Charles Kushner and the MAGA Ambassador’s Playbook
The New Yorker · Lauren Collins ·
Since taking up his post in Paris, Kushner has become known for lobbing provocations onto France’s domestic scene. Lauren Collins reports on the tactics of the MAGA diplomat.
During previous Fourth of July celebrations at the Embassy, guests had mingled freely, but now a V.I.P. section had been installed toward the front of the garden, cordoned off by red velvet ropes. The imposition of such a hierarchy seemed an odd choice for an event celebrating the birth of one democracy on the soil of another—more bridge-and-tunnel than all-men-are-created-equal or liberté-égalité-fraternité. But it was in keeping with the Kushner family’s predilection for conducting public service as a private affair, and with Kushner’s role as an exemplar of MAGA-style diplomacy in Donald Trump’s second term.
Since taking up his post, in the summer of 2025, Kushner has gained a reputation for lobbing provocations onto France’s domestic scene at sensitive moments. Just six weeks after arriving in the country, he published an open letter to President Emmanuel Macron in the Wall Street Journal, accusing him of allowing France to become a bastion of antisemitism. Ambassadors are ostensibly bound by Article 41 of the 1961 Vienna Convention, which forbids them to interfere in their host country’s internal affairs. In response to the open letter, the French foreign minister, Jean-Noël Barrot, took the unusual step of issuing Kushner a summons, an official demand that he appear for a meeting. Kushner ignored the request.
About six months later, in February of 2026, a far-right activist died of a brain injury after being beaten by members of a far-left group following a street brawl in Lyon. As with the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the event prompted an onslaught of uninformed commentary and partisan distortion. French authorities urged people to avoid politicizing the incident while an investigation was under way, but Kushner’s office did not oblige. “Violent left-wing extremism is on the rise,” the American Embassy pronounced on X. In an unprecedented back-to-back censure, Barrot convoked Kushner again. When Kushner flouted that summons, too, Barrot temporarily barred him from meeting with members of the French government, citing his “apparent misunderstanding of the basic expectations of an ambassador.”
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