Kushner's Next Act: Media Mogul, Backed by Gulf Cash
Jared Kushner, architect of the Abraham Accords and recipient of a cool $2 billion from Saudi Arabia for his private equity fund, Affinity Partners, is now playing kingmaker in Hollywood. His firm, along with sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi, are backing Paramount's hostile bid for Warner Bros. The regulatory filing helpfully notes they've 'agreed to forgo any
governance rights'—because who needs editorial control when you've got billions invested in the content itself? The mainstream media, ever vigilant, simply reports this as a business transaction, completely detached from the former White House senior advisor's past dealings. One might charitably assume this is just savvy investing. Or, one might recall Kushner's lucrative post-White House pivot,
where his 'deal-making' skills translated directly into vast sums from Gulf nations. It appears the 'new Middle East' isn't just about normalization; it's about media influence, secured quietly with non-voting shares. How convenient that the critical gaze of Hollywood's storytelling apparatus could now, inadvertently, benefit from the very regimes whose human rights records often fall short of
prime-time scrutiny.