Rep. Mike Waltz of Florida joins us to discuss America First Foreign Policy as President Trump's designated National Security Advisor. 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.
00:00:00.000These 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.
00:00:37.000This 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.
00:00:46.000While 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.
00:00:53.000Mike 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.
00:01:03.000He 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.
00:01:13.000In 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.
00:01:20.000He 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.
00:01:27.000Representative Mike Walsh's profound experience and commitment to the defense of American interests abroad will be critical to the success of the next administration.
00:01:34.000Don't miss this important conversation on this latest episode of the Sunday special.
00:01:38.000Congressman, thanks so much for stopping by.
00:02:15.000So 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.
00:02:33.000You 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.
00:03:19.000And 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.
00:03:34.000So 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.
00:03:47.000as we just saw with Syria, the world continues to spin.
00:03:52.000One of the fascinating things that's happened here is that, I mean, internationally, President Trump is already being treated as the president.
00:03:59.000I 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.
00:04:10.000You 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.
00:04:17.000This transition process has moved lightning fast.
00:04:20.000So what has that been like for you on sort of day-to-day?
00:04:23.000Well, 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.
00:04:57.000The world is still dealing with this administration, but they obviously are looking to President Trump and seeing how he responds to all things.
00:05:04.000And on some things, he absolutely wanted to make his voice known, like the truth that came out on the hostages.
00:05:13.000By 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.
00:05:45.000There 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.
00:05:53.000And so that the next time you think about it, You know what?
00:05:57.000A lot of these groups are going to say, whoa, it's just not worth it under Donald Trump.
00:06:02.000They'll go try to mess with America somewhere else, but not when it comes to taking our people.
00:06:08.000Enough is enough, and I think that truth spoke for itself.
00:06:12.000One 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.
00:06:21.000And 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.
00:06:28.000I 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.
00:07:57.000What is America having to give up to get this?
00:08:01.000And 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.
00:08:12.000And then finally, look, he sees our biggest lever.
00:08:17.000It's our economy and in our markets, right?
00:08:19.000Of course, we have to have a big stick.
00:08:21.000Of 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.
00:08:31.000But his first go-to is going to be, hey, let's resolve this economically.
00:08:39.000Let's resolve this with thing that most countries care about, which is their wallets.
00:08:44.000And then we'll talk about if we need to step in with any type of military force.
00:08:49.000And 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.
00:08:56.000Folks, let's talk about dressing sharp without sacrificing comfort.
00:08:59.000If you're tired of choosing between looking professional and feeling relaxed, we've got great news for you.
00:10:00.000Because you shouldn't have to choose between looking good and feeling good.
00:10:03.000So 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.
00:10:10.000So 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.
00:10:16.000That 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.
00:10:25.000Hezbollah in Syria was holding up Assad's regime.
00:10:28.000Israel destroyed Hezbollah in Lebanon.
00:10:43.000Israel 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.
00:10:53.000The situation in Syria now is devolving into what will probably be some sort of prolonged civil war partition.
00:11:08.000What 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?
00:11:14.000Well, talk about the Iran piece in a moment.
00:11:16.000But on Syria, just because it's kind of top of mind right now, I want to be crystal clear about that.
00:11:23.000America'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.
00:11:40.000I mean, they were dominating a space the size of Texas across the Middle East.
00:11:46.000This was Osama bin Laden and al-Baghdadi's grand dream that was actually realized, and it was horrific.
00:11:53.000President 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.
00:12:09.000Number one, ISIS. Number two, Israel and its borders.
00:12:12.000They're taking aggressive action right now.
00:12:14.000They 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.
00:12:32.000And then thirdly, look, there's this dynamic with our Arab partners there that we just have to keep an eye on.
00:12:38.000So President Trump is absolutely right.
00:12:40.000His mandate, overwhelmingly, was do not drag us into Middle Eastern wars.
00:12:44.000We do not need American boots running around Syria in any way, shape, or form.
00:12:48.000But we're keeping an eye on those things.
00:12:51.000ISIS, Israel's border, and kind of the broader dynamic with our Gulf allies.
00:12:55.000And 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.
00:13:06.000There's going to be some amazing movie about that one day.
00:13:10.000I think one of the gutsiest, most effective covert action ops in modern history.
00:13:16.000Because 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.
00:13:28.000And 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.
00:13:42.000And I hope all of this has Hamas so isolated They really thought the cavalry was coming from the north with Hezbollah.
00:13:49.000Now 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.
00:14:01.000The future of what happens in Iran is very unclear at this point.
00:14:04.000Obviously, they had this sort of Octopus-like terror network that was all over the Middle East.
00:14:10.000All 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.
00:14:18.000With all of that being the case, and with the Trump administration...
00:14:21.000The Houthis are still an outstanding issue.
00:14:59.000They're still holding up shipping in the Red Sea.
00:15:02.000Enormous amounts of shipping are now going around the Horn of Africa.
00:15:04.000Talk 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.
00:15:12.000I 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.
00:15:20.000And there's the question of the Iranian regime itself.
00:15:22.000The United States, President Trump has made clear, we have no interest in war in Iran.
00:15:26.000We're not interested in getting into a shooting battle with Iran.
00:15:29.000With 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.
00:15:38.000And so, you know, Israel obviously has a very strong interest in preventing the development of nuclear weapons.
00:15:43.000And 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.
00:15:56.000Or, theoretically, they could sign a deal or they can get hit.
00:15:59.000I 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.
00:16:08.000Yeah, 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?
00:16:21.000Or is this a moment they say, we are completely exposed, don't provoke the Israelis by rushing towards a nuke?
00:16:41.000What President Trump has been clear on is the other thing they care the most about is their cash.
00:16:46.000And I mean, they went from exporting 4 million barrels a day to less than 400,000 under the maximum pressure campaign.
00:16:55.000And now they're right back to where they were.
00:16:57.000And they're selling 90% of that oil to China.
00:17:00.000And 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.
00:17:08.000I mean, foreign policy speak, that would be secondary sanctions on Chinese buyers, refiners, shippers of Iranian oil.
00:17:17.000So that's something we'll take a hard look at.
00:17:19.000The House already passed those sanctions.
00:17:21.000They'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.
00:17:28.000Those secondary sanctions have been sitting there for over a year.
00:17:37.000Israel has taken decisive action to extinguish this vaunted ring of fire that was threatening them.
00:17:46.000Meanwhile, nature abhors a vacuum, and the Iranian vacuum is being filled by a couple of forces.
00:17:51.000Hopefully it'll be filled by the Kurds.
00:17:53.000The Israelis are defending their own security, as you mentioned, by taking the other side of Mount Hermon in Syria.
00:17:57.000Although they're basically attempting to delimit the border to prevent al-Qaeda and ISIS-associated forces from invading the Golan Heights.
00:18:04.000It's a defensive action, as Prime Minister Netanyahu has said.
00:18:07.000One 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.
00:18:15.000The Jordanians are deeply afraid of extremism moving across the border of Syria.
00:18:19.000They've already closed all the border crossings.
00:18:21.000Jordan, of course, is a very tenuous regime.
00:18:23.000It's a Hashemite dynasty sitting on top of 70% Palestinian population.
00:18:26.000My wife is a Jordanian Catholic, so yeah, whose mother came through Ellis Island Christian persecution, you know.
00:18:35.000So Jordan is deeply afraid, obviously, of Islamic extremism taking over that country.
00:18:40.000Saudi is deeply concerned with Islamic extremism extending into its sphere as well.
00:18:44.000Some of the rebels were seen on tape talking about how they want to take Mecca.
00:18:47.000The Saudi regime, one of the priorities for the Trump administration had been in term number one.
00:18:53.000Finishing off the Abraham Accords by getting Saudi into the Abraham Accords.
00:18:56.000Now 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.
00:19:04.000What 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?
00:19:15.000The second Trump term was in 2020. I believe we'd already be there.
00:19:23.000The 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.
00:19:37.000I 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.
00:20:07.000I frankly need to really unpack a lot of the details, so we're in the process of doing that.
00:20:13.000But I think the overall prospects of moving that relationship forward Get our people out.
00:20:20.000Get the issue of Gaza to a better place, at least for now.
00:20:25.000And then we absolutely are talking about a broader deal.
00:20:29.000Which will be just generational and transformative.
00:20:33.000And listen, I just want to take a step back for a moment, Ben.
00:20:35.000Because I have to do this all the time as a member of Congress.
00:20:40.000Why 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?
00:20:48.000Well, number one, if Iran gets a nuke, the Saudis are going to want to nuke, the Turks are going to want to nuke.
00:20:53.000If the Middle East exploding, not literally, but But figuratively, in a nuclear arms race, should scare every American.
00:21:02.000This isn't World War III with them flying between the United States and the Soviet Union.
00:21:08.000But if you ever have nukes going regionally, that is catastrophic for the world.
00:21:14.000Number two, Israel is our critical ally, both morally, historically, and I think geopolitically.
00:21:21.000And we should believe in Ayatollah, who intends to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, if they have nukes.
00:21:28.000And then number three, we can't take our eye off the ball of ISIS and terrorism.
00:21:32.000And 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.
00:21:47.000I 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.
00:22:00.000I'm trying to get my kids off to school.
00:22:01.000You know, why does this matter to them?
00:22:03.000And 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.
00:22:17.000And the world has gotten really small.
00:22:19.000I 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.
00:22:31.000And Russia, of course, was involved in the Middle East, and Russia is involved in Europe, and Russia has a burgeoning relationship with China.
00:22:36.000All of these issues are interconnected and trying to sort of separate off regions of the world.
00:22:41.000There are some regions of the world that don't have major impacts on the rest of the world.
00:22:44.000I mean, frankly, large portions of Africa.
00:22:45.000But 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?
00:23:01.000I mean, a lot of the military tech that America uses is actually developed in Israel as add-ons to, for example, I-16s.
00:23:06.000Chinese 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.
00:23:22.000I mean, one could argue it's our money with our trade.
00:23:25.000With our trade deficit going into China, going into Iran, flowing into Russia in the Middle East.
00:23:31.000So 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.
00:23:47.000So it's a It's almost a double counting.
00:23:50.000So let's talk about Russia because Russia, obviously, that was the other pillar that Assad was standing on.
00:23:56.000That got destroyed largely because of the war in Ukraine.
00:23:59.000The war in Ukraine continues to fight on.
00:24:02.000The Biden administration's approach to the war in Ukraine has been at best ambivalent.
00:24:06.000It'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?
00:24:16.000You 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.
00:24:23.000Literally said, we're not going to define it, it's up to them.
00:24:33.000And 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.
00:24:38.000And then he says, okay, then I need these resources.
00:24:41.000Well, if A, then B, if he wants the end to be liberating the Donbass and Crimea...
00:24:47.000Then 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.
00:24:53.000And the Biden administration refused sort of both sides of that bargain.
00:24:56.000And I never, I mean, behind closed doors, in, you know, compartmented facilities or even publicly, you never get that answer.
00:25:05.000As 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.
00:25:24.000You refuse to define the strategy to achieve that end state, and then what resources That are needed for that strategy.
00:25:31.000In the military, it's ends, ways, and means, right?
00:25:34.000The goal, the strategy to achieve the goal, and the resources needed for the strategy, all they just wanted to talk about was more money.
00:25:40.000And stop asking us these annoying questions like, you know, where is this all going?
00:26:07.000And, you know, it's really now the president's been very clear the war's got to end.
00:26:12.000What's been interesting is to see all of the shifts Both European leaders, Ukrainians, everyone now adopting that framework.
00:26:20.000So 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.
00:26:33.000We'll get to more on this in just a moment.
00:26:34.000First, let's talk about something that affects all of us responsible, hardworking Americans.
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00:27:30.000That's 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash Shapiro today.
00:27:34.000Don'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.
00:27:47.000The one thing that President Trump is very clear about is that he doesn't like losing.
00:27:52.000and one definition of losing would be Russian tanks rolling through Kiev.
00:27:55.000And 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.
00:28:02.000He 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.
00:28:11.000Meanwhile, he understands that if all leverage disappears against Putin, he's going to get a bad deal.
00:28:15.000This is one thing that President Trump understands probably better than anyone instinctively in American politics.
00:28:19.000Yeah, 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.
00:28:24.000So he needs enough leverage to get Putin to the table.
00:28:25.000But also, obviously, the United States has tremendous leverage on Zelensky and Ukraine to also come to the table.
00:28:31.000And so it seems to me that this has been the case for several years.
00:28:34.000But 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...
00:29:43.000So better energy policy, better sanctions enforcement, and burden sharing from our NATO allies are just pieces that have been absolutely missing.
00:29:51.000It's gotten better with NATO, but it's like patting an F student on the head for getting a D.
00:29:57.000They should have been at 100% back in 2014, the first time Russia invaded when they pledged to do it.
00:30:04.000And now, for example, Canada is on track to achieve the minimum by 2032.
00:30:13.000We should be celebrating 3%, 4%, 5% like Poland and the Baltics are doing, not achieving the minimum in 10 years.
00:30:20.000Now, 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.
00:30:39.000All of this has had a pretty negative impact on Russia.
00:30:41.000It has also led to a closer relationship that was already burgeoning between Russia and China.
00:30:45.000At the same time, on the Russia piece, though, they are transforming their economy to a North Korea-style wartime economy.
00:30:53.000And they are just grinding, grinding, and grinding forward.
00:30:58.000So we just have to be cognizant of what's happening.
00:31:07.000But Putin sees this as a legacy-defining moment.
00:31:12.000And we've got to get both sides of the table.
00:31:16.000So once that happens, and I think President Trump obviously is going to make that happen.
00:31:20.000As you say, the world's already shaping to what President Trump wants to happen there.
00:31:25.000With 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.
00:31:34.000China has basically turned Russia in many ways into its client state.
00:31:37.000Basically, Russia is being sponsored by China in a lot of ways.
00:31:40.000Russia's providing cheap oil to China.
00:31:42.000As you mentioned, China, in return, has been providing some military materiel.
00:31:46.000The 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.
00:31:54.000China is a geopolitical—this is one thing that President Trump, in his first term, totally shifted American politics on its head about.
00:32:00.000The entire national security community.
00:32:04.000You can talk to Democrats who now will agree that China is a geopolitical threat.
00:32:09.000That was something no one was talking about before President Trump took office.
00:32:12.000There was this bizarre idea that China had moderated because they'd adopted free market mechanisms in some ways, state-sponsored free market mechanisms.
00:32:18.000We can moderate politically if we just engage enough economically.
00:32:49.000Because it's manifesting in a variety of symptoms.
00:32:51.000The alliance with Russia, the alliance with Iran, the attempts to cudgel Taiwan, which is truly a threat to the entire world economy.
00:32:59.000I 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.
00:33:08.000Yeah, it's the microchips, but it's also the shipping lanes.
00:33:11.000And 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?
00:33:18.000But 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...
00:33:36.000Southeast Asia and, of course, the Chinese-Taiwan market.
00:33:40.000So, 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.
00:33:52.000So that is a, and you've already seen him truth out, tariffs.
00:33:57.000if we don't start changing some things, particularly on fentanyl production, number one.
00:34:02.000Number two, we have to get reduced dependency on those supply chains.
00:34:07.000A lesson from COVID was cheap everything isn't always better, even little things like mask, gowns, and gloves.
00:34:14.000But 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.
00:34:21.000We have all of those things here in the Western Hemisphere.
00:34:25.000If 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.
00:34:35.000So 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.
00:34:45.000You 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.
00:35:01.000Enhancing 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,
00:35:18.000recognizing 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.
00:35:37.000But 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?
00:35:52.000Or does he try to speed up to distract from those problems?
00:35:56.000And that's something we have to keep a very close eye on.
00:35:58.000But 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.
00:36:08.000It'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.
00:36:15.000I mean, the nation is going to be I believe 30% above the age of 60 within a decade.
00:36:21.000They 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.
00:36:29.000The 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.
00:36:39.000It 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.
00:36:48.000I'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.
00:36:55.000And then daring the United States to do something about it.
00:36:58.000Actually, that's the biggest danger in the next three weeks, frankly.
00:37:00.000I 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.
00:37:09.000His 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.
00:38:41.000You don't even realize our entire modern economy.
00:38:44.000Agriculture, obviously global finance, telecommunications, how we get around, but how the world gets around, shipping, the military, what have you, with the GPS systems.
00:38:55.000The Chinese know that, are developing the capabilities to take it out, which would send our economy dark.
00:39:00.000And 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.
00:39:12.000Now, when you've got thousands of little ones circling around, you can't take them all out.
00:39:18.000And then in cyber, I think we just have to completely rethink it.
00:39:21.000Right now, we're totally on defense, and we keep trying to get better and better on defense.
00:39:26.000And 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.
00:39:37.000We responded by building better and better offense so that we both understood mutually assured destruction to keep the peace.
00:39:46.000We're just totally focused on playing defense.
00:39:49.000And 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.
00:39:57.000And 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.
00:40:15.000We'll get to more on this in a moment.
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00:41:20.000So, meanwhile, one of the other areas that China has actually become quite involved is, in violation of the Monroe Doctrine, South America.
00:41:51.000He and President Trump obviously see eye to eye in a wide variety of ways, including personally.
00:41:56.000Or 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.
00:42:05.000And 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?
00:42:18.000Well, 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.
00:42:31.000This administration's still buying uranium from Russia with all kinds of sanction waivers and still having that dependency.
00:42:39.000When you've got uranium in Canada, You have uranium in Saudi Arabia.
00:42:47.000So 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.
00:43:40.000He 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.
00:43:59.000We fully plan to help them in doing that.
00:44:03.000I 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?
00:44:19.000How about you incentivize some of these kind of lower-skilled, high-output factories into Central America?
00:44:33.000Kamala 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.
00:44:42.000How about we incentivize some production there and start helping those economies turn around?
00:44:47.000Now we're solving our supply chain problem in many ways.
00:44:50.000We're getting it in the Western Hemisphere.
00:44:51.000You're getting at your migration issue.
00:44:54.000And then the President's been very clear, we're going to have a deportation regime.
00:44:58.000And for countries that want to do business with us, they need to take their people back.
00:45:03.000That needs to be first and foremost in our policy.
00:45:06.000So all of those pieces I think you're going to see coming together.
00:45:09.000And what's great is you've got Stephen Miller, who's an expert.
00:45:13.000You've got Holman, who's going to do it.
00:45:15.000And you have a Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who is a rare...
00:45:21.000I 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.
00:45:32.000Everybody 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.
00:45:45.000It's been a basket case for decades at this point.
00:45:47.000The new administration in Mexico seems to be just a continuation of the AMLO regime.
00:45:52.000Obviously, 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.
00:46:06.000I went down there last year, and you can actually see the drug cartels flying drones over American territory.
00:46:14.000Let 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?
00:46:32.000So, I mean, the president has been clear we are going to take these cartels on.
00:46:35.000That 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.
00:46:44.000But 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.
00:46:58.000To not only help the American, I mean to help the Mexicans, but to help our own law enforcement.
00:47:03.000We 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.
00:47:25.000And I think the president and the team around him is ready to take the gloves off.
00:47:29.000So 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.
00:47:36.000So walk me through how you got to be the NSA nominee.
00:47:41.000Yeah, for a redneck kid from the west side of Jacksonville, yeah, it's kind of a pinch-y moment.
00:47:48.000Look, I went to Virginia Military Institute.
00:47:52.000I served 27 years, a lot of it in the reserves in Special Forces.
00:47:58.000Many people realize both the Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets have reserve units, so I kind of have a day job.
00:48:05.000I worked in the Bush administration and the Pentagon.
00:48:09.000I 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?
00:48:25.000The interesting part, Ben, would then be taking the uniform off, coming back into the kind of policy apparatus.
00:48:32.000And saying, hey boss, this isn't working.
00:48:36.000You're getting fed a line of crap from the kind of blob and try to fix it.
00:48:41.000So I did that back and forth a number of times.
00:48:44.000And both worked in the White House, worked in the Pentagon, worked out in industry.
00:48:51.000I'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.
00:49:06.000So that was the trajectory, and I saw with President Trump that his instincts on so many things were absolutely right.
00:49:15.000Whether 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.
00:49:26.000Whether it was, you've got the same size economy the United States does.
00:49:32.000Stop this great deal you've got with, we're paying for your defense while you pay for your social programs.
00:49:37.000And so I've been 100% on board with his America First agenda.
00:49:43.000And 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.
00:49:56.000He gave me the nod to help pull all of that together for him.
00:49:59.000On the book, first, the proceeds go to the Green Berets that I lost.
00:50:04.000And nobody hates wars more than people that have to go fight them, right?
00:50:09.000Much 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.
00:50:43.000We 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.
00:50:54.000So we're that force-multiplying effect, and we specialize in regions of the world all over the world.
00:51:00.000Case in point, drop a few Green Berets in after 9-11.
00:51:04.000Before you know it, they're riding on horseback in Afghanistan, out in the mountains of Afghanistan.
00:51:11.000Less than a couple hundred Green Berets overthrew the entire regime and kicked Al-Qaeda out.
00:51:16.000And then we had 20 years of policy drift from that.
00:51:19.000But that's what we do, and that's what we do differently.
00:51:23.000And that's what I write about in the book.
00:51:26.000If 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.
00:51:36.000So each chapter is a different attribute.
00:51:38.000I tell a story of what I learned downrange in combat, how I've applied it now to this job.
00:51:46.000And how I think we need to think differently, and President Trump often thinks very differently and very unconventionally about these issues.
00:51:56.000Green Berets are kind of the masters of unconventional warfare, psychological operations, by, with, and through proxies, or allies, or others.
00:52:06.000And so it's gotten a great reception, and I hope people take a look at it.
00:52:15.000The 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.
00:52:24.000You mentioned what he called the deep state.
00:52:26.000The 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?
00:52:53.000For 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.
00:53:05.000It'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.
00:53:14.000And that's not kind of a middle finger to him.
00:53:17.000That's a middle finger to the 70, 80 million Americans who put him there.
00:53:23.000It's not like he's playing a bait and switch.
00:53:26.000Wasn't like he was totally transparent about what he wants to do and why we need to do it.
00:53:31.000And 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.
00:53:46.000That said, At the same time, our government has become bloated.
00:54:39.000And if you think about it that way, you should be getting on board.
00:54:43.000What I fear a little bit is that the most dangerous bureaucrat is one that's afraid for their paycheck.
00:54:49.000If 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.
00:55:12.000And just always, always keep that in mind.
00:55:14.000And as an elected I think too many people lose sight of that.
00:55:20.000And so I've told senior officials in the Pentagon and elsewhere, come with me to a town hall.
00:55:26.000Come 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.
00:55:44.000I'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.
00:55:54.000It'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.
00:56:04.000Well, Congressman Mike Waltz, the book, by the way, Hard Truths, again, it's terrific.
00:56:08.000And 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.