Jared Kushner appears in The Bob Zadek Show not as a guest but as a name invoked in passing during discussions of immigration policy and Republican Party politics. The excerpts contain no interview with Kushner and no sustained examination of his role in government or business. What the sources offer is a set of references made by two guests — Alex Nowrasteh and F.H. Buckley — each describing Kushner’s involvement in a specific policy or political effort. Because the references are brief and appear in only two episodes, this article is necessarily limited to what those excerpts state.
Immigration policy
In a May 2019 episode on illegal immigration, Bob Zadek introduced the topic of what he described as a “merit-based” immigration system, noting that President Trump had announced such a proposal but that it was short on details. He asked Alex Nowrasteh what a merit-based system meant, whether it would improve the current system, and how other countries had fared under similar arrangements.
Nowrasteh explained that under the current U.S. immigration system, about 80% of immigrants come in legally because of family ties to Americans or green card holders, while only about 7% come through the skills-based system. He then identified Kushner as among those seeking to change those proportions. According to Nowrasteh, President Trump, Kushner and others want to decrease the percentage coming in through the family-based system and increase it on the economic side, so that more immigrants are highly skilled economic migrants. Nowrasteh said that goal was not in itself terrible — if immigration is to be restricted and limited in number, he said, it probably makes sense to favor people who are well-skilled, educated and willing to work.
Where Nowrasteh said the approach goes wrong is in its second element: cutting the total number of immigrants. He argued that the percentages could be changed easily by allowing more skills-based immigrants rather than by cutting family members, but that Trump, Kushner and others want to cut the number of family members who can come in. He contrasted the U.S. with Canada and Australia, which have skills-based systems. About 25% of immigrants to Canada come in on the skills-based system exclusively, he said, but Canada admits about double the number of immigrants as a percentage of its population that the U.S. does each year. Nowrasteh suggested that the easiest way to get something like Canada’s merit-based system would be to double the number of immigrants coming to the U.S. each year while designating them as economic or skills-based immigrants — people who have shown high education or who want to invest and build businesses. He recommended that the President abandon the idea of cutting legal immigration and family-based immigration and simply increase the economic side What Part of Illegal Immigration Are You Against? Alex Nowrasteh Returns (2019).
The excerpt ends mid-sentence as Bob Zadek begins a new section on the need for low-skilled labor, so the discussion of Kushner’s role in the proposal is not developed further.
Republican Party strategy and the 2016 campaign
Kushner appears again in two July 2022 episodes featuring F.H. Buckley, author of Progressive Conservatism. In both episodes Buckley described his work on the Trump campaign and his efforts to shape its message. He said he pitched Kushner the idea that the big issue was the rise of aristocracy and the decline of economic mobility, and that this became a great theme of the campaign. Buckley described himself as the pitchman and said he also pushed a number of other issues that went nowhere with Trump Progressive Conservatism with F.H. Buckley (2022).
In the second episode, Buckley repeated the account in nearly identical terms, saying he pitched Kushner the idea about aristocracy and economic mobility and that it became a great theme of the campaign, while other issues he pushed went nowhere Trumpism After Trump (2022). In both episodes the reference to Kushner is confined to this single anecdote. Buckley did not describe Kushner’s response, his role in the campaign, or his position in the administration. The surrounding discussion concerned Buckley’s broader argument that the Republican Party should remake itself as a progressive conservative party — a middle-of-the-road movement he associated with Dwight Eisenhower — and that it should cut its ties with Trump as an individual while attracting the 74 million people who voted for him.
Across episodes
Kushner is mentioned in three episodes across two distinct topics: immigration policy in the 2019 episode with Alex Nowrasteh, and Republican Party strategy in the two 2022 episodes with F.H. Buckley. The excerpts show no development in the treatment of Kushner between the earlier and later episodes; the immigration reference and the campaign reference concern different subjects and do not build on one another. Buckley’s two 2022 accounts of pitching Kushner are substantially the same anecdote told twice.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not state Kushner’s title, his role in the Trump administration, his relationship to President Trump, or any biographical details. They do not describe his response to Nowrasteh’s or Buckley’s characterizations, nor do they contain any statement from Kushner himself. The sources do not indicate whether the immigration proposal Nowrasteh described was adopted, modified or abandoned, and they do not say what became of the themes Buckley said he pitched. No excerpt addresses Kushner’s business activities, his time in office beyond these passing references, or any other episode of the program in which he may have been discussed.