Donald Trump has lashed out at an NBC News reporter who challenged his son-in-law on his record as a peace negotiator.
The 80-year-old president shared a post on Truth Social defending Kushner, who is married to his eldest daughter, Ivanka, after NBC News Chief Foreign Correspondent Richard Engel questioned him during a press conference in Kyiv on Sunday.
“A Classic answer by Jared to a hostile, Trump Deranged Reporter,” Trump wrote, reposting comments from Lawfare Project founder Brooke Goldstein.
Goldstein had questioned why Kushner was being blamed for the lack of progress in Gaza.
“If I were Kushner, I would have told this reporter exactly where he could take that question,” Goldstein wrote. “Kudos to Kushner for calmly dismantling it with far more diplomacy than it deserved.”
Engel had directly challenged Kushner over whether he and Trump envoy Steve Witkoff could be trusted to deliver peace in Ukraine given the lack of results from previous negotiations.
Engel pointed to Kushner and Witkoff’s involvement in efforts to rebuild Gaza amid the Israel-Hamas war, noting that the territory remains a “wasteland.”
He also pointed to the ongoing war involving Iran and the escalating conflict in Ukraine before asking why the latest negotiations should succeed when earlier efforts had failed.
“Iran, you were involved in those negotiations. The war is still going on. You’ve been involved in several rounds of negotiations in this [Russia-Ukraine] conflict. It’s only getting more intense,” Engel said. “So you’re relaunching negotiations now. What’s the likelihood they will succeed when other negotiations you’ve been involved in have not?”
Kushner responded for nearly five minutes, arguing that the conflicts were exceptionally difficult and that negotiations required time.
“These are some of the hardest problem sets in the world,” Kushner said. He stressed that he and Witkoff were acting on Trump’s behalf rather than pursuing their own diplomatic strategies.
“These things take time,” Kushner added. “These are some of the hardest conflicts. And so, the tone of your question was a little bit like, ‘Why haven’t you done every single impossible thing possible?’”
Kushner also defended his work in Gaza, describing the territory as having been “basically built by NGOs and terrorists” and saying it had been “a dystopian place for a long time.”
The confrontation came as Kushner and Witkoff were attempting to revive negotiations aimed at ending Russia’s war in Ukraine, which Trump previously promised to end on day one of his second term.
The pair had travelled from Moscow last week, where they met Vladimir Putin, to Kyiv for talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
But the latest round of talks failed to move the needle. After meeting with Kushner and Witkoff, Zelensky told reporters “the war will continue” into the winter months.
Kushner, however, has insisted that he and Witkoff are committed to the task, even as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has reportedly been tapped to get more involved. The Financial Times reported this week that the White House has considered cutting down on Witkoff and Kushner’s involvement in talks as Ratcliffe prepares to jump in.
The White House has dismissed that reporting, however, saying Trump still “trusts” Kushner and Witkoff to lead negotiations.
