Verdict with Ted Cruz - Understanding US Intelligence Failures with Hamas, Russia & Ukraine and Defeating the Deep State--One-on-One w⧸ Ric Grenell

00:00:00.000 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:00:02.580 Guaranteed human.

00:00:05.300 Welcome.

00:00:06.040 It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you.

00:00:09.640 And Senator, it is always fun to be able to do this show and talk to people that are experts

00:00:15.420 in certain areas.

00:00:16.760 And a dear friend of ours is going to be with us for this show.

00:00:20.040 And it's so important, the timing.

00:00:21.860 When we're dealing with such major issues on national security, we're dealing with what

00:00:26.300 happened with Hamas and Israel.

00:00:28.000 So what's happening now between Russia and Ukraine and also the intelligence failures

00:00:34.860 that seem to be happening on a daily basis at our southern border with terrorists coming

00:00:39.200 across our southern border.

00:00:40.440 And I want you to introduce to the audience our special guests.

00:00:44.120 Well, it is Thursday night.

00:00:46.380 It is 9.38 p.m. Pacific time.

00:00:49.240 And I am out on the West Coast.

00:00:51.500 I'm in L.A.

00:00:52.860 Just landed not too long ago.

00:00:54.840 Tomorrow, I'm going on Bill Maher.

00:00:56.700 So that's going to be wild and woolly and should be fun.

00:01:00.700 And so we are doing a special podcast here tonight that will come out tomorrow morning

00:01:04.960 with your and my mutual friend, Rick Grinnell.

00:01:07.760 Now, Rick has had a storied career.

00:01:11.400 He was ambassador to Germany under Donald Trump.

00:01:15.400 He was the special presidential envoy for Serbia and Kosovo for the peace negotiations, again

00:01:23.600 under Trump.

00:01:24.660 And then he was also the acting director of national intelligence under Trump, which is

00:01:30.020 an incredibly important and difficult job.

00:01:33.160 And I think he did an extraordinary job at it.

00:01:35.200 And so we're going to talk a lot of foreign policy.

00:01:38.220 We're going to talk a lot of challenges facing the world.

00:01:42.220 And Rick is a California native.

00:01:46.680 So we are in La La Land together.

00:01:49.020 Rick, welcome to Verdict.

00:01:50.240 Welcome to Los Angeles, Senator.

00:01:51.840 Thank you for coming all the way out here.

00:01:53.320 It's a long way, isn't it?

00:01:54.360 It is a long way.

00:01:55.740 I flew from Dulles straight out here.

00:01:58.260 And that is a long flight.

00:01:59.640 It is longer than an iPad charge.

00:02:02.340 It's also, for you East Coasters, you can think about either flying to Europe or flying 0.93

00:02:08.000 to California.

00:02:08.900 It's about the same amount of time.

00:02:10.420 You know, I got to say, that may be the cruelest thing anyone has ever said about me.

00:02:14.420 You just called me an East Coaster. 0.99

00:02:15.940 I'm a Texan, damn it. 0.99

00:02:18.000 But you flew from Dulles. 0.99

00:02:19.700 But I was coming from D.C.

00:02:21.580 On top of that, you could be in Paris right now, but instead you're in L.A.

00:02:25.320 So it's like a double whammy there.

00:02:29.380 Well, look, as you know, it's one of my dirty little secrets that I have a soft spot in my

00:02:35.560 heart for California.

00:02:37.400 I married Heidi, who's a native Californian, and her whole family are Californian.

00:02:41.660 So I spent a lot of time out here. 1.00

00:02:43.080 And it is an absolutely gorgeous state that has been cursed by idiot politicians. 1.00

00:02:48.480 Yeah, for sure. 1.00

00:02:49.240 And, you know, we do not have a U.S. senator that represents us at all on the conservative

00:02:54.680 side.

00:02:55.120 So you can be our senator.

00:02:57.640 I am proud to be.

00:02:59.360 And a point I make often, so when I'm out here, regularly people will stop me in the

00:03:06.780 street and they'll say, Ted, I am the only conservative in California.

00:03:13.180 And they're almost like, they almost have like PTSD.

00:03:16.120 Like they will sort of scrape the shape of a fish with their foot in the sand, like they're

00:03:21.940 in the Coliseum.

00:03:23.500 And I tell them all the time, look, no, you're not.

00:03:27.400 And a point that I make frequently, what state has the most Republicans in it?

00:03:34.260 Yeah.

00:03:34.480 And the answer is California by far.

00:03:36.740 There are more Republicans in California than there are in Texas.

00:03:40.660 Now, there are even more Democrats.

00:03:42.520 You are, in fact, outnumbered.

00:03:44.100 But there's still a ton of strong conservatives in California.

00:03:48.000 They're just besieged.

00:03:49.180 Yeah, there's no question about that.

00:03:50.680 And we're really trying to get more.

00:03:52.360 I have an organization called Fix California, which is literally doing the unsexy work of

00:03:57.940 registering people who are not involved, sitting on the sidelines, uninspired, apathetic.

00:04:05.980 Maybe they think that there's no way that they need to vote, that they should vote because

00:04:10.700 it doesn't matter.

00:04:11.560 But we're trying to empower people to say, get off the sidelines.

00:04:15.300 And with that, a little bit, is to try to take some of the Sacramento types who are our 1.00

00:04:23.340 friends, who are doing the good work, and highlighting them, raising them a little bit

00:04:27.580 of money, giving them a little profile.

00:04:29.280 So we're doing good work, but it's going to take us about four or five years to catch up.

00:04:34.860 Well, the hard thing also in California is even though there are a lot of Republicans

00:04:38.520 here, none of them believe it's possible to win statewide.

00:04:42.300 And so turning Republicans out in an election here is insanely difficult.

00:04:48.520 And I think there's a tipping point that if people believed it was actually viable and

00:04:53.560 possible, you would see dramatically higher turnouts among Republicans.

00:04:58.920 But a lot of folks stay home because they say, what the heck difference does it make?

00:05:02.540 Yeah, that's exactly why we started Fix California is because we thought if we can start changing

00:05:07.740 the numbers every month and give people a little bit of hope, we think it will pick up.

00:05:12.020 We think then there'll be a self-fulfilling prophecy of, hey, maybe I should vote.

00:05:16.220 Maybe I should get other people to vote.

00:05:17.660 It's not a waste of time type of message.

00:05:20.820 Well, and Republicans certainly have been able to pick up congressional seats in California.

00:05:26.480 And without the California Republicans, we would not have a majority in the House.

00:05:31.540 And so there are parts of California that are winnable, but there are parts that are just

00:05:36.740 irredeemably blue.

00:05:38.940 Yeah.

00:05:39.420 Well, we're trying and we're so pleased to have people like you come through and speak

00:05:46.440 and charge us up.

00:05:49.500 We really are so thankful when we get some superstars through.

00:05:53.760 So thank you for being here.

00:05:55.100 Well, it's great to be back.

00:05:56.420 Rick, I want to ask you a question.

00:05:58.080 And this goes to some of the big breaking news that's happening right now.

00:06:02.180 And it deals with the massive intelligence failure.

00:06:06.040 This is your wheelhouse, obviously, being in the intelligence area and working under the

00:06:12.460 Trump administration.

00:06:14.120 This reporting that's coming out is shocking.

00:06:17.020 The photographers that were working for the Associated Press, for CNN, for the New York

00:06:22.720 Times and Reuters were embedded with Hamas on 10-7 and accompany the terrorists into Israel.

00:06:33.060 It's pretty clear that they knew the attack was coming.

00:06:37.020 They've been accused by Israel now of not just being involved in the attack, knowing the attack

00:06:41.560 was coming, but participating in it.

00:06:43.660 And yet there was such an intelligence failure, we didn't hear anything about this, neither

00:06:49.120 did Israel.

00:06:50.320 How on earth did we get to a point where we missed the boat, Israel missed the boat, and

00:06:56.980 yet these photographers working for AP, CNN, New York Times, Reuters were embedded with Hamas

00:07:02.520 and accompanied the terrorist group and then photographed the atrocities?

00:07:07.580 Yes, a couple of great questions there.

00:07:09.080 Let's start with the second part, which is really about the intelligence failure.

00:07:13.660 I actually don't believe that we didn't know that Iran and Hamas were planning. 0.98

00:07:22.420 There's just no possible way that we didn't have pieces of raw intelligence.

00:07:27.980 I think one of the crises that we have within the intelligence world right now is we have

00:07:35.060 too many people playing politics that are analyzing the information.

00:07:39.880 We have great collections process, but the people who are writing the analytical work, who

00:07:46.100 are taking the pieces of raw intelligence and making assumptions, those people are too partisan.

00:07:51.820 And imagine if you had the New York Times delivering opinion pieces every day, but nobody signed the

00:08:00.520 opinion pieces.

00:08:01.180 You wouldn't have any idea who these pieces are coming from, whether they're an expert or

00:08:06.380 whether they're just kind of bloviating.

00:08:08.720 And that's what we have within the intelligence community right now.

00:08:12.200 My first intelligence briefing was in 2001.

00:08:16.240 I am an expert on receiving intelligence as a public policy official and knowing whether or not it's useful.

00:08:24.180 Many times it's not useful.

00:08:25.640 I can't tell you how many...

00:08:26.720 So how do you tell the difference in your experience?

00:08:28.420 Well, first of all, when the briefer tells you something and they say this is top secret

00:08:33.540 and you say, well, I just read that in the newspaper today, it obviously is not.

00:08:38.280 So we have an over-classification problem.

00:08:41.580 A lot of the information is public or maybe not as distributed as you would think, but still

00:08:48.860 it's in the public domain somewhere.

00:08:51.520 I can think of a million examples during COVID where that was happening, where people were

00:08:55.760 pretending like this is top secret, but it had been published in some virologist magazine

00:09:01.160 three months before.

00:09:03.280 So we really do have a problem.

00:09:05.620 But what I found is the over-classification problem was a PR strategy.

00:09:11.660 When they didn't want something to get out, whether it was embarrassing or just a program

00:09:17.300 that they didn't want anyone to know, they would literally classify the whole thing.

00:09:22.500 And then when you read it, you would see this is not something that should be classified.

00:09:28.440 We now have information that is unclassified, but sensitive.

00:09:37.940 And you're like, wait, what?

00:09:39.380 If it's unclassified, then don't tell me that it's something that is supposed to be sensitive

00:09:46.120 or not distributable.

00:09:48.300 I do believe that the partisan nature of those who are writing the intelligence is really the

00:09:55.780 key fundamental problem.

00:09:57.120 When I was there, I brought in the Russia team and I said, you're way too political.

00:10:01.300 You're reading into everything as a political matter.

00:10:04.840 I told the China team, you're way too slow.

00:10:09.320 You're too thoughtful.

00:10:11.360 You're slowing down because you don't want to cause anybody to make a move.

00:10:16.000 And then the Israeli team was just completely wrong all of the time.

00:10:21.440 So we need to be able to fix that system.

00:10:25.420 And some of that is just cycling people out so that there's fresh eyes and fresh minds.

00:10:30.100 Well, I will say being a consumer of intelligence in the Senate, and I've been in a lot of classified

00:10:35.000 briefings, my experience very much comports with yours.

00:10:38.780 That 90 plus percent of what they tell you in a classified briefing, you can read in the newspaper.

00:10:45.640 You knew already.

00:10:46.540 And frankly, they want it classified because it's embarrassing and they don't want to admit it.

00:10:52.280 But it's not.

00:10:52.900 Look, there are times in a classified briefing where they say, you know, we intercepted such and such.

00:10:57.840 And you understand why it's classified.

00:11:00.680 I mean, where there are sources and methods and there are certainly things that are included

00:11:05.480 in it.

00:11:05.920 But I do think there's a big overclassification problem because it's a way to insulate the

00:11:12.380 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

00:11:24.160 just giving you the analytical pieces.

00:11:26.640 So you're only getting what a group of people say, well, this is what we should give Congress

00:11:32.880 on our thoughts about raw intelligence.

00:11:35.720 What would be so much better if we could trust the members of Congress to keep it private would

00:11:42.540 be to give them some of that raw intelligence is to ask the people to say, well, you know,

00:11:47.660 what do you think, actually, when you see this, that and the other?

00:11:51.000 Don't wait for an IC wide agreement, which a lot of times is garbage because it's the lowest

00:11:58.200 common denominator of what so many intelligence agencies kind of agree on.

00:12:05.000 But to give some of the raw intelligence and let other people make some analytical choices

00:12:10.040 about what's going on.

00:12:11.480 I think that that's where we need to go.

00:12:13.560 The other thing that I have to say is this, you know, gang of eight idea is baloney.

00:12:20.460 And this is the idea that the Senate and the House leadership are the only ones that get

00:12:25.720 briefed.

00:12:26.740 If it's good enough for the gang of eight, we should be briefing every member of Congress

00:12:30.560 who is interested.

00:12:32.720 Let me ask you one question Ben asked, but to go back.

00:12:35.540 Are you surprised that the Israelis didn't know about this attack before it happened?

00:12:40.960 I actually believe that the United States and the Israelis, of course, had the raw intelligence,

00:12:48.240 that the analytical people just didn't put it together.

00:12:51.960 They didn't want to assume that Hamas was going to make such a jump.

00:12:56.840 But but, you know, look at what's happening now.

00:12:59.760 We've got the White House and John Kirby saying we didn't have any direct intelligence that Americans

00:13:05.220 were being targeted.

00:13:06.080 At the same time, they're confirming that we're doing strikes in Syria because they're 1.00

00:13:12.680 coming at us.

00:13:13.500 They're shooting down a drone, a drone, by the way, that costs thirty five million dollars

00:13:19.180 of tax.

00:13:19.780 And the Wall Street Journal has reported that more than 500 Hamas terrorists trained in

00:13:24.340 Iran in September, the month before the attack.

00:13:27.940 Now, mind you, I'm repeating what I read in the journal because nobody's bothered to give

00:13:31.920 us an intelligence briefing actually telling us if that's true or not, other than the last

00:13:37.620 intelligence briefing we had.

00:13:39.040 There was a whole lot of CYA of no, no, no, are giving them a hundred billion dollars.

00:13:43.400 That had nothing to do with that.

00:13:44.740 Don't blame that at all.

00:13:46.840 And of course it did.

00:13:48.060 You cannot give money to Iran and trust Iran because that's really what they're doing. 1.00

00:13:54.300 They're trusting Iran to somehow play like a responsible member of the international community. 0.87

00:14:01.260 Bloomberg reported in August.

00:14:03.500 There's a piece in Bloomberg whereby the Biden administration was very proud of the fact

00:14:10.260 that they had unleashed the international sanctions and that it was working, that they

00:14:18.420 were having great conversations with the Iranians.

00:14:22.640 There was a trust factor there.

00:14:24.380 But at the same time, Iran is making billions off its oil.

00:14:29.040 It's getting more money from the Americans, from the Europeans and others.

00:14:35.240 And we shouldn't be surprised that when you're feeding them and you're trusting them and you

00:14:40.960 are telling them, hey, let's have some conversations about moving you forward into a better nuclear

00:14:48.060 agreement, that they are going to burn you.

00:14:50.960 They've lied about heavy water.

00:14:52.740 They've lied about the number of centrifuges.

00:14:55.100 They've lied to John Kerry about so many things that he just assumed that they weren't

00:15:00.300 lying on.

00:15:01.600 This to me is just the Democrats keep trusting Iran and hopefully now they see that they 1.00

00:15:07.760 can't.

00:15:08.200 And let me go back to a topic we've covered on a previous verdict, which is what do you

00:15:13.000 make of Rob Malley and why he got his security clearance yanked?

00:15:18.460 And what do you make of the three Iranian operatives that were in his inner circle?

00:15:24.640 And how the hell did that happen?

00:15:27.660 Look, I think Averill Haynes has some questions that she needs to answer.

00:15:32.920 She's not getting pushed at all.

00:15:35.160 You look at all of the DNIs under Trump.

00:15:38.200 All right.

00:15:38.340 So tell tell our listeners who Averill Haynes is.

00:15:40.880 Averill Haynes is the director of national intelligence.

00:15:43.080 So that's the role you had under Trump.

00:15:45.620 Correct.

00:15:46.520 And and John Radcliffe had and some others.

00:15:49.480 Look, we were under incredible scrutiny.

00:15:51.940 constant pressure from the media to do this, that or the other.

00:15:56.380 And and Averill Haynes, literally the last I checked, like her her last tweet was about

00:16:02.300 Dianne Feinstein's death.

00:16:03.920 And she made a statement about Dianne Feinstein's death, but she hasn't made a statement about

00:16:08.600 all of these other things.

00:16:09.840 And she gets away with it because no, they're when the media are not asking her the questions,

00:16:15.680 then she wakes up every single day thinking, I don't have to answer these questions.

00:16:20.560 I'm going to go and continue ignoring or continue hiding.

00:16:24.960 She needs to answer.

00:16:26.600 What did we know and why did we not act?

00:16:30.420 Was it an analytical failure?

00:16:32.400 Was it a intelligence gathering failure?

00:16:35.040 And then on Rob Malley, which is incredibly interesting.

00:16:38.520 I want to know who approved his security clearance.

00:16:40.920 I want to know which FBI agents signed off and what did they actually raise some concerns

00:16:49.960 and red flags and got overruled?

00:16:52.900 Did he even have a security clearance?

00:16:55.780 Maybe he never had one.

00:16:57.280 And his time ran out where they said, you know what, we couldn't approve you.

00:17:02.220 And so now you're out.

00:17:03.520 That that is a very real possibility that he was working in this job, didn't have access

00:17:08.740 to intelligence because he couldn't get a clearance.

00:17:12.000 They're not answering these questions.

00:17:13.700 And the media is not pushing.

00:17:15.740 We need.

00:17:16.640 And in the Senate, when we ask, they just give us the Heisman.

00:17:19.000 They completely stiff arm us and answer nothing.

00:17:22.240 Yeah.

00:17:22.480 And that's unacceptable.

00:17:23.960 And if we had more media pressure, if we had more people just insisting, why isn't

00:17:30.200 Averill Haynes being hounded to answer these questions?

00:17:33.480 Why are we not, you know, camping out at D&I?

00:17:38.980 There are so many times that they did that to us where CNN was watching when you were leaving

00:17:45.800 and they knew where you lived and they would follow you.

00:17:48.540 But that just doesn't happen.

00:17:50.160 So she wakes up every day and thinks, I don't have to answer these questions.

00:17:53.460 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

00:18:07.220 anything to prevent it?

00:18:08.740 It's a really interesting question.

00:18:10.900 I think that there will be a CYA strategy to say, well, we did see some raw intelligence.

00:18:22.020 We didn't have enough time to write the analytical piece.

00:18:26.300 So we didn't share anything with Israel.

00:18:29.260 But that's unacceptable.

00:18:31.560 What was in the PDB?

00:18:33.060 What was the president briefed on?

00:18:34.800 What was Jake Sullivan briefed on?

00:18:36.900 If we had raw intelligence that said Hamas is working with the Iranians on an attack somewhere

00:18:44.560 and somebody poo-pooed it, you know, the same team, remember, that told us that if you

00:18:50.660 moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, there would be World War III. 0.84

00:18:54.940 That same team was watching what Hamas was doing with Iran.

00:18:59.260 Think about that.

00:18:59.960 They completely got it wrong.

00:19:01.660 Not only did we not have World War III, but we actually ushered in world peace.

00:19:06.240 Yeah, and I will say that there has been no accountability for, number one, the military

00:19:14.960 failures and intelligence failures on the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was absolutely

00:19:19.600 catastrophic, and no one's lost their job.

00:19:22.520 And there's been no inquiry.

00:19:23.640 The Senate Democrats have zero interest in even finding out what went wrong.

00:19:27.780 They just want to sweep it under the rug. 0.99

00:19:29.200 And there's also been no accountability at all for the dramatically wrong intelligence

00:19:36.500 assessment of the Ukraine war.

00:19:39.400 Yeah, for sure.

00:19:39.900 I mean, I sat in Senate-wide briefings where the Defense Department, the State Department,

00:19:45.280 the entire intelligence community, every one of them told every senator, this war will

00:19:50.120 be over in a matter of days.

00:19:51.640 It will last less than a week.

00:19:53.200 Putin will roll in, he will conquer all of Ukraine, and it'll be over in just days.

00:20:01.200 And we're now years into the war, and that intelligence consensus, because there was no

00:20:09.080 disagreement, every single briefer, everyone agreed, and it was wildly wrong, and there hasn't

00:20:15.240 even been a minute of reflection or assessment.

00:20:18.540 How did we get so wildly wrong, and how do we prevent that from happening the next time?

00:20:23.780 There's one more angle to that.

00:20:25.180 As you know, I've worked at the State Department for 12 years.

00:20:27.680 I'm really a diplomat, and I care deeply about the State Department.

00:20:31.720 And we messaged, we heard the U.S. government, the Biden administration messaged for three straight

00:20:38.380 weeks, Putin is coming.

00:20:41.220 A war is around the corner.

00:20:43.360 It's going to be bloody and brutal.

00:20:45.760 A war is coming.

00:20:47.180 Why didn't the Secretary of State immediately get on his plane and go to Kiev with all of

00:20:55.200 the foreign ministers in Europe and say, no, if we know for sure that a war is coming, the

00:21:01.860 Secretary of State has an obligation, a responsibility to try to find a peaceful solution, I believe

00:21:10.240 that they've shoved Blinken right off the stage.

00:21:12.620 They just don't trust him.

00:21:14.200 It's weird.

00:21:16.020 He doesn't act like a Secretary of State.

00:21:17.940 He's a staffer.

00:21:18.940 Yeah.

00:21:19.540 I've never seen a Secretary of State as diminished as Tony Blinken is in this administration.

00:21:25.500 Do you agree with that?

00:21:26.240 I completely agree.

00:21:28.040 And by the way, all of my friends at the State Department, I have a ton of friends who

00:21:31.580 are not even really conservatives, but they're just good Foreign Service officers who salute.

00:21:37.020 They're horrified.

00:21:38.000 We're the first ones that are being evacuated from everything.

00:21:41.460 The Foreign Service officers, many of them, they joined the Foreign Service to solve problems.

00:21:47.620 They don't want to cut and run.

00:21:49.180 They want to be there, except they're pushed off the stage.

00:21:52.320 They were pushed off for Afghanistan.

00:21:54.980 No one has come up with even a peace idea.

00:21:58.120 Now, look, I want to have peace through strength.

00:22:00.500 I think the President of the United States, when they're in the Oval Office, needs to have two

00:22:03.800 strong voices, the Secretary of Defense that says, move over, because I'm going to kill

00:22:07.780 everybody and we're not negotiating, and the Secretary of State that says, you wait a

00:22:11.900 minute, because we need SOB diplomats at that table. 1.00

00:22:16.760 And the Democrats keep mocking tough diplomats.

00:22:19.900 But if you want to avoid war, you better have an SOB as a diplomat pushing and saying, wait

00:22:28.480 a minute, we're going to try to negotiate.

00:22:30.960 It's not weak-kneed, it's not culinary diplomacy, it's real diplomacy.

00:22:35.700 Well, and I will say, peace through strength, which you and I both agree with strongly.

00:22:42.160 Look, it's worth remembering that during eight years of his presidency, the biggest country

00:22:48.340 Ronald Reagan invaded was Grenada.

00:22:51.180 That when you have a strong commander-in-chief, people don't want to screw with you.

00:22:58.100 Exactly.

00:22:58.580 I think if Trump were still president, we would not have a war in Ukraine.

00:23:04.180 This would not have happened, among other things, because Nord Stream 2 would never have

00:23:09.700 been completed.

00:23:10.360 You and I worked very closely together on Nord Stream 2.

00:23:13.320 Yes.

00:23:13.680 Thank you for all your work.

00:23:14.820 You were one of the only ones pushing really hard when I was in Europe.

00:23:18.700 I was so thankful that you were there.

00:23:20.360 And I agree with you.

00:23:23.380 If Merkel had not gone to Joe Biden and said, look, you want to be nice to your allies, or

00:23:31.600 do you want to push us aside?

00:23:32.760 Because we're asking you.

00:23:34.300 We will applaud you.

00:23:35.560 You will be able to come to Europe, and everybody will love you if you drop these sanctions on

00:23:40.260 Nord Stream 2.

00:23:40.840 They did it.

00:23:42.100 The Senate Democrats did it.

00:23:43.400 And there are some atrocious speeches from Senate Democrats on Nord Stream 2, and why

00:23:49.100 they were dropping those sanctions.

00:23:50.560 I keep pushing the media to say, go pull Chris Murphy's speech.

00:23:55.220 Go pull these other speeches.

00:23:57.360 They were 100% wrong about Putin and the war.

00:24:01.380 And it signaled, when they dropped those sanctions, it signaled to Putin, now's the time to come

00:24:06.780 back and finish the job that you started under Obama.

00:24:08.880 Well, and I'll tell you something that you may or may not know, but it was a very revealing

00:24:13.400 aspect.

00:24:14.240 So, Nord Stream 2, I authored the first sanctions legislation in 2019.

00:24:19.840 We passed it in December 2019.

00:24:22.500 Putin stopped constructing the pipeline from Russia to Germany, literally the day Trump signed

00:24:27.620 my sanctions legislation into law.

00:24:29.900 I authored a second sanctions legislation in December of 2020.

00:24:35.460 That signed into law as well.

00:24:38.260 Biden becomes president January 20th, 2021.

00:24:42.680 Putin resumes deep sea construction of Nord Stream 2 four days later, January 24th, because

00:24:50.140 Biden foreshadowed weakness, and several months later, he formally waived the sanctions, gave

00:24:55.360 a multi-billion dollar gift to Putin, allowed him to finish the pipeline.

00:24:58.620 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.

00:25:23.740 Now, here's the bit that you may or may not know, but it's very revealing.

00:25:26.820 The day of the vote, Joe Biden personally came to Capitol Hill to lobby the Democrat senators

00:25:36.060 to vote against sanctioning Nord Stream 2.

00:25:39.420 It was the only time in his first two years in office that I know of that he came to Capitol

00:25:44.320 Hill to lobby the senators.

00:25:45.460 So think about the level of priority.

00:25:48.160 And at the time we were voting, President Zelensky publicly begged the Senate, pass these sanctions

00:25:53.540 or else Russia will invade.

00:25:55.740 The government of Poland begged us, pass these sanctions or else Russia will invade.

00:26:01.580 Most Eastern European countries.

00:26:04.280 And 44 Democrats flipped.

00:26:06.280 They had voted with me twice before.

00:26:07.920 But at Joe Biden's personal behest, they voted in favor of Russia, in favor of Putin.

00:26:14.020 And four weeks later, Russia invaded Ukraine.

00:26:16.500 It was an absolute moment.

00:26:18.740 You are exactly right.

00:26:19.920 I tell everybody, this was the moment that Putin saw weakness.

00:26:24.540 Yes.

00:26:24.900 The opposite of America first is consensus with the Europeans. 0.74

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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. 0.99

00:28:42.900 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.

00:28:55.320 He loves to be loved.

00:28:59.660 He likes to know all of the world leaders.

00:29:02.600 He wants the applause from all of them.

00:29:05.860 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

00:29:16.500 wants consensus with them.

00:29:18.140 He wants to be loved.

00:29:19.320 He wants the Europeans to like him.

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?

00:29:33.480 A little over two.

00:29:34.700 A little over two.

00:29:35.940 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

00:29:50.420 do.

00:29:50.900 He's not he's not predictable.

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.

00:30:01.440 Be nice here.

00:30:02.620 But I said, you know, Madam Chancellor, with all due respect, this is exactly what I've

00:30:07.100 been waiting for in a president.

00:30:09.180 It is really important that you and others can't determine and predict what the U.S.

00:30:16.500 president is going to do.

00:30:17.900 That creates a credible threat of military action, not just a threat of military action,

00:30:22.820 but it's a credible one.

00:30:24.280 And when it's credible, people act differently.

00:30:26.920 Absolutely right.

00:30:28.160 All right.

00:30:28.420 So here's an interesting question.

00:30:29.880 What's the coolest part and the crappiest part of being an ambassador and an ambassador

00:30:36.700 to a major country?

00:30:38.480 You know, Germany is not some island down in the Caribbean.

00:30:41.500 It is a major world power.

00:30:44.480 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

00:30:58.020 house, you know, house, the German national band is playing the American national anthem.

00:31:04.900 Oh, that is cool.

00:31:05.740 It was so cool.

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.

00:31:21.580 I don't really like the opera or the ballet.

00:31:24.640 And I think I was the first ambassador to not go to the opening of the Berlin opera and

00:31:29.880 the, you know, fancy stuff in Munich.

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

00:31:40.720 really help that industry in Europe.

00:31:45.060 Now, the worst part.

00:31:46.540 Yeah.

00:31:48.020 I think the worst part about being an ambassador is having security.

00:31:52.900 I hate it, to be honest.

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.

00:32:00.280 Right.

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.

00:32:14.740 I'd much rather be, you know, winging it.

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.

00:32:30.940 How much is that part of the job?

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

00:32:45.540 is about how great the other country is. 0.98

00:32:47.560 I find that to be pathetic, to be honest. 0.82

00:32:50.360 I think if the American people are paying you, you should be the office of America overseas. 0.90

00:32:55.020 And so everything that I did had a purpose.

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.

00:33:13.540 So choose which one.

00:33:14.680 And we tried to be very social with, uh, with a lot of different issues, um, that matter

00:33:21.940 and not just things that I wanted to do.

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,

00:33:35.820 which is really cool.

00:33:36.820 Yeah.

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

00:34:09.500 back.

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00:34:39.840 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

00:34:59.520 connected to Donald Trump.

00:35:00.500 What was it like early on and how were you treated?

00:35:04.820 Look, I had a great experience.

00:35:07.140 I have a lot of friends in Germany.

00:35:09.080 There are a ton of conservatives in Germany.

00:35:11.580 And the German business community is a lot like the American business community.

00:35:16.920 You kind of can't tell the difference.

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.

00:35:30.520 Um, so they act very much the same.

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

00:35:51.040 I needed to say.

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

00:36:12.560 Nord Stream 2.

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

00:36:58.340 where he gave the speech.

00:36:59.540 And other than that, there's nothing.

00:37:01.500 And, and, and that, that I found astonishing.

00:37:04.640 Did, did that surprise you?

00:37:07.060 It did.

00:37:07.440 And, and, uh, to be honest, the Reagan Library here, I have a lot of friends at the Reagan

00:37:11.340 Library because of the California connections.

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.

00:37:24.420 And he was a diehard socialist.

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

00:38:08.280 into the Ronald Reagan terrace.

00:38:10.140 And we put a seven foot statue of Ronald Reagan on top of the terrace, looking out at that,

00:38:16.340 uh, at the Brandenburg Gate.

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.

00:38:52.100 I always stop and let the moment be felt.

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

00:39:02.960 most amazing moments.

00:39:04.020 I do think that the U.S. embassy in Berlin is probably the best location of our embassies

00:39:10.700 in the world.

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?

00:39:21.340 It's up.

00:39:21.720 It's still up.

00:39:22.380 Okay.

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.

00:39:32.060 So it's there.

00:39:33.320 But you know what, funny thing is I, let me, let me just quickly say I invited Chancellor

00:39:38.120 Merkel to the opening, to the dedication.

00:39:40.220 And she said, oh, you know, I can't come, but you, will you let me know when you do

00:39:44.860 a Bush statue?

00:39:46.920 Because Bush united Germany and that made the whole world difference. 0.68

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00:41:29.300 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

00:41:49.320 national security threat.

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.

00:42:11.220 They're trying to become gotaways.

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

00:42:58.200 list is crossing the border?

00:42:59.360 It's because of raw intelligence.

00:43:00.740 We're figuring it out, but I, I, I think that it's being hidden when they reported, it's

00:43:08.680 not being analyzed and talked about.

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

00:43:22.220 you seeing at the border?

00:43:23.460 What are you hearing at the border?

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,

00:44:17.380 I believe broke the media. 0.87

00:44:19.020 He shattered their brains.

00:44:21.640 That has played a, a critical role in driving today's Democrat party to such extremes.

00:44:29.140 Yes.

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.

00:44:59.220 I totally agree because it's unleashed, right?

00:45:02.300 They, there's no consequences.

00:45:03.700 There's no downside.

00:45:04.600 So they get to do and say anything they want.

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 0.88

00:45:22.060 like it was real.

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 0.99

00:45:38.620 make some changes, uh, and, and we're trying to heal that relationship.

00:45:43.180 She opened it up.

00:45:44.340 We're on the verge of signing the Abraham Accords. 0.99

00:45:46.560 Yes.

00:45:47.240 And, and, and, until Biden screwed that up.

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 0.99

00:46:01.240 were going to play more fair and that they were going to be nicer to the Iranians by beating 1.00

00:46:07.300 up on the Saudis.

00:46:08.320 Right.

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.

00:46:17.380 Why were they taken off that list?

00:46:19.480 I mean, explain the politics behind that.

00:46:21.680 Well, I think, again, it's a, it's a gift to the Iranians. 1.00

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

00:46:42.460 we had.

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

00:47:00.720 Russians.

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.

00:47:21.520 This is, this was their argument.

00:47:22.860 And appeasement always, always, always fails.

00:47:28.500 It invites bullies and tyrants to be aggressive, to invade.

00:47:34.140 It, it causes war. 0.98

00:47:36.200 Absolutely.

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

00:47:43.320 Middle East of our lifetimes. 0.99

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.

00:48:16.840 Now, look, the Saudis have lots of problems.

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. 1.00

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

00:48:53.840 war until the end of time.

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.

00:49:14.820 Well, there's no question about that.

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. 0.99

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.

00:49:34.320 And they really believe that.

00:49:35.900 And the NGO community totally supports that.

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

00:49:57.360 it's working or not.

00:49:58.700 We could talk all day about Venezuela, because I think that's a failure of a policy.

00:50:02.780 It is.

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?

00:50:52.180 Yes.

00:50:52.720 For speaking engagements?

00:50:55.040 It's really so outrageous, so treasonous.

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.

00:51:09.200 They get away with it.

00:51:10.500 So let me ask another question.

00:51:13.700 So you were the director of national intelligence under Trump.

00:51:19.580 You were acting DNI for how long?

00:51:22.800 It was a short period of time.

00:51:23.780 A short period of time.

00:51:25.560 Supposed to be three months, but it was about four and a half.

00:51:27.940 So it's four and a half months.

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

00:52:24.640 and the agenda of the next White House?

00:52:26.620 Well, let me take the second part first.

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.

00:53:49.380 We've got duplicitous programs.

00:53:53.440 We've got people who it's supposed to be a coordinating body.

00:53:59.200 And yet it's no longer a coordinating body.

00:54:01.860 It's actually a competitive body.

00:54:04.060 It ballooned to more than 2,000 people.

00:54:06.800 It should be like 200 people.

00:54:08.740 And so I just started sending people back to their home agencies.

00:54:14.020 D&I, the OD&I had become the wasteland.

00:54:19.400 If an intelligence agency didn't like somebody, rather than fire them,

00:54:23.240 they sent them over to OD&I.

00:54:25.760 And so I just started sending people back and getting rid of every possible person

00:54:30.020 that we could, freezing hiring.

00:54:32.800 I did this in Germany as well.

00:54:36.280 And forcing people to rethink this.

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.

00:55:20.500 People should be fired.

00:55:22.000 The program should be eliminated, and that's not happening.

00:55:25.260 Rick, I really appreciate you coming on.

00:55:27.920 I know the senator and I love having you here.

00:55:31.480 And congratulations on an incredible career.

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,

00:56:02.380 we put together in a weekend review.

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.

00:56:10.360 Make sure you grab that as well.

00:56:12.000 And the senator and I will see you back here in a couple of days.

00:56:15.880 This is an iHeart Podcast.

00:56:18.780 Guaranteed Human.

Verdict with Ted Cruz - November 10, 2023

Understanding US Intelligence Failures with Hamas, Russia & Ukraine and Defeating the Deep State--One-on-One w⧸ Ric Grenell

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