Jared Kushner

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.

And I think in the course of World War I, it was one of the greatest atrocities that we've seen as humanity.

We've had 16 million people killed in that war.

And as I was reading the book, I remember thinking to myself, even though things are set in a certain way, go sit with somebody, go talk to them and say, this doesn't make sense, this is wrong.

How do we create a better pathway?

And as a civilian, all my life, I would read the newspapers, I would observe how different leaders would act.

But when we had the opportunity to serve in government and have the position, you realize you're not a civilian.

You don't have the luxury of sitting back and letting the world happen the way it's happening.

You have agency and you have the potential to influence the outcome of things.