Kushner: "The President Trusts Me"
JOHN KING, CNN ANCHOR: Today, a glimpse at a much talked about, but rarely seen or heard from power player inside the Trump White House. The president's son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner sitting down for an interview here at CNN forum. Kushner making clear he prizes operating in the shadows and he knows his chief qualification is his relationship with the boss.</s>VAN JONES, CNN POLITICAL COMMENTATOR: Why should we have confidence in you to do all this stuff?</s>JARED KUSHNER, SENIOR ADVISER TO THE PRESIDENT: Well, I think the first thing is that the president trusts me. I think he knows that every task he's given me from the start of the campaign through, I have been able to do it quietly. I have been able to do it effectively. I have been able to deliver results. I don't make a lot of noise. Noise is sometimes made about me, but I try to keep my head down.</s>KING: He doesn't make a lot of noise, and there is a lot of noise made about him. He is part of the Mueller investigation. But let me challenge the -- in the presidency part, not the campaign part. I'm effective and I get results. Jared Kushner's portfolio, his prison reform. Middle East peace? The subset of the Saudi relationship. Are there any results?</s>ALEX BURNS, NATIONAL POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: Well, they fired Comey, right? No, I mean -- but really, like the record of judgment during the administration have been seriously mixed. And you see now in the -- it really coming to a head now in this moment with Saudi Arabia that I think it's almost unimaginable that you would see him face the consequences that a normal adviser would face for mismanaging a foreign relationship. But if that is where this ends up going, right, if the feeling on the Hill or internationally is that he did not get his arms around this one, that has a real -- it has real lasting consequences for the administration.</s>MAGGIE HABERMAN, WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT, THE NEW YORK TIMES: It does. And one of the criticisms of Kushner from people who are involved in the campaign at the time was, he has this habit of always kind of appearing to be around on something that's going well and then never being around when it's not going well. And, there has been that consistent streak in the White House where we will constantly hear that he was really involved in something that was great like getting -- that the U.S. role in the World Cup for I think it was 2024 or 2026. Anyway. But, that was something that he was really involved in. But this, you know, in terms of MBS and terms of all sorts of other things, that's less involved. There's less really -- you don't really know what's being said. He's incredibly, incredibly focussed on his media coverage. I was really struck by something he said on that panel which that he doesn't have a Twitter account because he's certainly is aware of what it's on Twitter. So it's -- that is one of the big hallmarks of both he and his wife.</s>MJ LEE, CNN NATIONAL POLITICAL REPORTER: And there is a real sort of accountability issue that comes with the simple fact that they are family members of the president. Not just Jared Kushner but Ivanka as well. She has bristled in the past when asked questions that she deemed were too personal for a daughter of the president to be asked, but at other times, she very much maintains that she should be taken seriously as an adviser to the president. You sort of can't have it both ways. And I think you're absolutely right that Jared Kushner is now facing this moment of having to be in the spotlight for an issue that is very, very serious.</s>HABERMAN: There was actually one other thing that he said that I was really struck by. As he was asked by Van Jones about how does he respond to critics on a couple of different issues. And he basically said he only responds to critics who he respects. That's not how government works in this country.</s>KING: That's now how government works.</s>HABERMAN: That was really striking.</s>KING: And another thing, that's not how government works, and again, the president has the right to set it up any way he wants. But when the crown prince calls your son-in-law who's not officially part of the national security apparatus, where there's no read-out, there's no -- we get no indication of that phone conversation, that's a structure -- you can't distance yourself from that. You're accountable for that. I want to come back to some of his portfolio in a minute but listen here to what -- we're in a midterm election year, now we go into 2020. The president has been talking about 2020 a lot as he campaigns for 2018. Listen to Jared Kushner's take on the boss, his father-in-law, as a politician.</s>KUSHNER: I wouldn't bet against Trump. He's a black swan, he's been a black swan all of his life. And I just see in politics and business, I just don't like betting against him.</s>KING: A black swan.</s>PHILIP BUMP, NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT, THE WASHINGTON POST: Well, I think it's the -- I think it's the black swan all his life that probably raises more eyebrows based on the</s>KING: You're trying to say black swans pay their taxes?</s>BUMP: They do at least. They don't have father black swans to look out for him. But, you know, the -- he won the presidency, right. He won the presidency by -- the Republican electorate in 2016 was looking for someone who is going to echo what they saw on Fox News. Because what they saw on Fox News was people who are very angry at Democrats, people who are increasingly angry about immigration. And Trump seized that, he was a Fox News watcher, he ran as a candidate, it was his gut instinct to do that and it paid off. Right. He lost the popular vote, yes, but he won the Electoral College as he's always happy to remind us. So yes, I think that the point there generally speaking is correct, that said 2016 was itself a black swan and I'm not sure holds.</s>HABERMAN: It's also -- just again, striking the degree to which whether you're related to him or not. Everyone is still required to praise Trump</s>KING: But even if you're a son-in-law, that's part of the job. I want -- listen here, by talking about how prison reform not naturally an issue for President Trump, his son-in-law saying but he listens and he accepted.</s>KUSHNER: Somebody in the meeting said to him, you know, when you campaigned, you said that you're going to fight for the forgotten men and women of this country. And there's nobody more forgotten or underrepresented than the people in prison. And look, I talked to the president all the time and I know sometimes when I tell him something and he's listening, but he's not really want to listen to me. I know when he's listening to me and it penetrates -- I could tell right then that that really hit him in his heart. And since then, he's actually spent a lot of time on the issue.</s>KING: Again, help me. In the sense that you have a Republican president with a Republican Congress, a Republican president with an attorney general who does not agree with Jared Kushner on prison reform. If the president really cared, if he really cared, wouldn't you do more than just invite Kim Kardashian into the White House for a photo op? Wouldn't you ask the Republican Congress, tell the Republican Congress, take up this legislation?</s>BURNS: You would and you also might spend some time thinking about the political atmosphere you're creating for this debate, right? You know, potentially there is a mix into China moment here that only Trump can convince Congress to be lenient on criminal justice. But if I'm a Republican member of Congress and I see the ark of the Trump campaign and presidency, I'm not buying this idea that the president sort of has changed and he can change the hearts of millions. The Republican primary electorate doesn't want this, right? So maybe in a world of divided government if you were trying to look for some common ground with Democrats in the House. Although even there, if I'm a House Democrat, I don't know why I would believe that I could vote for this and then not ended up getting attacked for it by the president in 2020.</s>HABERMAN: And it's also where I think to your point about, is he going to do anything more than, you know, have Kim Kardashian or Kanye West to the Oval Office? This is where Jared Kushner has often been described as very tangibly playing to his father-in-law's ego, right. I mean, it's like he knew that bringing these celebrities to the West Wing, they want to meet you. That's how you penetrate and reach his heart as Jared Kushner put it. I don't have a sense that this is an animating issue for Trump. And the other thing that Kushner said was that, this is an issue of fairness to the president. Fairness is not normally part of the president's lexicon as a flat structure. It's usually sort of weighted so.</s>KING: Very diplomatic.</s>HABERMAN: Thanks. I'm trying.</s>KING: Up next, the president makes a major policy announcement that just about no one saw coming.