Sen. J.D. Vance (D-Ohio) joins CNN's Jake Tapper to talk about his new book, "Out of the Box: Trump's Best Foreign Policy" and why he thinks President Trump is the best foreign policy in a generation.
00:02:20.000Endorsing President Trump, obviously his support was very helpful to us in both the primary and the general election in Ohio.
00:02:25.000But importantly, the case that I lay out here is it's really about policy.
00:02:29.000In particular, we often talk about Trump's domestic policy achievements, but the foreign policy is the most important part because that's where the blob is most corrupt.
00:02:38.000That's where they're most wrong, and that's where they're most destructive.
00:03:02.000They're obsessed with his style at the very same time that his substance is actually the most cautious and the most careful foreign policy we've had in this country in a generation.
00:03:18.000Since I've been an adult, you had two separate, two-term administrations, Bush and then Obama, start four separate wars, none of which were successful for this country.
00:03:28.000Trump comes in and actually one starts to decouple from China, another great foreign policy achievement.
00:03:33.000But more importantly, he doesn't start any new conflicts and he starts the process of diplomacy with these regimes that people said, you can't talk to these guys.
00:03:42.000And Trump came along and said, well, why can't you talk to them?
00:03:44.000It's sure as hell better than letting us completely stagnate our relationship with these regimes and potentially lead to further conflict down the road.
00:03:51.000So I think what he accomplished there is actually the most important part of his presidency.
00:03:55.000And by the way, it's why they hate him the most.
00:03:58.000If you really go to this, this is why the D.C. establishment hates the guy, because they make a lot of money from broken American foreign policy.
00:04:07.000If we can fix it, we'll save a lot of American lives. We'll also empty their pocketbooks.
00:04:11.000By the way, to support that, last night, Fareed Zakhar was on with Wolf Blitzer after Jake Tapper does his interview with Netanyahu.
00:04:20.000And they say about the Arab nations not really supporting the Palestinian state anymore because of the Abraham Accords.
00:04:59.000And yet all the people who for a generation supposedly say the right things have presided over one disaster after another.
00:05:07.000Why is it that America is so good at training people who are very careful in what they say?
00:05:13.000They stand up and they throw out slogans about freedom and democracy and all these other things.
00:05:18.000And yet when it comes to actually supporting freedom and democracy here at home, when it comes to not getting us involved in disasters, they fail miserably.
00:05:52.000Why is it the people in the United States – the U.S. trains for leadership are so careful with their words yet so reckless with their actions?
00:06:02.000Well, what I mean by that is that we have an entire apparatus.
00:06:05.000All of our elite universities, fellowships at the State Department, at the Pentagon, these things train America's smart young people for leadership.
00:06:12.000And what I've seen is a lot of these guys, they are smart but they become reckless and they become boring and conventional.
00:06:19.000And right now, boring, conventional, and reckless go all hand in hand in the American foreign policy establishment.
00:06:25.000Nobody is asking – I mean this is really about Ukraine because that's the major foreign policy crisis at the time.
00:06:31.000Nobody is asking, what does this look like if we keep escalating?
00:06:35.000Why is it Boris Johnson is on Fox News this morning talking about the importance of the Ukraine war when his own people can't afford food?
00:07:04.000You say – but here's – talk about these catastrophes.
00:07:06.000I prefer – that would be Senator Vance – a different kind of statesmanship, one that stands athwart the crowd, reminding leaders in both parties that the United – the U.S. national interest must be pursued ruthlessly but also carefully with strong words but great restraint.
00:07:25.000Well, let's just compare and contrast Donald Trump with John Bolton, a person very well respected in the D.C. foreign policy establishment who, as far as I can tell, his main foreign policy objective is to start a nuclear war with half the nations in the world, right?
00:07:39.000This guy is respected and Donald Trump is the reckless one?
00:08:17.000You see what happens to these countries.
00:08:19.000You see when it's not thought through when you talk about people at Princeton and Harvard and Yale and Georgetown and all the cocktail parties.
00:08:44.000And I remember being in Iraq and thinking to myself, you know, doing security for the Iraqi poll workers and thinking, these people don't want Jeffersonian democracy.
00:08:52.000Why the hell are we trying to force it down their throats?
00:08:54.000And why are we spending America's best and brightest to do it?
00:08:57.000It doesn't make any sense, but again, that's what passes.
00:08:59.000That's what passes for statesmanship in 2023 in Washington, D.C., is throwing America's best and brightest at fake problems and problems we're never going to solve.
00:09:09.000Let's talk about this Ukraine problem because you've had – now you've got battle tanks.
00:09:12.000We've never had a national debate about that.
00:09:14.000Next thing you know, we're given battle tanks that got – on the 80th anniversary of the German army surrendering at Stalingrad, you've got German tanks with iron crosses going to go across the border.
00:09:37.000Is it time for the Senate or some – a couple of people stand up and say, force Biden to come with a war powers resolution and lay out the plan, lay out the objectives, lay out the strategy, what we're prepared to do, and then let's vote.
00:09:55.000If Ukraine is as important as the Biden administration and way too many Republicans say it is, then why isn't Europe stepping up and doing its job?
00:10:05.000Why are we footing the majority of this bill even today?
00:10:08.000The argument often made is that if Putin marches through Ukraine, then he won't stop until he reaches Berlin.
00:10:13.000Well, number one, isn't that the problem of the Germans?
00:10:16.000And number two, the Germans sure as hell aren't acting like they're worried about Vladimir Putin.
00:10:20.000Why are we so worried about what he can do instead of worrying about our own national interests?
00:10:25.000Compare and contrast this to the defense of Taiwan right now and the concern of that.
00:10:30.000It's night and day because Taiwan is such a critical part, frankly, because of mistakes that you were warning about 30 years ago.
00:10:37.000We offshored our entire computer chip supply chain to East Asia.
00:10:41.000China's much more an important foe and Taiwan's a much more important part for us strategically.
00:10:46.000Another point here, Steve, the Biden administration is telling us they're sounding the alarm that we are spinning down our munitions such that we're going to have to choose between arming the Ukrainians or arming our own troops.
00:10:58.000What happens, God forbid, if the Chinese invade Taiwan?
00:11:01.000Can we even invade Taiwan with our defense industrial capacity where it is right now?
00:11:06.000I don't know the answer to that, but I don't like the fact that it's uncertain.
00:11:09.000The Financial Times today says Brussels pressed to rein in promises fueling Ukraine's fast track to EU hopes.
00:12:24.000What do the people in Ohio think about this entire situation?
00:12:26.000The economy, what Biden's doing, and tie it to the national security aspects.
00:12:32.000I hear mixed views from the people of Ohio, right?
00:12:34.000Most people probably agree with my view.
00:12:36.000They don't know why this is such a main focus.
00:12:38.000Look, a lot of people have a lot of sympathy for the Ukrainians, that the country should not have been invaded.
00:12:44.000And a lot of people in Ohio feel that very personally.
00:12:47.000You've got a big Ukrainian population in Ohio.
00:12:49.000But I think even people who are sympathetic with the plight of the Ukrainians like I am, they don't think that this is America's main concern.
00:12:56.000There's obviously the border dynamic to this where we have a completely open American southern border, and yet we have a bipartisan consensus that a border 6,000 miles away is the most important thing for our country.
00:13:08.000So it's definitely a lot of us are looking around and saying, what the hell are we really focused on?
00:13:13.000Shouldn't our American government do America's job?
00:15:00.000Will the lack of a red wave during the midterms lead to a more emboldened Biden, more wasteful government spending, higher taxes, a deepening of inflation?
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00:16:25.000You were absolutely essential in the primary, in the general, but in the primary, that very tough primary of helping J.D. get over the top.
00:16:32.000And this is everything you and I talked about of of accomplishing.
00:16:44.000And for the war room posse, you understand we talked about this like the day after the next first thing said, hey, have they gone to the beach house?
00:17:09.000You know, I think it's his full set of papers, right, his full document file that needs to be at both University of Delaware as well as at Penn that needs to be investigated here.
00:17:19.000So, you know, this is obviously an ongoing story, continues to be incredibly alarming.
00:17:24.000And remember, you know, the corporate media keeps trying to gaslight the American people and say, oh, there are differences here, meaning that Biden's situation is not as is not as bad as Trump's.
00:17:34.000The inverse, of course, is true, because President Trump, as president of the United States, has the legal unitary power to declassify whatever he wants, whenever he wants.
00:17:44.000None of that power rested in certainly not in Senator Joe Biden nor in Vice President Joe Biden.
00:17:51.000And yet we know these papers go all the way back to his senatorial days, up through his vice presidential days.
00:17:56.000So, you know, once again, it's another troubling revelation, not surprising from somebody who really personifies permanent Washington.
00:18:03.000Remember, Joe Biden was elected to the Senate in 1972.
00:18:07.000OK, we are now past a half century mark of this man operating in the Washington sewer and doing so largely for his own benefit and the benefit of his family, which acted a lot more like a cartel than a legitimate family.
00:18:21.000You very early on and for the audience, you know, J.D.'s a beloved character, but so are you.
00:18:30.000And here's one thing is that Cortez is great about picking talent, but it's particularly about talent that stands for something.
00:18:38.000And you saw this in J.D. Vance very early on and gave up so much of your time to do that.
00:18:42.000When you see this Wall Street Journal piece, quite frankly, I'm shocked.
00:18:45.000I am kind of shocked the Wall Street Journal published this policy joke because the Wall Street Journal op ed section is is the is the thought center of the neocons.
00:18:55.000Is it not right? Steve Cortez, give us your thought about this piece and tie it back to what you saw in J.D.
00:19:00.680And you went around Ohio with him nonstop barnstorming in that amazing three week run up to the primary.
00:19:06.000Yeah, listen, thrilled to see J.D. Vance in the United States Senate and so far operating just as we all believed and hoped that he would as a patriotic populist advocate, as a real America first fighter.
00:19:19.000One of the things that I saw in him earliest and thankfully the people of Ohio saw in him is that he is willing to buck the establishment, even though he is extremely close to the establishment because of his life experiences.
00:19:31.000Right. Because he is this amazing Horatio Alger story, somebody who came from a troubled home, but found his way largely through the love of a devoted grandmother in the U.S. Marine Corps,
00:19:41.000found his way all the way to Yale Law School and then significant success in business, a lot of fame because of his book and the subsequent movie about his book, Hillbilly Elegy.
00:19:50.800So he's somebody who was intimately aware and conversant with the establishment, yet rejected the precepts of the establishment and saw, I think largely because he had lived in some ways these two separate lives,
00:20:02.880saw the pain and the agony that was inflicted upon regular working class Americans by the ruling class for their own self-aggrandizement.
00:20:13.240So I saw in him, you know, the perfect person in terms of both his character and life experiences, but then also in terms of the policy applications,
00:20:19.800the fact that he was willing to stand up and say, wait a minute, is intervening Ukraine, is escalating this war really in American interest?
00:20:27.180He was willing to say that way before it was popular. Now, I think it is getting to be a much more accepted ideal in American life right now,
00:20:35.680and certainly at least on the political right. But it was a very lonely position.
00:20:39.200There were only a few people there. Steve, you were one of them. J.D. Vance was one of them in those very early days.
00:20:44.240And of course, both of you, as former officers of this country, people have worn the uniform of the United States, risked your lives to defend our freedom.
00:20:50.740Both of you had authority even beyond other political analysts when you said, wait a second, does this march toward escalation really serve the interests of the United States?
00:21:00.720So that's really mainly what attracted me about him, other than his personal life story, his character.
00:21:06.100And I was I'm absolutely honored and thrilled to have played a supporting role in getting him elected.
00:21:10.380And by the way, there are others like him, thankfully, in the U.S. Senate.
00:21:13.320There's a crop of young patriotic populace who I think are starting to change that body.
00:21:18.400People like Katie Britt and Senator Schmidt from Missouri.
00:21:21.900I hope there's going to be more added to those ranks.
00:21:24.200I think Jim Banks will be one of those in the upcoming election.
00:21:27.060New declared candidate who's been endorsed by both now President Trump as well as J.D. Vance.
00:21:31.400So this this movement continues to grow.
00:21:34.140And a lot of us in the movement, in the America First movement, we understandably get very, very frustrated with particularly the Senate.
00:21:42.280When you see people like Lindsey Graham, these kinds of globalist corporatists, obviously Mitch McConnell.
00:21:46.640Well, the frustration is palpable at times and very understandable.
00:21:50.700But let's also take solace and be encouraged by the fact that there are young patriotic populace who are already there or I think on their way there in the election in 2024.
00:22:00.760And that our movement is still very young in the case of J.D. Vance, literally young, but also young as a political movement.
00:22:12.260So people should know Cortez is not just a capital markets guy, but one of the most sophisticated people about narrative and political messaging.
00:22:20.480It's the reason he was first brought on as a Trump surrogate into the Trump campaign back in 15 and 16 because of his understanding of this.
00:22:29.700But, Steve, you've got to help me out here.
00:22:31.200You know, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, these main battle tanks were everything.
00:22:35.920And it kind of came like, boom, like a summer storm.
00:22:38.240All of a sudden, Germany's committing tanks, you know, America's committing tanks, which means a whole new – in the war, all of a sudden you started to hear, yeah, this is all for a major offensive.
00:22:47.400They're going to totally pivot, major offensive, kind of maybe give up Bakhmut, the seizure, pivot, summer, in the spring, massive offensive maneuver warfare, combined arms to Crimea.
00:23:00.200And then they go, oh, by the way, we're going to need combat air patrol for that, closer, so we need F-16s.
00:23:07.660And, of course, my favorite headline, you know, Lockheed announces – Lockheed announces they're starting production runner, F-16s, even without a purchase order.
00:23:16.060Then all of a sudden, Biden, no – well, maybe no F-16s.
00:23:19.940Then today, you look at the Mac daddy, and if Denver could put that up on Drudge, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, now you see – which we've been saying is going to happen.
00:23:27.860But now all of a sudden, there's a story, oh, well, you know, the Russians are actually massing, I don't know, 700,000 new troops.
00:23:34.680They're conscripting on the border, and they're going to roll in with a massive winter offensive.
00:24:07.280First, make the case to the American people why this battle, okay, this Black Sea battle, this ancient ethnic rivalry that has gone on from time in memoriam, make the case to us why this matters to us and why the American people have a vital national interest in what has been an often moving border of eastern Ukraine.
00:24:27.900Then, secondly, make the case of, okay, if it does matter to us, what is the strategic plan, what are going to be the tactics of the United States to achieve this supposedly massive goal, this supposedly massively consequential goal for the United States?
00:24:43.620And then, thirdly, how are we going to pay for it, okay?
00:24:46.540That would be what a serious country would do.
00:24:49.420It would be what a real administration would do.
00:24:51.340We don't have that, unfortunately, in the White House right now.
00:24:55.580Instead, we get ridiculous platitudes saying that we're fighting for democracy or, you know, for the ideals of democracy or that we're somehow fighting to prevent another World War II, even though the situation is in no sense analogous to World War II.
00:25:10.040Not to mention, if it were, Europe, to J.D. Vance's point, Europe should be far more alarmed than the United States, and that is not the case right now.
00:25:38.940But, you know, getting back to the plan, Joe Biden had the decency to go to the American people, and not just Biden, the Republicans as well, many of them every bit as pro-escalation as he is, people like Lindsey Graham, have the decency to make the case, not with platitudes, okay, with reality, with strategic reality, to make the case to the American people why this is important, how you propose that we pursue these supposedly massive goals.
00:26:02.700And then how are we going to pay for it?
00:26:05.400Because, Steve, even if I were to grant, which I certainly don't, but even if I were to grant that this is massively important to the United States, how are we going to pay for it?
00:26:15.360We are borrowing mountains of money that we are sending over to Ukraine, which only exacerbates the inflationary quagmire that we are currently suffering here in the United States.
00:26:26.560The American people cannot afford the essentials of life, and yet we are borrowing mountains of money to send over to Ukraine to escalate a battle in which the United States has no discernible U.S. national security interest.
00:26:40.660By the way, Steve, we're going to take a break.
00:28:26.180After I've stolen the title, borrowed against it, or sold the property, it's 60 to 90 days for that person to even figure out that they're the victim of this crime.
00:29:15.640Are you shocked at your latest utility bills?
00:29:24.020Well, if you are, you're hardly alone.
00:29:26.220But for millions of Americans, it's an absolute crisis because they are literally having their power shut off.
00:29:32.180Let's look at the numbers in a chalk talk.
00:29:34.320From the Chicago Sun-Times data, last year, January through October, the most recent month we have, 1.5 million Americans had their power shut off.
00:31:24.300But that's what the numbers reveal, like the numbers that I just showed during the chalk talk.
00:31:28.180And by the way, I'm being very careful there because I always cite things.
00:31:31.860I always make sure that my data is correct.
00:31:33.600The actual number is probably worse than that because only 30 states out of the 50 states actually report this data.
00:31:40.160And again, we only have that data through October.
00:31:42.480So the reality is probably closer to about 2 million households, not people, 2 million households in the United States had their power shut off last year.
00:31:52.500And it's only going to get worse, Steve, because there was, of course, a moratorium on power shutoffs during the pandemic.
00:51:04.660She is a total committed globalist, somebody who served on the board of directors of Boeing.
00:51:09.660She is unfortunately representative of the terrible politicians from the great state of South Carolina.
00:51:15.840It's an absolute crime that the wonderful people of that red state, the wonderful salt of the earth South Carolinians, are represented by so many charlatans, unfortunately.
00:51:26.160And we can get into that maybe at another segment.
00:51:28.700But chief among them, their former governor, Nikki Haley.
00:51:31.260So, hey, you know, in a sense, I'm almost glad that she's entering the primary because, fine, it will give us a chance to highlight the failures of the globalists, to highlight her own hypocrisy, her own duplicity.
00:51:42.740And yes, to your point, her unbridled ambition that is not bound in any sense in patriotism or principle, but only in the pursuit of power.