A top aide whose portfolio included some of President Donald Trump’s most high-profile foreign policy work has suddenly been sidelined, cutting short his meteoric rise in the administration.
Josh Gruenbaum, a 40-year-old former Wall Street executive, was among billionaire Elon Musk’s allies placed with the General Services Administration as part of DOGE, the nebulous cost-cutting task force.
He used that position to forge a close relationship with Trump’s special envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff, originally helping them negotiate a ceasefire deal in Gaza, Politico reported.
Gruenbaum then leveraged that assignment into a broader portfolio working alongside Kushner and Witkoff—both real estate developers with no prior foreign policy experience, but with close personal ties to Trump—during failed peace talks involving Russia and Iran.
In January, he joined Kushner and Witkoff for a meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin.
He began seeking an office in the White House and was under consideration for a more formal role, only to be quietly taken off most of his foreign policy assignments sometime in the past week or so, according to Politico.
Now, he’ll be at Trump’s United Nations knock-off, the Board of Peace, working only on Gaza issues and physically removed from the center of power, sources told the outlet.
The move comes after Gruenbaum’s relentless self-promotion and abrasive work style alienated some of Trump’s other senior advisers in the West Wing and beyond, according to Politico.
“This is a guy that a couple of months ago, Steve and Jared brought to meet Putin, and now he’s gonna be sharing an office with Kristi Noem, basically,” one source said, referring to Trump’s disgraced former secretary of Homeland Security.
The president fired Noem from her Cabinet position last month following a series of scandals.
He named her the U.S. envoy to the Shield of the Americas in a role that supposedly has her combating drug cartels, but that sources previously told the Daily Beast was designed to keep her from running for the Senate in her native South Dakota.
Both the Board of Peace and Noem’s office are in the Institute of Peace building a mile from the West Wing.
Trump launched the board earlier this year, soliciting members and naming himself as chairman—which in turn gives him significant power over the group’s charter, membership, finances, and decision-making—to oversee reconstruction of Gaza, where the president has vowed to create a “Riviera of the Middle East.”
Most of the U.S.’s allies have refused to join the group, whose executive board includes both Witkoff and Kushner.
The two envoys reportedly remain Gruenbaum’s allies, but didn’t try to interfere with his demotion, according to Politico.
In a statement, White House spokesperson Anna Kelly told the outlet that Gruenbaum “will continue to advance the President’s agenda of enhancing stability in his role at the Board of Peace.”
Board of Peace spokesperson Brad Klapper said the organization was “very grateful to have Josh helping us advance one of the president’s signature foreign policy objectives: peace and prosperity in the Middle East.”
The Daily Beast has also reached out for comment.
