Rick Grinnell joins us to talk about the Trump administration's approach to foreign policy and why it's better than the one under Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris and why she's the worst foreign policy option in the history of the Democratic Party.
00:00:55.000It's the dog that didn't bark for the first two days of the DNC convention.
00:01:03.000What was that dog that didn't bark foreign policy?
00:01:07.000Not one mention of Gaza, Ukraine, Russia.
00:01:11.000They had five Jewish Americans on last night and they weren't even allowed to say Israel.
00:01:19.000I am delighted to have one of the great minds of the Trump administration with us this morning, Rick Grinnell, on foreign policy.
00:01:30.000Before we get started though, Rick did a beautiful chapter in my book, The New Maga Deal.
00:01:39.000Newmagadeal.com, you can check it out.
00:01:41.000But what I want to do to introduce Rick, because this is just pure Trump poetry, is just read briefly this passage real quick about the Trump America First policy doctrine.
00:01:57.000So the Trump America First doctrine forces policymakers to be clear eyed to see the world as it is, not as they think it ought to be.
00:02:08.000When our rhetoric surpasses our resources, when our policy exceeds our capabilities, when our expectations cloud our judgment, and when our desire to remake the world overtakes our duty to the American voter, that is when you get pointless and costly wars.
00:02:27.000That is when you send America's sons and daughters into harm's way without a plan for what comes next.
00:02:34.000That is when you make disastrous trade deals and sign dangerous nuclear agreements.
00:02:39.000That is when you get massive inequality and a divided society.
00:02:45.000That is when you get an immoral foreign policy.
00:02:49.000And that is Rick Grinnell at his absolutely most eloquent.
00:02:55.000Let's see if we can bring my brother Rick in.
00:03:04.000What I wanted to do with you this morning for the War Room is to talk broadly about the American First policy doctrine, which you were along with the president or the architect of.
00:03:16.000And then just work through the hot spots of the world and get your take on the difference between Kamala and Donald Trump on these things.
00:03:44.000And I'm glad that you reached out and asked me to write this, because I do think that the media misses the intellectualism of America first.
00:03:54.000They dismiss us as, you know, not well thought out and kind of a selfish foreign policy.
00:04:02.000When America puts itself first, the entire world benefits.
00:04:05.000And I speak to world leaders pretty regularly.
00:04:08.000I just got back from a eight day trip and saw several world leaders.
00:04:14.000And the reality is, is that they will tell us that the world was much better off when Donald Trump was in office because the rule of law was established.
00:04:25.000You had a respect for democracy, capitalism, all of those global rules.
00:04:30.000When America puts itself first, everyone else benefits.
00:04:34.000And we need a rules based system that is not based on selfish exploits.
00:04:40.000The United States of America does not go out and conquer other nations.
00:04:47.000One part of that passage that I think is the most poignant is talking about our rhetoric versus our resources.
00:04:55.000When Washington, D.C. becomes bloviating about what the world should be.
00:05:03.000And we don't have the capabilities to do a long and sustained effort and strategy to make that a reality.
00:05:11.000Then we're duping the American people.
00:05:14.000We have a thirty five trillion dollar national debt.
00:05:16.000And we're talking about two more wars under the Kamala Harris, Joe Biden regime.
00:05:22.000Europe right now is on fire with a war.
00:06:48.000I think Afghanistan was the second point to show Putin just how weak this team was.
00:06:54.000If you go back and I keep trying to get reporters to go back and look at the Senate Democrats on the Senate floor talking about dropping the Nord Stream 2 sanctions,
00:07:24.000The Wall Street Journal reported that the Ukrainians blew up the pipeline.
00:07:29.000I don't think it's too much to say that the first act of war was from Ukraine by blowing up the pipeline.
00:07:37.000And we we see the Europeans headed by Chancellor Merkel, who completely misjudged the Russians and the Russian strategy and Putin's offense.
00:07:48.000You ask yourself, why did Putin invade under Donald Trump?
00:07:53.000Because he realizes that there is a credible threat from Donald Trump, maybe not just military action, but certainly sanctions, tariffs, ruining of the economy.
00:08:05.000Donald Trump is very credible on these issues.
00:08:09.000Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are not credible.
00:08:12.000And that's why Putin endorsed Joe Biden and Kamala Harris for reelection when he said very specifically, I want predictability from the Americans.
00:09:27.000And Putin knows that Biden's very particular.
00:09:30.000But, Rick, you mentioned Afghanistan just in passing.
00:09:34.000Can you just go recall exactly the disaster that was Afghanistan that sent the weak signal to to Putin?
00:09:44.000Look, I was inside the Oval Office many times when President Trump was very frustrated that we weren't going fast enough winding down Afghanistan troops.
00:09:57.000And it was clear he wanted it to come to an end.
00:10:06.000But, you know, Peter, you know this about President Trump.
00:10:09.000When generals on the ground forcefully push back and say, we get your goal, Mr. President, and we're achieving it and we're going in that direction.
00:10:20.000But right now we can't go too fast because of the safety concerns and the collapse.
00:10:26.000And so they would push back on President Trump and say, go, we have to go a little slower.
00:11:00.000Joe Biden heard from the same generals to say, slow down.
00:11:04.000And he said, no, I want to be out by 9-11 for a political ribbon cutting ceremony.
00:11:10.000He didn't listen to those on the ground.
00:11:13.000He instead let politics go overboard and determine our Middle East policy.
00:11:21.000We have people who are concerned about Michigan, Pennsylvania on the Democratic side, the campaign officials who are determining foreign policy right now because that's how they stay in power.
00:12:23.000Look, President Trump was very clear about what needed to happen.
00:12:27.000I heard him say we need to get all of the equipment out.
00:12:32.000And if we can't get the equipment out, then we should disable it or destroy it because we're not going to leave it behind for the Taliban and others to take it or sell it or use it.
00:12:47.000And President Trump was was so detailed on this issue.
00:12:52.000I remember him in the Oval Office talking about the large tents that we bought and purchased.
00:13:02.000He knew exactly what those tents cost and he knew exactly what they look like.
00:13:07.000And he said, those are very useful tents.
00:13:31.000I mean, to give them all of that equipment and one of the best landing strips in the world, it seems just quintessential by Paris.
00:13:45.000And what's frightening to me, Rick, about about Harris is I can't think of a single presidential candidate, a major president who has less foreign policy experience than Kamala Harris.
00:14:04.000I mean, the only world leader she seems to have any relationship with is Benjamin Netanyahu.
00:14:10.000And all she wants to do is insult, insult the guy.
00:14:13.000Rick, when we come back from the break, I want to shift from Putin, Afghanistan, Ukraine, and get your analysis of the Gaza, Israeli, Iran hat trick there that threatens us literally with world war at this point because of the weakness of Kamala Harris, inexperience, and Joe Biden.
00:15:01.820They now want to use the technology behind Bitcoin for their own Orwellian purposes, their gold to dominate our economy by forcing everyone to use central bank digital currencies, which they control.
00:15:13.520Imagine your every purchase being called into question, your every move tracked, like you live in a communist country.
00:15:21.220This is not the America we want, but it is the America they want to create.
00:18:21.420What is Biden-Harris doing wrong, sir?
00:18:24.420Well, look, this is day 319 of having Americans held hostage in Gaza.
00:18:30.220And all this administration between Joe Biden and Kamala Harris can talk about is a ceasefire.
00:18:36.380Now, look, a ceasefire is an admission that you had a war, that you failed to keep the peace that Donald Trump handed you.
00:18:46.640And so I say to my Arab-American friends in Michigan and in Arizona, where we're really trying to push Donald Trump, I say to them, you know, you have to remember two things.
00:19:01.300And we have these top two messages, Peter, that we say to the evangelicals in America, to the pro-Israel Jewish Americans in America, and to Arab-Americans throughout this country.
00:19:16.540We say the same two talking points, unlike the Democrats who have to change their talking points according to who they're talking to.
00:19:24.960But our two points that President Trump is very proud of are simple.
00:19:47.440And make no mistake, the Democrats thought that we were being too harsh on Iran.
00:19:52.060They mocked President Trump, they mocked me, the media mocked us, for going out front and saying that no company should be doing business with Iran.
00:20:37.020So when you combine the sanctions relief, the cash and the credit, it's hundreds of billions of dollars given to the Islamic regime in Tehran.
00:21:21.020We literally have no one pushing peace deals.
00:21:23.640And the only thing that the media will ask a politician right now is, are you for more funding for the war or are you not for more funding the war?
00:22:11.140It's the Houthis in Yemen, all engaged in the destruction of Israel and attacks on American military personnel.
00:22:24.280And, Rick, for the life of me, I've never understood kind of the John Kerry, Kamala Harris, Joe Biden mentality of cozying up to Iran.
00:22:37.860I mean, I'm old enough to remember Jimmy Carter and the embassy and the first hostages that Iran took.
00:22:47.360What is the pulse in the Democrat Party?
00:22:51.060Are they simply trying to kowtow and cater to an Arab community that I think you rightly said would be much more responsive to a Trump message of peace in the Abraham Accords and all of that?
00:23:06.920What the hell is going on with these people?
00:23:43.880What you did not hear from Barack Obama last night is any analysis or apology about his cozying up to the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt.
00:23:52.620Much of our problems in the Middle East resulted around Barack Obama's failure in Egypt and then his cozying up to Bashar al-Assad in Syria.
00:24:04.000Remember, it was Assad in Syria who started to gas his people and the world saw it.
00:24:10.840The U.N. even issued a report saying, yep, Assad gassed his own people, used chemical weapons on his own people.
00:24:19.140Barack Obama beat his chest and said, if we found proof, then we would stop that.
00:24:23.760That's the red line that he would cross and we would act.
00:24:27.240There were multiple reports showing that Assad did it.
00:24:31.120The U.N. six months later issued a report, as I said.
00:24:34.580The U.N. coming around way later to say, yep, he did it.
00:24:39.040And still Barack Obama didn't do anything.
00:24:41.680Do you know that Assad is still in power in Syria?
00:24:44.860And between the Russians who are all over Syria and the Iranians all over Syria, we have another failed country that we don't talk about enough.
00:24:55.540And that directly is at the feet of Barack Obama.
00:24:58.420Now you add the Obama-Biden-Harris belief that Iran can be talked out of a nuclear weapon.
00:25:41.180And I'd be remiss here in not pointing out that when we have all of these multiple wars, it does come home to roost in the sense of if we look at our border crisis, which Kamala Harris refused to do anything about,
00:25:56.900a lot of the flow coming over across our southern border and sometimes our northern border is refugees from the wars that Kamala and Joe started.
00:26:08.700And I'm wondering how we should handle that.
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00:29:20.480Hey, Peter K. Navarro here in the War Room with Rick Grinnell.
00:29:28.480He does a beautiful chapter in the New Maga Deal, newmagadeal.com.
00:29:34.300To me, it was one of the keystone chapters of the book because it lays out in just really beautiful detail the America First foreign policy doctrine.
00:29:45.620We've gone from Russia, Ukraine to Gaza, Iran.
00:29:52.340We've got communist China building missiles, boats, carriers, subs, threatening Taiwan.
00:30:03.000What's your take on the current state of play in the South China Sea and how the inexperience of Kamala Harris and the mistakes of Biden have encouraged the communist Chinese like Russia?
00:30:15.800You know, Peter, I know you know this, but I spent eight years inside the UN Security Council at the UN as the top political advisor to four different ambassadors.
00:30:28.380And if you think about eight years at the UN where there's 193 countries maneuvering and you cover every single foreign policy issue, my eight years taught me a whole bunch.
00:30:40.800And one thing that I learned is that the mistake of the U.S. foreign policy is when you allow Russia and China to come together.
00:30:49.420And the basics are that they don't like each other.
00:30:54.820They don't have the same negotiating styles.
00:31:00.280And so we have to be very strategic about making sure that Russia and China are not collaborating together against the West, against the United States.
00:31:09.960And this to me is one of the fundamental flaws of the Biden team and Anthony Blinken.
00:31:15.740They just don't understand the basics of how to do that.
00:31:18.160Jake Sullivan is really good as an academic and a thinker, but he's terrible at actually doing practical foreign policy.
00:31:29.860He's crippled when there's different actions on the ground that he didn't anticipate in his white paper.
00:31:37.540And so I don't think we should ever have an academic to be a national security advisor ever again.
00:32:20.920And there's not much that this Biden-Harris-Blinken team is doing about it because they're so distracted.
00:32:29.420And so what we need to do is we need to have Donald Trump come back and give them some competition.
00:32:33.640You were a huge part of making sure that China felt the competition.
00:32:39.220And for me, that means continuing on the path of befriending and having better policies with India.
00:32:48.820I would put Turkey in there, a NATO ally since 1952.
00:32:53.420We need to have better economic relations with Turkey, which will only help us really blunt what's happening with the Chinese.
00:33:01.040I'd also put the Philippines in there, Indonesia, Singapore.
00:33:06.120There are many countries that we can grow our relations with, grow our trade policy with, that will also put the Chinese back on their feet.
00:33:17.480And lastly, I think we just got to think strategically about why we let the Chinese into the WTO more than 20 years ago.
00:33:26.560We thought Bill Clinton's articulation was that if we let the Chinese into the WTO, that they would move closer to a Western belief on democracy, capitalism and human rights.
00:33:39.780And by all practical purposes, it's gotten worse.
00:33:43.620Ever since we allowed the Chinese into the WTO, the situation in China has gotten worse.
00:33:50.440And let me just finish with one thought is that the Chinese have a real problem with the poor people in China and the middle class.
00:34:00.520They don't have enough information, the middle class, I call the Beijing soccer moms.
00:34:08.140They don't have enough information about what their government is actually doing to their children.
00:34:12.200For instance, with terrible environmental laws, many children have asthma.
00:34:19.840And if the soccer moms in Beijing realize that their child has asthma because of poor environmental laws, they're going to get angry.
00:34:30.440So we need to have an information war to really bring down this idea that the Chinese are controlling information to their people.
00:34:38.560And we need to pressure the United Nations that they can't be allowing the Chinese to pretend that they're a global power with a veto at the Security Council.
00:34:52.040Well, also at the same time, leading the G77 countries as developing nations and taking money from UNICEF and World Food Program and other UN programs because they're a developing nation.
00:35:08.360They're a superpower and they're a developing nation.
00:35:10.640They're getting money from the UN while also vetoing any policies at the UN.
00:35:15.780It's unacceptable and we have to do a better job.
00:35:18.360And Rick, one of those frightening things I ever saw, I went over to Geneva during the administration to negotiate a new postal agreement, basically, that stopped us from giving a bunch of money to China subsidizing the postal rights.
00:35:37.260But what was frightening was how big a mission they have in Geneva for the world, WTO, first of all, but also all these United Nations organizations they basically now control.
00:35:52.940I mean, and we don't do any of that kind of soft power stuff.
00:35:56.620The last thing, just in a minute, can you explain your comment about Germany being over a barrel on cars so people understand that relationship?
00:36:07.780I think because that's an important one.
00:36:10.460Well, just real quickly, when you and President Trump were squeezing China and trying to bring the world together to squeeze them,
00:36:17.260if you remember, Chancellor Merkel had announced that she was going to take 10 CEOs from Germany over to Beijing to sign agreements.
00:36:25.400Most of those were car companies to expand.
00:36:28.820I pushed Chancellor Merkel to say, now is not the time for our ally, Germany, to be going around our strategy of squeezing China.
00:36:38.160The world is starting to squeeze China.
00:36:39.820Why are you going in and signing deals?
00:36:43.040And you know what her response was to me?
00:36:45.800But, Ambassador, we've planned this trip for more than a year.
00:37:25.860Because she didn't like our trade policies, I think was the point.
00:37:29.540Rick, you are a patriot, you're a great American hero, and your kind of expertise is what we need in 2025 and what we don't have with Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Blinken, Jake Sullivan, and the clown show otherwise known as that administration.
00:37:51.560And it was interesting to me to see on the stage Barack Obama, Bill Clinton.
00:37:59.080I mean, these are people who got us into all the endless wars and the mess, and Bill Clinton got us into the WTO.
00:38:28.120In fact, if you've got that podcast thing up there for me, Control Room, I want you to put that graphic up now.
00:38:38.600Well, what we need to do, War Room Posse, is to, when you don't have time to watch the show live, obviously, you can get it on Memorex, on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts.
00:38:58.740But we're going to show you how to do that in this show, and we're going to have a graphic, a way you can scan it.
00:39:07.220And I'm stalling here a little bit, hoping Denver gets that up.
00:39:55.020And what Rick Grinnell just did in about 40 minutes for the War Room is offer you a doctoral seminar on the problems in foreign policy that have been created through Kamala Harris's total inexperience and Joe Biden's incompetence.
00:40:15.560And he's given you a window in the world of how.
00:40:57.340We've got the Download the War Room now on Apple Podcasts, that little scanner thing.
00:41:02.820You can do it with your PDF, your Apple phone or whatever.
00:41:08.020And, again, get this thing as one of your favorite shows and have it downloaded every day.
00:41:15.260And I would really appreciate it if you went and looked at what Rick Grinnell said and shared with some of your friends.
00:41:22.640What we're going to do at the top of the hour is we're going to have fresh – and I'm talking fresh right off the telephone – survey results from Rasmussen and Mark Mitchell.
00:41:38.540And we're going to go – and we're going to take our time doing this because there's a lot to unpack in the crosstabs.
00:41:44.700We're going to go through the battleground states, particularly Arizona, Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania,
00:41:56.560and see what the matchup is in a Harris-Trump race and then what happens when you throw Bobby Kennedy in the mix.
00:42:09.980Bobby Jr., if you're listening, brother, this is the time now to drop out of the race and endorse Trump.
00:42:20.680It's the smart thing to do for this country.
00:42:25.320Regrettably, in your view, your campaign just didn't get traction.
00:42:32.380You made some serious mistakes early on and not getting on the ballot as much as possible
00:42:36.920because you got so much opposition from the Democrats, not Trump.