Acting Undersecretary of Public Diplomacy at the Department of State, Darren Beatty, talks about global censorship, enacting much-needed reform, and carrying the torch for the America First mission abroad. He also talks about what he's been focusing on in his new role at the State Department.
00:06:25.000Today we're going to sit down with great friend of the show, Darren Beatty, who now has taken on a major role at the State Department as the Acting Undersecretary of Public Diplomacy.
00:06:37.000He's taking on global censorship, enacting much-needed reform, and carrying the torch for the America First mission abroad.
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00:09:00.000Well, guys, joining me now, Acting Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy at the State Department and the Acting President of the Institute of Peace, Darren Beatty.
00:10:10.000And there are so many exciting things we're doing at the Department of State and in the administration.
00:10:16.000And so I'll kind of focus on the highlights of what I've been most focused on.
00:10:21.000And as you know, a lot of our earlier discussions have focused on weaponization of government, on the color revolution issue, on the censorship issue, and now, thanks to the very forward leaning posture of your father's administration, we've been able to do a lot of very substantive things on those issues.
00:10:44.000I think at the highest level, what we've been able to promote is something I would refer to as free speech diplomacy.
00:10:54.000Now under the Biden regime, what you had was a situation in which, unfortunately, the US government was pressuring US tech companies to censor American citizens.
00:11:06.000Now under President Trump's administration, he has successfully rolled back a lot of the domestic censorship regime.
00:11:14.000But what has happened is there's been censorship architecture that's intensified overseas.
00:11:21.000And so just as we're rolling back the censorship regime here in the United States, rolling back what Biden was doing, we're seeing a redoubling of efforts in certain regions, in particular in Europe and Brazil.
00:11:36.000And so really this kind of foreign component of things, which has always been around but now it's intensified, not only invites but demands a real kind of diplomatic approach to free speech, which under President Trump's leadership and under Secretary Rubio's leadership, we've been able to conduct very successfully so far.
00:11:59.000And I'm very honored to have been a part of that process.
00:12:03.000Yeah, I mean, it really seems like the team, this time around, is all aligned.
00:12:10.000I think Secretary Rubio has done an incredible job.
00:12:16.000It's like they're actually in sync with my father.
00:12:20.000They're actually taking what he wants and effectuating it.
00:12:23.000Whereas in the first term, it was like, okay, we heard him, but we're never going to do any of those things that doesn't jive with the rest of us at state.
00:12:29.000I mean, have you seen that sort of cohesiveness?
00:12:33.000And does it translate to some of the stuff that we used to talk about again, which is sort of the guys that are the careers down below not necessarily buying in and holding people back?
00:12:43.000Or has just the leadership sort of overwhelmed some of that stuff that would have stymied any kind of America first First policies?
00:12:52.000I would say it's more in the direction of overwhelmed.
00:12:55.000We're in a situation now where we've gone through a very substantive reorganization.
00:13:02.000We have a configuration in place that really enables the department and really the bureaucracies writ large to be responsive to the president's vision, which is, again, that's a precondition for the democratic process to work.
00:13:19.000And that's something that has always been a complicated thing whenever you have a transformational presidency.
00:13:26.000Sometimes, you know, entrenched bureaucratic elements trying to thwart it.
00:13:30.000And this time around, I think we're really in a position where the systems are in place in order for the department and the bureaucracies to be maximally responsive to the president's vision.
00:13:44.000And I think that's why you've seen so many successes in so little time, including, again, some of the stuff we're doing.
00:13:52.000It's just a wild ride from discussing with you as a private citizen the weaponization of government under Biden.
00:13:59.000And one of the first things we did here at the Department of State, and major credit to Secretary Rubio for really leaning into this was.
00:14:09.000eliminating the Global Engagement Center, which was the kind of censorship operation within the State Department, really kind of inaugurated under Obama.
00:14:20.000It was run by a guy who kind of gained notoriety for advocating for the reimagining of the First Amendment and basically set up a censorship infrastructure within the State Department.
00:14:33.000That one of the first things we did was eliminate the entire office.
00:14:36.000And I'm currently undergoing a widespread transparency effort.
00:14:41.000And this is going to come out in the next couple of weeks.
00:14:44.000We've gone through hundreds of thousands of emails and very much look forward to revealing to the public exactly what was going on in this censorship office.
00:14:53.000I think the public will be shocked and a lot of the things they were doing even against current cabinet members in President Trump's administration.
00:15:01.000So there's a lot of that story that still needs to be told, but we've taken just a very proactive, aggressive posture towards these things.
00:15:10.000And it's just such an honor to be in a position to help realize this transformation from things that we've been talking about and the American people have been concerned about to things we're actually taking action on now within this new administration.
00:15:26.000So as the Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy, what exactly are your goals and responsibilities?
00:15:33.000And I know you're also now the acting president of the Institute for Peace.
00:15:39.000I mean, I know they've given Marco like seven or eight jobs.
00:15:43.000It's like, of course they have to give it to the Hispanic guy.
00:15:46.000He's going to be the one working all these things.
00:15:48.000But it looks like you have a pretty full plate too.
00:15:50.000You know, what exactly does all of that entail?
00:15:53.000Well, you know, it's a very interesting history, this public diplomacy office.
00:15:59.000It's really, I won't get want to go into too much detail the history, but it does come from basically what used to be called the US Information Agency, which is an organization that is largely credited for having helped win the Cold War, that did a lot of effective messaging and programs.
00:16:18.000And in the 90s, that became enveloped into the State Department, where it assumed its new form as the Office of Public Diplomacy.
00:16:28.000And this is an enormous office that encompasses a wide range of things that some of which would be familiar to most Americans.
00:16:35.000For instance, the Fulbright Scholarship Program, Music Diplomacy, Sports Diplomacy, and the Office of Public Diplomacy., which I know this administration has really taken a keen interest in.
00:16:50.000But really, it's about kind of speech is very much in that kind of purview as well.
00:16:56.000And so that's the component that I've leaned into, I think, most enthusiastically.
00:17:01.000And we've done a lot of work in relation to encroachments on free speech from Europe.
00:17:07.000And in particular, and probably most most known at this point are some of the things we're doing in relation to Brazil and in particular the censorship and persecution complex erected by Justice Moraes in Brazil against Bolsonaro and his supporters?
00:17:27.000Well, I mean, I think that one, you know, specifically on Brazil, you sanctioned Judge Alexander Moraes.
00:17:34.000It's a powerful and needed move against a sitting judge, you know, who is pushing, you know, the same kind of lawfare that we experience here, perhaps even more.
00:17:42.000Can you explain the specific actions that led up to this?
00:17:46.000you know, why it really matters, perhaps now more than ever.
00:17:49.000And there's those who also say that they actually want us to do this because that's their sort of way.
00:17:55.000If you don't bang Can you kind of explain the details of how you see this all playing out?
00:18:08.000Well, the first observation is all of these things are connected.
00:18:12.000And indeed, the parallels between the situation with Bolsonaro and the situation with President Trump, it's not a one-to-one correspondence, but there's definitely an analogy to be made.
00:18:50.000The successful populist movements across the world have been targeted in the same ways, for the same reasons, and in many instances by the same people and the same networks.
00:19:02.000And that's very much part of the dynamic in Brazil.
00:19:05.000And so right away, you had the cultivation of this persecution and censorship architecture in Brazil, unfortunately, with the assistance of our government, particularly under Biden.
00:19:19.000And what this has resulted in is, again, a very similar and unfortunate story in Brazil where law fair and politicized prosecutions and persecutions have really suppressed the democratic process in Brazil and the architecture is so monstrous and so profound that it's had spillover effects where it's affecting US citizens, US residents and US companies.
00:19:49.000Rumble has been directly affected by Justice Moraes' censorship regime.
00:19:55.000He banned Rumble and by extension, Truth Social even from Brazil.
00:20:02.000He's issued indictments and various orders against Rumble and other social media companies, so taking an extremely aggressive posture on that.
00:20:14.000So it's not just the censorship and persecution complex internally, which prevents Brazil from being able to express itself through the democratic process, but it's also directly affected, again, our citizens, our residents and our companies, including Rumble.
00:20:33.000So I'm very, very pleased and very happy that the president has taken decisive action on this and made it very clear that this political persecution complex is a central impediment to the ultimate flourishing of what could and should be an extremely productive bilateral relationship with Brazil.
00:20:55.000Yeah, I mean, it seems like you also have some, you know, problems in Colombia and other parts of Latin America, but we do cover Latin America a lot on this show, but this week we actually saw Bolivia reject socialism for the first time in twenty years in their presidential race.
00:21:12.000Are the people rising up and walking across Latin and South America?
00:21:17.000And how does that impact your diplomacy and effort to combat censorship and illegitimate regimes?
00:21:25.000Yes, I mean, I think that's a great story of this second term of this administration is there is a focus on the Western Hemisphere.
00:21:38.000I know you had the Deputy Secretary on not too long ago, who is very much an expert in this and expressed the importance of getting the Western Hemisphere right because the potentialities are tremendous.
00:21:52.000And again, we're Europe is very important, the Middle East is very important, but our backyard is very important too.
00:22:01.000And all of these countries that you mentioned have tremendous potential, and Brazil being an enormous country, enormous population, enormous economy, so many amazing things that we could do if the democratic process were in a position to actually flourish in the way that it should without this persecution and censorship architecture.
00:22:26.000So I think that's really something we're working towards, is realizing the full potentialities of what our relationships in the western hemisphere can be, including in Brazil.
00:22:39.000So how can we advance free speech as a diplomatic tool?
00:22:43.000How does that really manifest itself in practice, especially in a world where many countries, including some of our alleged allies, have far different views on the limits of free speech?
00:22:59.000And I think the general answer is we approach it the way that we've approached a lot of other objectives in the US government.
00:23:07.000The important thing is this is now an objective..
00:23:09.000We have a standard roster of carrots and sticks that have been pretty effective in advancing our interests in the past, you know, not in every case, but we do have carrots that people want to eat and sticks that people want to avoid, and so optimally and wisely marshalling those tools to advance our free speech interests is, I think, very much something that's sensible and advisable to do.
00:23:37.000And, you know, it's different in different areas and different regions.
00:23:42.000The case in Brazil, I think, is particularly severe and egregious in how.
00:23:46.000and how the censorship architecture was kind of globalized in a way that directly and severely impacts US interest.
00:23:56.000In Europe, there's another version of this that we're also looking at with concern that expresses itself in sweeping internet legislation like the Digital Services Act, where they might say, oh, we're doing these things.
00:24:12.000This is just an internal European thing.
00:24:15.000And it's a question of how much do we want to get involved in the internal process?
00:24:20.000But certainly we want to get involved if they're doing things that spill over and affect the speech environment in the United States.
00:24:28.000And so at the very least, what we want to avoid is something called the Brussels effect, which basically captures the regulatory comparative advantage of Europe where they have a market share and they leverage that by saying, okay, you don't have access to our market unless you conform to these standards.
00:24:47.000And just as a matter of efficiency, usually industries end up conforming to the standards of Europe because they're the most aggressive from a regulatory standpoint.
00:24:57.000So we want to prevent something from happening whereby our companies are either forced to incur a tremendous financial cost or conform to these censorship standards promoted by Europe.
00:25:12.000That's one of those things that I think is very much in the interest of the United States to do and something that we're working on very, very closely.
00:25:20.000And again, the Brazil case is especially severe, I would say, perhaps uniquely severe, and it's something that, again, has been dealt with with tools that kind of correspond to that severity.
00:25:34.000The Magnitsky sanction is known to be a kind of financial death sentence for a good reason.
00:25:40.000It's a very serious tool that reflects the nature there on the ground and what justice Marias has been doing to Brazil, but also by extension to the United States.
00:25:51.000What are some of those other kinds effective, let's call them soft power tools that are at our disposal?
00:25:57.000Is it traditional cultural exchanges and academic programs or are there other new types of strategies that are more important for building those people to people kind of ties that you need, that actually those real relationships that actually affect real diplomacy?
00:26:14.000And again, there are a lot of tools with different levels of severity.
00:26:18.000Another tool that we've implemented and established at the State Department was this tool of visas.
00:26:26.000So one thing that the State Department did a couple of months ago was announcing a global 3C visa policy.
00:26:33.000Basically, we're defining a target class of violations whereby any foreign official who is deemed to have been involved or complicit in censorship activity that affects Americans on American soil is subject to visa restrictions.
00:26:53.000So they and their immediate family members are not able to come into the United States.
00:27:00.000It's not at the level of severity of a Magnitsky sanction, but it definitely sends a very acute message to those who are potentially involved in that activity.
00:27:12.000And so there's a wide range of things.
00:27:18.000So we run the gamut from the softer tools to the more severe tools, and we kind of leverage those as appropriate.
00:27:26.000So how do you these days measure the success of a public diplomacy effort?
00:27:31.000Is it a change in public opinion, a policy shift in another country, or is it something else?
00:27:36.000Because I mean, you guys did a great job obviously getting rid of USAID and we saw the insanity uh you know that that was pushing but i guess by their standards they would have given themselves an a plus for you know making sure that there's gender awareness for trans people in third world countries who wouldn't know what transgender even is.
00:27:54.000And yet they spent billions of dollars and, you know, probably touted those successes.
00:27:59.000You know, how do you have an objective measure of what is success?
00:28:02.000Are we just seeing that with these peace deals, with the ending of the wars?
00:28:05.000You know, how do you grade those these days so that, you know, a regular person could be like, okay, we're actually spending money on these things and we're actually effectuating real change.
00:28:26.000Like everything USAID was doing prior.
00:28:28.000Yes, I agree with you, one hundred percent.
00:28:30.000I mean, and that's so critical, and hopefully we can get into that a little bit in this conversation of the NGO component of things.
00:28:40.000But yes, so first we just want not to spend money on bad things, not to spend money on misaligned things.
00:28:46.000So I've canceled a lot of stuff that was highly suspect and misaligned, and it takes a long time to get go through the entire catalog of what was set up.
00:29:00.000I think another component is defining, you know, defining precise goals, not sort of in an overarching sense, but for instance in relation to Brazil, we want the democratic process to be able to flourish there.
00:29:15.000And one can imagine like very precise sort of victory conditions associated with the situation in Brazil or maybe the Digital Services Act.
00:29:24.000There are certain components of, say, the fact checkers.
00:29:28.000We don't want them to use these fact checkers or maybe the idea.
00:29:33.000of say, Europe holding a fine over the heads of our companies, maybe that fine shouldn't be associated with the global revenue, but maybe just the European revenue.
00:29:44.000So these are things just, you know, there are ways to define precise victory conditions, but the overarching kind of concept of public diplomacy is something that I think is it's something that hasn't really been kind of freshly evaluated since the Cold War.
00:30:03.000The term public diplomacy itself is a Cold War coinage.
00:30:07.000It, to a large degree, a lot of the programs.
00:30:11.000are kind of, I don't want to say vestigial, but rooted in this Cold War context that is a particular configuration of the US, the Soviet Union, both animated by sort of ideologies of universal appeal, very much set up for this kind of global war of ideas framework that still applies to some degree today, but maybe with some differences.
00:30:38.000And so I think part of the exciting exercise we have is to really kind of fundamentally reassess what is public diplomacy means in the current configuration, how do we kind of rework these pipelines that have been on autopilot for decades and to kind of repurpose a lot of our assets in a more targeted and efficient fashion to achieve, as you were saying, kind of more precisely defined goals.
00:31:06.000I think that's part of the broader challenge and imperative we have.
00:31:10.000And I think so far we've been quite successful in doing that.
00:31:13.000So let's talk about that NGO component that you mentioned.
00:31:16.000I know, as long as I've known you, we've been talking about, you certainly had a real fundamental grasp of what was really going on.
00:31:24.000That was not the message that was conveyed to the public.
00:31:30.000Obviously, there's been a lot of dismantling of those, still a very powerful force.
00:31:35.000I don't know what you can and can't say now as someone who's working at the State Department, but I imagine in your past role, you and I talking on this show would have A done a victory lap about these things going on and then probably tied that to the staggering lack of funding for Act Blue and the Democrat fundraising machine.
00:31:55.000So what do you think is the NGO component now?
00:31:59.000Beyond perhaps what we've discovered with the exposure of USAID and all of these other insane programs.
00:32:09.000And I think this has been talked about, but I almost think this is an underappreciated and major success of the administration so far.
00:32:21.000There have been a lot of successes to go around, so there's kind of an abundance of riches in that regard, but I think one of the special successes has been how this administration has gone after the deep state, the swamp, whatever you want to call it, at the NGO layer.
00:32:39.000The NGO layer of the deep state has been profoundly undermined.
00:32:46.000Just to appreciate the significance of that, I think it's important to call, well, what function does this NGO layer serve?
00:32:53.000In a nutshell, basically, after the church committee hearings that expose a lot of the stuff that the CIA was doing, the government restructured in a way that kind of distributed responsibility in a kind of a plausibly deniable way to an archipelago of NGOs that have operated in this kind of interstitial zone of kind of public,
00:33:19.000kind of private, and they express themselves in different ways according to the needs of the people.
00:33:27.000And this layer of things is the layer on which color revolutions were conducted.
00:33:32.000It was the layer on which the Biden administration helped to facilitate a lot of the things that we don't love in Brazil and all over the world.
00:33:42.000And it's certainly the layer that's been most responsible for the censorship architecture, both domestically and abroad.
00:33:49.000And this has been dealt a decisive blow.
00:33:52.000A lot of the things that we've terminated at the State Department, including the Global Engagement Center, part of their infamy came from how they were funding a lot of these NGOs.
00:34:02.000And the US Institute of Peace in particular is a fascinating story.
00:34:07.000I think, from what I can tell, this is almost a perfection of that sort of chameleon like ambiguity of is this a government institution, is it a private institution?
00:34:23.000It's almost a perfection of that form.
00:34:25.000And well, I'm still kind of getting a handle on things.
00:34:30.000And so a lot will have to stay tuned, but I think the public will be very interested in what we have to come.
00:34:36.000But from what is already public, it's a very bizarre situation.
00:34:41.000For instance, this is called the US Institute of Peace.
00:34:44.000Why is one of their major things talking about how it's not a great thing that the opium business in Afghanistan is diminishing?
00:34:55.000Why is the US Institute of Peace because like all the acronyms and fancy names they come up in DC, like whatever they come up with, it's probably doing the opposite.
00:35:03.000So if you would have told me, and again, with you at the helm now, it's perhaps it's different.
00:35:07.000I'm going to give it the benefit of the doubt, but if you would have told me the Institute of Peace under Biden, I'm like, so they're sowing the seeds of war all over the world.
00:35:16.000But how bizarre is that of all places?, the US Institute of Peace making it one of their main agenda items to, like, implicitly try to restore the opium trade in Afghanistan or at least lament the diminishment of the opium trade in Afghanistan.
00:35:36.000So it's very bizarre and really it just underlines how, how, how, how, how, how complicated and how dirty this NGO layer can really be.
00:35:47.000And I think, you know, again, for full transparency of government, there needs to be a public understanding and reckoning with this NGO layer and like all the other layers needs to be brought under political control.
00:36:02.000And by political control, I mean control of the people.
00:36:06.000Because, you know, again, what's the point of winning an election if there's these bureaucratic and NGO layers that exist precisely to undermine the mandate and the will of the people as it's expressed through electoral outcomes.
00:36:23.000And so that's just a critical component of the swamp.
00:36:27.000And again, I think that of all of the incredible successes that the Trump administration has achieved so far, I would put the bringing the NGO layer to heal as preeminent among them.
00:36:43.000And I don't know if the American people yet even fully appreciate the significance of that.
00:36:48.000So what surprised you most about this new role?
00:36:52.000Well, I'm still getting into it and we're kind of trying to develop it in a deliberate and responsible fashion.
00:37:00.000But frankly, what surprised me was how perfectly it was set up.
00:37:06.000It really is sort of, if you look at the post church kind of government structure as the development of this sort of NGO world that exists at an arm's length plausible deniable layer to do the stuff that previously other maybe agencies in the government have done.
00:37:24.000What impressed me about USIP was how it's just really the culmination of that.
00:38:05.000And I think most Americans, including myself, is US Institute of Peace is not really on people's radar as much as something like USAID, but I think it really encapsulates a lot of the problems and challenges with this NGO layer, perhaps better than any other institution.
00:38:27.000Obviously, I thought of everything as USAID.
00:38:29.000I never even really heard of USIP, and I kind of do a lot of this.
00:38:34.000How many more of these things are there?
00:38:37.000I imagine USADE is one of the big ones, but if there's 30 other that are 10% of the size, it's still, you're talking about billions of dollars, plus the negative impact of what those things ultimately do to the America, their sort of global hegemony on power, where it seemed to really undermine so much of those things, as well as the countries.
00:38:57.000that they were supposed to be helping probably didn't get any benefit out of that unless they wanted to become trans-communists.
00:39:14.000You know, people think of aid as, oh, we're giving charity.
00:39:17.000Well, usually, you know, usually people like, you know, charity if you're just giving them stuff.
00:39:22.000In many cases, the countries didn't even like the US, the people who are complaining the most about the closure of USAID were actually just these, you know, NGO types, not even the recipients of taxpayer funding.
00:39:40.000Not even the alleged recipients and beneficiaries of this.
00:39:44.000So it's just another example of how the grand scheme is grift of the Democrats is really at the level of, you know, kind of using the tax base as their own political slush fund.
00:39:59.000And that's sort of another component of this NGO layer, which is sort of, it's a reconfiguration of how the government does some of its maybe dirty work, color revolution type stuff, post church committee.
00:40:14.000But also it's intimately twined with sort of the grand scale grift of the Democratic Party, which is very much to use the tax base to make money.
00:40:29.000Yeah, I mean, So, you know, the USAID stuff blows up two months ago, three months ago, whenever that was.
00:40:35.000And then all of a sudden you see, you know, the top, you know, five to seven executives at ACTBLUE, the Democrat fundraising apparatus design.
00:40:42.000Then you see their quarterly numbers and they're, you know, 10% of what they used to be.
00:40:49.000It doesn't seem like a stretch to say that these things have been tied and that's been a back channel way to fund, you know, the Democrat Party apparatus.
00:41:08.000And again, that could be directly and it could also be indirectly.
00:41:12.000Like if people are basically using these funds and operationalizing these institutions in a manner that's directly supportive of a kind of left wing democrat agenda, they don't even need to be formally associated with the party in order to be effectively an extension of that broader network.
00:41:30.000Just in the same way that National Endowment of Democracy or these other NGOs which were explicitly designed to function as cutout layers to other agencies within government, they don't need to have a formal relationship in order to function as a kind of bureaucratic extension of that.
00:41:51.000So it really is like these distinctions that I think traditionally have meant a lot to the conversation of the distinction between public and private and these kinds of things really don't capture the underlying reality of what this sort of broader nexus really is.
00:42:09.000And I think we need to think more of it in terms of this kind of, you know, one thing slash the other.
00:42:15.000They're extensions of each other, kind of in a similar way of sort of Eisenhower's coinage of the military industrial complex.
00:42:23.000I think the FOIA captures this very well.
00:42:26.000There's an equivalent, there's an analogous thing going on with these sort of NGO institutions is that they are extensions of this kind of broader apparatus and need to be thought of as part of this collective.
00:42:42.000Yeah, I mean, it feels like that's the entire purpose.
00:42:44.000Once it goes, once the money goes to the NGO, all of a sudden, there's no accountability.
00:42:54.000And so it was just a way of, to me, it was like money laundering.
00:42:57.000It's like it goes to a government gives it to these guys.
00:42:59.000They're doing at least one party's, you know, money laundering.
00:43:02.000Uh, you know, governmental work, but there's no way to actually track what's going on to see if there is waste, fraud, or abuse.
00:43:08.000And therefore, it was just going to keep going forever because there were enough beneficiaries of it to make sure that it made sense and stayed quiet.
00:43:14.000But other than that, it didn't really seem to have any real purpose.
00:43:27.000I mentioned that sports diplomacy is part of our portfolio.
00:43:32.000And that's very kind of a, uh, something that I know the president and also the secretary has taken very keen interest in with the Olympics going on, with FIFA going on, and a lot of other important programs.
00:43:47.000I just wanted to say on your show, one exciting thing that we're doing is we're adding the sport of mixed martial arts to the official roster of sports that can be included as part of exchange programs.
00:44:01.000And so that's one of those things, again, that we can do to sort of tailor our programs to sort of the vision of the administration, to how things have kind of developed.
00:44:13.000There's a lot of demand for this sport.
00:44:15.000For some reason it hasn't been officially included.
00:44:18.000But these are the kinds of things that we can leverage to strengthen our relationships overseas, because now this is a sport that is very much a global sport and obviously also a very important sport in Brazil.
00:44:32.000So I think there's a lot of potential there and I just wanted to, because I know you're a fan as well, so I wanted to break that news with you.
00:44:42.000I mean, it sort of pales in comparison to, I know, a couple of years ago when the Olympics were talking about getting rid of wrestling.
00:44:48.000I was like, I don't know, like, other than maybe track, like, what is more of an Olympic sport than wrestling?
00:44:54.000And then you see the stuff they want to admit and I'm like like, it's sort of wild.
00:44:58.000So I think that sets pretty good precedent for, you know, real sports to stay included and especially those kinds of sports that are, you know, played throughout the world.
00:45:07.000And I, you know, obviously MMA's got such a big, big following across every country now.
00:45:14.000These are, you know, these combat sports do conform to like the original understanding of what sport is, it's basically those or questions.
00:46:15.000I'm an, I've fully confess to being an academic nerd by nature.
00:46:22.000My background is in mathematics and philosophy.
00:46:25.000And again, we have, part of the Fulbright program, we have a lot of interesting academic exchange programs that perhaps haven't been used optimally in the past, but I think do have a lot of potential.
00:46:36.000We have very sophisticated things that I think really contribute to the narrative of America being the custodian of civilization.
00:46:47.000We have a special office in our department called the Cultural Heritage Center, which really conducts all diplomatic affairs related to the preservation of cultural antiquities.
00:47:01.000So stuff from ancient Greece, ancient Rome, ancient Near East, all the diplomacy associated with that, sort of Indiana Jones type stuff is very important and I think it's important for the United States to be known as the custodian of civilization in that respect.
00:47:19.000So the academic background has been very helpful and obviously the media background is, you know, we do a lot of media and just knowing how that works has been tremendously important.
00:47:32.000I feel like all of those previous chapters of my professional life have kind of come together into a skill set that is, you know, specially tailored to allow me to have the honor of contributing in this capacity at the State Department and to President Trump's administration.
00:47:48.000Yeah, no, I think one hundred percent, I guess that's the, you know, one thing I wanted to say about you, Deputy Secretary Landau, Secretary Robio, you're all kind of sophisticated intellectuals and policy experts.
00:48:01.000And that really seems to be paying dividends for the American people.
00:48:06.000And, you know, what is that environment like at, you know, foggy bottom?
00:48:10.000Because there's there are so many good things happening.
00:48:13.000You compare and contrast that to the last administration.
00:48:16.000I'm like, I don't know if any of these guys knew anything.
00:48:18.000They were just sort of like you were we're just going to put you in this spot.
00:48:41.000to them at all it was like but it was like you can't really get much worse that's what rock bottom looks like and this is a little different and you see the changes in such a short amount of time already.
00:48:51.000So, yeah, previous administration, very low bar, but I would say this administration now has really been an exceptionally high bar.
00:49:00.000And I can, you know, I speak for the administration most broadly, but in particular because this is what I see, what I know, what I interact with every day.
00:49:08.000I am, you know, I'm a tough grader, but I am really impressed by the quality of my colleagues here at the State Department.
00:49:20.000I think, you know, the American people should be proud.
00:49:24.000There's genuinely a critical mat mass of not only 100% politically aligned people, but exceptionally smart, creative and courageous people.
00:49:57.000Have the combination of totally solid political people who are also very smart, very entrepreneurial, very resourceful, very creative and who have good guts, which is a big thing.
00:50:11.000That's really a recipe for the kind of success that we've seen so far.
00:50:14.000Yeah, no, I've always had the sort of the concentric circles of loyal and smart and wise.
00:50:18.000I mean, it's like, it's a really little, tiny little sliver of that.
00:50:22.000But it seems like, you know, they've done a great job of putting those people all in one place.
00:50:26.000So I want to thank you for taking on that role, Darren.
00:50:28.000It's just really, it's awesome to see.
00:50:30.000And, you know, as you get more subtle and you start taking on more of these things, I look forward to having you back and hearing all about it.