Jared Kushner is at the center of Trump's corruption: From media mergers to foreign policy, Trump's son-in-law
Last edited Sun Dec 14, 2025, 09:14 AM - Edit history (1)
Lots of details in rest of article also.
Jared Kushner is at the center of Trump’s corruption
From media mergers to foreign policy, Trump's son-in-law is consolidating power — and making millions
https://www.salon.com/2025/12/13/jared-kushner-is-at-the-center-of-trumps-corruption/
By Sophia Tesfaye December 13, 2025 9:00AM (EST)
The speed and scale of Jared Kushner’s re-emergence can’t be overstated. In the first year of Donald Trump’s second presidency, his son-in-law is casually consolidating economic and political power with staggering speed. 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.
On Monday, Paramount Skydance — run by David Ellison, a billionaire Trump has openly urged to reshape the news industry in his favor — launched an unprecedented bid to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery by initiating a hostile takeover after losing an earlier bidding contest to Netflix. Paramount’s offer draws heavily from Kushner’s investment firm, Affinity Partners, and from the sovereign wealth funds of Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar. These Middle Eastern autocracies are principal investors in an acquisition that would give them — and Kushner — influence over some of America’s most powerful news and cultural engines: CNN, HBO, Warner Bros. Pictures and the vast library of Warner content that shapes the national (and international) imagination. The partnership is unprecedented. Not even Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing media empire was capitalized by foreign monarchies seeking political leverage.
After leaving the first Trump administration, Kushner raised over $3 billion for Affinity Partners, including $2 billion from the Saudi government’s Public Investment Fund. The Saudis’ own advisers reportedly warned Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman that Kushner’s record did not justify such an investment, but the crown prince overruled them. ............. Forbes now calls him a billionaire.
The breathtaking scale of the Paramount–Warner bid makes the stakes even clearer............
These are autocracies investing in the infrastructure of American political communication, and they are doing so through the president’s son-in-law. You could not design a more direct conflict of interest...................
After the Wall Street Journal reported that Ellison had promised to deliver political obedience, telling Trump he would make “sweeping changes” to CNN once the deal closed, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt sneered that CNN “would benefit from new ownership.”....
Taken together, this is the authoritarian playbook in its purest form. Trump has not even attempted to disguise his intentions.............
The president has long been obsessed with CNN......
Now, members of Congress from both parties have raised alarms about this new deal. Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, who leads a Senate subcommittee on antitrust, said on X that the deal raised “a lot of antitrust red flags” and that he would hold “an intense antitrust hearing.” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said the Justice Department should take a “hard look” at the deal. And Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., noted that the deal “looks like an anti-monopoly nightmare.” If Netflix were to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, it would own two of the top three largest streaming services, Netflix and HBO Max. This market power could allow Netflix to raise prices for its subscription services, which have already been rapidly increasing.
But Kushner’s influence is not limited to the media; it reaches into the heart of U.S. foreign policy. Just weeks ago, he re-emerged as a central actor behind Trump’s new Gaza initiative, a plan that has produced a fragile ceasefire, a prisoner exchange and a partial Israeli withdrawal................................