← The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
The 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson
Understanding US Intelligence Failures with Hamas, Russia & Ukraine and Defeating the Deep State--One-on-One w/ Ric Grenell
00:55:41
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- [00:01]
Ben Ferguson
Welcome. It is Verdict with Senator Ted Cruz, Ben Ferguson with you. And Senator, it is always fun to be able to do this show and talk to people that are experts in certain areas. And a dear friend of ours is going to be with us for this show. And it's so important, the timing when we're dealing with such major issues on national security. We're dealing with what happened with Hamas and Israel, what's happening now between Russia and Ukraine, and also the intelligence failures that seem to be happening on a daily basis at our southern border with terrorists coming across our southern border. And I want you to introduce to the audience our special guests.
- [00:40]
Senator Ted Cruz
Well, it is Thursday night, it is 9:38pm Pacific Time, and I am out on the West Coast. I'm in la, just landed not too long ago. Tomorrow I'm going on Bill Maher. So that's going to be wild and woolly and should be fun. And so we are doing a special podcast here tonight that will come out tomorrow morning with your and my mutual friend Rick Grinnell. Now, Rick, Rick has had a storied career. He was ambassador to Germany under Donald Trump. He was the special, the special presidential envoy for Serbia and Kosovo for the peace negotiations again under Trump. And then he was also the acting Director of National Intelligence under Trump, which is an incredibly important and difficult job. And I think he did an extraordinary job at it. And so we're going to talk a lot of foreign policy, we're going to talk a lot of challenges facing the world. And, and, and, and Rick is a California native, so, so we are in LA LA Land together. Rick, welcome. Welcome to Verdict.
- [01:46]
Rick Grinnell
Welcome to Los Angeles. Senator, thank you for coming all the way out here. It's a long way, isn't it?
- [01:50]
Senator Ted Cruz
It is a long way. I flew from Dulles straight out here. And that, that is a long flight. It is longer than an iPad charge.
- [01:58]
Rick Grinnell
It's also for you East Coasters, you can think about either California. It's about the same amount of time.
- [02:06]
Senator Ted Cruz
You know, I gotta say, that may be the cruelest thing anyone has ever said about me. You just called me an East Coaster. I'm a Texan, damn it, from DC.
- [02:17]
Ben Ferguson
On top of that, you could be in Paris right now, but instead you're in la. So it's like a double whammy there.
- [02:25]
Senator Ted Cruz
Well, look, as, as you know, it's, it's, it's one of my dirty little secrets that I have a soft spot in my heart for California. I married Heidi, who's a native Californian, and her whole family are Californians. I spent a lot of time out here and it's, it is an absolutely gorgeous state that has been cursed by idiot politicians.
- [02:44]
Rick Grinnell
Yeah, for sure. And, you know, we, we do not have a US Senator that represents us at all on the conservative side. So you can be our senator.
- [02:53]
Senator Ted Cruz
I am proud to be. And a point I make often. So when I'm out here regularly, people will stop me in the street and they'll say that, they'll say, ted, I am the only conservative in California. And they're almost like, they almost have like, ptsd. Like they will sort of scrape the shape of a fish with their foot in the sand like they're in the Coliseum. And I tell them all the time, look, no, you're not. And a point that I make frequently, what state has the most Republicans in it?
- [03:30]
Rick Grinnell
Yeah.
- [03:30]
Senator Ted Cruz
And the answer is California. By far, there are more Republicans in California than there are in Texas now. There are even more Democrats. You are, in fact, outnumbered. But there's still a ton of strong conservatives in California. They're just besieged.
- [03:45]
Rick Grinnell
Yeah, there's, there's no question about that. And we're really trying to get more. I have an organization called Fix California, which is literally doing the unsexy work of registering people who are not involved sitting on the sidelines, uninspired, apathetic. Maybe they think that there's no way that they need to vote, that they should vote because it doesn't matter. But we're trying to empower people to say get off the sidelines. And with that a little bit is to try to take some of the Sacramento types who are our friends who are doing the good work and highlighting them, raising them a little bit of money, giving them a little profile. So we're, we're, we're doing good work, but it's going to take us about four or five years to catch up.
- [04:30]
Senator Ted Cruz
Well, the hard thing also in California is even though there are a lot of Republicans here, none of them believe it's possible to win statewide.
- [04:38]
Rick Grinnell
Right.
- [04:39]
Senator Ted Cruz
And so turning Republicans out in an election here is insanely difficult. And I think there's a tipping point that if people believed it was actually viable and possible, you would see dramatically higher turnouts among Republicans. But a lot of folks stay home because they say, what the heck difference does it make?
- [04:58]
Rick Grinnell
Yeah, that's exactly why we started Fix California is because we thought if we can start changing the numbers every month and give people a little bit of hope, we think it will pick up. We think then there'll be a self fulfilling prophecy of, hey, maybe I should vote, maybe I should get other people to vote. It's not a waste of time type of message.
- [05:16]
Senator Ted Cruz
Well, and Republicans certainly have been able to pick up congressional seats in California. And without the California Republicans, we would not have a majority in the House. And so there are parts of California that are winnable, but they're parts that are just irredeemably blue.
- [05:34]
Rick Grinnell
Yeah, well, we were trying, and we're so pleased to have people like you come through and speak and charge us up. We really are so thankful when we get some superstars through. So thank you for being here.
- [05:51]
Senator Ted Cruz
Well, it's great to be back.
- [05:52]
Ben Ferguson
Rick, I want to ask you a question. And this goes to some of the big breaking news that's happening right now, and it deals with the massive intelligence failure. This is your wheelhouse, obviously, being in the intelligence area and working under the Trump administration. This reporting that's coming out is shocking that photographers that were working for the Associated Press, for cnn, for the New York Times and Reuters were embedded with Hamas on 107 and accompanied the terrorists into Israel. It's pretty clear that they knew the attack was coming. They've been accused by Israel now of not just being involved in the attack, knowing the attack was coming, but participating in it. And yet there was such an intelligence failure. We didn't hear anything about this. Neither did Israel. How on earth did we get to a point where we missed the boat? Israel missed the boat. And yet these photographers working for ap, cnn, New York Times, Reuters were embedded with Hamas and accompany the terrorist group and then photographed the atrocities.
- [07:03]
Rick Grinnell
Yes, a couple of great questions there. Let's start with the second part, which is really about the intelligence failure. I actually don't believe that we didn't know that Iran and Hamas were planning. There's just no possible way that we didn't have pieces of raw intelligence. I think one of the crises that we have within the intelligence world right now is we have too many people playing politics that are analyzing the information. We have great collections process. But the people who are writing the analytical work, who are taking the pieces of raw intelligence and making assumptions, those people are too partisan. And imagine if you had the New York Times delivering opinion pieces every day, but nobody signed the opinion pieces. You wouldn't have any idea who these pieces are coming from, whether they're an expert or whether they're just kind of bloviating. And that's what we have within the intelligence community right now. My first intelligence briefing was in 2001. I am an expert on receiving Intelligence as a public policy official and knowing whether or not it's useful, many times it's not useful. I can't tell you how many.
- [08:22]
Senator Ted Cruz
How do you tell the difference in your experience?
- [08:24]
Rick Grinnell
Well, first of all, when the briefer tells you something and they say, this is top secret, and you say, well, I just read that in the newspaper today. It obviously is not. So we have an over classification problem. A lot of the information is public, or maybe not as distributed as you would think, but still it's in the public domain somewhere. I can think of a million examples during COVID where that was happening, where people were pretending like this is top secret, but it had been published in some virologist magazine know, three months before. So we really do have a problem. But what I found is the over classification problem was a PR strategy. When they didn't want something to get out, whether it was embarrassing or just a program that they didn't want anyone to know, they would literally classify the whole thing. And then when you read it, you would see this is not something that should be classified. We now have, you know, information that is unclassified but, you know, sensitive. And you're like, wait, what if it's unclassified? Then, then don't tell me that it's something that is supposed to be sensitive or not distributable. I do believe that the partisan nature of those who are writing the intelligence is really the key fundamental problem. When I was there, I brought in the Russia team and I said, you're way too political. You're, you're reading everything as a, as a political matter. I told the China team, you're way too slow, you're way, you're too thoughtful, you're slowing down because you don't want to cause anybody to make a move. And then the Israeli team was just completely wrong all of the time. So we need to be able to fix that system. And some of that is just cycling people out so that there's fresh eyes and fresh minds.
- [10:26]
Senator Ted Cruz
Well, I will say, being a consumer of intelligence in the Senate, and I've been in a lot of classified briefings, my experience very much comports with yours that that 90 plus percent of what they tell you in a classified briefing you can read in the newspaper. You knew already. And frankly, they want it classified because it's embarrassing and they don't want to admit it, but it's not. Look, there are times in a classified briefing where they say, you know, we intercepted such and such and it's, and you understand why it's classified. I mean, where there's sources and methods and there's certainly things that are included in it. But I do think there's a big over classification problem because it's a way to insulate the administration from criticism for their foreign policy failure.
- [11:14]
Rick Grinnell
So there's also another problem that when we go to brief members of Congress, they are just giving you the analytical pieces. So you're only getting what a group of people say, well, this is what we should give Congress on our thoughts about raw intelligence. What would be so much better if we could trust the members of Congress to keep it private would be to give them some of that raw intelligence is to ask people to say, well, what do you think actually when you see this, that and the other. Don't wait for an IC wide agreement, which a lot of times is garbage because it's the lowest common denominator of what so many intelligence agencies kind of agree on. But to give some of the raw intelligence and let other people make some analytical choices about what's going on, I think that that's where we need to go. The other thing that I have to say is this, you know, Gang of Eight idea is baloney. And this is the idea that the Senate and the House leadership are the only ones that get briefed. If it's good enough for the Gang of Eight, we should be briefing every member of Congress who is interested.
- [12:28]
Senator Ted Cruz
Let me ask you one question Ben asked, but to go back. Are you surprised that the Israelis didn't know about this attack before it happened?
- [12:38]
Rick Grinnell
I actually believe that the United States and the Israelis, of course, had the raw intelligence that the analytical people just didn't put it together. They didn't want to assume that Hamas was going to make such a jump. But. But, you know, look at what's happening now. We've got the White House and John Kirby saying we didn't have any direct intelligence that Americans were being targeted. At the same time, they're confirming that we're doing strikes in Syria because they're coming at us. They're shooting down a drone. A drone, by the way, that costs $35 million of taxpayer money.
- [13:16]
Senator Ted Cruz
The Wall Street Journal has reported that more than 500 Hamas terrorists trained in Iran in September, the month before the attack. Now, mind you, I'm repeating what I read in the journal because nobody's bothered to give us an intelligence briefing, actually telling us if that's true or not. Other than the last intelligence briefing we had, there was a whole lot of CYA of no, no, no, our giving them $100 billion. That had nothing to do with that. Don't blame that at all.
- [13:42]
Rick Grinnell
And of course it did. You cannot give money to Iran and, and trust Iran, because that's really what they're doing. They're trusting Iran to somehow play like a responsible member of the international community. Bloomberg reported in August. There's a piece in Bloomberg whereby the Biden administration was very proud of the fact that they had unleashed the international sanctions and that it was working, that they were having great conversations with the Iranians. There was a trust factor there. But at the same time, Iran is making billions off its oil. It's getting more money from the Americans, from the Europeans and others. And we shouldn't be surprised that when you're feeding them and you're trusting them and you are telling them, hey, let's have some conversations about moving you forward into a better nuclear agreement, that they are going to burn you. They've lied about heavy water. They've lied about the number of centrifuges. They've lied to John Kerry about so many things that he just assumed that they weren't lying on. This, to me, is. Is just the Democrats keep trusting Iran, and hopefully now they see that they can't.
- [15:04]
Senator Ted Cruz
And let me go back to a topic we've covered on a previous verdict, which is what do you make of Rob Malley and why he got his security clearance yanked? And what do you make of the three Iranian operatives that were in his inner circle? And how the hell did that happen?
- [15:23]
Rick Grinnell
Look, I think Avril Haynes has some questions that she needs to answer. She's not getting pushed at all. You look at all of the DNIs under Trump.
- [15:34]
Senator Ted Cruz
All right, so tell our listeners who Avril Haines is.
- [15:37]
Rick Grinnell
Avril Haynes is the Director of National Intelligence.
- [15:39]
Senator Ted Cruz
So that's the role you had under Trump.
- [15:41]
Rick Grinnell
Correct. And John Radcliffe had and some others. Look, we were under incredible scrutiny, constant pressure from the media to do this, that or the other. And Avril Haynes, literally, the last I checked, her last tweet was about Dianne Feinstein's death. And she made a statement about Dianne Feinstein's death. But she hasn't made a statement about all of these other things. And she gets away with it because when the media are not asking her the questions, then she wakes up every single day thinking, I don't have to answer these questions. I'm going to go and continue ignoring or continue hiding. She needs to answer, what did we know and why did we not act? Was it an analytical failure? Was it a intelligence gathering failure? And then on Rob Malley, which is incredibly interesting, I want to know who approved his security clearance.
- [16:37]
Senator Ted Cruz
Yeah.
- [16:37]
Rick Grinnell
I want to know which FBI agents signed off and what did they actually raise some concerns and red flags and got overruled. Did he even have a security clearance? Maybe he never had one and his time ran out where they said, you know what? We couldn't approve you, and so now you're out. That is a very real possibility that he was working in this job, didn't have access to intelligence because he couldn't get a clearance. They're not answering these questions and the media's not pushing. We need.
- [17:12]
Senator Ted Cruz
And in the Senate, when we ask, they just give us the Heisman. They completely stiff arm us and answer nothing.
- [17:18]
Rick Grinnell
Yeah. And that's unacceptable. And if we had more media pressure, if we had more people just insisting, why isn't Avril Haynes being hounded to answer these questions? Why are we not, you know, camping out at dni? There are so many times that they did that to us where CNN was watching when you were leaving and they knew where you lived and they would follow you, but that just doesn't happen. So she wakes up every day and thinks, I don't have to answer these questions.
- [17:50]
Senator Ted Cruz
Do you think there will be any reckoning, any accountability for the intelligence failures that led to a failure on the American part to anticipate the October 7th attack and do anything to prevent it?
- [18:04]
Rick Grinnell
It's a really interesting question. I think that there will be a CYA strategy to say, well, we did see some raw intelligence. We didn't have enough time to write the analytical piece, so we didn't share anything with Israel, but that's unacceptable. What was in the pdb? What was the President briefed on? What was Jake Sullivan briefed on? If we had raw intelligence that said Hamas is working with the Iranians on an attack somewhere and somebody pooh, poohed it. You know, the same team, remember that told us that if you moved the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, there would be World War iii. Right. That same team was watching what Hamas was doing with Iran. Think about that. They completely got it wrong. Not only did we not have World War 3, but we actually ushered in world peace.
- [19:02]
Senator Ted Cruz
Yeah. And I will say that there has been no accountability for, number one, the military failures and intelligence failures on the withdrawal from Afghanistan, which was absolutely catastrophic. And no one's lost their job and there's been no inquiry. The Senate Democrats have zero interest in even finding out what went wrong. They just want to sweep it under the rug and there's also been no accountability at all for the dramatically wrong intelligence assessment of the Ukraine war. I mean, I sat in Senate wide briefings where the Defense Department, the State Department, the entire intelligence community, every one of them told every senator, this war will be over in a matter of days. It will last less than a week. Putin will roll in, he will conquer all of Ukraine, and it'll be over in just days. And we're now years into the war. And that intelligence consensus, because there was no disagreement, every single briefer, everyone agreed.
- [20:08]
Rick Grinnell
I know.
- [20:09]
Senator Ted Cruz
And it was wildly wrong. And there hasn't even been a minute of reflection or assessment. How did we get so wildly wrong? And how do we prevent that from happening the next time?
- [20:19]
Rick Grinnell
There's one more angle to that. As you know, I've worked at the State Department for 12 years. I'm really a diplomat and I care deeply about the State Department. And we messaged, we heard the US Government, the Biden administration, messaged for three straight weeks. Putin is coming. A war is around the corner. It's going to be bloody and brutal. A war is coming. Why didn't the Secretary of State immediately get on his plane and go to Kiev with all of the foreign ministers in Europe and say no? If we know for sure that a war is coming, the Secretary of State has an obligation, a responsibility to try to find a peaceful solution. I believe that They've shoved Blinken right off the stage. They just don't trust him.
- [21:11]
Senator Ted Cruz
It's weird. He doesn't act like a Secretary of State. He's a staffer.
- [21:14]
Rick Grinnell
Yeah.
- [21:15]
Senator Ted Cruz
I've never seen a Secretary of State as diminished as Tony Blinken is in this administration.
- [21:22]
Rick Grinnell
I completely agree. And by the way, all of my friends at the State Department, I have a ton of friends who are not even really conservatives, but they're just good Foreign Service officers who salute. They're horrified. We're the first ones that are being evacuated from everything. The Foreign Service officers, many of them are. They joined the Foreign Service to solve problems. They don't want to cut and run. They want to be there. Except they're pushed off the stage. They were pushed off for Afghanistan. No one has come up with even a peace idea. Now, look, I want to have peace through strength. I think the President of the United States, when they're in the Oval Office, needs to have two strong voices. The Secretary of Defense that says, move over because I'm going to kill everybody and we're not negotiating, and the Secretary of State that says, you wait a minute, because we need SOB diplomats at that table. And the Democrats keep mocking tough diplomats. But if you want to avoid war, you better have an SOB As a diplomat pushing and saying, wait a minute, we're going to try to negotiate. It's not weak need, it's not culinary diplomacy, it's real diplomacy.
- [22:31]
Senator Ted Cruz
Well, and I will say peace through strength, which you and I both agree with strongly. Look, it's worth remembering that during eight years of his presidency, the biggest country Ronald Reagan invaded was Grenada. That when, when you have a strong commander in chief, people don't want to screw with you.
- [22:54]
Rick Grinnell
Exactly.
- [22:55]
Senator Ted Cruz
I think if Trump were still president, we would not have a war in Ukraine. This would not have happened, among other things, because Nord Stream 2 would never have been completed. You and I worked very closely together on Nord Stream 2.
- [23:09]
Rick Grinnell
Yes. Thank you for all your work. You were one of the only ones pushing really hard when I was in Europe. I was so thankful that you were there. And I agree with you. If the, if Merkel had not gone to Joe Biden and said, look, you want to be nice to your allies, or do you want to push us aside? Because we're asking you, we will applaud you. You will be able to come to Europe and everybody love you if you drop these sanctions on Nord Stream 2. They did it. The Senate Democrats did it. And there are some atrocious speeches from Senate Democrats on Nord Stream 2 and why they were dropping those sanctions. I keep pushing the media to say, go pull Chris Murphy's speech, go pull these other speeches. They were 100% wrong about Putin and the war. And it signaled when they dropped those sanctions, it signaled to Putin, now's the time to come back and finish the job that you started under Obama.
- [24:05]
Senator Ted Cruz
I'll tell you something that, that you may or may not know, but it was a very revealing aspect. So Nord Stream 2, I authored the first sanctions legislation in 2019. We passed in December 2019. Putin stopped constructing the pipeline from Russia to Germany. Literally the day Trump signed my sanctions legislation into law, I authored a second sanctions legislation in December of 2020 that signed into law as well. Biden becomes president January 20, 2021. Putin resumes deep sea construction of Nord Stream 2 four days later, January 24. Because Biden foreshadowed weakness. And several months later, he formally waived the sanctions, gave a multi billion dollar gift to Putin, allowed him to finish the pipeline. As you know, I put a hold on every State Department nominee which caused the State Department to lose their minds in order to try to force them to stop Nord Stream 2 to avoid this war. Finally, at the end of 2021, I released a big tranche of State Department nominees in exchange for a vote on reimposing sanctions in January of 2022. Now, here's the bit that you may or may not know, but it's very revealing. The day of the vote, Joe Biden personally came to Capitol Hill to lobby the Democrat senators to vote against sanctioning Nord Stream 2. It was the only time in his first two years in office that I know of that he came to Capitol Hill to lobby the senators. So think about the level of priority. And at the time we were voting, President Zelensky publicly begged the Senate, pass these sanctions or else Russia will invade. The government of Poland begged us pass these sanctions or else Russia will invade.
- [25:57]
Rick Grinnell
Most most Eastern European countries.
- [26:00]
Senator Ted Cruz
And 44 Democrats flipped. They'd voted with me twice before, but at Joe Biden's personal behest, they voted in favor of Russia, in favor of Putin, and four weeks later, Russia invaded Ukraine.
- [26:13]
Rick Grinnell
It was an absolute moment. You are exactly right. I tell everybody this was the moment that Putin saw weakness. Yes, the opposite of America first is consensus with the Europeans.
- [26:25]
Ben Ferguson
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- [28:39]
Rick Grinnell
So I have a slightly different thought and belief about Joe Biden because of my experience with him as the head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He loves to be loved. He likes to know all of the world leaders. He wants the applause from all of them. He wants the dudemen bro moment with world leaders. And so when people come, like Chancellor Merkel come and they ask him to do something, he literally wants consensus with them. He wants to be loved. He wants the Europeans to like him. And so I have this great story of, you know, sitting across from Chancellor Merkel, who I actually really liked and respected quite a bit.
- [29:26]
Senator Ted Cruz
And you were ambassador to Germany for three years.
- [29:29]
Rick Grinnell
A little over two.
- [29:30]
Senator Ted Cruz
A little over two.
- [29:32]
Rick Grinnell
And I once, in talking to Chancellor Merkel about some subject, she said to me, you know, Rick, one of the issues that I have with your president is that I just don't know what he's going to do. He's not predictable. And that creates a lot of problems for us in Germany. And I remember smiling and thinking, you know, don't smile too big. Be nice here. But I said, you know, madam Chancellor, with all due respect, this is exactly what I've been waiting for in a president. It is really important that you and others can't determine and predict what the US President is going to do. That creates a credible threat of military action. Not just a threat of military action, but it's a credible one. And when it's credible, people act differently.
- [30:23]
Senator Ted Cruz
Absolutely. Right. All right, so here's an interesting question. What's the coolest part and the crappiest part of being an ambassador? An ambassador to a major country. You know, Germany is not some island down in the Caribbean. It is a major world power. What's the coolest and worst part about that job?
- [30:43]
Rick Grinnell
I think the coolest moment that I had, I had two cool moments. One is when you present Your credentials in Germany, and you walk out of the President's, you know, house. The German national band is playing the American national anthem.
- [31:00]
Senator Ted Cruz
Oh, that is cool.
- [31:01]
Rick Grinnell
It was so cool. And, you know, as this little kid from Michigan who never thought that I could represent the United States, it was a moment that was pretty emotional. And then the second thing is, is I'm a big MMA fan. I don't really like the opera or the ballet, and I think I was the first ambassador to not go to the opening of the Berlin Opera and, you know, fancy stuff in Munich. But I did bring the MMA and the UFC to Germany, and I got to go pretty regularly in Germany and really help that industry in Europe. Now, the worst part. Yep, I think the worst part about being an ambassador is having security. I hate it, to be honest. I'm somebody who likes to think about going to the gym when I feel it, not when I plan it.
- [31:56]
Senator Ted Cruz
Right.
- [31:57]
Rick Grinnell
So I would plan to go to the gym in the morning because you have to tell security. And then you'd wake up and you'd be like, actually, I don't feel like going to the gym right now. So I didn't like having to determine my whole schedule and having security. I'd much rather be, you know, winging it.
- [32:13]
Senator Ted Cruz
Now, how frequently are ambassadors doing the wining and dining thing? I mean, you know, you have gazillionaires who go be ambassadors and, you know, spend a bunch of money on an incredible wine collection. How much is that part of the job?
- [32:28]
Rick Grinnell
I mean, it can be the whole part of the job if you want it to be. You can go and just have a lot of fun and pretend like you're an ambassador from America, but you're really doing a travelogue of the whole country, and your Instagram is about how great the other country is. I find that to be pathetic, to be honest. I think if the American people are paying you, you should be the Office of America Overseas. And. And so everything that I did had a purpose. If. If we were going to try to squeeze Iran, I would bring in business leaders to say, you know, I'm not going to tell you what to do, but you either are going to work in America or you're going to work in Iran, but you're not going to do business in both, so choose which one. And we tried to be very social with. With a lot of different issues that matter and not just things that I wanted to do.
- [33:21]
Senator Ted Cruz
Well, I will say, when Heidi and I brought our girls to Europe for a summer vacation several years Back when we were in Germany, you very kindly hosted us at your residence, which is really cool.
- [33:32]
Rick Grinnell
Yeah. Oh, that. That residence was amazing. Great history. It was the Nazi Party of Berlin's headquarters. Wow.
- [33:42]
Senator Ted Cruz
That's kind of creepy.
- [33:43]
Rick Grinnell
It was creepy, and it had a long history, but the American military, the US army took it over, used it as a guest house for military leaders for a while. And when Germany was reunited and they needed an American ambassador's residence back in Berlin, the State Department stepped in and said to the military, we'll take this back.
- [34:06]
Ben Ferguson
I wanted to ask you a question about what it was like also being an ambassador. Germany, you were there from 18 to 20, and it wasn't as hostile, I think, then as it is now politically, especially on the world stage, especially if you're connected to Donald Trump. What was it like early on and how were you treated?
- [34:30]
Rick Grinnell
Look, I had a great experience. I have a lot of friends in Germany. There are a ton of conservatives in Germany. And the German business community is a lot like the American business community. You kind of can't tell the difference. I mean, Lufthansa, for instance, has 12,000American employees. And you could do this with Daimler and BMW and whatever the German company is. So they act very much the same. I think the difference is that the German business community will talk about the government in a negative way privately, but publicly, they won't criticize the government. So there's a little bit of fear there. But I felt like I could completely say what I needed to say. I spoke to groups constantly, and I was brutally honest about Nord Stream 2 and about defense spending, telling them just how Americans felt. When we see the largest economy in Europe not paying their NATO obligation, but feeding the beast with Nord Stream 2, and that really went over well, I think, with everybody but the government.
- [35:42]
Senator Ted Cruz
You know, one of the things I found remarkable in Germany is that when we went to the Brandenburg Gate, and as you know, I have in my office a gigantic painting of Reagan in front of the Brandenburg Gate with the words, tear down this wall in German in the style of the graffiti that was on the wall. And I think those are the most consequential words uttered by any leader in modern times. Well, when you go to the Brandenburg Gate and you go to where Reagan gave that speech, there's almost nothing from the German government commemorating it. There's a small little brass plaque on the ground that's maybe six inches wide. That is where he gave the speech. And other than that, there's nothing.
- [36:26]
Rick Grinnell
Yeah.
- [36:26]
Senator Ted Cruz
And that I found astonishing. Did that surprise you?
- [36:32]
Rick Grinnell
It did. And to be honest, the Reagan Library here, I have a lot of friends at the Reagan Library because of the California connections. And they all said to me, like, what's going on? Why isn't Germany giving Ronald Reagan his due? And when I got there, I decided to go straight to the mayor of Berlin. And he was a die hard socialist. And I said, mayor, what's up? You have a lot of memorials to Russians and others, but there's nothing for Ronald Reagan. And he told me, he goes, you know, you Americans, you always overplay Ronald Reagan. You pretend like he did a lot more than what he did. And I was like, well, we think that he was the catalyst. And so we were asking for a statue and he formally told me no. So, as you know, in the embassy, it's pretty amazing location. And I decided to take the terrace, the whole terrace of the US Embassy and turn it into the Ronald Reagan terrace. And we put a seven foot statue of Ronald Reagan on top of the terrace, looking out at that, at the Brandenburg Gate. But the most amazing thing that we did, and it was a last minute thought, is you walk all the way out to the edge and you're looking down below where the wall was, you see the spot where Reagan gave the speech. And I put up a kiosk and you can press the button and you can watch while you're out on this little ledge feeling like you're just alone and suddenly you're watching the speech right from where it took place. I have to tell you, I've taken probably 20 senators out to do that. I always stop and let the moment be felt. And I've seen a lot of tears from US Senators, from US Officials who say this is one of the most amazing moments. I do think that the US Embassy in Berlin is probably the best location of our embassies in the world.
- [38:36]
Senator Ted Cruz
Yeah, it's, it's. I love that you put that statue up. That, that was long overdue. Do you know, did the Biden guys leave it up?
- [38:46]
Rick Grinnell
It's up. It's still up.
- [38:47]
Senator Ted Cruz
Okay, well, I'm glad I hadn't heard that it had been taken down, but.
- [38:50]
Rick Grinnell
I anchored it pretty, pretty hard to the, to the concrete and I made sure that it would stay so it's there. But you know what funny thing is, I. Let me, let me just quickly say I invited Chancellor Merkel to the opening to the dedication. And she said, oh, you know, I can't come, but you will you let me know when you do a Bush statue, Because Bush United Germany and that made the whole world difference.
- [39:17]
Ben Ferguson
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- [42:07]
Rick Grinnell
Yeah, Ben, it's a good question because, you know, I gotta believe that all of the intelligence officials who are collecting raw intelligence see it on a daily basis. They're seeing, I mean, how else do we know that someone from the terrorist watch list is crossing the border? It's because of raw intelligence. We're figuring it out. But I think that it's being hidden when they report it. It's not being analyzed and talked about. It's not being put into the President's daily briefing. All of that information is completely being suppressed. And once again, we should be asking these questions of Avril Haines. You know, what are you seeing at the border? What are you hearing at the border? And you know, she's just not getting pushed on it. But it's clearly extremely dangerous. Everybody knows that you're not going to have a country if you have an open border. We all know that. But I find the most outrageous thing is that the media are complicit in this problem because Democrats would have to face the music if they were hearing from the media in their home states, if they were being pushed and held to account like they used to. When I would sit around and watch the news with my dad as a kid, the news was kind of holding both sides to account.
- [43:29]
Senator Ted Cruz
Well, Rick, this is a point that we've made a lot on this podcast and that I make in my brand new book, Unwoke, which is that the corruption of the media and Donald Trump, I believe, broke the media. He shattered their brains. That has played a critical role in driving today's Democrat party to such extremes. They go so crazy left because they never, ever, ever get questioned on any of it. So there's no downside to giving in to the radical extreme in their party. They never fear that they will get a hard question at home. They never fear they'll get a bad story at home. And so I think the abandonment of any effort at journalism by the corporate media has been one of the most destructive developments in recent years.
- [44:24]
Rick Grinnell
I totally agree. Because it's unleashed, right? There's no consequences, there's no downside. So they get to do and say anything they want. As I watch April Haynes and you know, she got into office and immediately in order to please Iran, one of the first things she did was manipulate past intelligence to pretend like it was real. And they went after the Saudis and the Khashoggi issue all over again. They literally. There was nothing new in that report. It was repackaged to hit the Saudis hard after we had basically looked at them and tried to make some changes. And we're trying to heal that relationship.
- [45:08]
Senator Ted Cruz
She opened it up. We're on the verge of signing the Abraham Accords.
- [45:11]
Rick Grinnell
Yes.
- [45:13]
Senator Ted Cruz
Until Biden screwed that up 100%.
- [45:16]
Rick Grinnell
True. And I look back now and it makes sense to me. The reason they did it is because they wanted to show the Iranians that somehow that they were going to play more fair and that they were going to be nicer to the Iranians by beating up on the Saudis. Right. And then why aren't we talking about the fact that they took the Houthis off the terrorist watch list and the Houthis are the ones who just shot down the drone?
- [45:42]
Ben Ferguson
Why were they taken off that list? I mean, explain the politics behind that.
- [45:46]
Rick Grinnell
Well, I think, again, it's a gift to the Iranians. They're trying to please them because they want to get back. And, you know, they will spin that somehow the international sanctions were pressuring the Iranians and therefore they were closer to a nuclear bomb because of the sanctions and the grip that we had. And again, this is the same strategy that they had with Russia. When you go and you see Democrat senators making the case for dropping the sanctions on Nord Stream 2, it is. In summary, they keep saying, well, we don't want to stick it in the eye of the Russians. This pipeline and us sanctioning it, making it not come online, is creating problems. So we must therefore let the pipeline flow through with gas because things are going to be better if we don't stick it in the eye of Putin. This is. This was their argument.
- [46:48]
Senator Ted Cruz
And appeasement always, always, always fails. It invites bullies and tyrants to be aggressive, to invade. It causes war.
- [47:01]
Rick Grinnell
Absolutely.
- [47:01]
Senator Ted Cruz
I mean, Joe Biden inherited peace and prosperity. We now have the biggest land war in Europe since World War II and the biggest war in the Middle east of our lifetimes. I mean, that is. And you know, you're talking about the Saudis. Look, in my view, the dominant foreign policy objective of Joe Biden and his team has been to re enter an even worse Iran nuclear deal. And everything in the Middle east hinges on why do they go after the Saudis so ferociously for the same reason that I am largely pro Saudi, which is that the Saudis are the most important regional counterweight other than Israel to Iran. Now look, the Saudis have lots of problems, so I describe the Saudis as a problematic ally. But we want them to be an ally. We want them to be strong as a counterbalance to Iran. That's precisely why the Biden administration wants the Saudis to be weak. Because everything is subservient to getting in another deal with Iran, including in the middle of this Ukraine war. After Biden's weakness causes the war in Ukraine, it has now become the ultimate democrat virtue signal to wear a Ukrainian flag and commit that we must be in the war until the end of time. And even while they say that they continue to flow now roughly $100 billion into Iran, much of which goes into Iranian drones, that Iran becomes the top weapons supplier to Russia. And so Biden is funding both sides of the Ukraine war.
- [48:39]
Rick Grinnell
Well, there's no question about that. And this goes back to what my original point on Iran was. It sounds crazy, but they trust the Iranians. There's some belief, Jake Sullivan, maybe it's just a white paper intellectual exercise, that if you're nicer to them, somehow they're going to give up a nuclear weapon. And they really believe that. And the NGO community totally supports that and we call it appeasement. But they're trying once again, engagement. And this is one of my problems with the foreign policy community is that we should be able to try engagement, try sanctions, try all sorts of things, but we should quickly evaluate whether it's working or not. We could talk all day about Venezuela because I think that's a failure of a policy.
- [49:28]
Senator Ted Cruz
It is. You know, it's worth also underscoring that the Biden administration's top Iran diplomat, Rob Malley, who's been fired and had his security clearance pulled and is nonetheless in a cushy job at my alma mater at Princeton, which is really disgraceful. His inner circle included three individuals who were Iranian operatives recruited by the Iranian government, reporting directly to the Iranian foreign Minister and advancing Iranian policy agendas within the United States government, within the Biden administration. One of whom as far as we know, is still a chief of staff in the Department of Defense to this day.
- [50:11]
Rick Grinnell
Yeah, and they've been caught asking the Iranian diplomats for sign off. Yes, for speaking engagements. It's really so outrageous, so treasonous. But once again, you don't see any of these national security reporters at the New York Times or the Washington Post or politico or anywhere else, putting pressure, asking the questions, they get away with it.
- [50:35]
Senator Ted Cruz
So let me ask another question. So you were the Director of National Intelligence under Trump. You were acting DNI for how long? It was a short period of time.
- [50:49]
Rick Grinnell
A short period of time. Supposed to be three months, but it was about four and a half.
- [50:53]
Senator Ted Cruz
So it's four and a half months. It was the most consequential tenure at DNI that I have seen, and you really shook that place up in a very short time period. And I guess what I would ask is, number one, how did you do that? How did you take on the deep state, which is real throughout government, but especially in the intelligence community, is a persistent problem, and lots of conservatives sometimes feel frustrated and say, well, you can't take on the deep state. And I think you managed to do it remarkably during that tenure. 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 and facing career bureaucrats that are ideologically and passionately opposed to the next Republican president and the agenda of the next White House?
- [51:52]
Rick Grinnell
Well, let me take the second part first. I think the reality is you can't hire someone whose livelihood is Washington, D.C. if you're hiring somebody who needs a job later in the Washington system, where reporters go to church with politicians and lobbyists, they live in the same communities. They're never gonna make big, bold decisions because they'll have the ire of their friends and their church acquaintances. What I believe that you have to do is hire people also who really don't care about their New York Times profile piece, who somehow have the ability to make the right decisions. I've told President Trump we're going to fix the personnel problem when he's president. And the first thing is to look at every resume, and if the resume has a Washington, D.C. address on it, throw it away. We can hire people from outside of Washington, D.C. what happened with me at DNI is actually pretty simple. When I came into DNI, one of the first things they did is they gave me four reports that had been done over the last 10 years of how to fix the intelligence system. I read the reports and I thought, well, a lot of this makes sense. We've got duplicitous programs. We've got people who. It's supposed to be a coordinating body, and yet it's no longer a coordinating body. It's actually a competitive body. It ballooned to more than 2,000 people. It should be like 200 people. And so I just started sending people back to their, their home agencies. Dni, the ODNI had become the wasteland. If intelligence agency didn't like somebody, rather than fire them, they sent them over to odina. And so I just started sending people back and getting rid of every possible person that we could. Freezing hiring. I did this in Germany as well and forcing people to rethink this. You got to be able to play the system, but you got to know the system. And I've worked at the State Department and I knew how the federal government works to where you can come in and manipulate it and start using its own rules against it. I do think, though, that in order for us to make big, bold decisions, Congress is going to have to somehow change the way the labor force is legally allowed to, you know, be cut, as you know, and I'm preaching to the choir here. But when we come up with new technologies and we decide to spend on a different program, by definition other things should fall, People should be fired, the program should be eliminated, and that's not happening.
- [54:50]
Ben Ferguson
Rick, I really appreciate you coming on. I know the senator and I love having you here and congratulations on an incredible career. I have a feeling that final chapter in your career is nowhere close to being finished. And there's a lot more to look forward to with your leadership in this country as well. And so again, thank you so much for coming on Verdict, being a part of this. Don't, don't forget, every Monday, Wednesday and Friday we do this show. Make sure you hit that, follow that subscribe or auto download button, wherever you're listening right now. And on Saturdays, much of what you may have missed later in the podcast each week we put together in a weekend review. So make sure you grab that on Saturday mornings or on Sundays. Maybe you're in the car driving to and from the games or something. Make sure you grab that as well. And the senator and I will see you back here in a couple of days.