merely to seek revenge? Jared Kushner earned the respect and admiration of many of the people he worked with, on both sides of the aisle and of many foreign leaders and diplomats. Just thinking back about the Middle East including the Abraham Accords, immigration reform, Mexican policy, China negotiations, payroll guarantees, North Korean diplomacy, energy independence, criminal justice reform, the achievement of a vaccine and providing supplies needed during a previously unknown pandemic not prepared for by the Biden/Obama administration during their term, helping in the fight against the unfair charges leveled against Trump and his White House, the mockery of the impeachment charges and the Russian Dossier, shows some of the positive effects of his work. The presentation of the details of how he achieved the goals of the President are intensive and thorough. Hopefully, they are also accurate.Jared describes himself as the lynchpin in most of the consequential decisions made by the White House, and so far, no one has contradicted him. He accurately describes conditions in politics that continued to try Trump in “the court of public opinion”, unfairly. He was rarely covered positively although he achieved monumental unexpected goals. Kushner names the names of those who were deliberately thwarting Trump’s efforts though they were theoretically on the same side; he names Trump’s fiercest opponents and identifies their lies and their duplicitous methods. An honest appraisal of the book will acknowledge that Trump was a good President, he achieved a lot that was ignored at America’s own peril, and will recognize the atrocious level of obstruction and slander that is still being leveled at this man who believes he has worked his whole life to advance his country’s needs whenever he was asked. Although Jared does not really stress the fact that Trump was maligned, as he seems only to want to promote himself in this book, he still exposes the enemies in Trump’s own administration; he explains why there were so many hiring changes made, why so many remained who were enemies, and why the lack of political expertise hindered their efforts. He makes the reader aware of the heinous behavior of Trump’s enemies on both sides of the aisle.In short, his efforts and the description of the Trump Presidency is honest, even though it is often not positive, and Jared and Ivanka’s opposition to some of Trump’s policies are distinctly left-wing. One has to wonder, however, if Jared thinks anything would have been accomplished without him. Some of the people he exposes are tainted journalists like Chris Wallace and Steve Bannon of Breitbart who was self-serving and leaked relentlessly, Megan Kelly and all those who perhaps unknowingly competed with him, defeating his efforts, Corporate leaders like Tillerson, Generals like Mattis, and a host of others like politicians, Pelosi, Schiff, Clinton, Obama, Christie, and Biden, and ordinary people like Howard Kohr of Aipac who unfairly pushed back against Trump, Stephanie Grisholm who worked in the administration but was disappointed because she did not achieve her own personal goals and resented the help of others which she viewed as interference, and Lewandowski who tried but who was not able to achieve good public relations for the administration. In the face of the disgraceful, left-wing obstruction and fury about Hillary Clinton’s losing the election, I am not certain anyone could have achieved that goal.Perhaps the most positive moment in the book for me was when Jared described Trump as magnanimous, someone who could talk to everyone, and was not an elitist. That is a side of Trump not often promoted or even discussed. If only the press had covered Trump fairly, his accomplishments which were world changing, but were largely ignored, would have been even greater. Instead, after each achievement, charges of new conspiracies were mounted against him.Jared is more likely a liberal and a democrat, but he uses those left-wing talking points, subtly, and promotes them under the surface. The book illustrates the atmosphere Trump was faced with, even from his own family. It is really worth the read to understand how great Trump’s achievements were, how much opposition he faced and was still able to achieve so much, and how sad it is that the very things that earned America respect again, are being rolled back. We are watching our country descend into chaos with outrageous crime, rising prices, a failed border policy and a Democrat Party that is more divisive than any other ever has been, that cares little for achieving American greatness and more for petty vengeance as sore losers.