ADRIAN FLORIDO, HOST:
Jared Kushner is back. The president's son-in-law and former chief adviser had said he wasn't planning to join the administration for a second time. He'd successfully returned to the private sector and was raking in millions from foreign ties he built during his first stint at the White House. But then President Trump drafted him back to help secure a ceasefire in Gaza.
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PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: And then we called in Jared. We call it. We need that brain on occasion. We got to get Jared in here. We got to get a certain group of people.
FLORIDO: Critics question whether Kushner's return is appropriate. NPR's Franco Ordoñez has been covering this and he joins us in the studio now. Hey, Franco.
FRANCO ORDOÑEZ, BYLINE: Hey, Adrian.
FLORIDO: Jared Kushner returned to the Middle East this week, Franco, after a deadly outbreak of violence that raised questions about whether the ceasefire there can hold. Why did Trump pick him?
ORDOÑEZ: Yeah, I mean, basically, Trump sent back the two guys who helped secure the peace deal to make sure that that ceasefire holds. I mean, that's Kushner, of course. Also, Steve Witkoff, Trump's Middle East envoy. They were also there to make sure the second phase of the president's peace plan starts to get implemented. And yesterday, Kushner actually told reporters that the violence everyone's so concerned about was expected.
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JARED KUSHNER: A lot of people are getting a little hysterical about different incursions one way or the other. But what we are seeing is that things are going in accordance. Both sides are transitioning from two years of very intense warfare to now a peacetime posture.
FLORIDO: OK, so that's his take. But there are a lot of questions, Franco, about whether Kushner should even be involved, considering his deep business ties to the region. But Trump chose him despite these questions.
ORDOÑEZ: Yeah, for sure. I mean, those questions date back to his work in the first administration. Now, the biggest thing that Kushner did was help broker the Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and several Arab countries. And that work has led to some fruitful business opportunities. Several foreign governments, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, have invested billions in an investment firm that he launched after leaving the administration. And critics, Democrats and some Republicans, have accused Kushner of crossing ethical lines.
Now, I was talking with Daniel Shapiro, who was the U.S. ambassador to Israel during the Obama administration. And he said it was fair to ask whether Kushner should be doing this work.
DANIEL SHAPIRO: I think there are reasonable questions about the ethical and conflict-of-interest concerns that would be associated with people doing business with governments that they are also doing diplomacy with.
ORDOÑEZ: But Shapiro, like other Democrats, have also given Kushner a lot of credit.
SHAPIRO: At the same time, I don't think there's any question that Jared Kushner's involvement in that critical phase, given the relationships he has and given the experience he's had working with these governments previously, helped produce a result fairly quickly that brought about the good outcome.
ORDOÑEZ: Now, Shapiro also noted that especially in Gulf countries, there are few lines between the politics and business and family. So when there is someone like Kushner, who they've worked with before, there's already some built-in trust.
FLORIDO: What is the White House saying?
ORDOÑEZ: Well, the White House says that Kushner was key to getting the deal done. And a senior administration official told me that criticism is generally coming from people opposed to anything that the president does. I'll just add that Kushner also defends his ties in an interview on CBS' "60 Minutes." He says what some see as a conflict of interest, he calls experience, which he argued gives him particular insight into how the Arab world works. Now, I will say, Adrian, there may be more questions about his business ties now. But that said, there's still a lot of uncertainty about whether this peace deal even holds.
FLORIDO: Well, thanks for your take. NPR White House correspondent Franco Ordoñez.
ORDOÑEZ: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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