Jared Kushner

So you got to start working with Israel.

You have to be paying more of your fair share and you have to be stopping the Wahhabism that's being spread.

And again, I had no knowledge.

These were just kind of the traditional talking points about Saudi Arabia.

So

The guy I was with basically said, it was a guy, Fadal Tunzi, who's a very respected minister there.

He says, Jared, he says, you don't know much about Saudi Arabia, do you?

I said, no, no, no, I don't.

It's just really what I've kind of been told or what I read.

And he says, okay, let me do this.

we want to be great allies with America.

We've traditionally been great allies with America.

Can I come back to you with a proposal on ways that we can make progress on all of the different areas where we have joint interests?

And keep in mind at that point in time, the Middle East was a mess.

And probably the single biggest issue we had after ISIS was the ideological battle.

If you remember in 2016, there was the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, you had the San Bernardino shooting, and people were being radicalized online with the

And then there was a lot of crimes that were happening because of that.

And it was a big topic in the campaign.

And so that, when I was thinking about talking to different generals and what capabilities the US had to really combat the extremism and the ideological battle, what we realized was that Saudi Arabia is the custodian of the two holiest sites in Islam, the Mecca Medina, that that would be the best partner to work with if they were willing to.

But for years, they really hadn't been willing to kind of lean into this fight.