Former Acting Director of U.S. National Intelligence, Rick Grinnell, joins Megyn to discuss the Brittany Griner swap with notorious arms dealer Victor Bout, also known as the Merchant of Death, and much more.
00:01:23.700Look, you know, we should start off by saying these issues are very difficult when you're dealing with family members who literally, I think,
00:01:31.600will do anything to get their loved ones back.
00:01:35.880I've thought long and hard about this hostage process, and it's really important that the families always stay independent from government.
00:01:44.880Government certainly doesn't want to have a slippery slope of doing something that encourages regimes like Putin's regime to somehow start grabbing people and using them as a weapon in negotiations.
00:02:00.660Certainly, we know that if that happens, they'll just start grabbing Americans wherever they can and then start with demands.
00:02:07.180But I think, in particular, this Griner swap was really bad.
00:02:12.800And I think that it is going to signal troubled waters for Americans as we travel overseas,
00:02:19.260because what you have is a basketball player who simply had marijuana and suddenly they're being switched for a guy who has been trafficking in arms,
00:02:35.040arms that kill Americans, literally a killer of Americans and others.
00:02:41.660And it's just not something that we should have done.
00:02:45.780I think the Biden team has made clear that they had no choice, that this was the offer that Putin made.
00:02:54.120I think you always have an opportunity to leverage.
00:02:57.820You're the United States of America, and you shouldn't just have Putin dictating to you a trade and take it or leave it and being trapped somehow by saying,
00:03:08.420well, we want Brittany Griner home, and this is the only thing that we can do to get her home.
00:03:12.180I think it really, again, signals troubled waters for Americans overseas.
00:03:19.020It's such a tough situation because we want Americans home.
00:03:22.200Yes, she appears to have taken pot into Russia.
00:03:25.780But I mean, my God, 10 months in a labor camp, that's really not, in anybody's mind, fair.
00:03:45.540Shortly after 1 p.m. Bangkok time on March 8th, 2008, two shaggy Colombian guerrillas locked eyes with a genial mega rich Russian arms dealer and realized they had a lot to talk about.
00:06:23.600And when Biden came in and this doesn't get enough media attention, he and many Senate Democrats that took to the floor in the Senate said, we're dropping these sanctions because we don't want to stick it in the eye of the Russians.
00:06:36.980And we think that this situation is going to get worse if we don't drop the Trump sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
00:06:51.620And within months, we had the war in Ukraine.
00:06:54.820I don't buy these Democrats who are all big tears about the war in Ukraine right now.
00:07:00.780And and the fact is, the media aren't putting the tough questions to them to say, yeah, but you voted to drop the sanctions on Putin's pipeline.
00:07:11.180Putin is going to thank you and pull back from his offense?
00:07:16.020No, he saw weakness and he doubled down and we have a war in Ukraine because we dropped those sanctions.
00:07:23.040Now we're giving billions of dollars in this war and they just got their arms dealer, their expert arms dealer, their best arms dealer back in Russia.
00:07:35.560And he's already at work, absolutely trying to find new arms to escalate this war.
00:07:50.000We forgot our ex-Marine who's sitting over there, who's been accused, our people say, on trumped up bullshit charges of being a spy.
00:07:59.260And he's been sitting over there since December 2018.
00:08:02.860He told CNN in a phone call Thursday night, he's really unhappy about this.
00:08:09.200Here's just a bit of that thought, too.
00:08:11.820I have to say I'm greatly disappointed that more has not been done to secure my release, especially as the four year anniversary of my arrest is coming up.
00:08:25.220I was arrested for a crime that never occurred.
00:08:28.840I'm happy that Brittany is going home today and that Trevor went home when he did.
00:08:34.680But I don't understand why I'm still sitting here.
00:08:51.400Again, I want to emphasize that it's very important for the family.
00:08:55.320I've worked extremely closely with families who have a loved one that is detained overseas and they should have the right to speak out and criticize.
00:09:06.520The government should not try to control them.
00:09:09.260And we in the Trump administration were absolutely clear that the families get to do whatever they want to do.
00:09:14.500We're not going to try to control them.
00:09:15.900The Biden team absolutely threatens and controls these families.
00:09:42.820This is an administration that is trying to control the families.
00:09:46.740And I think it's really important to let the families pressure the government and do whatever they can.
00:09:53.300Go on TV, criticize the U.S. government.
00:09:57.140I even believe this is very controversial, but I even believe that the families individually, without the government support, should be able to pay and do anything they want to get their loved ones back.
00:10:08.200From a public policy standpoint, we don't think that's a good idea to pay.
00:10:13.280When I'm in government, I absolutely want to try to convince the families why it's a bad idea.
00:10:20.060But, Megan, if my mom, if my nephew, if my brother was overseas, I'm going to do everything possible, and that would mean everything is on the table.
00:10:29.700I almost feel like, don't say it out loud, Rick.
00:10:32.440You know, it's like, next thing you know, somebody's going to think of that.
00:10:57.920Well, Ken, my problem with this is it feels like a loss.
00:11:02.400You know, I don't understand why we couldn't get a twofer.
00:11:05.080When we're giving it up, an arms dealer, when he's in the middle of this war, which isn't going very well for him, why can't we get a twofer?
00:11:13.580It's not like we have an arms dealer and a basketball player.
00:11:17.300We got a guy who they say may have been a spy.
00:11:21.300It seems like the evidence of that is rather weak.
00:11:23.160I don't know what the proof is, but they didn't catch him in the middle of an arms deal like we did this guy, Victor, about.
00:11:28.640So, you know, the Biden administration basically shrugs his shoulders and say, says it wasn't an either or.
00:12:57.720So now we're going to have to, you know, ratchet it up and give away a whole bunch because that's the the pay scale that the Biden administration has established.
00:13:23.200We have a whole bunch of things that we can use.
00:13:26.140I'll just quickly say when I was U.S. ambassador to Germany, we had a situation where Mahan Air was an airline bringing in terrible stuff into Germany.
00:13:37.060And we asked the Germans to shut down the airline.
00:13:41.780And I had to say to Chancellor Merkel, we're going to have to warn Americans that if you travel to Germany on an air flight, you need to be realizing that this is a very risky situation because there's an Iranian airline coming in and bringing in bad stuff.
00:13:59.620And so as soon as we used that tool, that that said a lot to the government and they changed their ways and they barred Mahan Air.
00:14:08.560I'm suggesting that there are other tools that we can use throughout the U.S. government, Treasury Department, Agriculture, Commerce, State Department.
00:14:18.800There are other tools to get wheeling home.
00:14:21.740Let's shift gears in the time we have, which is the Twitter files.
00:14:24.220They continue to come out via Matt Haiby, Barry Weiss, Michael Schellenberger now as well, working to expose what Elon Musk has found since he lifted up the roof and took a hard look at what was going on in the Twitter engine.
00:14:40.520The second there's been a couple of additions.
00:14:42.480But what Barry Weiss essentially reported is contrary to the congressional sworn testimony of Jack Dorsey, the former Twitter CEO, they have been shadow banning people.
00:14:53.100And lo and behold, it's conservatives.
00:14:59.080It's Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, who we first put on this show in the spring of twenty twenty one when he was being banned and not platformed by anybody.
00:16:16.300He better hope that what they just revealed in these files started after that testimony, because that could be problematic for him.
00:16:23.880And it's just problematic on such a bigger level, Rick, in terms of what this massive social media company.
00:16:29.060And I guarantee you it's not just Twitter has been doing to half of the country to spokespeople or prominent voices for half of the country.
00:16:52.160This is packaged as a freedom of speech issue.
00:16:56.460And shame on the D.C. media who have been cheerleaders for silencing conservatives and silencing dissenting voices.
00:17:07.420Sometimes they're not even conservatives.
00:17:08.800I'm outraged that we have a platform that lied to us about what they were doing, pretending to spin the whole thing as, you know, we're the guardians against fake news.
00:17:23.080And they turned out to be people who were censoring the truth and promoting fake news.
00:18:00.240And until we get a media that's going to push back against these scandals, including the weaponization of power by powerful people in government in Washington, D.C., it's going to get worse.
00:18:50.860In fact, according to Elon, he's they've actually gotten more aggressive against child porn than the entire history of Jack Dorsey's tenure.
00:18:58.420See, you know, never mind the guy who came after him.
00:19:01.160So the media decides to say there's no story here because we chose not to cover the first time.
00:19:05.600And now that we're being exposed to, there's really no story.
00:19:08.260And by the way, Elon Musk is terrible.
00:19:09.880And here's a bunch of made up stories about him.
00:19:11.400That's I mean, you can take it to the bank.
00:19:22.940Her husband was one of the people that signed the were 51 former intelligence intelligence officials who signed the letter saying that Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation.
00:19:34.080It wasn't what we know is there wasn't a single piece of raw intelligence that suggested that this was a politicization of the the issue three weeks before the campaign.
00:19:48.260And Dana Bash has a responsibility to ask the person that she's sleeping with whether or not he had accurate information or if he signed a letter that manipulated the election that interfered with the presidential election.
00:20:04.560Why isn't she asking her husband about this profound public policy issue that we're all talking about?
00:20:11.260The other person is Maggie Haberman at The New York Times, who covers everything that Donald Trump does, except she's not covering the Elon Musk revelations about Donald Trump.
00:23:39.880It appears to be that the press has occasionally been not nice to Meghan Markle after months of ubiquitous, fawning coverage, coverage that made her a household name.
00:23:51.720Some then said nasty things like calling her the C word and the B word and the other B word.
00:24:41.900And let me tell you what I've learned.
00:24:44.180Over time, the nastiness dies down and you learn to rise above.
00:24:50.140You learn to look at your beautiful life and to focus on that.
00:24:54.000Not what strangers write about you in the press.
00:24:56.620The sun keeps rising in the east and your loving life goes on.
00:25:00.220No matter what people tweet or print about you.
00:25:03.940As King Charles once said, and I know you've seen this because it's in your series, you let this stuff take hold of you at your peril.
00:25:11.880If you don't try to work out in your own mind some kind of method for existing and surviving this kind of thing, you would go bad, I think.
00:25:22.340Obsessing over the negative pieces for five plus years is another way to go constantly playing the victim despite the enormous gifts you've been given.
00:25:32.240But this is not healthy, nor is it particularly attractive and newsflash.
00:25:38.060It has the added effect of making people dislike you, thus feeding the demand for even more negative press.
00:25:45.200The people this pair is asking to feel sorry for them, have their own problems, real ones.
00:25:54.240They live paycheck to paycheck for the most part.
00:25:56.580They have kids in public schools where they worry about depression or drugs and crazy teachers.
00:26:04.340They need a vacation that they're probably not going to get.
00:26:06.500And they don't have a closet full of designer dresses, never mind stylists surrounding them for major black tie events, as we see in this piece.
00:26:14.320They live in small houses or maybe an apartment.
00:26:17.440They keep a watchful eye on the rising gas and electric bills, the cost of groceries as they try to save for college and still give their kids a nice Christmas.
00:26:26.280Too often they're dealing with health issues or dependency or unexpected layoffs.
00:26:30.200And they certainly don't give a damn about the mean tweets being sent out about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
00:26:38.100One thing I did find interesting was the amount of emotional baggage Harry still carries.
00:27:39.600Does anyone really think if he were Harry Jones instead of Harry Windsor, this beautiful, semi-known social climber would have given him the time of day?
00:27:48.340It is a bit shocking that she's with him.
00:27:50.880Until you consider his title, fame, family, money, sort of, castles, staff, and access to fabulous things and people.
00:27:58.980Well, that's what lured her in, clearly.
00:28:01.900Not Harry's red hair and not his Mensa IQ either.
00:28:11.460All of this is a downside of being a prince, I guess.
00:28:15.260And not even the heir, just the spare.
00:28:18.180Honestly, though, it's probably also a downside of being a Gates or a Jobs or a Zuckerberg or a Beckham or a Brady.
00:28:24.280But it does explain why she so easily leads him around now by his little red puppy dog ears.
00:28:32.880Top that off with her damsel in distress routine every time a tabloid or a tweet or an anonymous Internet troll says something nasty about her.
00:28:41.340And you have the perfect cocktail for frustration, tears, and eventually Megxit.
00:28:48.120Here's Harry explaining how he was not going to let this become Diana 2.0.
00:28:52.500I accept that there will be people around the world who fundamentally disagree with what I've done and how I've done it.
00:30:16.420I'm part of the press and we don't answer to Prince Harry.
00:30:20.260He does not control us, scare us or really even get to shape our coverage at all.
00:30:24.880He certainly doesn't have any power over what American journalists or citizens write or say, which Markle knows very well as an American actress.
00:30:33.880But even in Great Britain, where the palace may be able to influence some coverage, they do not control the media.
00:30:40.360Otherwise, Prince Andrew would still be a working royal and we wouldn't know how much he'd like to hang out with pervert Jeffrey Epstein.
00:30:47.020The series also makes clear the roots of Harry's newfound annoying wokeness.
00:30:52.260Yes, it's his wife, his wife's influence for sure.
00:30:56.200But he is also tormented, apparently, by that time he wore the Nazi uniform for Halloween when he was 20, complete with a swastika on his arm.
00:31:05.580Says it was one of the worst mistakes of his life.
00:31:08.020But wants us to know now that he met afterward with a rabbi and a Holocaust survivor.
00:31:13.400Because, like, he didn't know that Nazis were bad before that?
00:31:18.560Since then, you see, however, he has done the work tackling his unconscious bias, which he wants the rest of his family and Britain to do, too.
00:31:30.240Because you're either part of the problem or part of the solution.
00:35:16.180A journalist would not have aired this thing without making sure that his or her attempts to get comment from the palace were repeated and clear and well-documented, none of which happened here.
00:35:28.240A journalist would not have allowed Meghan to smear the BBC as doing an orchestrated reality show interview for their engagement without seeking comment from the BBC,
00:35:39.020which has since denied the charge and accused the filmmaker of misleading editing.
00:35:43.980A journalist might have felt duty-bound to point out that while Meghan was urgently messaging her dad about her wedding, she was coordinating with Palace PR.
00:35:54.920These were not loving messages from a concerned bride-to-be.
00:35:58.500This was defensive PR by a woman obsessed with her media coverage.
00:36:04.160All of this came out in one of her many lawsuits against the UK press.
00:36:07.240Guess this documentarian forgot to document that.
00:36:10.700The fallout with her dad caused lasting damage.
00:36:15.660In one of the more shocking moments of the film, H describes it this way.
00:36:21.080She had a father before this, and now she doesn't have a father.
00:37:43.400My mother was all heart and I am my mother's son.
00:37:47.900And also, I'm the only one in this family who married for love.
00:37:50.780I think for so many people in the family, especially obviously the men, there can be a temptation or an urge to marry someone who would fit the mold as opposed to somebody who you perhaps are destined to be with.
00:38:09.480The difference between making decisions with your head or your heart.
00:38:13.700And my mom certainly made most of her decisions, if not all of them, from her heart.
00:39:10.640And she is not getting hounded by the press in any way close to the way Diana was.
00:39:16.820Other than a few paparazzi hanging around outside of Megan's house in Canada when their relationship first was made public,
00:39:24.080the only paparazzi shown bothering her is one guy on a scooter in New York City in a scene that remains my very favorite of the entire series so far.
00:44:54.440It all began to sour when they became so hypocritical.
00:44:58.680When she went to New York for a baby shower that cost half a million
00:45:02.920and she claimed while she flew on a private jet that she was an environmentalist.
00:45:07.640When she denied the public sight of Archie when he was born, but they gave an exclusive to CBS.
00:45:14.880When she began complaining to the palace officials in a way which was characterized as bullying.
00:45:21.180And all the time, the public was giving her the benefit of the doubt until it became intolerable.
00:45:28.100She was not only hypocritical, but she was dishonest.
00:45:31.660And that is really when it all fell apart.
00:45:34.740And of course, when she gave her letter to her friends who passed it on to People magazine,
00:45:41.440the letter to her father, which was clearly intended for public consumption, which was just filled with lies.
00:45:49.300Then I think the public decided that Meghan was after her own interests and had none of the interests of the royal family or Britain at heart.
00:45:57.440And she really cast herself as a celebrity to return to Hollywood and was not prepared to be a member of the royal family.
00:46:06.200And it's at that point she lost not only public support, but the British media support.
00:46:13.700I mean, I've I've joked on the show before.
00:46:15.460Here's my here's my Meghan and Harry mug.
00:46:18.080Believe it or not, I have a Meghan and Harry mug from their wedding when I went to cover it.
00:46:22.820And so I was there. I saw the love for her amongst the British people.
00:46:27.120They absolutely adored her and not just the people, the press, too.
00:46:31.220Yes, there's always going to be a couple who are nasty or say negative things.
00:46:34.520That's life. But the overwhelming majority of coverage and comments about her were absolutely fawning.
00:46:42.360But we're supposed to just forget all of that because these two go scroll through the comments section.
00:46:47.700Literally, there was a statement by him eight days after the relationship was announced, referencing the comments section of some online Internet sites to try to find anything negative.
00:46:58.900And then they blow it up into representative of the full coverage.
00:47:04.280Well, I think you've got to bear in mind that Harry is not very intelligent and is emotionally insecure and has never really understood Diana at all.
00:47:13.060When Diana died, he was 12 and he's never really tried to understand that Diana was not killed by the media.
00:47:20.100Diana fed the media. I mean, she'd given Andrew Morton a secret interview to provide his book.
00:47:26.060She'd given the BBC an interview to the Panorama interview, which was explosive.
00:47:31.260She kept on calling paparazzi photographers to tell them where they could get a good angle of her.
00:47:36.400So the idea that Diana was not totally in cahoots with the media is ridiculous.
00:47:42.040And of course, she didn't die in Paris because of the media.
00:47:45.560She died because she wasn't wearing a safety belt while she was driven by a drunken driver at a reckless speed.
00:47:52.420And Harry doesn't want to understand that because of one factor.
00:47:58.660All his other girlfriends got fed up with a manic depressive who drank too much, who was boisterous, and had paid no attention to them, the women.
00:48:06.940And Meghan comes along deliberately looking for a rich, famous man, and in the end cultivated him.
00:48:15.360In the end, she created what she wanted, and he simperingly obeys her.
00:50:13.620Because the way they tell it in the documentary is he was just scrolling through his Instagram and he follows some person who's close to the royals, I guess.
00:50:20.480And there was Meghan in her cute little dog ears and dog.
00:58:07.780In the first three series, Harry comes out and says,
00:58:10.100oh, there's the leaking of stories, meaning by the palace, that the press wouldn't be the leakers.
00:58:15.620It's the it's the the principles, the royal family leaks and also the planting of stories.
00:58:21.980And he is absolutely getting ready to say in this next three episodes that the palace and its staffers,
00:58:27.960courtiers, whatever, were planting negative stories on him and her.
00:58:30.900That's what she means, I think, clearly by they threw me to the wolves or they fed me the wolves.
00:58:34.500By the way, it's the same thing that they were going to be the dumping ground
00:58:38.980for negative stories while William and Kate were protected and that they were not protected.
00:58:44.300In fact, to the contrary, negative hit pieces were planted on them by their own family.
00:58:48.840So how is the palace likely to deal with that?
00:58:52.720Well, it was great difficulty because, of course, they're lying.
00:58:55.540They themselves created the bad press by behaving so irrationally and so hypocritically,
00:59:01.220like, for example, refusing to visit the queen in Balmoral on the grounds that Archie was too young to fly
00:59:07.440and then flying off to meet George Clooney in the Mediterranean and Elton John.
00:59:15.120I mean, they are the cause of their own bad publicity and the bad stories.
00:59:19.960They created them by their dishonest performance.
00:59:25.180But the real problem is that I don't think silence will silence them anymore by the royal palace.
00:59:30.900The royal palace is going to have to come out and give their version because the only way the Sussexes can earn their living
00:59:39.640is by carrying on regurgitating their moans and complaints and lies.
00:59:45.320And the only way for the palace in the end to silence it is to give a version of the truth.
00:59:50.760However much I can say that the Sussexes are not telling the truth, that will not silence them.
00:59:57.220It'll have to be something very, very simple, but effective.
01:00:02.260And I think William is the mouthpiece for the royal family and he needs to talk soon.
01:00:08.280What do you make of the relationship now between these brothers?
01:00:10.480I heard you on with Dan Wooten on GB News saying Diana would be horrified at what her one son is doing to the other,
01:00:16.720not to mention to King Charles now at the beginning of his reign.
01:00:20.220I mean, he's really trying to sabotage the whole thing from the look of it.
01:00:23.160What do you make of the relationship between the boys?
01:00:25.320It's a tragedy. And of course, it's very, very damaging.
01:00:28.320It's very damaging for Britain's reputation across the world because the one thing which everyone associates with Britain is the royal family.
01:00:36.340But you see, the point is that this is Meghan's plan all along, was that she had to be famous.
01:00:41.840And when she discovered that the royal family is led by the queen and not by Meghan, that is when she decided she was getting out.
01:00:52.940And now she is setting herself up as the queen of Montecito.
01:00:56.840She is setting herself up as the person who will speak on behalf of the exiled royals.
01:01:02.040And she doesn't care how much damage she's creating, because after all, remember how she's treated her father, how she's treated her first husband, how she treated her best friends from school.
01:01:12.080She is a person who is totally destructive when it comes to promoting herself.
01:01:16.640So I think there's a lot more bloodshed to come in this battle.
01:01:20.380And of course, the relationship between Harry and William is one of the casualties.
01:01:24.220Even how she treated her own niece, which is documented to some extent in this film, they bring up her niece, Ashley, who is the daughter of her Meghan's estranged half sister, Samantha Markle, who may be familiar to the viewers.
01:01:41.220They don't get along, Samantha and Meghan.
01:01:43.440Meghan says they never had a relationship.
01:01:45.000She doesn't know why this woman's all over the press commenting about her now.
01:01:49.080And there's a picture of the two of them as recently as Meghan was twenty eight, seven years old and says she dumped Samantha when she started to become famous and got together with Harry.
01:01:57.640In any event, Meghan had a relationship with Samantha's daughter, who Samantha did not raise Samantha's parents.
01:02:58.180And I called her and I had her on speakerphone and we talked her through what guidance we were being given and why this assessment was made.
01:05:13.020But, of course, what Meghan did invite were all the people she didn't know, like George Clooney, Oprah Winfrey, and all the other Hollywood stars who were going to help her career.
01:09:20.280What's very interesting to me, Meghan, is this, that they have provided 15 hours of their own home videos, which are just filled with loving pictures of themselves.
01:09:29.540But they didn't allow Netflix into their home to really get the honest, candid, what I imagine would be a proper fly on the wall documentary.
01:10:58.440But most of us in the public eye understand it's the unfortunate downside of being in the limelight.
01:11:03.180It will pass head down, shoulders back, move forward.
01:11:07.660Never have I seen such a whiner who thinks she can control an entire group of people and professionals in the UK and Canada and the United States because she doesn't like what they're saying.
01:11:18.080And I don't know what happens with the British press corps and the royals.
01:11:41.720Well, I think she wanted the spotlight.
01:11:44.060She told her father when she was seven years old and they came out of a cinema that she wanted to walk on the red carpet for the rest of her life.
01:12:38.400So let me pick it up where I touched on with Tom Bauer, which is her saying and him saying the reason they needed to do this Netflix documentary, again, in quotes, is people just they have to tell their story.
01:13:02.700When you feel like people haven't gotten any sense of who you are for so long.
01:13:08.980It's really nice to just be able to have the opportunity to let people have a bit more of a glimpse into what's happened and also who we are.
01:15:20.240So what is it about England and what was this whole setup in the first three episodes to paint England as this awful, racist, nasty country?
01:15:31.840The piece that that Leilani was just referencing, Sophie, about where she weighs in on what Will and Kate are like behind closed doors is it's a masterclass in manipulation.
01:25:30.020And she thinks that she can relate to people.
01:25:32.320Maybe she thinks, oh, it makes me more relatable if I have problems that I can complain about.
01:25:37.040Because right now there is this whole thing of competitive victimhood that's going on, points for racism, points for being put on, points for being bullied.
01:25:50.100So it's all to me, I think it's so much of it's made up, but she can play on these, like, victim points, compete with other, you know, not real victims of, like, abuse or anything, but she plays the victim.
01:26:02.240And so for me, the turning point was when she was in South Africa and she was doing a tour.
01:26:06.860She was at a home with very vulnerable girls.
01:26:10.380And it was an ITV journalist that said to her, you know, Megan, how are you doing?
01:26:15.100And she's like, no one ever asks if I'm okay.
01:26:18.180And it's like, whoa, for me, that was like, hold on a minute.
01:26:21.760You have not only money, but you also have a healthy child.