President Trump dispatched special envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner (the president's son-in-law) to Russia and Ukraine over the weekend as part of ongoing efforts by the administration to bring peace between the two warring nations. "They're bringing with them a plan to end the war," Trump remarked when interacting with reporters in the Oval Office on Friday.
The duo first visited Russian President Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin on Saturday. One of the Russian negotiators, Yuri Ushakov, said after the meeting that Putin had held "extremely frank" talks with Witkoff and Kushner on how to end the war, with the Americans proposing a "number of ideas."
The envoys then traveled to Kyiv, where they met with Ukranian president Volodymyr Zelensky. Witkoff reported, "We've had very meaningful discussion, substantive, important, and we're very encouraged." A senior Ukraine official said much of the discussion was focused on "how to get through the winter and what can be done before then."
Witkoff and Kushner sat down with Zelensky on Sunday to answer questions from the press. One of those questions came from NBC News' Richard Engle, who snidely questioned the Americans like this: "You have been involved in numerous negotiations around the world. Why should people have any confidence in your capacity to succeed here?"
To which Kushner deftly replied that, first and foremost, the two were representing President Trump and "doing it the way that he wants to see these things done." Noting that "these are some of the hardest problem sets in the world," Kushner politely pointed out the previous administration – under whose watch the war began – hadn't even bothered to visit Russia.
He concluded that "if the answer was simple, then somebody would have solved it."
In other words, Kushner didn't fall into the trap Engle likely thought he was setting by insinuating the president's son-in-law wasn't qualified to be participating in such high-level negotiations. Perhaps Engle has never heard of the Abraham Accords?
Here's the exchange.
I thought @jaredkushner gave a spot on magnificent answer to the really nasty-toned question from @RichardEngel . Kudos to Jared 👏👏👏👏👏 pic.twitter.com/JNk6USUvqq
— Todd Headlee (@ToddHeadleeAZ) September 7, 2026
ENGEL: This is for Mr. Witkoff and Jared Kushner. You have been involved in numerous negotiations around the world. Why should people have any confidence in your capacity to succeed here? You were involved in the Gaza negotiations, but Gaza remains a wasteland. There's been really no progress there. Iran, you were involved in those negotiations. The war is still going on. You've been involved in several rounds of negotiations in this conflict. It's only getting more intense. So you're relaunching negotiations now. What's the likelihood they will succeed, when other negotiations you've been involved in have not?
KUSHNER: These are some of the hardest problem sets in the world, and I think that you have to try and you have to bring to it. Obviously, Steve and I bring different approaches to these things, but we work very well together as partners. But we're not bringing our approaches. We're really representing President Trump, and we're doing it the way that he wants to see these things done.
And working with President Trump the first term, obviously, we achieved a lot of unthinkable things, whether it was achieving the Abraham Accords, which nobody thought was possible. We achieved, the USMCA, the biggest trade deal history, made a great deal with China and the list just goes on and on. We just celebrated the World Cup in America. That was a deal that I led on President Trump's behalf, to win for America. The same thing with the Olympics that'll be coming up.
So, you have to take on hard things. The tone of your question was a little bit like: "Why haven't you done every single impossible thing possible?" We are very honored to be able to have the opportunity to work on these, under President Trump's leadership and we're very committed to giving it everything we can. And I think President Trump has a track record of doing impossible things.
I think the last administration, they didn't go to Russia. I mean, I think they had one visit with the CIA director. But, you know there's a war. I mean, every day there are soldiers on the front line from both sides, and they wanna go home to their families, and there are people in these cities who have bombs dropping, and their lives are very disrupted, and they wanna see that put to an end.
And so, if the answer was simple, then somebody would have solved it. But I think President Trump's general framework is that if something is worthy and important and will have a big impact he doesn't matter how much he'll get criticized by people in the press or different critics. He wants to go after it, and he's asked Steve and I to do that on his behalf, and we'll do our best to try to get an outcome. And so I know that if we don't try, we will not succeed, and nothing will change and it's just important to try, and that's what we're gonna try to do.
I can't guarantee that there will be success, but what I can promise, you and promise everyone here in Ukraine and even everyone in Russia is that on behalf of President Trump Steve and I are gonna be doing everything we can. We have been doing everything we can to try and find a way out of a mess that was created before President Trump's time which has had a huge toll. And so we're gonna do our best to try and make progress.
Engle seemed to think he was making some kind of "gotcha" moment by calling out the lack of a quick breakthrough on a war that started under Biden's watch and has raged for over four years. Instead, Kushner’s simple response shut him up: these are hard problems to solve, and not a thing will change if nobody tries.
Editor’s Note: Thanks to President Trump and his administration’s bold leadership, we are once again respected on the world stage, and our enemies are being put on notice.
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