Salon reporter Sophia Tesfaye says “the speed and scale of Jared Kushner’s re-emergence can’t be overstated,” and neither can his corruption.
“In the first year of Donald Trump’s second presidency, his son-in-law is casually consolidating economic and political power with staggering speed,” said Tesfaye. “Kushner has positioned himself at the center of the biggest media merger in years and at the fulcrum of White House foreign policy, all while taking in multi-billion-dollar investments from autocratic governments.”
Tesfaye said Paramount Skydance recently launched a bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery through a hostile takeover. Paramount’s offer draws heavily from Kushner’s investment firm, Affinity Partners, and from the sovereign wealth funds of Middle Eastern autocracies Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. Which would give them — and Kushner — influence over some of America’s most powerful news and cultural engines
“The partnership is unprecedented,” said Tesfaye. “Not even Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing media empire was capitalized by foreign monarchies seeking political leverage.
Kushner raised over $3 billion for Affinity Partners at the end of the first Trump administration, said Tesfaye, including $2 billion from the Saudi government’s Public Investment Fund. The UAE and Qatar soon followed, “adding another $1.5 billion to the pot.”
The sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, Abu Dhabi and Qatar amount to autocracies investing in the infrastructure of American political communication, said Tesfaye, and they are doing so through the president’s son-in-law — a man whose application for a top-secret clearance was initially rejected in Trump’s first term after an FBI background check raised concerns about potential foreign influence.
“You could not design a more direct conflict of interest,” she said. “Paramount is even trying to structure the deal to avoid federal review by arguing that foreign investors would have no ‘voting rights,’ a fiction so flimsy it should insult the intelligence of any serious regulator.”
The merger will affect CNN, HBO, Warner Bros. Pictures. And Trump “has long been obsessed with CNN,” said Tesfaye, while Kushner “is credited with orchestrating Spanish-language network TelevisaUnivision’s rightward shift ahead of the 2024 election, which saw Trump’s electoral performance among Hispanic voters subsequently improve.”
But Kushner’s influence is not limited to the media, said Tesfaye. Weeks ago, he proved a central actor behind Trump’s new Gaza initiative, and he’s quietly inserted himself into Trump’s Ukraine diplomacy, Tesfaye said.
“In late November, he and White House envoy Steve Witkoff met with Vladimir Putin in Moscow for five hours. Kushner and Witkoff, neither of whom hold formal government positions, were allowed to meet with the Russian president before even some Cabinet-level officials. The pair then joined Ukrainian officials in separate talks in Geneva and Miami,” Tesfaye said. “This is privatized foreign policy: diplomacy conducted by men whose incentives are not in the public interest.”
Republicans spent years wailing about former first son Hunter Biden’s foreign business ties,” wrote Tesfaye. “And yet here stands Jared Kushner: a man who has made a small fortune from a large one, who positioned himself as a ‘deal-maker’ while outsourcing U.S. foreign policy to the highest bidder, who now wants to help pick which news organizations survive and which are purged.”
“Kushner’s sudden, sweeping reappearance is not a coincidence or a comeback,” said Tesfaye. “It is a consolidation. He’s back to lead a hostile takeover of our information ecosystem.”
Read the full Newsbreak report at this link.