The Ben Shapiro Show - The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

00:00:00.000 These poor people, those that are still alive, will have been held longer than the Iranians held our hostages in 1979 with the Carter to Reagan transition. 0.63

00:00:12.000 That's totally unacceptable.

00:00:13.000 And I think, writ large, there has never been enough consequences.

00:00:17.000 And that's what we need to be talking about with these people.

00:00:20.000 You take an American, you illegally detain them if you're a nation state or if you're a terrorist, you hold them hostage. 0.61

00:00:26.000 There is going to be all hell to pay.

00:00:28.000 There are going to be nothing but consequences for you financially and maybe even a bullet in your damn forehead if you take an American. 1.00

00:00:35.000 Period.

00:00:37.000 This week on the Sunday special, Representative Mike Waltz of Florida joins us to discuss America First Foreign Policy as President Trump's designation for the National Security Advisor in the new administration.

00:00:46.000 While Waltz is in the throes of planning for the transition, he shares his foreign policy priorities and proposes a vision for the revival of American strength abroad.

00:00:53.000 Mike Waltz is a Green Beret who served as an army officer in some of the most volatile regions of the world, deploying multiple times to the Middle East and Africa and earning himself four Bronze Stars for his exceptional achievements.

00:01:03.000 He then continued to serve the public after his military career, becoming the first Green Beret elected to Congress in 2018, where he quickly became known for his deep understanding of national defense issues.

00:01:13.000 In today's episode, Mike Walz shares his perspective on the fate of NATO, why domestic American energy is an essential component of American foreign policy.

00:01:20.000 He also discusses what Middle East diplomacy might look like after the Abraham Accords and how outer space and cybersecurity are part of his policy calculus as well.

00:01:27.000 Representative Mike Walsh's profound experience and commitment to the defense of American interests abroad will be critical to the success of the next administration.

00:01:34.000 Don't miss this important conversation on this latest episode of the Sunday special.

00:01:38.000 Congressman, thanks so much for stopping by.

00:01:50.000 Yeah, sure.

00:01:50.000 I really appreciate it.

00:01:51.000 Great to be with you.

00:01:52.000 A lot going on.

00:01:53.000 Yeah, just a little.

00:01:55.000 So tell me about what your day looks like now.

00:01:58.000 So obviously you're still presiding over what you had in Congress.

00:02:02.000 I mean, you had that whole role, and now you're moving into the NSA role.

00:02:05.000 And it turns out that, I was joking with you a moment ago, that this is like that meme of the dog looking around, everything's on fire.

00:02:12.000 The world's on fire pretty much everywhere.

00:02:14.000 So what does your day look like?

00:02:15.000 So I thought I was already kind of in fourth gear on the Armed Services Committee and a Subcommittee Chairman there of Readiness on Intel, the Intelligence Committee in the House, the Foreign Affairs Committee, the Oversight Committee, and then I had this little thing called the Assassination Task Force.

00:02:33.000 You know, added on as an additional duty, but since President Trump gave me the honor of nominating me as his national security advisor, I found three more gears that I didn't know I had, and working with a man that is in 10th gear.

00:02:51.000 Hitting the ground running.

00:02:52.000 I've never seen anything like him.

00:02:54.000 His engine just does not stop.

00:02:57.000 And part of it's keeping up with him.

00:03:00.000 Part of it's building the team.

00:03:02.000 And part of it is really having a lot of conversations about how we're going to conform the system to his style.

00:03:08.000 Frankly, I think some of my predecessors, who were great, tried to conform him to the national security apparatus.

00:03:16.000 And that just...

00:03:17.000 Did not work for a lot of reasons.

00:03:19.000 And then coordinating with the fantastic team that he's putting together between Pam Bondi and Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard and crew to really make sure we are all on the same page with him going forward.

00:03:34.000 So it's a lot And it's not exactly like, as you said, the world is going to sit back and wait for us to get this kind of all together and have a transition with the Biden people.

00:03:47.000 as we just saw with Syria, the world continues to spin. 1.00

00:03:52.000 One of the fascinating things that's happened here is that, I mean, internationally, President Trump is already being treated as the president.

00:03:59.000 I mean, just the way that the world is reacting to the incoming administration, it is very clear that they are looking to January 20th, understanding that a change is coming in terms of America's approach to the world.

00:04:10.000 You saw it when President Trump went to Notre Dame, and basically he was being treated as already the president of the United States in a lot of ways.

00:04:17.000 This transition process has moved lightning fast.

00:04:20.000 So what has that been like for you on sort of day-to-day?

00:04:23.000 Well, look, I want to be clear, and I've said this multiple times publicly, our adversaries should not see this as a moment of opportunity.

00:04:32.000 You can't play mom against dad.

00:04:34.000 You can't play the administrations off from each other.

00:04:37.000 I'm in regular contact with my counterpart, Jake Sullivan.

00:04:41.000 We don't agree on all things, by no means.

00:04:44.000 But we are talking.

00:04:45.000 We are coordinating.

00:04:47.000 And we'll continue to do that all the way through January 20th.

00:04:51.000 Yeah, look, I mean, it's just kind of a statement of common sense.

00:04:55.000 There's only one president at a time.

00:04:57.000 The world is still dealing with this administration, but they obviously are looking to President Trump and seeing how he responds to all things.

00:05:04.000 And on some things, he absolutely wanted to make his voice known, like the truth that came out on the hostages.

00:05:12.000 Enough is enough.

00:05:13.000 By the time January 20th comes around, these poor people, those that are still alive, will have been held longer than the Iranians held our hostages in 1979 with the Carter to Reagan transition. 0.92

00:05:28.000 That's totally unacceptable.

00:05:30.000 And I think writ large, there has never been enough consequences.

00:05:33.000 And that's what we need to be talking about with these people.

00:05:37.000 You take an American, you illegally detain them if you're a nation state or if you're a terrorist, you hold them hostage. 0.61

00:05:43.000 There is going to be all hell to pay.

00:05:45.000 There are going to be nothing but consequences for you financially and maybe even a bullet in your damn forehead if you take an American, period. 1.00

00:05:53.000 And so that the next time you think about it, You know what?

00:05:57.000 A lot of these groups are going to say, whoa, it's just not worth it under Donald Trump.

00:06:02.000 They'll go try to mess with America somewhere else, but not when it comes to taking our people. 0.94

00:06:08.000 Enough is enough, and I think that truth spoke for itself.

00:06:12.000 One of the things that's been fascinating with President Trump, and this has been true since he was running in 2015-2016, is all the attempts to sort of define what a Trump doctrine would look like.

00:06:21.000 And the truth is that it seems to me from the outside that the Trump doctrine has always been, certainly was in his first term, and I think continuing on to his second term, fairly simple.

00:06:28.000 I mean, he has suggested that it's peace through strength, and it is also that if you screw with America, you're going to F around and find out.

00:06:34.000 It's going to cost.

00:06:35.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:06:36.000 And he is perfectly willing to use leverage.

00:06:38.000 He is perfectly willing to use threats and imprecations.

00:06:40.000 And he's perfectly willing to build up the military such that those threats of force are credible.

00:06:45.000 And he's willing to use other methods as well, ranging from tariffs to economic sanctions, in order to achieve America's interests.

00:06:50.000 I'm always sort of puzzled by folks who find his foreign policy mysterious.

00:06:53.000 It's actually the most transparent foreign policy I think I've ever seen in my life.

00:06:56.000 I just think him as a person and as a president, it's been transparent.

00:06:59.000 But, you know, just one more thing on the hostage piece, right?

00:07:02.000 Whether it...

00:07:04.000 I mean, you name the bad actor.

00:07:07.000 All they've seen is upside from taking our people, right?

00:07:11.000 And so what's the incentive?

00:07:12.000 Take more people and get more for it.

00:07:15.000 We need them to see nothing but downside.

00:07:17.000 And we are going to be sure they see nothing but downside.

00:07:20.000 President Trump's a dealmaker.

00:07:22.000 He's a business guy.

00:07:23.000 He understands incentives.

00:07:25.000 And if the bad guys are incentivized to take more because they keep getting more, then they're going to keep doing it.

00:07:31.000 If the bad guys feel nothing but cost and pain for taking our people, they're going to stop doing it.

00:07:36.000 This isn't, as you just said, this isn't overly complicated grand Kissingerian theory here.

00:07:43.000 It's about costs and consequences and incentives.

00:07:46.000 And then on the broader side, You know, kind of Trump foreign policy or Trump approach.

00:07:51.000 It is constantly.

00:07:52.000 Bottom line up front, what is in America's interest?

00:07:55.000 What is America getting out of this?

00:07:57.000 What is America having to give up to get this? 0.98

00:08:01.000 And that's with our, look, we can be friends and allies and have tough conversations, whether that's on trade or whether that's on some geostrategic issue like, you know, the South China Sea.

00:08:12.000 And then finally, look, he sees our biggest lever.

00:08:17.000 It's our economy and in our markets, right?

00:08:19.000 Of course, we have to have a big stick.

00:08:21.000 Of course, we have to have a military that I don't know is actually focused on lethality and not social justice, and that is capable of stepping in when needed.

00:08:31.000 But his first go-to is going to be, hey, let's resolve this economically.

00:08:37.000 Let's resolve this diplomatically.

00:08:39.000 Let's resolve this with thing that most countries care about, which is their wallets.

00:08:44.000 And then we'll talk about if we need to step in with any type of military force.

00:08:49.000 And when we do, like the Soleimani hit, it's going to be precise, it's going to be very little collateral damage, and it's going to be strategic.

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00:10:03.000 So I want to kind of do a world tour with you because, as I say, you're stepping into just a world that is on fire in a wide variety of spheres.

00:10:10.000 So why don't we start the Middle East, since obviously that is sort of first and foremost in everybody's mind, given the Assad regime falling.

00:10:16.000 That appears to be the sort of side effect of Israel having completely destroyed so many of Iran's proxies in the region, which were basically holding up Assad's regime.

00:10:25.000 Hezbollah in Syria was holding up Assad's regime.

00:10:28.000 Israel destroyed Hezbollah in Lebanon.

00:10:30.000 They interdicted enormous amounts.

00:10:31.000 And the Russians too.

00:10:32.000 The Russians as well.

00:10:34.000 And I want to kind of save that part of the conversation for the Ukraine part because that is the other part of it for sure.

00:10:34.000 With Assad uniquely.

00:10:40.000 Assad was being held up by, on the one hand, the Iranians. 0.99

00:10:42.000 On the other side, the Russians. 0.96

00:10:43.000 Israel destroys the Iranian axis, moving all the way from Iranian territory all the way to the Mediterranean Sea via Lebanon, then curving around into the Hamas areas and all the way down to Yemen with the Houthis.

00:10:53.000 The situation in Syria now is devolving into what will probably be some sort of prolonged civil war partition.

00:11:01.000 That's what it appears to be.

00:11:03.000 What do you think is the future in Syria?

00:11:05.000 And also, why should Americans care?

00:11:07.000 Should Americans care?

00:11:08.000 What exactly should America's role be in a place like Syria that's been a mess forever and will likely continue to be a mess going forward? 1.00

00:11:14.000 Well, talk about the Iran piece in a moment.

00:11:16.000 But on Syria, just because it's kind of top of mind right now, I want to be crystal clear about that.

00:11:23.000 America's interests here are the tens of thousands of ISIS fighters that are holed up right now, thanks to the actions President Trump took In his first term, remember the ISIS caliphate, attacks all over Europe, inspired attacks across the United States.

00:11:40.000 I mean, they were dominating a space the size of Texas across the Middle East.

00:11:46.000 This was Osama bin Laden and al-Baghdadi's grand dream that was actually realized, and it was horrific.

00:11:53.000 President Trump cleaned it up, but the simmering leftover peace was now literally tens of thousands of fighters and families that are sitting in prison camps, Guarded by our friends, the Kurds, supported by us, and we can't have that unleash again.

00:12:08.000 That's our key interest.

00:12:09.000 Number one, ISIS. Number two, Israel and its borders. 0.78

00:12:12.000 They're taking aggressive action right now.

00:12:14.000 They took the rest of Golan, finally, and are hitting key sites that we don't want following into terrorist hands, like chemical weapons factories, like missile factories, things like that.

00:12:27.000 Yeah, yeah, right.

00:12:27.000 They destroyed the Air Force.

00:12:29.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:12:30.000 So to keep that at bay.

00:12:32.000 And then thirdly, look, there's this dynamic with our Arab partners there that we just have to keep an eye on.

00:12:38.000 So President Trump is absolutely right.

00:12:40.000 His mandate, overwhelmingly, was do not drag us into Middle Eastern wars.

00:12:44.000 We do not need American boots running around Syria in any way, shape, or form.

00:12:48.000 But we're keeping an eye on those things.

00:12:51.000 ISIS, Israel's border, and kind of the broader dynamic with our Gulf allies.

00:12:55.000 And all of this has been unleashed because of what Israel and its leadership under Bibi Netanyahu did to Hezbollah, the pager and walkie-talkie op.

00:13:06.000 There's going to be some amazing movie about that one day.

00:13:10.000 I think one of the gutsiest, most effective covert action ops in modern history.

00:13:16.000 Because of that, taking down Hezbollah that everybody said couldn't be done and would be too provocative, exposing Iran's air defenses so that they literally are naked right now and on their back foot. 0.89

00:13:28.000 And then importantly, I think that's being overlooked, is hitting their finances across the region and the money that has been flowing out of Tehran into Beirut, into its proxies in Syria and elsewhere.

00:13:42.000 And I hope all of this has Hamas so isolated They really thought the cavalry was coming from the north with Hezbollah. 0.99

00:13:49.000 Now that that is shown not to be true, Hamas has every exit blocked except one, and that's to release our hostages if you want to live. 0.54

00:14:00.000 You mentioned Iran.

00:14:01.000 The future of what happens in Iran is very unclear at this point.

00:14:04.000 Obviously, they had this sort of Octopus-like terror network that was all over the Middle East.

00:14:10.000 All of those arms have now been chopped off, essentially, with the possible exception of the Houthis, who I think will be finished by probably the Saudis in the future.

00:14:18.000 With all of that being the case, and with the Trump administration...

00:14:21.000 The Houthis are still an outstanding issue. 1.00

00:14:21.000 That's fair. 1.00

00:14:23.000 They definitely are.

00:14:25.000 And the Biden administration handled that in a particularly egregious way.

00:14:29.000 I guarantee one thing you're going to see is a redesignation of them for what they are as a terrorist organization.

00:14:36.000 And I'm standing on the House floor month after month.

00:14:40.000 As the Democrats were just railing on the Saudis, railing on the Trump administration, right?

00:14:45.000 You know, Yemen, Yemen, Yemen.

00:14:47.000 And it was absolutely a humanitarian crisis, but I don't see a lot of them.

00:14:53.000 I think there's maybe been one or two that kind of said, yeah, maybe we were wrong on that one.

00:14:57.000 Yeah, exactly.

00:14:58.000 It's insane.

00:14:59.000 They're still holding up shipping in the Red Sea.

00:15:02.000 Enormous amounts of shipping are now going around the Horn of Africa.

00:15:04.000 Talk about an inflationary action, but 80% of shipping is having to divert all the way around South Africa, so the Suez Canal didn't exist.

00:15:12.000 Exactly.

00:15:12.000 I mean, so hopefully the maximum pressure campaign that President Trump has already talked about, exerting economically with regard to Iran, is going to starve the Houthis of funds, for example.

00:15:20.000 And there's the question of the Iranian regime itself.

00:15:22.000 The United States, President Trump has made clear, we have no interest in war in Iran.

00:15:26.000 We're not interested in getting into a shooting battle with Iran. 0.99

00:15:29.000 With that said, the reality is that that regime looks like a paper tiger in the same way the Assad regime looks like a paper tiger and falls apart pretty quickly. 0.64

00:15:38.000 And so, you know, Israel obviously has a very strong interest in preventing the development of nuclear weapons.

00:15:43.000 And the Iranians, it looks like, are going to have a choice, which is they can try to rush forward toward a nuclear weapon and turn themselves into North Korea, which is a pariah state with a nuclear weapon just maintaining its rule through sheer terrorism against its population. 0.91

00:15:56.000 Or, theoretically, they could sign a deal or they can get hit.

00:15:59.000 I mean, and if they choose the former path seeking nuclear weapons, I think there is very little doubt that Israel is going to be on the preemptive side of this ledger after October 7th. 0.85

00:16:08.000 Yeah, is this a moment where the Ayatollah, who is not in good health and is looking at his own secession, Is this a moment where they say, we are completely exposed, therefore we rush towards a nuke?

00:16:21.000 Or is this a moment they say, we are completely exposed, don't provoke the Israelis by rushing towards a nuke? 0.60

00:16:28.000 And we'll see which way they go.

00:16:32.000 And then I don't want to get too much in revealing our cards and revealing our hand, but we're watching.

00:16:40.000 Very closely.

00:16:41.000 What President Trump has been clear on is the other thing they care the most about is their cash.

00:16:46.000 And I mean, they went from exporting 4 million barrels a day to less than 400,000 under the maximum pressure campaign.

00:16:55.000 And now they're right back to where they were.

00:16:57.000 And they're selling 90% of that oil to China.

00:17:00.000 And as President Trump said on the campaign trail, in his first term, he looked at China and said, you got to stop buying from them or you can't buy from us. 0.75

00:17:08.000 I mean, foreign policy speak, that would be secondary sanctions on Chinese buyers, refiners, shippers of Iranian oil.

00:17:17.000 So that's something we'll take a hard look at.

00:17:19.000 The House already passed those sanctions.

00:17:21.000 They've been sitting on Schumer's desk, like a whole lot of other things that could have helped out Israel in the last couple of years.

00:17:28.000 Those secondary sanctions have been sitting there for over a year.

00:17:32.000 So it is the cash.

00:17:32.000 Right.

00:17:34.000 It's the nuclear program.

00:17:36.000 And you're right.

00:17:37.000 Israel has taken decisive action to extinguish this vaunted ring of fire that was threatening them.

00:17:46.000 Meanwhile, nature abhors a vacuum, and the Iranian vacuum is being filled by a couple of forces. 0.99

00:17:51.000 Hopefully it'll be filled by the Kurds. 1.00

00:17:53.000 The Israelis are defending their own security, as you mentioned, by taking the other side of Mount Hermon in Syria.

00:17:57.000 Although they're basically attempting to delimit the border to prevent al-Qaeda and ISIS-associated forces from invading the Golan Heights.

00:18:04.000 It's a defensive action, as Prime Minister Netanyahu has said.

00:18:07.000 One of the things that's arising from this, because of the rise of HDS, is the threat of HDS to Jordan and Saudi, who are also American allies.

00:18:15.000 The Jordanians are deeply afraid of extremism moving across the border of Syria.

00:18:19.000 They've already closed all the border crossings.

00:18:21.000 Jordan, of course, is a very tenuous regime.

00:18:23.000 It's a Hashemite dynasty sitting on top of 70% Palestinian population.

00:18:26.000 My wife is a Jordanian Catholic, so yeah, whose mother came through Ellis Island Christian persecution, you know.

00:18:33.000 Decades and decades ago.

00:18:34.000 Exactly.

00:18:35.000 So Jordan is deeply afraid, obviously, of Islamic extremism taking over that country.

00:18:40.000 Saudi is deeply concerned with Islamic extremism extending into its sphere as well.

00:18:44.000 Some of the rebels were seen on tape talking about how they want to take Mecca.

00:18:47.000 The Saudi regime, one of the priorities for the Trump administration had been in term number one.

00:18:53.000 Finishing off the Abraham Accords by getting Saudi into the Abraham Accords. 1.00

00:18:56.000 Now that Israel has defenestrated so many of its enemies, that could be seen as an opportunity for the Saudis to take with President Trump coming into office.

00:19:04.000 What do you think the prospects are of the Saudis joining the Abraham Accords, given that so many of their allied states, UAE, Bahrain, are already members of the Abraham Accords?

00:19:12.000 I think they're good.

00:19:13.000 I think it's a natural next step.

00:19:15.000 The second Trump term was in 2020. I believe we'd already be there.

00:19:23.000 The reordering was focusing on Iran as the common enemy, that they are, and their malfeasance, their malicious behavior, versus putting the Palestinian issue right in the center.

00:19:37.000 I firmly believe, if you remember the interview with Brett Baer and Mohammed bin Salman, when he held up and said, we are this close, We're good to go.

00:20:06.000 The pieces of it are there.

00:20:07.000 I frankly need to really unpack a lot of the details, so we're in the process of doing that.

00:20:13.000 But I think the overall prospects of moving that relationship forward Get our people out.

00:20:20.000 Get the issue of Gaza to a better place, at least for now.

00:20:25.000 And then we absolutely are talking about a broader deal.

00:20:29.000 Which will be just generational and transformative.

00:20:33.000 And listen, I just want to take a step back for a moment, Ben.

00:20:35.000 Because I have to do this all the time as a member of Congress.

00:20:40.000 Why do, you know, my supporters in Northeast St. Johns County in Florida, you know, why does this matter to them in their everyday lives, right?

00:20:48.000 Well, number one, if Iran gets a nuke, the Saudis are going to want to nuke, the Turks are going to want to nuke. 0.83

00:20:53.000 If the Middle East exploding, not literally, but But figuratively, in a nuclear arms race, should scare every American. 0.51

00:21:02.000 This isn't World War III with them flying between the United States and the Soviet Union.

00:21:08.000 But if you ever have nukes going regionally, that is catastrophic for the world.

00:21:14.000 Number two, Israel is our critical ally, both morally, historically, and I think geopolitically.

00:21:21.000 And we should believe in Ayatollah, who intends to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, if they have nukes. 0.96

00:21:28.000 And then number three, we can't take our eye off the ball of ISIS and terrorism.

00:21:32.000 And with the withdrawal from Afghanistan, that now is essentially Osama bin Laden's dream, and we haven't even talked about what's simmering over there, what happens over there will not stay over there, but to have another ISIS caliphate that we have to clean up again. 0.94

00:21:47.000 I mean, those are all our critical national interests And I always want to take it back to that because, you know, as I'm in my town halls and we're talking Drews and this, you know, like, look, why does this, you know, I'm a mechanic.

00:21:59.000 I'm going week to week.

00:22:00.000 I'm trying to get my kids off to school.

00:22:01.000 You know, why does this matter to them?

00:22:03.000 And that, you know, all of those things matter, not to mention things like 80% of global shipping having to be diverted because of a ragtag bunch of terrorists that, you know, we couldn't take on in the Red Sea.

00:22:16.000 So.

00:22:16.000 I mean, that's exactly right.

00:22:17.000 And the world has gotten really small.

00:22:19.000 I mean, the fact is that, for example, Iran losing its financial capability, that's going to have a heavy impact on what happens in places like Ukraine, because actually it's Iranian drones that are being used by the Russians in Ukraine.

00:22:31.000 And Russia, of course, was involved in the Middle East, and Russia is involved in Europe, and Russia has a burgeoning relationship with China.

00:22:36.000 All of these issues are interconnected and trying to sort of separate off regions of the world.

00:22:41.000 There are some regions of the world that don't have major impacts on the rest of the world.

00:22:44.000 I mean, frankly, large portions of Africa.

00:22:45.000 But the reality is that if you're looking at the Middle East, which, again, has many thoroughfares for shipping, or is the supply of oil for many of America's adversaries, or is this a source of a lot of military tech?

00:23:01.000 I mean, a lot of the military tech that America uses is actually developed in Israel as add-ons to, for example, I-16s.

00:23:06.000 Chinese money going to Tehran, buying their oil for cents on the dollar, and then the drones flying into Russia and the missiles going into Russia that we're then spending against in Ukraine and the terrorism that's exploded across the Middle East.

00:23:22.000 I mean, one could argue it's our money with our trade.

00:23:25.000 With our trade deficit going into China, going into Iran, flowing into Russia in the Middle East.

00:23:31.000 So it's one of the reasons the President is so focused on these trade deficits because it's really, in many ways, our money from our market that's flowing around the world and that often our adversaries are using against us that we then have to spend against in our own defense budget.

00:23:47.000 So it's a It's almost a double counting.

00:23:50.000 So let's talk about Russia because Russia, obviously, that was the other pillar that Assad was standing on.

00:23:56.000 That got destroyed largely because of the war in Ukraine.

00:23:59.000 The war in Ukraine continues to fight on.

00:24:02.000 The Biden administration's approach to the war in Ukraine has been at best ambivalent.

00:24:06.000 It's been bizarrely vague from the very beginning of the war when Joe Biden's first response was, can we get you a plane for Zelensky to get out of Ukraine?

00:24:16.000 You are going to be able to fight as long as you want for whatever ends you want, but we're not going to define the ends, but also we're not going to give you the weaponry to actually allow you to achieve the end.

00:24:23.000 Literally said, we're not going to define it, it's up to them.

00:24:26.000 Right.

00:24:27.000 I think we have an inherent interest in...

00:24:32.000 How that ends.

00:24:32.000 For sure.

00:24:33.000 And not only that, even if you're going to do that, if you're going to say to Zelensky, however you want it to end, that's how it should end.

00:24:38.000 And then he says, okay, then I need these resources.

00:24:41.000 Well, if A, then B, if he wants the end to be liberating the Donbass and Crimea...

00:24:47.000 Then you have to give them the weaponry to do that or just admit that that's actually not in the United States' interest to provide that weaponry and that's not what the end of the war is going to look like.

00:24:53.000 And the Biden administration refused sort of both sides of that bargain.

00:24:56.000 And I never, I mean, behind closed doors, in, you know, compartmented facilities or even publicly, you never get that answer.

00:25:05.000 As we were really having that last funding debate, I mean, there were a number of Republicans who had been, you know, gotta stop Putin, can't let him roll through Ukraine and hit NATO, and then suck us in that way, and wanted to vote for it, but said, you refuse to define what the end state is in line with our interests.

00:25:24.000 You refuse to define the strategy to achieve that end state, and then what resources That are needed for that strategy.

00:25:31.000 In the military, it's ends, ways, and means, right?

00:25:34.000 The goal, the strategy to achieve the goal, and the resources needed for the strategy, all they just wanted to talk about was more money.

00:25:40.000 And stop asking us these annoying questions like, you know, where is this all going?

00:25:45.000 And I do think it's a valid question.

00:25:46.000 I certainly get asked by my constituents.

00:25:49.000 Is it in America's national interest to expect every Russian off of every inch of Ukraine, including Crimea? 1.00

00:25:56.000 How long is that going to take?

00:25:57.000 How much money is that going to cost?

00:25:59.000 How many lives will be lost?

00:26:00.000 Is that even a realistic goal at this point?

00:26:04.000 Valid question, something we're certainly talking about.

00:26:07.000 And, you know, it's really now the president's been very clear the war's got to end.

00:26:12.000 What's been interesting is to see all of the shifts Both European leaders, Ukrainians, everyone now adopting that framework.

00:26:20.000 So part of my job and our job with the team he's put together is who's at the table, how do we get people to the table, and then what's the framework for an agreement that best meets our interests.

00:26:33.000 We'll get to more on this in just a moment.

00:26:34.000 First, let's talk about something that affects all of us responsible, hardworking Americans.

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00:27:34.000 Don't let the IRS take advantage of you and get the help you need with Tax Network USA. One of the things that's been fascinating about President Trump's approach to this is that he actually has not taken the sort of more isolationist position that all funding will definitely go away no matter what.

00:27:47.000 The one thing that President Trump is very clear about is that he doesn't like losing.

00:27:52.000 and one definition of losing would be Russian tanks rolling through Kiev.

00:27:55.000 And so what he's doing, as he's stated openly with regard to NATO, for example, is he's getting everybody else to pay their freight.

00:28:02.000 He says, okay, well, if you want to make sure that NATO actually does its job, then all you other nations have to increase your defense spending, and you have to be contributing more to the fight in Ukraine.

00:28:11.000 Meanwhile, he understands that if all leverage disappears against Putin, he's going to get a bad deal.

00:28:15.000 This is one thing that President Trump understands probably better than anyone instinctively in American politics.

00:28:19.000 More than anybody I've ever seen.

00:28:19.000 Yeah, I mean, he understands leverage, And he understands that if the leverage were to go away against Putin, then he's not going to get a good deal.

00:28:24.000 So he needs enough leverage to get Putin to the table.

00:28:25.000 But also, obviously, the United States has tremendous leverage on Zelensky and Ukraine to also come to the table.

00:28:31.000 And so it seems to me that this has been the case for several years.

00:28:34.000 But I guess what I just want to kind of footstomp here is we've seen everybody's narrative go from as long as it tanks, blank check, don't dare say anything else, or you're somehow pro-Russian, to...

00:28:46.000 How do we get this to a deal?

00:28:47.000 How do we get this to it?

00:28:48.000 Just from the Trump effect, right?

00:28:50.000 Yes, since he was elected.

00:28:51.000 We saw that in Paris when he just went over.

00:28:54.000 We've seen that from everybody who's come to see it.

00:28:56.000 One of the first people that we had at Mar-a-Lago was the NATO Secretary General, and that's where he was.

00:29:02.000 But I think the broader pieces that have been also missing are energy policy.

00:29:08.000 We start Flooding the world with, by the way, cleaner American oil and gas, and you're driving down prices.

00:29:17.000 Now you're taking options away from Iran, Russia, Venezuela, our other adversaries.

00:29:21.000 And oh, by the way, people should be buying from us, not them.

00:29:25.000 I had lunch with the Speaker of the Parliament of Lithuania right there on the front line.

00:29:31.000 She said, I buy 85% of my gas from Louisiana and Texas.

00:29:36.000 You now have an LNG ban.

00:29:38.000 What do you want me to do?

00:29:39.000 I mean, you're leaving me no option.

00:29:41.000 It was a bit insane.

00:29:43.000 So better energy policy, better sanctions enforcement, and burden sharing from our NATO allies are just pieces that have been absolutely missing.

00:29:51.000 It's gotten better with NATO, but it's like patting an F student on the head for getting a D.

00:29:57.000 They should have been at 100% back in 2014, the first time Russia invaded when they pledged to do it. 0.80

00:30:04.000 And now, for example, Canada is on track to achieve the minimum by 2032.

00:30:10.000 It's completely unacceptable.

00:30:13.000 We should be celebrating 3%, 4%, 5% like Poland and the Baltics are doing, not achieving the minimum in 10 years. 0.93

00:30:20.000 Now, one of the things that's happened, obviously, as a result of the war in Ukraine, which Russia thought was going to be very easy and turns out to be unbelievably hard for them, is, as we've mentioned, the impoverishment of Russia, the military breakdown of Russia, having to draw people from prisons in order to send them in, having to draw from North Korea troops, basically emptying out having to draw from North Korea troops, basically emptying out Syria.

00:30:39.000 All of this has had a pretty negative impact on Russia.

00:30:41.000 It has also led to a closer relationship that was already burgeoning between Russia and China.

00:30:45.000 At the same time, on the Russia piece, though, they are transforming their economy to a North Korea-style wartime economy.

00:30:53.000 And they are just grinding, grinding, and grinding forward.

00:30:58.000 So we just have to be cognizant of what's happening.

00:31:03.000 The RuPaul is in trouble.

00:31:05.000 Other things seem to be in trouble.

00:31:07.000 But Putin sees this as a legacy-defining moment.

00:31:12.000 And we've got to get both sides of the table.

00:31:16.000 So once that happens, and I think President Trump obviously is going to make that happen.

00:31:20.000 As you say, the world's already shaping to what President Trump wants to happen there.

00:31:25.000 With that as part of the calculus, the growing relationship between Russia and China is disturbing to an enormous number of people, as it should be.

00:31:34.000 China has basically turned Russia in many ways into its client state.

00:31:37.000 Basically, Russia is being sponsored by China in a lot of ways.

00:31:40.000 Russia's providing cheap oil to China.

00:31:42.000 As you mentioned, China, in return, has been providing some military materiel.

00:31:46.000 The real threat that lurks behind so many of these other issues, the Middle East, Russia, even South America, which we'll get to in a minute, is China.

00:31:54.000 China is a geopolitical—this is one thing that President Trump, in his first term, totally shifted American politics on its head about.

00:32:00.000 The entire national security community.

00:32:02.000 Left and right.

00:32:04.000 I mean, it's amazing.

00:32:04.000 You can talk to Democrats who now will agree that China is a geopolitical threat.

00:32:09.000 That was something no one was talking about before President Trump took office.

00:32:12.000 There was this bizarre idea that China had moderated because they'd adopted free market mechanisms in some ways, state-sponsored free market mechanisms.

00:32:18.000 We can moderate politically if we just engage enough economically.

00:32:21.000 Right, exactly.

00:32:22.000 And that had been sort of the going wisdom.

00:32:23.000 And of course, it turned out not to be true at all.

00:32:25.000 It turns out that they could engage very comfortably in corporate fascism.

00:32:28.000 They could simply subsidize certain aspects of their economy.

00:32:31.000 They could just absorb our IP, absorb all the giveaways, steal everything.

00:32:35.000 Exactly.

00:32:35.000 And they would be a much more powerful version of the USSR for engaging in more market-based activity.

00:32:39.000 While subsidizing the increase of their surveillance state and Xi Jinping's dictatorship.

00:32:39.000 That's right.

00:32:44.000 So China is lurking in the background of all of this.

00:32:47.000 What should be the approach to China?

00:32:49.000 Because it's manifesting in a variety of symptoms.

00:32:51.000 The alliance with Russia, the alliance with Iran, the attempts to cudgel Taiwan, which is truly a threat to the entire world economy. 0.96

00:32:59.000 I mean, if they were to blockade or take Taiwan, that would destroy half the world economy overnight because of the microchips and superconductors over there.

00:33:08.000 Yeah, it's the microchips, but it's also the shipping lanes.

00:33:11.000 Yes.

00:33:11.000 Right?

00:33:11.000 And that's what, you know, people look at a map and they see mainland China and this little island over there and like, why are we so worried about it?

00:33:18.000 But if you really look closely, you see about 90% of the world's largest shipping flowing through the Taiwan Strait, about 50% of global shipping that are flowing all within proximity of Taiwan that feeds 50% of the global economy between Japan, South Korea...

00:33:36.000 Southeast Asia and, of course, the Chinese-Taiwan market.

00:33:40.000 So, look, I think that, again, what President Trump knows is that a lot of the world, including China, needs our market, needs our economy more than we need theirs.

00:33:52.000 So that is a, and you've already seen him truth out, tariffs.

00:33:57.000 if we don't start changing some things, particularly on fentanyl production, number one.

00:34:02.000 Number two, we have to get reduced dependency on those supply chains.

00:34:07.000 A lesson from COVID was cheap everything isn't always better, even little things like mask, gowns, and gloves.

00:34:14.000 But when it comes to our pharmaceuticals, when it comes to chips, when it comes to critical minerals, Governor Burgram is going to be hot on.

00:34:21.000 We have all of those things here in the Western Hemisphere.

00:34:25.000 If we would only get out of our own way with this permitting, you know, ridiculous maze of state, local, and federal permitting requirements to get the stuff out of the ground.

00:34:35.000 So supply chain reduction, our markets, One of the lessons we should learn from Ukraine is you don't try to arm your allies after they've been invaded. 0.97

00:34:45.000 You maybe arm them before to prevent the invasion in the first place and we'll certainly be looking to clear the backlog when it comes to things that Taiwan is looking to purchase and that were required by law to help provide them.

00:35:01.000 Enhancing our allies, one of the great things that What President Trump did in the first term was reinvigorate the Quad, the United States, Japan, Australia, and India, which is also going to be a critical partner in all of this, rebuilding our own military so that it's a deterrent,

00:35:18.000 recognizing what China's continued to do and what I believe is the largest and most rapid military modernization since we've seen since the 1930s with Germany, tripling their nuclear arsenal, navy that's now larger than ours, Cranking out ships at a rate of 3 to 5 to 1 compared to us.

00:35:37.000 But ultimately, it is going to be, as he looks at his own economic situation, does he slow down to deal with things, his demographic problems and their indebtedness and other issues?

00:35:52.000 Or does he try to speed up to distract from those problems?

00:35:56.000 And that's something we have to keep a very close eye on.

00:35:58.000 But all of those pieces, I think, will be critical from the economic to the supply chain, to our allies, to Taiwan's in particular, and to the state of our own military.

00:36:08.000 It's definitely a worrisome moment because as China is facing all sorts of tremendous headwinds, and we mentioned the demographic headwinds, there are no children in China.

00:36:15.000 I mean, the nation is going to be I believe 30% above the age of 60 within a decade.

00:36:21.000 They have a totally upside-down economic structure that is rooted in debt and overspending in a wide variety of areas, including, for example, real estate, which is totally bankrupt over there.

00:36:29.000 The suggestion by Matt Pottinger, who was a member of the administration first time around, Essentially, the Taiwan Strait needs to be turned into what's been called a boiling moat.

00:36:39.000 It has to be so armed up that it becomes clear to China that if you, in desperation, grab for Taiwan, exactly, that it's going to be a problem.

00:36:48.000 I'm not afraid that China is going to go for a full-scale invasion of Taiwan, but you could easily see them Attempting a blockade.

00:36:55.000 And then daring the United States to do something about it.

00:36:57.000 Now, I think that...

00:36:58.000 Actually, that's the biggest danger in the next three weeks, frankly.

00:37:00.000 I think that under President Trump, they may be much more deterred because President Trump has been much more stalwart and is obviously much more willing to threaten, credibly, the use of force.

00:37:09.000 His foreign policy isn't just saying no into a camera and then that being violated over and over and over by the rest of the world.

00:37:16.000 I thought it was don't.

00:37:17.000 Don't.

00:37:18.000 Yeah, don't.

00:37:19.000 Exactly.

00:37:20.000 Well, just two other key pieces, and this is globally, but also particularly when it comes to China, and that's space and then cyber.

00:37:20.000 Yeah.

00:37:27.000 And in all the war games, the first shots, and sometimes they're just checkmate before anything even begins, are in space and in cyber.

00:37:36.000 And in space, look, this is why everybody made fun, everybody had their jokes in the Netflix series on the creation of the Space Force.

00:37:43.000 Again, another instinct that President Trump had.

00:37:47.000 There were resistors within his administration.

00:37:50.000 A couple of people got fired by tweet.

00:37:54.000 The Pentagon actually saw some accountability for a change.

00:37:58.000 Got on board with their elected commander-in-chief.

00:38:02.000 But incredibly important, and just a statistic on why Elon and what he's done with SpaceX is so important.

00:38:07.000 In 2018, the Chinese launched more into space than us and the rest of the world combined, just six years ago.

00:38:14.000 Last year, SpaceX launched 80% of the global tonnage.

00:38:18.000 And that's before Starship even comes fully online, which is going to take it by 10 to 100 to even 1,000x.

00:38:27.000 If he starts launching one per week over the next couple of years.

00:38:31.000 So that is critical for what's up there and for everybody out there saying, why the hell do I care?

00:38:36.000 You touch space seven, eight times a day before 7 a.m.

00:38:39.000 Or seven, eight times before 7 a.m.

00:38:41.000 You don't even realize our entire modern economy.

00:38:44.000 Agriculture, obviously global finance, telecommunications, how we get around, but how the world gets around, shipping, the military, what have you, with the GPS systems.

00:38:55.000 The Chinese know that, are developing the capabilities to take it out, which would send our economy dark. 1.00

00:39:00.000 And we have to be able to defend what's up there and what he's doing in terms of, you know, A few years ago, they could take out a few big satellites, big battleship satellites that we had up there.

00:39:12.000 Now, when you've got thousands of little ones circling around, you can't take them all out.

00:39:18.000 And then in cyber, I think we just have to completely rethink it.

00:39:21.000 Right now, we're totally on defense, and we keep trying to get better and better on defense.

00:39:26.000 And the analogy I use back in the 50s when you had the rise of nuclear ICBMs, we didn't respond to the Soviets by building better and better missile defenses.

00:39:37.000 We responded by building better and better offense so that we both understood mutually assured destruction to keep the peace.

00:39:45.000 We're not doing that in cyber.

00:39:46.000 We're just totally focused on playing defense.

00:39:49.000 And I think we need to change our doctrine when it comes to offense because the Chinese are clearly not getting the message to knock it off. 1.00

00:39:57.000 And when they shift, as they recently did, from spying and stealing to putting cyber time bombs in our critical infrastructure, the Volt Typhoon systems or malware that was discovered, to me that was a red line that was crossed and we need to deal with it with a new doctrine.

00:40:15.000 We'll get to more on this in a moment.

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00:41:20.000 So, meanwhile, one of the other areas that China has actually become quite involved is, in violation of the Monroe Doctrine, South America.

00:41:27.000 They're very involved in Venezuela.

00:41:28.000 They've become increasingly involved in places like Chile.

00:41:32.000 The sort of Chinese involvement in South America is something that's been largely overlooked.

00:41:35.000 South America has its own issues, a wide variety of issues, obviously.

00:41:39.000 There are some real green shoots in South America.

00:41:43.000 Obviously, the administration of Javier Mille.

00:41:44.000 I'm a huge Mille fan in Argentina.

00:41:46.000 He's doing amazing things.

00:41:47.000 He's the first foreign leader to come visit.

00:41:49.000 He's amazing.

00:41:50.000 Emilia is tremendous.

00:41:51.000 He and President Trump obviously see eye to eye in a wide variety of ways, including personally.

00:41:56.000 Or Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, who's been doing great work cleaning up the gang problems in El Salvador, while also doing real well on that Bitcoin bet, actually.

00:42:04.000 He did very well on that.

00:42:05.000 And when you look at South America and you look at the fact that that does have impact on particularly the immigration systems and driving immigrants up north toward the Mexican border, what should policy look like in terms of outreach to some of these countries?

00:42:18.000 Well, look, I think from a broad sense, we have all the food, all of the critical minerals, all of the energy that we need in our hemisphere if we would only pay more attention to it.

00:42:31.000 This administration's still buying uranium from Russia with all kinds of sanction waivers and still having that dependency.

00:42:39.000 When you've got uranium in Canada, You have uranium in Saudi Arabia.

00:42:45.000 You have uranium in other places.

00:42:47.000 So as we look at a new energy policy, if we look at unleashing our gas, if we look at going with small modular reactors, we have a lot of the critical minerals that we need both for our computer chips, for our energy supplies, for our modern economy, all here.

00:43:04.000 And we need better trade deals.

00:43:08.000 Better partners.

00:43:09.000 I think a deregulation regime right here in the United States.

00:43:15.000 And people are ready to deal.

00:43:17.000 They're ready to come to the table.

00:43:18.000 I'm really excited about this relationship with Argentina.

00:43:21.000 It could be, I mean, you want to talk about having some real fundamentals that could be there.

00:43:27.000 I think you should spend an entire show just unpacking how Miele has done it so fast.

00:43:33.000 Despite the odds.

00:43:34.000 I mean, everybody laughed when he had his famous afuera with all of these agencies.

00:43:38.000 He's actually done it.

00:43:40.000 He still needs some help in terms of his currency, and he still needs some help in terms of his predecessors that got so dependent on China for so many things, like space tracking stations right there in the mountains, that they were literally ceding away Argentine territory in China's debt diplomacy.

00:43:59.000 We fully plan to help them in doing that.

00:44:03.000 I think the other piece is, as we talk about decoupling some critical supply chains from China, of course we want them to come right back to the United States with American jobs, but if it doesn't make business sense, how about we get them in the Western Hemisphere? 0.80

00:44:19.000 How about you incentivize some of these kind of lower-skilled, high-output factories into Central America?

00:44:33.000 Kamala Harris wanted to just throw aid down that hole down there with a lot of corruption and a lot of gangs and cartels that actually made the problem worse. 1.00

00:44:42.000 How about we incentivize some production there and start helping those economies turn around?

00:44:47.000 Now we're solving our supply chain problem in many ways.

00:44:50.000 We're getting it in the Western Hemisphere.

00:44:51.000 You're getting at your migration issue.

00:44:54.000 And then the President's been very clear, we're going to have a deportation regime.

00:44:58.000 And for countries that want to do business with us, they need to take their people back. 1.00

00:45:03.000 That needs to be first and foremost in our policy.

00:45:06.000 So all of those pieces I think you're going to see coming together.

00:45:09.000 And what's great is you've got Stephen Miller, who's an expert.

00:45:13.000 You've got Holman, who's going to do it.

00:45:15.000 And you have a Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who is a rare...

00:45:21.000 I think a rare leader that's really invested in the relationships down there over 20, 30 years of his career understands the complex dynamic, is going to spend the time on it.

00:45:32.000 Everybody just gets sucked in the Middle East and into Europe and into Asia, but I think you have a Secretary of State that is really going to be focused on it.

00:45:39.000 You're going to see a difference.

00:45:40.000 That does leave the main question with regard to the United States southern border being Mexico.

00:45:44.000 Mexico is a basket case. 0.87

00:45:45.000 It's been a basket case for decades at this point.

00:45:47.000 The new administration in Mexico seems to be just a continuation of the AMLO regime.

00:45:52.000 Obviously, significant corruption issues, massive economic problems, and working closely with China to actually take the precursor ship from China to make fentanyl into Mexico and then smuggle those across the border via the drug cartels, which essentially do control huge swaths.

00:46:06.000 I went down there last year, and you can actually see the drug cartels flying drones over American territory.

00:46:12.000 It's an unbelievable thing.

00:46:14.000 Let me ask you, if you renamed those cartels from Sinaloa and Jalisco to ISIS and Al-Qaeda, and they were pumping chemicals into our inner cities and infiltrating cells into our cities and taking over swaths of them, It wouldn't even be a debate, right?

00:46:32.000 So, I mean, the president has been clear we are going to take these cartels on.

00:46:35.000 That doesn't mean, as the media likes to spin it, we'll probably even spin that statement of we're sending the 2nd Marine Division into Mexico City.

00:46:43.000 No.

00:46:44.000 But we have a lot of tools to support law enforcement in a much more forceful way with cyber, with sanctions, even with space assets and others, with the more focused intelligence.

00:46:58.000 To not only help the American, I mean to help the Mexicans, but to help our own law enforcement.

00:47:03.000 We cannot have a situation where these paramilitary organizations that are fighting the Mexican army, not police, army to a standstill with heavy armored vehicles, shooting down helicopters, controlling huge swaths of our border, and to some estimates, 20, 30, 40% of the territory of our neighbor.

00:47:23.000 Enough is enough.

00:47:25.000 And I think the president and the team around him is ready to take the gloves off.

00:47:29.000 So I want to turn to the personal side of this for a moment because you have this great book, Hard Truths, all about your time as a Green Beret.

00:47:36.000 So walk me through how you got to be the NSA nominee.

00:47:41.000 Yeah, for a redneck kid from the west side of Jacksonville, yeah, it's kind of a pinch-y moment.

00:47:48.000 Look, I went to Virginia Military Institute.

00:47:52.000 I served 27 years, a lot of it in the reserves in Special Forces.

00:47:58.000 Many people realize both the Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets have reserve units, so I kind of have a day job.

00:48:04.000 I built a company.

00:48:05.000 I worked in the Bush administration and the Pentagon.

00:48:09.000 I had to be one of the only idiots that was writing the strategy, briefing the strategy, then I would get mobilized with my reserve unit and have to go actually do the strategy out there with my guys, who would then say, who the hell thought this was a good idea?

00:48:25.000 The interesting part, Ben, would then be taking the uniform off, coming back into the kind of policy apparatus.

00:48:32.000 And saying, hey boss, this isn't working.

00:48:35.000 I was just out there on the ground.

00:48:36.000 You're getting fed a line of crap from the kind of blob and try to fix it.

00:48:41.000 So I did that back and forth a number of times.

00:48:44.000 And both worked in the White House, worked in the Pentagon, worked out in industry.

00:48:51.000 I've got more scar tissue from contracting officers in government and trying to do business with our own government than I do from the Taliban and brought all those experiences to bear, I think, in Congress when I ran for Ron DeSantis' seat when he ran for governor. 0.53

00:49:06.000 So that was the trajectory, and I saw with President Trump that his instincts on so many things were absolutely right.

00:49:15.000 Whether it was the pivot on China, whether it was, hey, we can shift to focus on Iran rather than Palestinians and bring people together in the Middle East.

00:49:26.000 Whether it was, you've got the same size economy the United States does.

00:49:32.000 Stop this great deal you've got with, we're paying for your defense while you pay for your social programs.

00:49:37.000 And so I've been 100% on board with his America First agenda.

00:49:43.000 And you look at what he got done on the Abraham Accords, on China, on the border, on all kinds of reforms in the military that we've been asking for for years.

00:49:56.000 He gave me the nod to help pull all of that together for him.

00:49:59.000 On the book, first, the proceeds go to the Green Berets that I lost.

00:50:04.000 And nobody hates wars more than people that have to go fight them, right?

00:50:09.000 Much less endless ones that become this, you know, I don't know, grind and policy drift of funerals and people that were feeding into it.

00:50:22.000 So that's a piece.

00:50:24.000 The other piece is Green Berets are a little bit different.

00:50:28.000 The SEALs, the Rangers, are some of the best in the world.

00:50:31.000 We can do it too.

00:50:33.000 Two bullets in the forehead, middle of the night, Salma Bin Laden raid, in and out, lightning strike, and that son of a bitch is done. 0.99

00:50:42.000 We stay a lot longer.

00:50:43.000 We have to learn multiple languages, local cultures, blend in, and you take five or six of us, put us in a valley, put us in a village, we'll train tens of thousands of them to kick in doors for us.

00:50:54.000 So we're that force-multiplying effect, and we specialize in regions of the world all over the world.

00:51:00.000 Case in point, drop a few Green Berets in after 9-11. 0.99

00:51:04.000 Before you know it, they're riding on horseback in Afghanistan, out in the mountains of Afghanistan.

00:51:11.000 Less than a couple hundred Green Berets overthrew the entire regime and kicked Al-Qaeda out.

00:51:16.000 And then we had 20 years of policy drift from that.

00:51:19.000 But that's what we do, and that's what we do differently.

00:51:21.000 And that is a different mindset.

00:51:23.000 And that's what I write about in the book.

00:51:26.000 If we can herd the tribes in Africa or of Afghanistan, then I can herd the tribes in Congress and in Washington, D.C., although I think D.C. was a little tougher sometime.

00:51:36.000 So each chapter is a different attribute.

00:51:38.000 I tell a story of what I learned downrange in combat, how I've applied it now to this job.

00:51:46.000 And how I think we need to think differently, and President Trump often thinks very differently and very unconventionally about these issues.

00:51:56.000 Green Berets are kind of the masters of unconventional warfare, psychological operations, by, with, and through proxies, or allies, or others.

00:52:06.000 And so it's gotten a great reception, and I hope people take a look at it.

00:52:14.000 Final question for you.

00:52:15.000 The big thing that I think a lot of people who voted for President Trump or fans of the president who donated to the campaign with President Trump are worried about is, of course, the blob.

00:52:23.000 You mentioned the blob.

00:52:24.000 You mentioned what he called the deep state.

00:52:26.000 The career employees who are within every one of these agencies who, during his first term, spent inordinate amounts of time What does that look like?

00:52:50.000 Look, I'll tell you...

00:52:53.000 For people out there, and look, there's a lot of good and great case officers out in CIA or civil servants or FBI agents that are out there doing bad things to bad guys.

00:53:05.000 It's often in that kind of Washington leadership where they get ensconced and really believe that they know better than the person that was elected.

00:53:14.000 And that's not kind of a middle finger to him.

00:53:17.000 That's a middle finger to the 70, 80 million Americans who put him there.

00:53:23.000 It's not like he's playing a bait and switch.

00:53:26.000 Wasn't like he was totally transparent about what he wants to do and why we need to do it.

00:53:31.000 And the mandate that he's received and the popular vote in all seven swing states are not something that I don't think any bureaucrat needs to just think they can outweigh it or outlast or throw sand in the gears.

00:53:46.000 That said, At the same time, our government has become bloated.

00:53:50.000 It's become too large.

00:53:52.000 It is completely focused on inputs.

00:53:55.000 The reflexive response, whether it's the Pentagon, State Department, you name the bureaucracy, to a priority.

00:54:03.000 Well, I need more people and more money to throw at it.

00:54:06.000 With the interest in our debt exceeding now the entire defense budget and growing, That does not work anymore.

00:54:16.000 And I think the president is focused on outputs.

00:54:18.000 The team, whether it's Doge and Elon and Vivek and others, are focused on outputs.

00:54:24.000 What are the American people getting for all of this money?

00:54:28.000 And that, like any business, man or woman, needs to be, you know, what are the metrics?

00:54:35.000 What are the outputs?

00:54:36.000 What are we getting?

00:54:37.000 What can be done more efficiently?

00:54:39.000 And if you think about it that way, you should be getting on board.

00:54:43.000 What I fear a little bit is that the most dangerous bureaucrat is one that's afraid for their paycheck.

00:54:49.000 If you're throwing sand in the gears, if you're leaking, if you think you know better just because you disagree, You need to look at the people across a wide swath, Hispanic, African-American, Jewish, you name it, that said, we want to go in the direction President Trump wants to go.

00:55:12.000 And just always, always keep that in mind.

00:55:14.000 And as an elected I think too many people lose sight of that.

00:55:18.000 They really do.

00:55:20.000 And so I've told senior officials in the Pentagon and elsewhere, come with me to a town hall.

00:55:26.000 Come with me to a town hall or someone from USAID and tell a group of first responders why we need to pay first responders in another country and not them.

00:55:38.000 Go ahead, explain that.

00:55:40.000 That's a difficult conversation.

00:55:44.000 I've told people, if you think we're tough in hearings, Come with me down, you know, and talk to our constituents who have very real questions.

00:55:52.000 It's their money, right?

00:55:54.000 It's their lives that we're taking from and that we owe it back to them to give them the most efficient government possible and one that is in line with their elected leaders' interests, period.

00:56:04.000 Well, Congressman Mike Waltz, the book, by the way, Hard Truths, again, it's terrific.

00:56:08.000 And the NSA nominee, soon to be the NSA himself, with the help of God and the United States Senate, which will confirm you, really appreciate the time.

00:56:15.000 It's been wonderful.

00:56:16.000 Thanks.

00:56:16.000 The Ben Shapiro Sunday Special is produced by Jessica Kranz and Matt Kemp.

00:56:26.000 Associate Producers are Jake Pollock and John Crick.

00:56:29.000 Editing is by Olivia Stewart.

00:56:30.000 Audio is mixed by Mike Koremina.

00:56:33.000 Camera and lighting is by Zach Ginta.

00:56:35.000 Hair, makeup, and wardrobe by Fabiola Christina.

00:56:37.000 Title graphics are by Cynthia Angulo.

00:56:40.000 Production intern is Sarah Steele.

00:56:42.000 Executive assistant Kelly Carvalho.

00:56:44.000 Executive in charge of production is David Wormis.

00:56:47.000 Executive producer Justin Siegel.

00:56:48.000 Executive producer Jeremy Boring.

00:56:50.000 The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday Special is a Daily Wire production.

The Ben Shapiro Show - December 22, 2024

The Trump Effect | Congressman Mike Waltz

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