unimaginable a few years ago but with
resolve
determination a fresh look at the way
peace is done
this is being achieved thank you mr
president
history at the white house today as two
arab nations the united arab
emirates and bahrain come to the table
to sign agreements with israel
isolating iran as its neighbors join
hands with israel
to forge a new economic future and
embrace a vision of a middle east
potentially
without war it is an agreement that
nobody
really saw coming and one that has been
called a huge achievement even by those
who are not fans of this administration
here's this in the new york times what
happened between israel
and two former enemies is an honest
triumph in a region and a year that has
known precious few
the last time we saw this kind of
breakthrough was 26 years ago with the
signing in 1994.
of an agreement between jordan and
israel and prior to that
in 1979 when egypt and israel
brokered peace we begin tonight with
white house senior adviser jared kushner
who spearheaded this deal jared good to
have you here tonight thanks for being
here martha great to be with you
so you know when you started this
venture
and these discussions a lot of people
said
that you had the audacity to think that
you could make a difference
in the middle east so everybody has
tried to broker these kinds of deals
how was what you did different
so uh first of all it's great to be with
you and what we did different was we
showed up in the region and we started
listening you know the president's first
trip was to saudi arabia where he
brought all the leaders together and
said
you know these are not your problems
these are not our problems let's all
focus on
them as collective problems and he we
studied everything that had been tried
and that had failed and he said
let's try to do it differently and
instead of trying to take on the
israeli-palestinian conflict
and making that the panacea of
everything we took the steps that needed
to be taken to show that there was real
sincerity
but we showed that the palestinian
leadership is not interested in making a
peace deal at this time
and we showed that israel was that along
with the efforts to bring everyone
closer together
allowed for us to make these historic
breakthroughs so uh people in the in the
middle east are now seeing that
they don't want to have their futures be
held back by conflicts of the past
people want
uh to pursue shared opportunities they
want to have better jobs they want to do
business together they want to explore
each other's countries they want to get
to know each other
and president trump was able to take an
unconventional approach to bring people
together and i'll just say that
again for the last three and a half
years we've been very heavily criticized
for the approach we took
by the quote experts who have been doing
this for the last decades
before not doing it the way they did it
but their way didn't work and so
president trump took a different way but
he achieved a different result
uh by doing it in a much more productive
way so it's interesting you know and
john kerry
uh made the iran deal and now
you have a situation where iran is more
isolated
than ever as we said in the introduction
so what i'm wondering is when when you
look at the iran deal and the european
countries that are still
technically part of that deal do you
think this changes
their calculus on that arrangement
well i think that it shows them that the
world's moving forward
look the iran deal is one of the worst
deals ever made and
and again you know good deals will stand
the test of time this deal barely can
make it past
you know one administration so it was a
terrible deal it basically allowed iran
to have a pathway to a nuclear weapon it
allowed them to have access to 150
billion dollars that they used to fund
terror
that led to further destabilization you
would have thought on the day of the
agreement they would have said thank you
america instead they
were chanting in the streets death to
america death to israel president trump
ended that deal he also
uh immediately went the middle east and
destroyed the caliphate of isis
and took back that land and we've been
working with iraq is more stable now
we've brought our partners that all felt
very isolated by the previous
administration's
voyeurism going to to work with the
iranians uh whether it's israel saudi
arabia united arab emirates bahrain
they all trust president trump because
they know that when he says he's going
to do something he does it
and he's made peace by by showing great
strength in the region so
iran is definitely more isolated and
while president trump's president they
will never have
a nuclear weapon i mean this it's very
interesting to look at how this
this potentially changes the whole
dynamic in
in the middle east so one of the things
that the president said today was that
he thought that iran would come to the
table they have a terrible terrible
economy
right now but what i'm wondering is what
is the administration
willing to do if the iranian people
want to choose a different future for
themselves
so it's very complicated because the
situation
with iran is not is is one where they
have an amazing people an amazing
culture they have an
incredible country very rich with
natural resources and history
but they have a leadership that's trying
to use religion as an excuse to divide
people to maintain their power
and they want to cause destabilization
as opposed to economic integration
and allow people to have a better life
so look from president trump's point of
view he's willing to meet with people
he's willing to talk while brainstorm
will come up with ideas but he's willing
to be creative to help them
form a better future but you know you
see this deal which again really is a
watershed moment and just for me
personally
uh was an honor to be a part of it and a
very emotional day here at the white
house watching
uh you know something happened that
nobody thought would be possible you
know all these leaders getting together
signing a peace agreement
it makes you realize that anything is
possible if we have the courage and the
and the vision and the determination to
try to move forward so the hope that we
have is that iran
um well we'll stop their opposition to
progress we'll see that
they should be modernizing their society
giving their citizens more rights more
freedoms and helping build a brighter
future for their next generation
that would be fascinating and we can
help them do that i want to i i want to
learn more about that as we go forward
um the palestinians obviously were very
unhappy with this deal they called it
a very deep stabbing in the back of the
palestinians it is a free offer
for the israelis to continue their
occupation
on our land your response
so i saw the other day that they were
launching a a campaign against
normalization
what they should be doing is launching a
campaign to make the lives of the
palestinian people better this rhetoric
is tired the people are tired the people
want to live better lives
you have a government that's in the 16th
year of a four-year term the the whole
experiment there with democracy has
proven that it is not working in that
form and so
look you know bahrain is a sovereign
nation uh united arab emirates is a
sovereign
nation israel is a sovereign nation they
have the ability to do what's in the
interests of their country and come
together in that regard and
you know you have old tired rhetoric by
people who have a big track record of
failure and making
uh progress that quite frankly is not
allowing the palestinian people to live
a better life we hosted our economic
conference in bahrain
uh we built an economic plan which
actually would work very well we studied
poland singapore uh the palestinians
only five million people it's not that
hard it's a 50 billion dollar plan that
would create a million
new palestinian jobs reduce their
poverty rate by 50 percent double their
gdp
and the leaders wouldn't even show up to
a conference to try to talk about it so
what we've been trying to do is figure
out how do we improve the lives of the
palestinian people
but the old way of doing it was a dead
end so we said let's try a different way
and
obviously that achieved a great result
and i'll just say one final thing on the
president is that
you know there's been a lot of people
who basically are saying the president's
bad all these things these people have
been saying that if president trump was
elected
uh he would start world war three and
what we saw today was instead of world
war three he achieved the first
breakthrough in the middle east peace in
the last 26 years
and and again he does things a lot of
videos
kudos i think from from all sides on
that you know but here
here's the other thing everybody's
asking you know when is saudi arabia
going to be part of this deal
the president suggested today that he
thought that that was
um you know something that could develop
fairly quickly but the saudi statement
today is this the kingdom stands by the
palestinian people
and supports all efforts to establish
their independent palestinian state on
the 1967 borders
with east jerusalem as its capital so
that doesn't sound like they're
very close right so that's a cliche it's
an old cliche people have been using for
a long time the countries that
uh that made the deals today they've
used the same cliche
but at the end of the day people realize
that the palestinian leadership just
isn't getting there to make a deal and
and they want to move forward so i think
people are running out of patience and
again in deal-making you know politics
is politics but in deal-making
everyone's at no until they're at yes so
i and by the way in saudi arabia king
salman the crown prince
they do very genuinely care about the
palestinian people they want to see them
live better lives they've given a ton of
money a ton of aid to them over time
uh but i think that there's just a lot
of frustration in the middle east and
throughout the world with the
palestinian leadership and the way that
they've conducted themselves these last
couple of years but
you know our line is open we do have a
lot of respect for them and we've uh you
know we have
discussions and uh when they're ready
for peace we'll be a great party
in that area i want to ask you two quick
questions um before i let you go
jared the first one is about covid and
the nevada
um rally the other night you know after
tulsa and we saw what happened to herman
cain that was so sad and tragic
after that um he died a couple of weeks
later so i'm wondering is there
is there a lot of internal debate over
whether or not it makes sense to do
these things inside i think the outside
venues everybody feels
is a great alternative but doesn't it
scary a little bit doing these things
inside
right so our preference is to do them
outside at this point in time i mean
first of all we have seen cases going
down
death is going down test positive test
positivity is going down
in the country so we're seeing a lot of
very positive signs with the virus
people are much more knowledgeable today
they know their comorbidities like i had
a friend today who really want to be at
the ceremony but he said
you know he has some co-morbidity so his
wife said you know let's wait till after
the vaccine comes which is coming very
quickly why do anything inside like
nevada i mean why not
why do that yeah so the preference is to
do it outside we had several outdoor
venues that we were
planning to use but the governor
intervened and would not allow that to
happen
so we were forced to use an indoor venue
but again people wanted to assemble and
they won't be together
we encourage people to wear masks the
masks were available hand sanitizer
and again we encourage people to do
what's right but also to know their risk
profile
so that people can take the appropriate
action for them
last question is on tick tock senator
hawley has come out and said that this
is an unacceptable deal
in in terms of national security grounds
because it looks like the oracle deal is
going to go through which would allow
china to still have uh some control over
that company rather than the walmart
deal and the microsoft deal which would
have bought them
outright uh so he's saying that this is
a deal that should not happen
um what is the president you know what
is what is his take on this and why
would he be okay with that given the
fact that in the beginning he said that
was not what he wanted at all
well uh senator hawley's a very smart
senator and somebody who the president
talks to and listens to
so if he has that point of view i'm sure
that's something that the administration
will
listen to and take into account but the
latest that i know is that an
application was submitted i have not
seen the structure
our interest in this is national
security interest we want to make sure
that the data and privacy of american
citizens is protected and so if that's
not the case that deal won't go through
no if that if it's not adequately
satisfied i don't believe it'll be
approved but i know we have a proper
process with experts who will look at it
and then make an adjudication on the
proper grounds and then once they have
their recommendation they'll take it to
the president
all right jared kushner thank you for
your time tonight good to have you
martha great to be with you
thank you