Trump Begins to Build His Team
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President Trump, now also President-elect Trump, has named the team he wants to advise him on foreign policy and national security. I'm going to offer a few thoughts, but I really want to hear what Rich Goldberg thinks about these choices. Rich is wicked smart and he knows a huge amount about both policy and politics, about how the U.S. government works and not infrequently how it fails to work.

You've probably heard him on this and other podcasts often, but a bit of background. He served on the White House National Security Council staff as Deputy Chief of Staff and Foreign Policy Advisor to former U.S. Senator Mark Kirk of Illinois, as Chief of Staff and Head of Legislative Affairs to former Governor Bruce Rauner of Illinois, and as a Navy Reserve Intelligence Officer with experience on the Joint Staff and in Afghanistan.

By the way, he was sanctioned by Iran's rulers in August of 2020. So my guess is that he and his wife and kids won't be taking their Christmas vacation in Shiraz this year. Disappointing. One day, when the current regime is in what Trotsky called the dustbin of history. By the way, I've also promised my wife a boat cruise on the Volga River. So I'm determined to outlive Putin.

All right. There are a few other topics Rich has been writing and thinking about, and I'm also eager to discuss with him, time permitting. We're both pleased you could drop in, too, here on Foreign Odyssey. Good to see you, as always, Rich. Look, let's begin with the wide aperture and then we'll zoom in. Would I be correct? Would it be too generous of me to characterize Trump's picks as proponents of peace through strength?

I think that's correct. I think the core pick so far, when you look at record, experience, public statements, both far past and very recent,

Congressman Waltz, Mike Waltz from Florida, very strong proponent of peace through strength. I would characterize him as a national security hawk. He's one who has talked about the rise of the CCP, the threats from China needing to have a more comprehensive national strategy, larger investments in our defense spending and a widening of our defense industrial base to be able to deter a potential war with China and prevent their invasion of Taiwan.

He has talked about the threat from Iran, very clear eyed in the need to prevent that regime from acquiring nuclear weapons and to return to some sort of a maximum pressure campaign to squeeze the resources for all their other malign activities. Has been clear eyed on the Russia threat for many years, clear eyed on North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, etc.,

In Marco Rubio, I can probably go through them. And I do want to go through them all. And I want to get back to that. I just, our view and the view you just said, I just want to point out is not necessarily everybody's view. First, the Democrats are going crazy. A lot of people on the left are going crazy over this.

And then Bill Kristol, who was, you know, the editor of the Weekly Standard, wonderful editor of a wonderful magazine years ago, is very near with Trump. Here's what he's saying. What a cavalcade of kooks and creeps Donald Trump is trying out for positions of trust and responsibility in the United States government. So I just I just want to be honest and say, hey, there's a there's a lot of there's controversy here.

over all this. I also, you know, political and policy wonks like you and me, we think and talk about the president-elect making appointments. I just want to throw out that there's another way to look at it a little bit, that Trump in a way is like a TV producer casting a reality show. And I don't mean that as a condemnation. I'm not even sure it's a criticism because it's

His emphasis is on communications and his communication style is unique in communications. No one will, I've spent, you know, like 50 years in various aspects of communications. I don't disagree with that. So he asks himself like who, who, who gets people to pay attention and to whom will people listen? And so it's important that people look the part and they can get in front of a camera and that they can act a little like actors, but,

But for actors, their lines are written later. In Hollywood, that means scripts. In Washington, it means talking points. And also think about this, and then I'll let you comment. If you think of Mike Waltz, you mentioned Marco Rubio, Elsie Stefanik, Pete Hagseth, Kristi Noem, Vivek Ramaswamy, also J.D. Vance and Ellen Musk. All of them suggest, emanate youth and vigor.

I don't think that's accidental. I think that's the image he wants to give to people. You see what I'm saying? I think that that's true. I think they also are all people who he trusts, which is a big deal. Yeah, Lance, he's not a terrible thing. Correct. I mean, if you trust somebody and you're able to have candid discussions, arguments, debates behind closed doors and trust that those debates don't leak.

And that they will hire people under them who will not leak or turn or be against certain policy agendas. They will actually carry out the decisions ultimately the commander in chief directs. That is a course correction from some of his potential employment mistakes, personnel mistakes in the first administration, certainly in his own perception.

A lot of people, he was new. He didn't think he was going to win in 2016. He had a hurry transition. He had in his mind, perhaps what you just laid out, which is I want people who look the part. I want people who are impressive. A lot of people have been on TV. A lot of very interesting, important people are calling me saying this person, that person.

Let's talk to them. They interview very well. And so you end up with a Secretary Mattis. You have Mad Dog Mattis become your Secretary of Defense. It did not work out well in the dynamic between them, both on viewpoints, ideologies, and communication and trust. You end up with Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State. The exact same thing happens, even though he looks the part and he's recommended great management experience, business experience, negotiation experience.

just is somebody who cannot understand that he's the political appointee for the president of the United States and not somebody to just feel the pain of the bureaucracy and be their voice of the deep state. So I think he's course correcting in that regard, number one. But he's also factoring in actual talent, expertise, ability to communicate, all the things you just said.

Doug Burgum, another recent appointment that just came out, Secretary of the Interior, somebody who has a vision for American energy dominance. I actually think that the president doesn't look at that post as a purely domestic post, as mostly we do, because energy is his platform for flexibility and foreign policy and national security.

If we can change our domestic energy policies, that gives us room to maneuver and leverage over Russia, potentially, if his approach at first is, is ignored by Vladimir Putin over Iran, certainly in restoring a maximum pressure campaign over Venezuelan dictator down there as well. Um,

Also, China, obviously. By the way, he'll need a good secretary of energy to work with him who also sees it that way. Absolutely. And I have an expectation that will happen. Just kidding.

based on watching this for a long time. And obviously, I've known Governor Burgum, soon to be Secretary Burgum now, for a while. And he's an amazingly talented leader and understands all that. And will, I think, be a great part of the foreign policy team, not just the domestic policy team in that role, which I think is surprising to people. But again, this is people who are being recruited for a very specific mission. Right.

that the president sees expertise, talent, ability to communicate, looking impressive, all those qualifications still there, and trust, and the ability to execute something for that department, for that portfolio that's very important to him. And so even if there are certain picks that right now are being deemed controversial, and the media is going crazy, or Bill Kristol is going crazy, whatever it is,

There is a reason why he's decided on this person for this post. And you have to sort of decipher what that might be. He, you know, in the in the Department of Justice, the weaponization of the Justice Department, his view and having somebody who will fight back on that piece. You know, there is a distrust.

whether you like it or not, whether you agree with it or not, there is a distrust of parts of the intelligence community. There is a, there is a debate going on. It's not an illegitimate one. It's one we should have of, you know, how is intelligence produced? Who curates it? Who puts their thumb on the scale for what the president of the United States sees? You know,

At some point, there is a subjectivity to intelligence analysis and production when you curate something down and say, here, Mr. President, read this. Somebody decided this was going to be in the brief and this was not going to be in the brief. How do you fight politicization inside the intelligence community? So I think there's a lot of things going on in different silos in his mind of different pieces. I don't read his mind. I don't speak for him. I talk to him about it, but that's my read of the situation.

But in the key posts that are going to be around him, you know, the War and Peace Council, if you will, of making the critical decisions on all the top threats we face, you are talking about an all-star team.

Mike Waltz, Marco Rubio, Elise Stefanik, you just mentioned. Pete Hexup, I think a surprising, unconventional, disruptive choice. Catches everybody by surprise. Not unqualified, as some people have said. He has military service. He has studied defense and national security policy, politics, the arena for 20 years.

He's been a player inside Washington before, inside policy discussions, running advocacy campaigns, advocacy organizations, meeting with people, shown a devotion to our troops in active service and our veterans over many years in philanthropic ways and activism ways on television.

And he obviously is a good communicator, but he also shares certain values that the president aligns with. And he's somebody who can come in and be a disruptor separate from the bureaucracy, separate from the joint staff and the generals.

to push back. Maybe this is about the DEI wokeism agenda that's crept in over the last four years into DOD, something that Pete Hexeth has spoken about more than almost anybody out there in the commentary. Maybe this is about procurement reform and changing the way we do business. If you're going to have to go from zero to 60 on expanding our defense industrial base,

and ramping up production and being able to make more faster to prevent World War III from emerging in just a couple of short years, you need to disrupt the system. You need people who are able to drop in and be your person to help disrupt. I think Pete Hexeth could be that person. And by the way, here's the last thing I'll say on all the picks. There is a process.

There is a confirmation process. There are chairman of committees who are coming in with a new Senate Republican majority. They will all have to go through the gauntlet of meeting with senators,

sharing their views, going through a confirmation hearing, getting asked very tough questions. If somebody has said something controversial in the past, they will be asked about that in open hearing so we can understand what is their view today. Do they align with the president? Have they changed? Have they evolved? Why did they say that at a certain point? How do they account for that?

That's part of the process. It's important. People will need to be able to do that. And through that process, I think we will gain more confidence, as I think the president already has in the nominees. And if for some reason somebody really flops or something egregious comes out that's just outrageous, then at that point, that's what the process is for. But

But for now, the president has a mandate. He's won overwhelmingly in this election. And he's making picks based on experience, talent, ability to carry out his objectives in these departments and agencies, and trust. Yeah, a couple of things I want to just note. One is to be – but a finer point on it. If they screw up during the confirmation process, much as John Toon, who's going to be the new head of the –

the new leader in the Senate wants to give the president who he wants. He's a, he's a, he's not a shrinking violet. He's not a yes man. He knows that he, that the Senate is important. He's not going to push for confirmation of somebody who doesn't perform in the confirmation hearing as, as able. I mean, I have a lot of faith in John Toon. I watched him for years. I think he's John Toon is pretty, is a pretty damn good character.

That's one. Yeah. Here's another person coming in. Marco Rubio is going to be elevated as Secretary of State once confirmed. There's going to be a new chairman of the Intelligence Committee in the Senate. Well, that person's in charge of the DNI confirmation, to be sure. That's going to be Senator Tom Cotton. I trust Senator Cotton implicitly. Absolutely. In foreign policy, national security and intelligence matters. And I think he's going to run a rigorous process. And by the end of that process, we will either have confidence or not.

in whoever is before that committee for confirmation. So again, core team around the president, making critical life and death decisions, making critical investment decisions for our future budget decisions. And I look at the record of a Waltz, of a Rubio, Stefanik going to be the tip of the spear for political warfare for the United States.

Really changing it up, shaking it up at Turtle Bay and hopefully putting our enemies back on defense and making them have to spend a lot more time thinking about what's happening at the Security Council than us having to think about so much time of playing defense, defunding organizations that they're using for their advantage.

making sure we clear out of the bureaucracy of the UN, Chinese officials who are working for the CCP. There's a lot to be done there to drain the Turtle Bay Swamp the way the president's talked about draining the Swamp of Washington.

Again, phenomenal pick. If anybody watched her hearings raking over the call of the university presidents to root out anti-Semitism in America, if the people who were hired to prep Claudine Gay of Harvard are the ones being hired by the UN Secretary General to prepare for Elise Stefanik, it's going to be a disaster for the UN and an amazing day for the United States. Right, right, right. And one other point here that in most of these jobs, there should be

a balance between advising the president and at the end of the day, implementing the president's policies, even if you disagree with them to some extent. And H.R. McMaster, who chairs our military center here at FDD and has a fascinating book, he and I have discussed it on this podcast on foreign policy, his memoir of the time he spent as national security advisor. I mean, I think his model is the right one and is the one that is

is meant to be, which is he advises the president. He gives the president options. He may make recommendations that this is a preferable policy, but he understands there are other considerations. At the end of the day, the president gets to make the decision, not, not H.R. McMaster as national security advisor. That was the problem with St. Mattis, for example. I mean, I,

I admire Mattis, but he thought, I know how to do this stuff. I know all about it. This guy doesn't know. What does he know? He's a real estate guy. He doesn't know anything. He's not telling me. I'm telling him, and that didn't work out so well. So, you know, that's how the job should be seen. How do we serve this president who was elected? How do we give him the best advice? How do we show him respect?

what the various options are likely to lead to and give him some guidance and then can we carry it out. Now, I want to, this brings me to the following. We haven't mentioned except from the fact that he's dynamic, Elon Musk, and he's not a theoretic, he's not a member of the Trump's national security cabinet.

But two things. One, and by the way, I admire him hugely. He's brilliant. The idea that he can make government more efficient, which hasn't happened for 50 years, you know, since Calvin Coolidge. I think I'm very optimistic about all that. Musk is an amazing American.

But it's reported that he met with Tehran's UN ambassador, right? I think it was the Times that said that he was reported to have discussed ways to diffuse tensions between Iran and the United States.

I think this is a very seductive delusion for people who are not in Washington and people who are in Washington that all that's needed is dialogue, diffuse tension. Maybe you push a button that says reset and everybody is happy. You know, in a certain way, diplomacy is the opium of the therapeutic classes that, you know, relations can just be thawed. We're stuck in a freezer for some reason. So I'm worried when Elon Musk starts talking

to the ambassador who knows full well that the rulers of Iran are fully determined on a theological basis to death to Israel and death to America and do want to have nuclear weapons because that's the easiest way they can achieve their revolutionary jihadi aims. So I'm going to be critical here. I'm going to caution that it's dangerous to have Musk

Talking with the ambassador who's very clever and wants to sell him the most expensive rug in the chouk.

Well, there's a lot to unpack here in this story that we've heard about. And by the way, I didn't mention John Ratcliffe for Central Intelligence. I think he'll be excellent there as well. It's time to make the CIA great again and put them back in the lead, dominant in the intelligence community. And I think that's also reflected in the choices here. But to your question, listen, there's a lot we don't know about this story right now. So I want to be cautious here.

in how we think about this. A lot of it is hypothetical in nature. We're hearing something leaked out from an Iranian perspective here for whatever purposes they want to achieve and how they're leaking it out.

Usually there is a kernel of truth and then a lot of propaganda sort of surrounding it that's not true. Was Elon Musk meeting with the Iranian ambassador? It seems weird that they would lie about it. At some point it'll be confirmed on the American side or on Musk's side or not. If he was, was he doing that on his own accord with his own big idea or was he actually sent by the president elect?

Was he sent by the president elect with a specific message?

Or was it sort of a, yeah, Yolanda wants to go. He has an idea. You know, you can go if you want. Don't speak for me, but, you know, sound him out and report back what you hear. There are others who have tried that in the past. We remember Senator Rand Paul reportedly tried doing that with Javad Zarif during the maximum pressure campaign in the first Trump administration. It was never really achieved much. Nope.

Um, it was, uh, almost, uh, and I never, you know, again, don't read the president's mind. I almost wonder if it was sort of amusing to see that the Iranians, uh, spinning their wheels, believing something's happening and there's a negotiation that could happen and they got Trump, you know, over a barrel now and they've snookered Trump and they don't even realize what's happening, but maybe the president does realize exactly what's happening. Um,

Was the message very tough if it was authorized by the president? Was it a threat more than an opportunity? Was it specific in nature to one arena or more global? But we don't know the answers to any of these questions, which is why I'm circumspect and cautious. So in the hypothetical, not commenting on reality, I think it is dangerous for somebody to take it upon themselves and believe that they know best.

And to go and represent themselves potentially falsely under false pretenses, knowing that they have the ear of the president or with the president and therefore have the stature.

to be seen as potentially speaking for the president. That's dangerous. I think in general, until you have been fully briefed on all communications to date that are likely classified over the last four years and really have a perspective on what have the Iranians said to us, what have we said to the Iranians, what have we promised the Iranians? By the way, what are we currently giving the Iranians?

that we don't even know about as far as money flow and oil flow. And, you know, we know that Brett McGurk was going back and forth to Oman and Qatar and the Sultan of Oman and the Emir of Qatar were meeting with the Iranians and making deals. And we moved money around and we issued waivers that are still in effect. There are arrangements that we have made. Maybe they've been broken by the Iranians. Maybe they're no longer in effect. We need to know all of this.

You need to know what was the last message sent back and forth. The Wall Street Journal has a report that the Iranians sent a letter back to the White House in response to a letter they got about not killing Trump.

And they said that, no, we're not going to, we're promised not to. Okay, well, I don't put much stock in some letters saying we're not going to, but I'd want to read the letter. I'd want to understand it, want to unpack any intel around it and around the assassination plots and a range of other issues going on before I sent any emissary to deliver a message, unless it has some sort of sense about the immediate impact that has to happen sooner than later, like

There's a Lebanon ceasefire negotiation going on. It seems unlikely Hezbollah and the Lebanese government say yes to anything on the table unless the Iranians tell them to say yes to it, in my view. Is it somehow related to that? Did the White House encourage this to happen because they want the Iranians to know that there is a unified position on something?

where they've said something, but they want to make sure that they have a hand while they're still in power and get reinforced by the incoming president. If that's the case, if this is somehow really thought out and formulated and specific in nature and not what the Iranians are trying to present it as,

It matters less to me who the emissary of the president is and more about what the message is and more about how you develop the strategy of sending the message. Because Elon Musk is around the president in Mar-a-Lago, it appears, every single day, almost every single hour. Therefore, he probably has right now the right brain and right hand of the president in some ways. Or elites can have that perception with a foreign leader for as long as that remains the reality.

Um, so if you want to use that person to send the message and he's a powerful person and a person in himself with a lot of prestige, okay. Again, unconventional, but this is not a conventional president elect. Um, so again, so I come back to saying absolutely right to identify a lot of risks here. A lot can go very, very, very bad if this was not authorized by the president, if it was sort of

Kind of authorized, but not thought out. But like Elon just has a big idea and he wants to go see where he can take it and show the president something that always goes poorly in my view. And I think the president elect is smart enough to be able to sniff out BS. That's the bottom line. He knows he holds the cards here. They don't.

They make a lot of threats. He's seen it all before. He's seen their offers of talks or not talks or we're going to respond. We're going to retaliate. We're going to escalate. He knows what he's capable of. He knows what the U.S. military is capable of. He knows what sanctions can do when they're enforced.

So I do have confidence that the team he's appointing around him, he's going to ask Mike Waltz, what do you think of what came back? He's going to ask Marco Rubio, what do you think about this? He's going to ask other people, and he's going to get, I hope, the right answer, which is, Mr. President, they're full of BS. They're full of hot air. They're scared of you.

Let's keep moving. Let's rebuild pressure. Let's make sure we put them not in Jake Sullivan's pretend box, but in an actual box. I take your points. And I hope you're right. I'm just going to rewrite that. This is kind of what I often, often say is,

to be wary of dialogue for dialogue's sake, of believing negotiations are in themselves are an achievement, of believing, and I worry about this a little bit with Trump, that there's always a deal to be made because you'll find what's in their interest and what's in our interest and we can find common ground and do it. The fact of the matter is, at the end of the day, power determines when you're dealing with people like Ali Khamenei of Iran,

Xi Jinping of China, Vladimir Putin, power is what matters and really nothing else. You may think you're the most persuasive person in the world, but it doesn't work. These guys are a different breed. Anyhow, that's...

The instability they face inside Iran is an asset. Continuing to increase their domestic pressure in any way possible is a tool to continue to pressure this regime and squeeze the regime. And therefore, how we talk to Iran, how we reach out to Iran, when we talk to them, what we say when we talk to them needs to include and incorporate that element of

which is a critical element so that we are not abandoning the Iranian people. We are not in some way making the Iranian regime's position stronger by how we talk to them or when we talk to them.

But at the same time, talking to them can be advantageous at certain points. It can actually undermine them if it's done correctly. It can confuse them. It can allow us space to do things that actually build up the pressure around them while they're being talked to. So they don't own the game. They don't own the trickery of just trying to fool us by talking. We can play that game too.

Okay. I thought we'd go through some of the, we've mentioned some of these nominees. I want to go through them very quickly. And I'll just, because a few just things I think that those listening to us in this conversation, they should know about these. So take Mike Waltz for a bit of background. In 2014, he wrote a fascinating book called Warrior Diplomatic Green Berets Battles from Washington to Afghanistan.

Really good book. In 2015, by the way, he was a non-resident senior fellow here at FDD. And in 2018, he became the first. I knew that name somewhere. There it is. Right. Well, you heard him. Well, 2018, he became first Green Beret elected to Congress. And he took the seat that had been, that governor, now governor Ron DeSantis used to hold. Right.

And the other reason you heard that name is we interviewed him here, talked to him here on Foreign Policy in 2023. He's also on FDD's morning briefing. I would only recommend that- That's, by the way, the lead in his bio starts with former featured guest on Foreign Policy. Featured, yes, of course. Of course. Listen, I would only recommend, and will, that he sit down for a very long lunch with H.R. McMaster, who served, again, who served as national security ambassador

advisor to Trump only for a year. It was a difficult relationship. We know that from the book. But HR, I do think, spent a lot of time figuring out what it is a national security advisor is meant to do, how that job should be done. Not all national security advisors do it the way he did it, bringing together the views of various

cabinet officials and advisors and trying to give the president the best possible, clearest, most succinct advice so we can make the best possible decisions. By the way, HR now chairs, well, full disclosure, our military center. But as you say, listen, Mike's been great. He's consistently advocated for a more assertive approach toward Iran.

He doesn't need Senate confirmation, by the way, which is different. And by the way, Mike has said, and this is really important, he has said, we are in a cold war with the Chinese Communist Party. Now, who else believes that? Well, the great historian Neil Ferguson, and of course, Mike Gallagher, who's a friend of Mike Waltz, who established the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, also somebody who's not in Congress now.

I think he has a political future. He also was affiliated with FDD years ago. Matt Pockinger chairs our China program. And I certainly think that this should be seen as Cold War 2.0 and that it's more challenging than Cold War 1. Go ahead. Do you know who else? Do you know who else coming to the cabinet has openly said it's a Cold War? Ah.

Doug Burgum. Oh, yeah. He said that a lot. He was the first person during that presidential campaign primary to talk about this. And, you know, something I would advise to incoming national security advisor Waltz is get with

Secretary Burgum very quickly and incorporate what he's doing into your national security strategy and your structure and make sure that energy, what they're doing in the interior, both domestic and global energy strategies and policies are a key pillar inside both the National Security Council and National Economic Council and overlay directorate with a very senior director, deputy assistant to the president.

and have that person be working very closely

with incoming Secretary Burgum and also whoever becomes the Secretary of Energy. I think they should have their own part of the National Security Council incorporated there. It'd be non-traditional for the Interior to sit on the NSC. I actually think if it's Burgum, that should happen. And I think that the close relationship, no matter what, between the National Security Advisor and both Interior and Energy is going to be very important. I'll just mention this, and I don't want to go off too far on this conversation, but

The wealth that we need both to expand our defenses and because of the problem we have with the huge deficit, energy can provide a lot of that. But I'm talking about gas, natural gas, maybe nuclear in time, being energy dominant in the world. Energy security is national security or can be and not least – and this is going to be a little controversial –

Why is this difficult? Because...

Elon Musk makes electric vehicles. I'm not against electric vehicles, but they're not any solution for the environment and they're not an energy solution. And they give China a lot of power in the world because that's where the batteries and critical mineral come from. The critical minerals are processed. That's a bit of a problem. And because Elon Musk does make most of his Teslas in China, which may be fine, but strategic...

So strategic materials, chains of, you know what I'm saying? We shouldn't rely on China for anything strategic. T-shirts, maybe cars, but I think we have to be careful of that too because you can put all kinds of things into those cars that are useful for national security. Admiral Mark Montgomery would say, yeah, there's some dangers there. Okay, I don't know what, that's a whole other subject.

But trillions spent on a false energy transition. No, it's an important one. And, you know, what I'll tell you is actually the repurposing of a ton of that money is going to be a major priority.

A lot of the control is going to be out of the Department of Energy. I imagine Secretary Burgum will work on that as well since he's an expert in this. It's going to be about also investment in baseload energy because and it could be nuclear. It could be other forms that have been under attack by the Biden-Harris administration. But the bottom line is, if you are going to win the AI race with China,

You need a lot of power. Unbelievable. You need a lot of power. And the tech companies already know that. They're willing to start building it on their own. They're already raising big capital to just make their own electricity grids, make their own power. Also, maybe with modular nuclear that will power AI, they may try to do it themselves. So you've got to get rid of the regulations that stifle that.

So I agree with you along with reducing our reliance dependencies in critical minerals and critical supply chains, making sure we're,

both energy independent and energy dominant, more importantly. These are going to be big, big, big issues inside, not just the National Economic Council, but I think the National Security Council. Right, right, right. All right. So going on to Marco Rubio for the Secretary of State, son of Cuban immigrants. I don't think he'll have, as you said, any trouble getting confirmed. He was, by the way, he was among a handful of U.S. officials who

on whom China has imposed sanctions back in 2020, and he was banned from traveling to China. That's interesting. I wonder if they have to formally withdraw that now. I wonder. I don't know how many of you do.

I'm sure it's not a big bureaucratic process if Xi Jinping says, let him come, I want to talk to him. They must have like a general license process like we have at OFAC in the Treasury Department for our sanctions. They won't lift the sanctions, but they can issue a waiver for his arrival. A name we haven't mentioned, but interesting in this regard is Robert Lighthouser, who was U.S. trade representative during Trump's first term. And I've seen signs that he's likely to be recruited by

by Trump again. I'm not sure for what position, but he is pretty hawkish on China and kind of wants to decouple from China's access to U.S. markets, technology, and capital. I think probably more like Matt Pottinger, who chairs our China program, it's not decoupling, disengaging entirely, but constraining, and at least as you say, the

The strategic supply chains have to be cut and we have to find other things for them. So that's going to be some interesting conversations that I imagine in the Oval Office and with Putin from these various people who may not agree 100% on these things, right? Yeah.

I think so. And I think the president's also talked about reopening U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement, USMCA, which was one of his prized renegotiations of NAFTA in his first term. But what we've seen happening, and actually we have FDD scholars who have written about this and exposed the game that China is playing, is that they are evading...

uh, the rules of USMCA by moving some of their factories into Mexico, making things in Mexico. And therefore the Mexicans get to bring it into the United States. Uh, and therefore all the tariffs we put on China get evaded. Um, so I think that there's going to need to be some tweaks already to counter what the Chinese are doing to evade our trade policies, uh, and keep some pressure on Beijing, uh,

protect our own industry in certain places where they've taken advantage and where the Mexicans are taking advantage of us now by partnering with the Chinese. So there's going to be some opportunities there. And by the way, obviously, the U.S.-Mexico relationship will be very interesting to watch in that context, but also for border security and fentanyl flows and everything else that's going to be happening down there. You have hawks on all these issues coming in at the key posts.

Canada will go to the polls next year. Right now, unless there is a major change, we expect a conservative overwhelming victory in Canada. So you have a changing government that will be more aligned with the incoming U.S. administration. So a lot of these issues will be very interesting, how our North American and Western Hemisphere policy takes shape. Yeah, I think I see Mexico as problematic and a very strong competitor.

ambassador to Mexico. I lived in Mexico years and years ago. Mexico has not gone in a good direction, including under the current president, from my point of view. The cartels and the power they have, the cartels who have been

connected closely with the Chinese Communist Party, getting fentanyl precursors and making them and putting them in, which I think the Chinese know very well about. Then what happens is we send some envoy to China who says, I talked about fentanyl. I think they're going to be very cooperative with us. And they're kidding themselves and kidding

the American people by saying that because that's not what the Chinese have done. All right. And by the way, you know, it is striking to me, we've talked a lot about a lot of different issues so far, and I just touched barely on border security. And I think it's important for us to take a step back and say that on the list of day one priorities, on the things that our national security, homeland security apparatus will be focused on while we think about what are we doing with China? What does Russia, Ukraine look like?

What is it? Are we reconstituting Iran? Maximum pressure? What are we doing with North Korea? Continuing to launch its ballistic missiles and move forward with its nuclear program. These are all things are going to have to get sorted out very quickly. Defense spending. Are we committing very early on to a new direction and defense industrial base? But day one,

The promise to the American people is controlling the border, getting control of the border. And it is a national security crisis when you think about, and I've written on this recently, it was in the Wall Street Journal a couple weeks ago on this.

We had an illegal immigrant who came across from Mauritania, of all places. We've seen this crazy rise in illegal crossings from countries you never either... Maybe you heard of them, but you never thought that you have a legal immigration from there coming through Mexico. We obviously have seen...

just tens of thousands of Chinese, you've seen Russians, you've seen Iranians caught at the border. We know Hezbollah has major operations in Central South America, partnerships with Mexican cartels. They have the ability to be going in and out of the country at the moment. And so you have a Mauritanian guy just goes to the Jewish neighborhood in Chicago and shoots a Jew within hours of Israel's response strike on Iran.

I mean, and they just say, oh, he's working alone. We don't have any information. No idea who he is. What could be the motive? Cover up this person's identity for days.

still don't know much about how he radicalized, who he is, where was he going to mosque, who are his friends, who are the other Mauritanians he came across with, where are they today? I mean, all these question marks. We've seen ISIS-linked people picked up in the United States who were originally released. We've had illegal immigrants who have been picked up trying to surveil or get access to Quantico and other military bases. So,

For all those reasons, I think the system is flashing red right now, along with just the rise in radical Islam.

anti-Israel, anti-Semitic feelings, both on his radical left, but also in Islamic radicalism as well. With an open border, this is a major, major national security issue. You got the Chinese in Cuba. You have the Russians in Cuba. You have the Russians in Venezuela. You have Iran throughout the hemisphere. We have got to get control of the border day one. It has to be the

the top priority. And I think rightly so. And I think it was a major issue and part of the mandate that the president has in this election, along with energy dominance, which I think is also a day one commitment that he's going to make. And then, oh, yeah, the rest of the world and, you know, making sure we don't have World War Three still high up there. Going to take a few more days and months to sort that out and make sure we're in a good position.

Yeah. If you, if America is to be great again, or even not so great, any nation needs two things, needs a flag and a border.

If you don't have that, you're not really a nation. And I think those who are against having a secure border, and there are those who are against it, and those who simply lied about it, like the former or the current Homeland Security Chief Alejandro Mayorkas saying it's secure, it's secure. Those millions of people going by, no, no, no, don't worry about them. They're all, you know.

they don't believe that Americans have the right to secure borders. They believe we stole the country or the land or something like that. And that anybody who wants to has a right to come here, demand whatever social services they, any human being should have. And that's just fine. And that's, you know, it's kind of humanistic, but it's totally unrealistic. And at the end, it's, it'll break the back of whatever welfare system we have. And they're doing that in many, many cities around the country already. Anyhow, that's a,

for another day, but I think you're right that, that immigration, illegal immigration, um, by the millions is it wasn't one of the reasons that Trump won. And that has to be a priority in this administration. And I think it probably will be, we'll get to that. Mike Huckabee, uh, ambassador to Israel. I think it's a great choice. He's a Baptist minister. Um,

the fact of the matter is there are more Christian Zionists than Jewish Zionists in the United States of America. Uh, so I think that's a very good choice. And for those who believe in the U S Israel relationship, believe that Israel is a, not just a reliable, but valuable ally. I think that's a gotta, that's gotta be applauded. I, I have three comments on this. One is a joke and two are serious observations. One, uh,

This will be the first ambassador of the United States to Israel in history who actively lobbies on a daily basis to try to get the Israeli government to be more pro-Israel. Two, I think to your point, it's a powerful message to have a Christian in this post. And this is sort of a sub reason. It's like number three goes with number two. I think Israelis right now are freaked out.

And rightly so. They are watching American college campuses explode over the last year plus. They are seeing the streets explode. They are seeing Jews get shot on their way to synagogue on a Sabbath.

They are just what has happened to the United States. And rather than seeing both presidential candidates firmly condemn and come down on their side, as they have always seen over the past with some nuances, sure, but on the big ticket moments, always with them in the kishkis, as they say, to see one person running for president and the outgoing president say things like the people in the streets burning the American-Israeli flags have a point.

And when a person screaming genocide and, and horrible things about Israel, and it gets cleared out of a rally to say what that person was talking about is real. And when before October 7th, some horrible anti Israel, anti-Semitic student in a classroom stands up and just gives a diatribe against Israel. The sitting vice president at the time says, um, you need to speak your truth. That's your truth. I mean, this is scaring people. What is happening to our country? Like we're turning into what great Britain is turning into. Um,

In their minds, and that's really, really bad if your number one ally is the United States of America, if your security, your economy, a lot of things depend on a strong alliance with the United States. And so I think Mike Huck could be arriving there talking to Israelis.

and saying, I am of the tens upon tens of millions of Americans who stand with you and will always stand with you. And let me tell you something, what you see in the news, what you saw Harris giving some credence to, what you see on college campuses is sick, disgusting. We're going to clean it up. It's not America. These are not our values. And I'm here to reassure you of that. So that's important on the Israeli side. And then also equally important, as you've had this indoctrination in the left, the

The attempt to mainstream anti-Semitism in the form of anti-Zionism

in wide swaths of the American body politic and debates going on, columns in New York Times, you know, questioning maybe Harris lost because she wasn't anti-Semitic enough. Maybe she wasn't anti-Israel enough. Maybe a full embrace of the Hamas agenda is what the Democratic Party needs. Otherwise, they could have won Michigan and kept the blue wall. These are serious conversations going on with supposedly serious people, and it's outrageous.

To have the ambassador from Jerusalem get on a Sunday show regularly and speak to the American people the way he will speak to them and explain what's going on, I think is equally powerful to the American people. And I worry that, look, you remember that during the lame duck period, President Obama stabbed the Israelis in the back.

He allowed, maybe even engineered, a UN Security Council resolution that talked about occupied Palestinian territories, including the Jewish quarter of Jerusalem and the Western Wall, the holiest site for Jews. That was just such a betrayal of an ally. Is it possible that

President Biden will do something similar? I think it is possible. And I really worry about that. One of the things that's going on now is an executive order sanctioning individual Israelis in the West Bank. And for what? For being opposed to stability and peace, which who knows what that even means. But I know that one of the individuals caught up in this is a woman who was protesting the

the aid to Gaza. Why was she prosaic? She said, I don't think there should, aid should be going to Gazans while Gazans are holding American and Israeli hostages in Gaza. Give up the hostages, free the hostages, release the hostages, and then you get the aid. Why is it not that way? All these people, you hear them say, we need a ceasefire.

And the release of the hostages. No, we need the release of the hostages. That can lead to a ceasefire. The idea that it's normal, and this gets into another odd subject, but I don't know if we'll have time today. I know it drives you crazy, this concept of hostage diplomacy. No, hostage taking is a crime, unequivocally.

And we should not be saying, well, what can we give them? A few billion dollars? Can we make some concessions? I mean, they have our hostages. What can we do? No, that is not the way we should be dealing with this. I'm getting into many other subjects, but I am worried about this lame duck period and what may be done to Israel now.

in that period. Yeah, we can talk about both of them. I don't want to talk about two looks. I want to get through all these people. No, no, no. I mean, it's like this could be a five hour series or something. So Joe Rogan does that. Why can't we for next week? Well, you know what? Have you thought? First of all, you kind of look like Joe Rogan. I've always thought that I have hair. Yeah.

And now with YouTube, you can actually know I'm right. And I'm just looking in the car. Check out our YouTube version of this too. You'll understand. A little promo there. A good promo. People are going to log on now to the YouTube. First of all, they'll start watching it and they'll say, wait, I thought it was supposed to be Joe Rogan. It's close. No. So on the executive order side.

You're correct. There is an executive order that was issued earlier in the year, earlier in the year, right around the time when the Biden administration took that U-turn. And it went from real deference and support to Israel and Hamas is evil and...

You know, the president sort of viewing his support of Israel in that moment as his political path to getting a supplemental for Ukraine. So he ties Putin with Hamas, the two evils that were battling were with Israel completely.

Then there's this movement in Michigan to not vote for him all of a sudden and people are getting scared and the people inside the administration start resembling a college campus with their own encampments going on and secret letters and resigning and people with masks protesting in front of the White House and

Well, we got to put the brakes on this and start pressuring Israel. So they give a green light to people in the State Department to come up with every crazy idea you've always wanted to do to Israel because you hate Israel. Go and go and do that. And one of them was an executive order that is fundamentally without looking at who they've designated or why.

The actual executive order is the building block, the foundation of a government-sponsored, U.S. government-sponsored BDS campaign against Israel. What do I mean by that? To your point, it says anybody who is somehow disruptive to stability, to peace in the West Bank and Judea and Samaria, in these areas, by the way, to include Jerusalem,

to include the eastern parts of Jerusalem, including the Old City and the Western Wall, can be subject to secondary sanctions. Oh, and this came with an advisory from the Financial Crimes Network at the Treasury Department, FinCEN, warning banks around the world, hey, hey, slow down on your transactions with anybody who's over the green line, anybody who's in that Judea and Samaria area is in the West Bank.

because you might be dealing with an actor that's going to be covered by this executive order. That's how you chill commerce. That's how you start forcing banks to stop transactions. You start forcing companies to halt their operations and pull out of territory. What does that sound like to you? It's the BDS movement. It's the BDS campaign. Only now a U.S. sanctions executive order disguised as we're countering

settler extremism, which is on the rise. And there are absolutely incidents that are horrific that have happened.

I've pulled these statistics from the Israeli police and seen the differences over several years. They're incremental at best. You know, I saw like 2022, there's something like 900 incidents, 2023, a thousand incidents. So 10%, I suppose, a swing, but when you're talking about 900 versus a thousand post October 7th, there was a surge because of everything going on, obviously. Yeah.

You have incidents that the UN tries to document and the UN Human Rights Council has been behind this movement for many years if you do the research.

And there's organizations tied to Palestinian terror organizations like the PFLP on the ground in the West Bank that are supplying a lot of this information. And there's an organization in Washington that is tied to bad actors called Dawn, which is really feeding a lot of this information flow into the State Department, not just on this issue, but on other areas to castigate Israel.

Be that as it may, they started this in a very politically smart way where they took people who you wouldn't want to defend. Maybe somebody would defend them. I wouldn't defend some of these people who are on the list based on their views, their public statements in various ways. I'm not going to be friends with them. I might condemn them. I don't know them. But if I, you know, you give me the dossier and then I might stand up and say, I don't like this person. That's not what we're talking about here.

If they're actually a danger for some reason, you can deny them a visa to come to the United States. And if they've committed terrorism, then we have terrorism authorities on the books to actually prove somebody is involved in a terrorist activity or a group is. But to decide that we're going to have an executive order to impose sanctions on a swath of Israeli society, a democratic ally.

for political objectives, in this case, to meddle in Israeli politics, to put pressure on Israel, to stop military operations, to lay the foundation for an economic boycott, sanctions, divestment campaign against Israeli banks, Israeli companies who are doing business in places where you don't want Israel to continue to have settlements. I mean, this is outrageous.

I mean, it could be under the definitions here. They can go after ministers who are just you don't like them. You don't agree with them. They say outrageous things.

By the way, they're calling for that in Congress right now. They're asking the administration. I mean, like 80 Democrats in the House and Senate just sent a letter, just became public, saying you should use this executive order to impose sanctions on members of the democratically elected government of Israel's cabinet. Because they're saying things you disagree with because they're expressing opinions you disagree with. You don't have to like them. You can go to the floor and give a speech against them, introduce a resolution condemning them. I mean –

What did you put sanctions on? I mean, that's crazy. And then, you know, if you went to the Temple Mount as a Jew, it's provocative. You can have disagreements on whether the policy based on peace and stability and violence, all that. I think it's fundamentally crazy to me that we always consider it a controversy that Jews...

should not be allowed to visit the holiest site in their religion if that's what they want to do. There's no freedom of religion for Jews in their holiest site in the world, in Jerusalem, but there's freedom of religion for everybody else. I've never understood that. I understand why people are upset about it. I understand it causes frustration and outrage, and Arab capitals say things about it, and maybe there's good reason for a policy.

But the way we talk about it, I've never understood. It's like fundamentally anti-Semitic to me for somebody to complain that a Jew gets to go, you know, is going on a temple Mount, but a Muslim can go there and nobody cares or a Christian can go there. Nobody cares. But by the way, the Christian has to go on certain days too. So the bottom line here is,

We should not be involved in this in a sanctions perspective. Day one, rescind the executive order. Get rid of all of these sanctions. If you don't like people, say bad things about them. Use your freedom of speech. Give whatever proclamation, whatever you want to do. Talk on the House and Senate floor about them. Use the diplomatic channels if it's a government dispute with our closest ally. But by God, we should not have an executive order targeting an ally.

All right. And I think you may have a hard stop since I'm going to raise one more issue so that you decide how long we go. I'm good. I'm good. Keep going. I want to talk a little bit about Elise. The car have hard stops already. They're like stopping and going and they don't know what to do right now. Elise Stefanik, again, we mentioned her, U.S. ambassador to the U.N. She's only 40 years old. She's had five terms in Congress when she came in. At 30, I think she was the youngest woman ever elected to Congress. She's now the most senior woman

in the house Republican leadership and chair of the house Republican conference. Of course, she's from New York. So Kathy Huckle, the governor will take at least not as long as she can. I think it's 90 days to replace her when she leaves. Uh, as you've talked about, she took on the Ivy league, uh,

college presidents did so really well. She's repeatedly accused the UN of being plagued by what she called anti-Semitic rot. I think that's a pretty good description. So I think she'll be very effective as Nikki Haley was. You wrote an excellent piece in the New York Post the other day with additional advice for her. And I thought you might want to just tick off some of the things you're recommending that she do when she gets that job.

Yeah, listen, one of the things I'm most proud of here at FTD is we've spent four years really building out our international organizations program and published a lot monographs, research memos, op eds. We've had panels and events and talked to the media and really try to develop a playbook.

for UN reform at a fundamental level, both systematically across the UN system and within individual organizations and agencies. And we're going to make sure that the incoming ambassador has all of that. And I think her team is already ripping through a lot of our monographs and stuff. But here's the playbook in my view from day one. And it's a reset in how we look at the UN and how we act in the UN. Because

Because our enemies are eating our lunch in the United Nations system in several ways. First of all, I know we still in our minds live in the 1990s and maybe early 2000s, where we have a weak Russia, post-Soviet Union.

We have a China that's cozying up to us because they want permanent normal trade relations. They want access to the WTO. They want to be on our good side and have collaboration. And so they just basically abstain if it's controversial instead of blocking anything. And the Russians abstain if something's controversial or actually vote yes on a lot of things because we tell them to and we have influence. We are in a different world today.

We are in a world where if it's something that's actually in American interests and going to disadvantage our top adversaries, China and Russia, and certainly Iran and North Korea and others, the China-led axis, China and Russia, with two permanent member seats on the Security Council, are going to veto it together. They're going to stop it.

And instead, they're going to work with our enemies, Israel's enemies, others, to politically terrorize us in the council and put forward agendas and meetings and resolutions that put us on defense. And our good-natured, positive-thinking diplomats...

Don't love to veto things. It's a diplomatic failure in the UN if you have to use your veto in a lot of people's mind, because it means you didn't find common ground, which is the real mission of the Security Council, to promote peace and security in the world. If we can't find the common ground with China and with Russia and with other actors, what is the point of the Security Council then? We need to water down resolutions. We have to compromise. Our European allies get weak-kneed a lot.

That's a fact. And so they'll come to us saying, we can't support you on this resolution. We need you to compromise on it. We don't want the Russians to veto. We don't want the Chinese to veto. Please, please, please change the resolution. Compromise your position. So we lose. We lose each way. We don't advance our interests.

If anything, we actually disadvantage our interests by promoting final resolutions that don't work towards our interests and are better for Russia and China in the name of common ground and compromise. Anything that actually is in our interest is blocked.

So why can't we play this game? Why can't we turn the tables? Why can't we understand, number one, do no harm. Veto anything that's bad, period. The veto's back. We're not afraid to use it. Somebody wants to come out with an anti-hosa resolution, it's going to get vetoed. It's not going to get watered down. We're not going to compromise. We're not going to agree on a president's statement from the Security Council in lieu of a resolution.

It's just gone. You want to renew some sort of a mandate for a peacekeeping force that's completely outrageous and is pro-Hezbollah and is promoting things that help our enemies and adversaries instead of forcing our enemies to actually negotiate on our terms? Veto. Not allowed to go through. We're not afraid anymore. And secondarily, we're going to start turning the tables by introducing our own resolutions and convening our own meetings.

And running this like a campaign strategic communications calendar where it's like this week we're highlighting human rights abuses in Xinjiang. And this week we're going to highlight what Russia is doing here. And this week we're going to highlight North Korean missiles. And this week we're going to highlight Iran doing this or that. Whatever the president signs off on based on obviously connection to our foreign policy in the moment and our national security priorities and what's hot and where we can do damage to our enemies.

And you know what? Let's start putting forward resolutions that put everybody else on defense on key issues. And the example I use in this op-ed, because it's top of mind and I've just always thought it's crazy we don't do this, I want to see the Russians and the Chinese have to veto a resolution declaring Hamas a terrorist organization.

It's not in the United Nations. Neither is Hezbollah. You have some French problems with that potentially. But Hamas, it's declared in its entirety a terrorist organization by the European Union, by the United States, by other key allies. Let's put it forward.

Europe has to be with us on that. I don't know how they're supposed to say we're neutral on whether Hamas is a terrorist organization. Who's going to veto it? Oh, the Russians, the Chinese, fine. What a great talking point. Now we get to go out everywhere for a month and talk about how the Chinese and Russians are pro-Hamas and they proved it and they protected this brutal terrorist organization at the United Nations. That's a great point.

That's a win. That's called political warfare. It's called diplomatic warfare. Like that's what we should be doing at the Security Council and think of other creative ways to keep putting Iran on defense and North Korea on defense when necessary and the Russians on defense when necessary and the Chinese on defense every single day in my view and Venezuela and Cuba and everybody else.

That's a security council. Okay. That's one piece. It's a big piece. How about a resolution condemning Russia and the North Koreans for the North Koreans sending troops to kill Ukrainians? How about that? And let them let them veto that. Or do they approve of the use of North Korean troops as cannon fodder or whatever they're going to be used for on Ukrainian territory?

We should do all these things because in my view, no matter where the president wants to take directions on a certain day, negotiations with certain actors, offers, sanctions pressure going up, diplomatic overtures going up, whatever it's going to be, he needs to view this as part of his toolbox.

This is a major tool of leverage. It's going to keep your adversaries busy. It's going to make them exasperated. And it's great for you from a global strategic communications posture to help the United States and really communicate what we stand for, our values and our interests, and bring allies along with us while we do it and put really weak-kneed allies in a tough position because they can't defend the opposite side.

This is a way to really think creatively and strategically of forcing allies to the table on our side and putting our adversaries on defense. Okay. And again, I understand this is the Security Council. It's model UN on steroids to some people.

These countries take it seriously. They invest a lot of money in people and diplomats. They spent a lot of time thinking about how to take advantage of us there. It's time for us to flip the table because in the end, we are a permanent member of the Security Council. It's a big deal. We have the veto. We have the ability to convene. We have the forum that is unlike any forum in the world to have discussions like this on a world stage and have the Chinese and Russians sitting there at the table. We should take advantage of it. Okay. That's

That's one piece. By the way, if we can campaign for an Israeli membership on the Security Council, that'd be cool too. But the rest of the UN system...

understand that there are nuances here and it's going to depend on sort of how they structure everything and I think the relationship between a Secretary of State Rubio and Ambassador Stefanik is going to be very important. Who they put in as Assistant Secretary of International Organizations at the State Department working with USUN's mission in New York, very important. Who our ambassadors are in the other UN missions. I know people think UN, you just think New York. You

who's actually Geneva, where a lot of the agencies that you hate are based. And we have an ambassador who will go out there as our U.S. ambassador to the U.N. organizations in Geneva, in Vienna, where a lot of the arms control related organizations sit, Nairobi. So it'll be important for this team to be aligned.

The ambassador in New York is typically sort of chief among equals here and has a big sway. And obviously for things that are directly funded out of either the regular budget or UN subsidiary organizations, not the specialized agencies that might be in Geneva or in Vienna, that will be a real lead for ambassadors to Fonick. Think of an UNRWA, right? That is part of the UN there.

should be considered independent at this point. Obviously, they try to say it's part of the UN system. That'll be in Stefanik's jurisdiction. It should be defunded. It's one of the agencies that should be defunded. This is the UN agency that provided social services to Gaza, and it became totally an arm of Hamas. Let's just make sure we understand. Correct. And it's fundamentally created to create

an October 7th situation to raise generation after generation indoctrinated to believe that you're waiting for your moment where you are a refugee going to return into modern day Israel, push the Jews into the sea. Your textbooks are all anti-Semitic. You know, your whole idea, you're internalized of I'm a refugee waiting to kill the Jews basically. And so October 7th to me is like the logical conclusion extension of UNRWA for 75 years.

So this organization should be gone for so many reasons. We have the Abraham Accords. This was set up by Arab nations warring with Israel as part of their political warfare arm back in 1949, 1950. That's over now. You know, now with the material support for terrorism, the anti-Semitism, the radicalization.

with the ability to actually do something new now in Gaza and a post Hamas Gaza, and then replicate that in the West Bank areas and Palestinian Authority areas where it resides. It's a big mission. Number one is make sure no money flows. But number two is start really working with all the senior leaders in the US government to pressure our allies to stop the money flow, and then have the plan for what

comes next. How are you phasing out UNRWA? How is it being dismantled? How are we going to be able to block their budget in the UN General Assembly when it comes back up for a vote? Those are things that have to happen. Otherwise, what we've seen is you defund an agency, you just walk away from the agency. You don't fundamentally change it. You don't pressure our allies to do the same. Four years from now, somebody else might be president. It pops right back up. We just start pumping more money and it limps along until the person in office leaves who doesn't like it.

has to be a fundamental change in how we actually degrade, dismantle the organizations that have no hope for reform like in UNRWA. But there are organizations...

where the system actually can be taken advantage of for our interests in that the elections are fair. They're open ballot. We have a board of governors at an agency. You can run a campaign. You can bring close allies along. You can recruit candidates and you can win elections. And by the way, they do important things that might be important for the world.

Even if you wouldn't rely on them for our national security and say we're handing over something to you to take care of us, they might perform some function. The IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna, performs a function. It's an important function.

It's not, you know, sort of the moment that you're going to depend on a U.N. inspector to know whether or not Iran is secretly working on nuclear weapons, which we know they're doing some sort of work about weaponization at this point. But important to have the system, the inspectors, to know what you can know, to go into places, to have people sign up to a regime like the Nonproliferation Treaty.

And by the way, when we put our back into it, diplomatically, we can get behind candidates who are not going to do things pro-Iran, pro-North Korea, pro-China, pro-Russia, and in fact are oriented to our Western values and our American and allied interests. We can do that in other organizations as well, standards-making organizations. Like, you've never heard of these organizations, the acronyms like ITU, the International Telecommunication Union,

ISO, the International Standards Organization. You don't even know what they do if you're listening to this. Look it up. It's actually really big. And most of the tech corporations of the world, anybody who's working on 5G and the next G and the internet and where it's going, they're all working in these organizations because they're producing standards and technology for the world for production. And China wants to have Chinese standards guiding the world. And we don't want that to happen.

And so one thing that did go well is we actually had an American who ran in the last four years to head the ITU.

beat a Russian candidate post-invasion of Ukraine when Russia's stock was low at the UN, not a hard bar. In the past, the Chinese have taken control of that organization and they will attempt to again. But by the way, they've embedded people in lower ranks of an organization like that. They've embedded their people inside the secretariat in New York, in other major agencies. They still control certain agencies by winning elections that we don't contest. Here's a really good example.

The Food and Agriculture Organization, again, not sure if anybody's ever heard of it. It goes by FAO, not the toy company. And they are very important with ag producers and ag tech and people are thinking about food security in the world and food production and agriculture development. It's a big, big, big piece of how the world works. And by the way, if you're China...

You're not just energy import dependent for your economy. You're also food import dependent. Food security is a big issue for the Chinese. And so they've made this little UN agency that does a lot in this space part of sort of a food belt and road initiative of how they're going to solve their food insecurity issues. It's a big strategic issue for the United States. We didn't even field a candidate to run China.

against the Chinese head of this organization who won re-election. Why wouldn't we do that? Why are we allowing this to happen? We've gone back into an organization like UNESCO, which has historically been horrifically anti-Semitic, passing resolutions to deny that Jews ever lived in Jerusalem or in other major cities of the Bible on behalf of the Palestinians, have recognized Palestine as a state, which goes against contrary to U.S. law.

We went back into this organization because we had to counter China. We haven't countered one thing that China's doing. They still get World Heritage sites claiming places in China that are historically Han Chinese, that have no connection to Han Chinese and the history of China. But it's part of their propaganda. It's part of their cultural and education arms of the BRI campaign. They're trying to influence universities and higher education around the world through UNESCO.

So there's a lot of things we need to do to take control of these agencies where possible, where our money is flowing. And by the way, if they push back, if they say no, you cut off the money, you condition the money, you pull out and you work to change it or replace it. Another big one, World Health Organization, anti-Semitic and pro-China. It's like the combustible combination, sort of like the Human Rights Council.

Still have no idea how COVID-19 started. Covered up every investigation. A director general under the thumb of Beijing since day one. Again, we could have run against Dr. Tedros at the WHO when he ran for reelection during this past administration. After COVID-19, you would think if you were the World Health Organization lead,

who covered up the origin of COVID-19, downplayed its spread at the beginning, and then stopped an independent investigation of it afterwards. Oh, by the way, just noting the global pandemic, you might want to change horrors. You might want a new director general for a fresh start for the WHO. Oh, and by the way, an organization that allowed Syria to be on its executive board, North Korea to be on its executive board. I mean, like, oh, yeah, you know, the organizations that are really committed to world health, the states that are...

into World Health, a standing agenda item every year as World Health Assembly to castigate Israel. It's not just the Human Rights Council does that. WHO does it too. People don't realize that. Oh, and refusing to allow Taiwan to

to have at least observer status at its World Health Assembly annually. The Biden administration for four years said, oh, we're going to fight for Taiwan to have a seat at the table at WHO. One of the world leaders in COVID-19 response, by the way, not allowed in to coordination on future pandemics at the WHO.

We do nothing about all of this except say to Dr. Tedros, you got it. You got another term. We're going to support you. In fact, we're going to support your new budget reform plan to reduce our leverage at the WHO by increasing assessed contributions. So the mandatory money that's coming out of the UN that just gets forked over for the director general's use and reduce the voluntary contribution portion of the budget of the organization, which reduces our leverage as the largest voluntary contributor.

What are we doing here? It's crazy. Totally crazy. Letting China and Russia, Syria, Iran, haters of Israel, anti-Semites run these major organizations where we're forking over taxpayer dollars. No way. No way. So that's why I say big ticket systemic changes. UNY, starting with the General Assembly and the regular budget and going into all these organizations. If you're engaged in anti-Semitism, you're cut off.

Done. Easy. If you are in some way hurting an ally like Taiwan, refusing observer status for Taiwan, that they want to sit at the table, or you're in some way, we catch you doing something to help the CCP, go in bed with the CCP, whitewash their corruption, their crimes against humanity, be part of the BRI campaign, we're going to be not so happy about that. We're going to cut you off. If we see money flowing to terrorists like at UNRWA,

Oh, by the way, we need to open the hood and take a very close look at the hundreds of millions of dollars flowing into Afghanistan, where we know at least 10% is being taken by the Taliban. According to our own inspector general, still reporting to Congress on Afghanistan, which agencies, how is the Taliban taking control of the money? Why are we allowing this to happen? As the UN itself reports to us that the Taliban is back in the game with Al Qaeda like never before.

And the rise of Al Qaeda plus ISIS-K in Afghanistan is one of the largest terrorist threats we face globally. That's got to change too. So I think some big ticket systemic changes, some tactical changes. I'd set up an election war room at UN headquarters or back at state in the IO Bureau to run a campaign to say, every organization that has an election, I want to see what the date is. I want to have a team. I want to know who's campaign manager. I want to know who's rallying allies. I want to know what the vote count is.

I want to know who's running, how we're doing on candidate recruitment, who's the other people involved, who's Beijing backing, and we're going to win this election. And by the way, if the rules and the governance structure is set up in a way where it's rigged against us and we can't win this election, our money and participation shouldn't be there.

Rich, you seem to have strong opinions on the UN. I want to encourage you to speak about them very frankly. Don't be shy. No, I'm glad you did. And in conclusion. And in conclusion. No, I think it's important that, you know, I think Elsie Stefanik is going to be great. I think our input will be very useful to her, not least because...

You have worked on this and thought this through and given her a huge agenda. And we haven't talked about everybody I wanted to talk about on this podcast. Maybe we'll have you back as the confirmation hearings go and talk some more because we didn't talk a lot about Pete Hegseth, I'd like to, about Tulsi Gabbard for DNI. That's a controversial choice in some ways. I'm

We didn't talk about Christie Noem for Homeland Security. Maybe I'm going to write a column on all this for the Washington Times next week because I have other thoughts. But one thing I would say to all of them, and I think we want to say to all of them, is figure out what your most important mission is. One, two, three things. Not more than that. Reagan didn't have a whole lot of things that he wanted to do, just a few. And everything else, delegate.

That's why there's an assistant secretary of defense, many assistant secretaries. If you're Tulsi Gabbard and you're doing intelligence, learn from the intelligence and also see where the intelligence makes sense and where it's being manipulated. And to the extent you can rely on people like John Radcliffe who are longtime professionals and who can teach you a lot. She's young enough and smart enough she can learn.

Anyhow, I think I'll say this. As somebody who has had many jobs for which I was not qualified, what you need to do is say, okay, what can I do that's necessary and important to do? What can I do that I'm going to find people who can do for the organization or for me in this job? And that's how you move on and get something done. And it's not like...

There's such a high bar if you think of what we've had at Homeland Security in recent years. Lloyd Austin is a nice man, but the military has become woke. We have a recruitment crisis, and we have not over the past four years prepared for the defense challenges we have from China. Mike Gallagher had a wonderful, really important piece on this in the Wall Street Journal the other day on how our Navy is not prepared. He hasn't done the work.

The work needs to get done over the next four years. It's really critical that it is. I'll let you have the last word and then we'll close off for today, Rich.

I think that last piece is well said. We have a lot of work to do. We're way behind. We're on track to have a potential major conflict with China in this decade. We can't allow that to happen. The way you stop that from happening is by deterring the threat, peace through strength. That's going to be a major focus, but it can't come at the expense of our other adversaries that are working with China that are trying to pick us apart. I always sort of compare it to that point in Monty Python.

Where you remember that knight who keeps losing a limb and saying he's going to fight on. Just a flesh wound. Yeah, it's a flesh wound. He has no arms, no legs, but he's still going to fight you. That's kind of how I see North Korea and Iran and Venezuela and a lot of these threats. They can still take an appendage. They can still threaten us in a major way. They can still create a lot of bleeding that will bleed us out, and then we cannot actually defeat or deter the CCP.

And so, uh, while I understand, um, the inclination to prioritize and we do need to prioritize and we will prioritize, uh, it can't mean that you ignore other threats. Uh, and I think he's building a team that understands that, uh, that is clear eyed on the full range of threats. That's clear on how they are working together against our interests. Uh, and that, uh, weakening each of those pieces that are attacking us can eventually weaken the core. Can we weaken the whole, uh,

um while continuing to make sure we surge our investments in our military spending uh surge uh the expansion of our defense industrial base and make sure the big big big threat is not one that overtakes us in the indo-pacific rich thank you for your work and service in government in the military at fdd and all you're going to do in the future it's i'm proud to be your colleague

And thanks to all of you who have been with us for this long, but I think very informative conversation here today on Foreign Policy. Thank you for listening to this episode of Foreign Policy. If you enjoyed the show, please rate us, preferably with five stars. Ratings and reviews help give us visibility and the opportunity to reach more people who seek to understand the most critical national security foreign policy issues. Also, make sure to subscribe so you never miss an episode.

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