Jared Kushner

you'll figure it out.

And so going through some of the challenges that I had in my life early on, whether it was the issue with my father that I'm sure we'll talk about, or even going through some tougher financial times during the great financial crisis, I really learned a lot about partnership.

And I always thought, how can I act in a way where I could be the type of partner or friend to others that I wish others would be to me?

Yeah.

So leaders are generally chosen by their country.

And so my view was, if I had an objective, I didn't get to choose who was the leader of other countries.

My job was to deal with that leader, understand their strengths, understand their weaknesses, understand their power dynamics as well.

You know, one of my greatest takeaways when I grew up, I'd read the newspapers about all these powerful, famous people.

And then as I got older and had the chance to

And then ultimately, you know, interact with them in government as I realized that they're just like you and me, they wake up every morning, you know, their kids are pissed at them, their wife doesn't want to talk with them, you know, and they've got, you know, a set of advisors around them, one saying, you know, let's go to war, one saying, let's make peace, one saying, do the deal, one saying, don't do the deal.

And they're all thinking, where do I get advice?

How do I make decisions?

And so understanding the true human nature of them and then the different power dynamics around them, I thought was very key.

And so I didn't have a choice, do I deal with them or not?

It was a function of how do you deal with them effectively in order to find areas where you have common interests and then work well together to pursue those common interests in order to achieve a certain goal.

So this was a book I read way before the notion of serving in government was ever even on my mind or reality.

Yeah.

And I remember thinking about it, reading it and thinking how World War I started, where you had somebody who was assassinated, and then you had all these different alliances that were created.

And then in order to accomplish objectives, it triggered all of these...

people getting in bed with everyone else because of documents that were created without the intent of going to a massive war.