Understanding US Intelligence Failures with Hamas, Russia & Ukraine and Defeating the Deep State--One-on-One w⧸ Ric Grenell
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Summary
Ted and Ben are joined by Rick Grinnell, former U.S. Ambassador to Germany under President Donald Trump and former Director of National Intelligence under President George W. Bush, to discuss a wide range of topics, including Iran, Russia, Ukraine, and much more.
Transcript
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It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.
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And Senator, it is always fun to be able to do this show and talk to people that are experts
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And a dear friend of ours is going to be with us for this show.
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When we're dealing with such major issues on national security, we're dealing with what
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So what's happening now between Russia and Ukraine and also the intelligence failures
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that seem to be happening on a daily basis at our southern border with terrorists coming
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And I want you to introduce to the audience our special guests.
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So that's going to be wild and woolly and should be fun.
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And so we are doing a special podcast here tonight that will come out tomorrow morning
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He was ambassador to Germany under Donald Trump.
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He was the special presidential envoy for Serbia and Kosovo for the peace negotiations, again
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And then he was also the acting director of national intelligence under Trump, which is
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And so we're going to talk a lot of foreign policy.
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We're going to talk a lot of challenges facing the world.
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It's also, for you East Coasters, you can think about either flying to Europe or flying
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You know, I got to say, that may be the cruelest thing anyone has ever said about me.
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On top of that, you could be in Paris right now, but instead you're in L.A.
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Well, look, as you know, it's one of my dirty little secrets that I have a soft spot in my
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I married Heidi, who's a native Californian, and her whole family are Californian.
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And it is an absolutely gorgeous state that has been cursed by idiot politicians.
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And, you know, we do not have a U.S. senator that represents us at all on the conservative
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And a point I make often, so when I'm out here, regularly people will stop me in the
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street and they'll say, Ted, I am the only conservative in California.
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And they're almost like, they almost have like PTSD.
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Like they will sort of scrape the shape of a fish with their foot in the sand, like they're
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And I tell them all the time, look, no, you're not.
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And a point that I make frequently, what state has the most Republicans in it?
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There are more Republicans in California than there are in Texas.
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But there's still a ton of strong conservatives in California.
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I have an organization called Fix California, which is literally doing the unsexy work of
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registering people who are not involved, sitting on the sidelines, uninspired, apathetic.
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Maybe they think that there's no way that they need to vote, that they should vote because
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But we're trying to empower people to say, get off the sidelines.
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And with that, a little bit, is to try to take some of the Sacramento types who are our
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friends, who are doing the good work, and highlighting them, raising them a little bit
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So we're doing good work, but it's going to take us about four or five years to catch up.
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Well, the hard thing also in California is even though there are a lot of Republicans
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here, none of them believe it's possible to win statewide.
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And so turning Republicans out in an election here is insanely difficult.
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And I think there's a tipping point that if people believed it was actually viable and
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possible, you would see dramatically higher turnouts among Republicans.
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But a lot of folks stay home because they say, what the heck difference does it make?
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Yeah, that's exactly why we started Fix California is because we thought if we can start changing
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the numbers every month and give people a little bit of hope, we think it will pick up.
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We think then there'll be a self-fulfilling prophecy of, hey, maybe I should vote.
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Well, and Republicans certainly have been able to pick up congressional seats in California.
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And without the California Republicans, we would not have a majority in the House.
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And so there are parts of California that are winnable, but there are parts that are just
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Well, we're trying and we're so pleased to have people like you come through and speak
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We really are so thankful when we get some superstars through.
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And this goes to some of the big breaking news that's happening right now.
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And it deals with the massive intelligence failure.
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This is your wheelhouse, obviously, being in the intelligence area and working under the
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The photographers that were working for the Associated Press, for CNN, for the New York
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Times and Reuters were embedded with Hamas on 10-7 and accompany the terrorists into Israel.
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It's pretty clear that they knew the attack was coming.
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They've been accused by Israel now of not just being involved in the attack, knowing the attack
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And yet there was such an intelligence failure, we didn't hear anything about this, neither
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How on earth did we get to a point where we missed the boat, Israel missed the boat, and
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yet these photographers working for AP, CNN, New York Times, Reuters were embedded with Hamas
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and accompanied the terrorist group and then photographed the atrocities?
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Let's start with the second part, which is really about the intelligence failure.
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I actually don't believe that we didn't know that Iran and Hamas were planning.
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There's just no possible way that we didn't have pieces of raw intelligence.
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I think one of the crises that we have within the intelligence world right now is we have
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too many people playing politics that are analyzing the information.
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We have great collections process, but the people who are writing the analytical work, who
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are taking the pieces of raw intelligence and making assumptions, those people are too partisan.
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And imagine if you had the New York Times delivering opinion pieces every day, but nobody signed the
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You wouldn't have any idea who these pieces are coming from, whether they're an expert or
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And that's what we have within the intelligence community right now.
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I am an expert on receiving intelligence as a public policy official and knowing whether or not it's useful.
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So how do you tell the difference in your experience?
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Well, first of all, when the briefer tells you something and they say this is top secret
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and you say, well, I just read that in the newspaper today, it obviously is not.
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A lot of the information is public or maybe not as distributed as you would think, but still
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I can think of a million examples during COVID where that was happening, where people were
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pretending like this is top secret, but it had been published in some virologist magazine
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But what I found is the over-classification problem was a PR strategy.
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When they didn't want something to get out, whether it was embarrassing or just a program
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that they didn't want anyone to know, they would literally classify the whole thing.
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And then when you read it, you would see this is not something that should be classified.
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We now have information that is unclassified, but sensitive.
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If it's unclassified, then don't tell me that it's something that is supposed to be sensitive
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I do believe that the partisan nature of those who are writing the intelligence is really the
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When I was there, I brought in the Russia team and I said, you're way too political.
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You're reading into everything as a political matter.
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You're slowing down because you don't want to cause anybody to make a move.
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And then the Israeli team was just completely wrong all of the time.
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And some of that is just cycling people out so that there's fresh eyes and fresh minds.
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Well, I will say being a consumer of intelligence in the Senate, and I've been in a lot of classified
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briefings, my experience very much comports with yours.
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That 90 plus percent of what they tell you in a classified briefing, you can read in the newspaper.
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And frankly, they want it classified because it's embarrassing and they don't want to admit it.
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Look, there are times in a classified briefing where they say, you know, we intercepted such and such.
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I mean, where there are sources and methods and there are certainly things that are included
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But I do think there's a big overclassification problem because it's a way to insulate the
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administration from criticism for their foreign policy failure.
00:11:18.280
So there's also another problem that when we go to brief members of Congress, they are
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So you're only getting what a group of people say, well, this is what we should give Congress
00:11:35.720
What would be so much better if we could trust the members of Congress to keep it private would
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be to give them some of that raw intelligence is to ask the people to say, well, you know,
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what do you think, actually, when you see this, that and the other?
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Don't wait for an IC wide agreement, which a lot of times is garbage because it's the lowest
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common denominator of what so many intelligence agencies kind of agree on.
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But to give some of the raw intelligence and let other people make some analytical choices
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The other thing that I have to say is this, you know, gang of eight idea is baloney.
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And this is the idea that the Senate and the House leadership are the only ones that get
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If it's good enough for the gang of eight, we should be briefing every member of Congress
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Let me ask you one question Ben asked, but to go back.
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Are you surprised that the Israelis didn't know about this attack before it happened?
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I actually believe that the United States and the Israelis, of course, had the raw intelligence,
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that the analytical people just didn't put it together.
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They didn't want to assume that Hamas was going to make such a jump.
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But but, you know, look at what's happening now.
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We've got the White House and John Kirby saying we didn't have any direct intelligence that Americans
00:13:06.080
At the same time, they're confirming that we're doing strikes in Syria because they're
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They're shooting down a drone, a drone, by the way, that costs thirty five million dollars
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And the Wall Street Journal has reported that more than 500 Hamas terrorists trained in
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Iran in September, the month before the attack.
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Now, mind you, I'm repeating what I read in the journal because nobody's bothered to give
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us an intelligence briefing actually telling us if that's true or not, other than the last
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There was a whole lot of CYA of no, no, no, are giving them a hundred billion dollars.
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You cannot give money to Iran and trust Iran because that's really what they're doing.
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They're trusting Iran to somehow play like a responsible member of the international community.
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There's a piece in Bloomberg whereby the Biden administration was very proud of the fact
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that they had unleashed the international sanctions and that it was working, that they
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were having great conversations with the Iranians.
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But at the same time, Iran is making billions off its oil.
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It's getting more money from the Americans, from the Europeans and others.
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And we shouldn't be surprised that when you're feeding them and you're trusting them and you
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are telling them, hey, let's have some conversations about moving you forward into a better nuclear
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They've lied to John Kerry about so many things that he just assumed that they weren't
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This to me is just the Democrats keep trusting Iran and hopefully now they see that they
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And let me go back to a topic we've covered on a previous verdict, which is what do you
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make of Rob Malley and why he got his security clearance yanked?
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And what do you make of the three Iranian operatives that were in his inner circle?
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Look, I think Averill Haynes has some questions that she needs to answer.
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So tell tell our listeners who Averill Haynes is.
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Averill Haynes is the director of national intelligence.
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constant pressure from the media to do this, that or the other.
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And and Averill Haynes, literally the last I checked, like her her last tweet was about
00:16:03.920
And she made a statement about Dianne Feinstein's death, but she hasn't made a statement about
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And she gets away with it because no, they're when the media are not asking her the questions,
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then she wakes up every single day thinking, I don't have to answer these questions.
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I'm going to go and continue ignoring or continue hiding.
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And then on Rob Malley, which is incredibly interesting.
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I want to know who approved his security clearance.
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I want to know which FBI agents signed off and what did they actually raise some concerns
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And his time ran out where they said, you know what, we couldn't approve you.
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That that is a very real possibility that he was working in this job, didn't have access
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to intelligence because he couldn't get a clearance.
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And in the Senate, when we ask, they just give us the Heisman.
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They completely stiff arm us and answer nothing.
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And if we had more media pressure, if we had more people just insisting, why isn't
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Averill Haynes being hounded to answer these questions?
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There are so many times that they did that to us where CNN was watching when you were leaving
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and they knew where you lived and they would follow you.
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So she wakes up every day and thinks, I don't have to answer these questions.
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Do you think there will be any reckoning, any accountability for the intelligence failures
00:18:00.840
that led to a failure on the American part to anticipate the October 7th attack and do
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I think that there will be a CYA strategy to say, well, we did see some raw intelligence.
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We didn't have enough time to write the analytical piece.
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If we had raw intelligence that said Hamas is working with the Iranians on an attack somewhere
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and somebody poo-pooed it, you know, the same team, remember, that told us that if you
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moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, there would be World War III.
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That same team was watching what Hamas was doing with Iran.
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Not only did we not have World War III, but we actually ushered in world peace.
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Yeah, and I will say that there has been no accountability for, number one, the military
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failures and intelligence failures on the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was absolutely
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The Senate Democrats have zero interest in even finding out what went wrong.
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And there's also been no accountability at all for the dramatically wrong intelligence
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I mean, I sat in Senate-wide briefings where the Defense Department, the State Department,
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the entire intelligence community, every one of them told every senator, this war will
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Putin will roll in, he will conquer all of Ukraine, and it'll be over in just days.
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And we're now years into the war, and that intelligence consensus, because there was no
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disagreement, every single briefer, everyone agreed, and it was wildly wrong, and there hasn't
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even been a minute of reflection or assessment.
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How did we get so wildly wrong, and how do we prevent that from happening the next time?
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As you know, I've worked at the State Department for 12 years.
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I'm really a diplomat, and I care deeply about the State Department.
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And we messaged, we heard the U.S. government, the Biden administration messaged for three straight
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Why didn't the Secretary of State immediately get on his plane and go to Kiev with all of
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the foreign ministers in Europe and say, no, if we know for sure that a war is coming, the
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Secretary of State has an obligation, a responsibility to try to find a peaceful solution, I believe
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that they've shoved Blinken right off the stage.
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I've never seen a Secretary of State as diminished as Tony Blinken is in this administration.
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And by the way, all of my friends at the State Department, I have a ton of friends who
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are not even really conservatives, but they're just good Foreign Service officers who salute.
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We're the first ones that are being evacuated from everything.
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The Foreign Service officers, many of them, they joined the Foreign Service to solve problems.
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They want to be there, except they're pushed off the stage.
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Now, look, I want to have peace through strength.
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I think the President of the United States, when they're in the Oval Office, needs to have two
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strong voices, the Secretary of Defense that says, move over, because I'm going to kill
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everybody and we're not negotiating, and the Secretary of State that says, you wait a
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minute, because we need SOB diplomats at that table.
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And the Democrats keep mocking tough diplomats.
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But if you want to avoid war, you better have an SOB as a diplomat pushing and saying, wait
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It's not weak-kneed, it's not culinary diplomacy, it's real diplomacy.
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Well, and I will say, peace through strength, which you and I both agree with strongly.
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Look, it's worth remembering that during eight years of his presidency, the biggest country
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That when you have a strong commander-in-chief, people don't want to screw with you.
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I think if Trump were still president, we would not have a war in Ukraine.
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This would not have happened, among other things, because Nord Stream 2 would never have
00:23:10.360
You and I worked very closely together on Nord Stream 2.
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You were one of the only ones pushing really hard when I was in Europe.
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If Merkel had not gone to Joe Biden and said, look, you want to be nice to your allies, or
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You will be able to come to Europe, and everybody will love you if you drop these sanctions on
00:23:43.400
And there are some atrocious speeches from Senate Democrats on Nord Stream 2, and why
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I keep pushing the media to say, go pull Chris Murphy's speech.
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And it signaled, when they dropped those sanctions, it signaled to Putin, now's the time to come
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back and finish the job that you started under Obama.
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Well, and I'll tell you something that you may or may not know, but it was a very revealing
00:24:14.240
So, Nord Stream 2, I authored the first sanctions legislation in 2019.
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Putin stopped constructing the pipeline from Russia to Germany, literally the day Trump signed
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I authored a second sanctions legislation in December of 2020.
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Putin resumes deep sea construction of Nord Stream 2 four days later, January 24th, because
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Biden foreshadowed weakness, and several months later, he formally waived the sanctions, gave
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a multi-billion dollar gift to Putin, allowed him to finish the pipeline.
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As you know, I put a hold on every State Department nominee, which caused the State Department to
00:25:04.180
lose their minds in order to try to force them to stop Nord Stream 2 to avoid this war.
00:25:10.620
Finally, at the end of 2021, I released a big tranche of State Department nominees in exchange
00:25:18.180
for a vote on reimposing sanctions in January of 2022.
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Now, here's the bit that you may or may not know, but it's very revealing.
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The day of the vote, Joe Biden personally came to Capitol Hill to lobby the Democrat senators
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It was the only time in his first two years in office that I know of that he came to Capitol
00:25:48.160
And at the time we were voting, President Zelensky publicly begged the Senate, pass these sanctions
00:25:55.740
The government of Poland begged us, pass these sanctions or else Russia will invade.
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But at Joe Biden's personal behest, they voted in favor of Russia, in favor of Putin.
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I tell everybody, this was the moment that Putin saw weakness.
00:26:24.900
The opposite of America first is consensus with the Europeans.
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00:28:05.500
Rick, I want to ask you a question about, and you talked about Anthony Blinken and just
00:28:10.560
the diminished role, but when you look at these intelligent screw-ups and you talked about
00:28:15.600
how you were managing things when you were in the Trump administration, how much of these
00:28:21.560
failures may come down to the fact that Joe Biden just can't handle the job as being present
00:28:26.720
and that they may be avoiding even briefing him or letting him make decisions and that
00:28:32.440
people underneath him are doing things so much on their own that everybody's basically
00:28:37.880
a mini president in this administration because they don't know which way to run.
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So I have a slightly different thought and belief about Joe Biden because of my experience with
00:28:52.480
him as the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
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He wants the dude man bro moment with world leaders.
00:29:09.740
And so when people come, like Chancellor Merkel, come and they ask him to do something, he literally
00:29:21.060
And so I have this great story of, you know, sitting across from Chancellor Merkel, who I
00:29:27.420
actually really liked and respected quite a bit.
00:29:30.540
And you were ambassador to Germany for three years?
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And I once in talking to Chancellor Merkel about some subject, she said to me, you know, Rick,
00:29:44.840
one of the issues that I have with your president is that I just don't know what he's going to
00:29:53.500
And that creates a lot of problems for us in Germany.
00:29:57.240
And I remember smiling and thinking, you know, don't smile too big.
00:30:02.620
But I said, you know, Madam Chancellor, with all due respect, this is exactly what I've
00:30:09.180
It is really important that you and others can't determine and predict what the U.S.
00:30:17.900
That creates a credible threat of military action, not just a threat of military action,
00:30:24.280
And when it's credible, people act differently.
00:30:29.880
What's the coolest part and the crappiest part of being an ambassador and an ambassador
00:30:38.480
You know, Germany is not some island down in the Caribbean.
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What's what's the coolest and worst part about that job?
00:30:47.140
I think the coolest moment that I had, I had two cool moments.
00:30:51.400
One is when you present your credentials in Germany and you walk out of the president's
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house, you know, house, the German national band is playing the American national anthem.
00:31:07.160
And, you know, as this little kid from Michigan who never thought that I could represent the
00:31:13.460
United States, it was a moment that was pretty emotional.
00:31:16.620
And then the second thing is, is I'm a big MMA fan.
00:31:24.640
And I think I was the first ambassador to not go to the opening of the Berlin opera and
00:31:32.660
But I did bring the MMA and the UFC to Germany and I got to go pretty regularly in Germany and
00:31:48.020
I think the worst part about being an ambassador is having security.
00:31:55.220
I'm somebody who likes to think about going to the gym when I feel it, not when I plan it.
00:32:00.720
So I would plan to go to the gym in the morning because you have to tell security and then
00:32:05.300
you'd wake up and you'd be like, actually, I don't feel like going to the gym right now.
00:32:08.740
So I didn't like having to determine my whole schedule and having security.
00:32:18.020
Now, how frequently are ambassadors doing the wining and dining thing?
00:32:22.900
I mean, you know, you have gazillionaires who go be ambassadors and, you know, spend a
00:32:27.220
bunch of money on an incredible wine collection.
00:32:32.700
I mean, it can be the whole part of the job if you want it to be.
00:32:35.120
Uh, you can go and just have a lot of fun and pretend like you're an ambassador from
00:32:40.820
America, but you're really doing a travel log of the whole country and your Instagram
00:32:50.360
I think if the American people are paying you, you should be the office of America overseas.
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00:32:59.460
If we were going to try to squeeze Iran, I would bring in business leaders to say, you
1.00
00:33:05.480
know, I'm not going to tell you what to do, but you either are going to work in America
00:33:10.340
or you're going to work in Iran, but you're not going to do business in both.
00:33:14.680
And we tried to be very social with, uh, with a lot of different issues, um, that matter
00:33:25.900
Well, I will say when Heidi and I brought our girls to Europe for a summer vacation several
00:33:30.860
years back when we were in Germany, you very kindly hosted us at, at, at your residence,
00:33:37.400
Oh, that, that residence was, uh, amazing, uh, great history.
00:33:41.460
It was the Nazi party of Berlin's headquarters, uh, his, wow, that's kind of creepy.
00:33:46.940
It was creepy and it had a long history, but the American military, the U S army took it
00:33:51.700
over, uh, used it as a guest house for military leaders for a while.
00:33:56.600
And when Germany was reunited, um, and they needed an, uh, an American ambassador's residence
00:34:03.240
back in Berlin, uh, the state department stepped in and said to the military, we'll take this
00:34:09.840
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I want to ask you a question about what it was like also being an ambassador in Germany.
00:34:47.700
You were there from 18 to 20 and it wasn't as hostile.
00:34:53.020
I think then is it is now politically, especially on the world space stage, especially if you're
00:35:00.500
What was it like early on and how were you treated?
00:35:11.580
And the German business community is a lot like the American business community.
00:35:18.920
I mean, Lufthansa, for instance, has 12,000 American employees.
00:35:23.660
And you could do this with Daumler and BMW and, you know, whatever the German company is.
00:35:34.380
I think the difference is, is that the German business community, uh, will talk about the
00:35:41.220
government in a negative way privately, but publicly they won't criticize the government.
00:35:45.340
So there's a little bit of fear there, but I felt, uh, like I could completely say what
00:35:51.820
I, I spoke to groups constantly and I, I was brutally honest about Nord Stream 2 and about
00:35:59.040
defense spending, uh, telling them just how Americans felt when they, when we see the largest
00:36:05.820
economy in Europe, um, not paying their NATO obligation, but feeding the beast with, with
00:36:13.320
And that really went over well, I think, with everybody but the government.
00:36:17.220
You know, one of the things I found remarkable, uh, in Germany is that, is that when we went
00:36:23.680
to the Brandenburg Gate, um, and as you know, I have in my office, a gigantic painting of
00:36:29.400
Reagan in front of the Brandenburg Gate with the words, tear down this wall in German and
00:36:34.780
the style of the graffiti that was on the wall.
00:36:36.640
And I think those are the most consequential words uttered by any leader in modern times.
00:36:42.540
Well, when you go to the Brandenburg Gate and you go to where Reagan gave that speech,
00:36:46.700
there's almost nothing from the German government commemorating it.
00:36:51.660
There's a small little brass plaque on the ground that's maybe six inches wide that is
00:37:07.440
And, and, uh, to be honest, the Reagan Library here, I have a lot of friends at the Reagan
00:37:13.480
And they all said to me, like, what's going on?
00:37:15.900
Why isn't Germany giving Ronald Reagan his due?
00:37:19.400
And when I got there, I decided to go straight to the mayor of Berlin.
00:37:27.240
And, and I said, you know, mayor, what, what, what's up?
00:37:30.240
You have a lot of, uh, memorials to Russians and others, but there's nothing for Ronald Reagan.
00:37:37.560
And he told me, he goes, you know, you Americans, you always overplay Ronald Reagan.
00:37:42.520
You, you pretend like he did a lot more than what he did.
00:37:46.340
And I was like, well, we, we, we think that he was the catalyst.
00:37:50.180
And so we were asking for a statue and, and he formally told me no.
00:37:55.640
So as you know, in the embassy, it's pretty amazing, uh, location.
00:38:00.600
And I decided to take the terrace, the whole terrace of the U.S. embassy and, uh, turn it
00:38:10.140
And we put a seven foot statue of Ronald Reagan on top of the terrace, looking out at that,
00:38:18.120
But the most amazing thing that we did, and it was a last minute thought, is you walk all
00:38:23.480
the way out to the edge and you're looking down below where the wall was, you see the
00:38:29.080
spot where Reagan gave the speech and I put up a kiosk and you can press the button and
00:38:36.040
you can watch while you're out on this little ledge, feeling like you're just alone and suddenly
00:38:43.000
you're watching the speech right from where it took place.
00:38:45.960
I have to tell you, I've taken probably 20 senators out to do that.
00:38:56.900
And I've seen a lot of tears from U.S. senators, from U.S. officials who say, this is one of the
00:39:04.020
I do think that the U.S. embassy in Berlin is probably the best location of our embassies
00:39:11.660
Yeah, it's, it's, I love that you put that statue up, that, that, that was long overdue.
00:39:15.960
Um, do you know, did, did the Biden guys leave it up?
00:39:22.580
Well, I'm glad to hear, I hadn't heard that it had been taken down, but I anchored it pretty,
00:39:26.840
pretty hard to the, to the concrete and, uh, I made sure that it would stay.
00:39:33.320
But you know what, funny thing is I, let me, let me just quickly say I invited Chancellor
00:39:40.220
And she said, oh, you know, I can't come, but you, will you let me know when you do
00:39:46.920
Because Bush united Germany and that made the whole world difference.
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I want to ask you about another question that deals with the Southern border.
00:41:33.440
And I want to go back to putting your, you know, taking the ambassador hat off, but going
00:41:37.180
back to national intelligence, you look at our Southern border right now, and it's doesn't
00:41:42.960
take a very bright human being to understand that an open border, the way it is now is a
00:41:50.600
There are more and more people that are saying this.
00:41:53.240
We saw the FBI director, Ray saying that we're at the highest level in his opinion, since
00:41:59.180
nine 11, uh, for the prospect of an attack in this country.
00:42:03.160
We know that terrorists are coming across the border.
00:42:05.640
They're on the terrorist watch list that have been caught.
00:42:07.720
These terrorists are not trying to turn themselves into border patrol agents.
00:42:13.540
We have no idea how many terrorists have made it into this country undetected so far.
00:42:17.700
But when you look at the warnings now and you look at what just happened and you look
00:42:22.220
at the warnings of possibilities of the same type of style attack that we just saw in Israel,
00:42:27.440
and yet we still have an open border and we still have Mayorkas before Congress, what
00:42:33.340
was that yesterday, day before saying that, no, he doesn't believe we need a border wall.
00:42:37.700
What is your reaction from an intelligence standpoint?
00:42:40.520
Yeah, Ben, it's a good question because, uh, you know, I gotta believe that all of the
00:42:47.260
intelligence officials who are collecting, uh, raw intelligence see it on a daily basis.
00:42:54.260
They're saying, I mean, how, how else do we know that someone from the terrorist watch
00:43:00.740
We're figuring it out, but I, I, I think that it's being hidden when they reported, it's
00:43:10.700
It's not being put into the president's daily briefing.
00:43:13.400
Uh, all of that information is completely being suppressed.
00:43:16.200
And, and once again, we should be asking these questions of Avril Haines, you know, what are
00:43:25.400
And, you know, she's just not getting pushed on it, but it's clearly extremely dangerous.
00:43:31.560
Everybody knows that you're not going to have a country.
00:43:34.480
If you have an open border, we all know that, but I find the most outrageous thing is that
00:43:41.480
the media are complicit in this problem because Democrats would have to face the music if they
00:43:49.700
were hearing from, uh, the media in their home states, if they were being pushed and held
00:43:56.240
to account like they used to when, when I would sit around and watch the news with my dad as
00:44:00.180
a kid, the news was kind of holding both sides to account.
00:44:04.820
Well, Rick, this is a point that, that we've made a lot on this podcast and that I make in,
00:44:09.200
in my brand new book on woke, which is that the corruption of the media and, and Donald Trump,
00:44:21.640
That has played a, a critical role in driving today's Democrat party to such extremes.
00:44:29.340
You go so crazy left because they never, ever, ever get questioned on any of it.
00:44:33.900
So there's no downside to, to giving in to the radical extreme in their party.
00:44:39.760
They, they never fear that they will get a hard question at home.
00:44:42.980
They never fear they'll get a bad story at home.
00:44:44.960
And, and, and so I think the, the abandonment of any effort at journalism by the corporate
00:44:53.160
media has been one of the most destructive developments in recent years.
00:45:07.160
And I, as I watch Avril Haines and, you know, she got into office and immediately in order
00:45:15.420
to please Iran, one of the first things she did was manipulate past intelligence to pretend
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00:45:22.960
And they went after the Saudis and the Khashoggi issue all over again.
00:45:26.940
They literally, there was nothing new in that report.
00:45:30.120
It was repackaged to hit the Saudis hard after we had basically looked at them and tried to
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00:45:38.620
make some changes, uh, and, and we're trying to heal that relationship.
00:45:44.340
We're on the verge of signing the Abraham Accords.
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00:45:49.440
It was 100% true and, and they, I look back now and it makes sense to me.
00:45:56.240
The reason they did it is because they wanted to show the Iranians that somehow that they
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were going to play more fair and that they were going to be nicer to the Iranians by beating
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00:46:09.100
And then why aren't we talking about the fact that they took the Houthis off the terrorist
00:46:13.500
watch list and the Houthis are the ones who just shot down the drone.
00:46:21.680
Well, I think, again, it's a, it's a gift to the Iranians.
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00:46:25.540
They're, they're trying to please them because they want to get back and, you know, they will
00:46:29.280
spin that somehow the international sanctions was, were, were pressuring the Iranians and
00:46:36.320
therefore we, they were closer to a nuclear bomb because of the sanctions and the grip that
00:46:42.800
And again, this is the same strategy that they had with Russia.
00:46:47.160
When you go and you see Democrat senators making the case for dropping the sanctions on Nord Stream
00:46:54.180
2, it is, in summary, they keep saying, well, we don't want to stick it in the eye of the
00:47:01.000
This pipeline and us sanctioning it, making it not come online is creating problems.
00:47:10.880
So we must therefore let the pipeline flow through with gas because things are going to
00:47:18.800
be better if we don't stick it in the eye of Putin.
00:47:28.500
It invites bullies and tyrants to be aggressive, to invade.
00:47:36.740
I mean, Joe Biden inherited peace and prosperity.
00:47:39.220
We now have the biggest land war in Europe since World War II and the biggest war in the
00:47:44.900
I mean, I mean, that is, and, and, and, you know, you're talking about the Saudis.
00:47:49.080
Look, in my view, the dominant foreign policy objective of Joe Biden and his team has been
00:47:55.420
to reenter an even worse Iran nuclear deal and everything in the Middle East hinges on
00:48:02.100
why do they go after the Saudis so, so ferociously?
00:48:05.320
For the same reason that I am largely pro Saudi, which is that the Saudis are the most important
00:48:12.440
regional counterweight other than Israel to Iran.
00:48:19.420
So I describe the Saudis as a problematic ally, but we want them to be an ally.
00:48:24.640
We want them to be strong as a counterbalance to Iran.
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00:48:28.600
That's precisely why the Biden administration wants the Saudis to be weak, because everything
0.91
00:48:34.700
is subservient to getting in another deal with Iran, including in the middle of this
00:48:42.260
Ukraine war, after Biden's weakness causes the war in Ukraine, it has now become the
00:48:48.500
ultimate Democrat virtue signal to wear a Ukrainian flag and, and commit that we must be in the
00:48:55.280
And even while they say that they continue to flow now, roughly a hundred billion dollars into Iran,
00:49:05.520
much of which goes into Iranian drones that Iran becomes the top weapons supplier to Russia.
00:49:10.960
And so Biden is funding both sides of the Ukraine war.
00:49:16.140
And this goes back to what my original point on Iran was.
00:49:18.980
It sounds crazy, but they trust the Iranians.
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00:49:23.900
There's some belief, Jake Sullivan, maybe it's just a white paper intellectual exercise that if
00:49:30.500
you're nicer to them, somehow they're going to give up a nuclear weapon.
00:49:39.840
And we call it appeasement, but they're trying, once again, engagement.
00:49:45.060
And this is one of my problems with the foreign policy community, is that we should be able to
00:49:51.000
try engagement, try sanctions, try all sorts of things, but we should quickly evaluate whether
00:49:58.700
We could talk all day about Venezuela, because I think that's a failure of a policy.
00:50:03.560
You know, it's worth also underscoring that the Biden administration's top Iran diplomat,
00:50:10.860
Rob Malley, who's been fired and has security clearance pulled and is nonetheless in a cushy
00:50:17.200
job at my alma mater at Princeton, which is really disgraceful.
00:50:21.320
His inner circle included three individuals who were Iranian operatives recruited by the
00:50:28.520
Iranian government, reporting directly to the Iranian foreign minister and advancing Iranian
00:50:35.040
policy agendas within the United States government, within the Biden administration, one of whom,
00:50:40.220
as far as we know, is still a chief of staff in the Department of Defense to this day.
00:50:46.560
And they've been caught asking the Iranian diplomats for sign-off?
00:50:58.320
But once again, you don't see any of these national security reporters at the New York Times
00:51:04.680
or the Washington Post or Politico or anywhere else putting pressure, asking the questions.
00:51:13.700
So you were the director of national intelligence under Trump.
00:51:25.560
Supposed to be three months, but it was about four and a half.
00:51:29.220
It was the most consequential tenure at DNI that I have seen.
00:51:34.960
And you really shook that place up in a very short time period.
00:51:38.900
And I guess what I would ask is, number one, how did you do that?
00:51:43.840
How did you take on the deep state, which is real throughout government, but especially
00:51:50.320
in the intelligence community, is a persistent problem?
00:51:53.420
And lots of conservatives sometimes feel frustrated and say, well, you can't take on the deep state.
00:52:00.160
And I think you managed to do it remarkably during that tenure.
00:52:04.700
And what I would say as a second part of the question is, what advice would you give to the next Republican cabinet member coming into office
00:52:16.720
and facing career bureaucrats that are ideologically and passionately opposed to the next Republican president
00:52:29.240
I think the reality is, is you can't hire someone whose livelihood is Washington, D.C.
00:52:34.700
If you're hiring somebody who needs a job later in the Washington system where reporters go to church with politicians and lobbyists,
00:52:45.880
they live in the same communities, they're never going to make big, bold decisions
00:52:50.100
because they'll have the ire of their friends and their church acquaintances.
00:52:55.140
What I believe that you have to do is hire people also who really don't care about their New York Times profile piece,
00:53:04.600
who somehow have the ability to make the right decisions.
00:53:10.200
I've told President Trump, we're going to fix the personnel problem when he's president.
00:53:15.860
And the first thing is, is to look at every resume.
00:53:18.580
And if the resume has a Washington, D.C. address on it, throw it away.
00:53:21.780
We can hire people from outside of Washington, D.C.
00:53:27.020
What happened with me at D&I is actually pretty simple.
00:53:31.520
When I came into D&I, one of the first things they did is they gave me four reports
00:53:38.660
that had been done over the last 10 years of how to fix the intelligence system.
00:53:44.020
I read the reports and I thought, well, a lot of this makes sense.
00:53:53.440
We've got people who it's supposed to be a coordinating body.
00:54:08.740
And so I just started sending people back to their home agencies.
00:54:19.400
If an intelligence agency didn't like somebody, rather than fire them,
00:54:25.760
And so I just started sending people back and getting rid of every possible person
00:54:38.420
You've got to be able to play the system, but you've got to know the system.
00:54:41.680
And I've worked at the State Department and I knew how the federal government works
00:54:46.940
to where you can come in and manipulate it and start using its own rules against it.
00:54:52.920
I do think, though, that in order for us to make big, bold decisions,
00:54:57.340
Congress is going to have to somehow change the way the labor force is legally allowed to be cut.
0.98
00:55:06.240
But as you know, and I'm preaching to the choir here, but when we come up with new technologies
00:55:12.200
and we decide to spend on a different program, by definition, other things should fall.
00:55:22.000
The program should be eliminated, and that's not happening.
00:55:34.460
I have a feeling that final chapter in your career is nowhere close to being finished.
00:55:38.560
And there's a lot more to look forward to with your leadership in this country as well.
00:55:43.800
And so, again, thank you so much for coming on Verdict, being a part of this.
00:55:47.560
Don't forget, every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, we do this show.
00:55:50.600
Make sure you hit that follow, that subscribe, or auto-download button wherever you're listening right now.
00:55:57.060
And on Saturdays, much of what you may have missed later in the podcast each week,
00:56:04.400
So make sure you grab that on Saturday mornings or on Sundays.
00:56:07.640
Maybe you're in the car driving to and from the games or something.
00:56:12.000
And the senator and I will see you back here in a couple of days.