These poor people, those that are still alive, will have been held longer than the Iranians held our hostages in 1979 with the Carter to Reagan. uh transition that's totally unacceptable and i think writ large there has never been enough consequences and that's what we need to be talking about with these people you take an american
You illegally detain them if you're a nation state or if you're a terrorist, you hold them hostage. There is going to be all hell to pay. There are going to be nothing but consequences for you financially and maybe even a bullet in your damn forehead if you take an American. Period. This week on the Sunday special, Representative Mike Waltz of Florida joins us to discuss America first foreign policy as President Trump's designation for the National Security Advisor in the new administration.
While Walt is in the throes of planning for the transition, he shares his foreign policy priorities and proposes a vision for the revival of American strength abroad. Mike Waltz is a Green Beret who served as an army officer in some of the most volatile regions of the world, deploying multiple times to the Middle East and Africa and earning himself four Bronze Stars for his exceptional achievements. He then continued to serve the public after his military career.
becoming the first Green Beret elected to Congress in 2018, where he quickly became known for his deep understanding of national defense issues. In today's episode, Mike Walz shares his perspective on the fate of NATO, why domestic American energy is an essential component of American foreign policy. He also discusses what Middle East diplomacy might look like after the Abraham Accords and how outer space and cybersecurity are part of his policy calculus as well.
Representative Mike Walsh's profound experience and commitment to the defense of American interests abroad will be critical to the success of the next administration. Don't miss this important conversation on this latest episode of the Sunday Special. Congressman, thanks so much for stopping by. I really appreciate it. Yeah, sure. Great to be with you. A lot going on. Yeah, just a little. So tell me about what your day looks like now. So obviously you're still, you know...
presiding over what you had in Congress. I mean, you had that whole role and now you're moving into the NSA role. And it turns out that I was joking with you a moment ago that this is like that meme of the... Dog looking around, everything's on fire. The world's on fire pretty much everywhere. So what does your day look like? So I thought I was already kind of in fourth gear on the Armed Services Committee and a subcommittee chairman there of readiness on Intel.
uh the the intelligence committee in the house the foreign affairs committee the oversight committee and then i had this little thing called the assassination task force you know added on as an additional duty but well since president trump gave me the honor of nominating me as his national security advisor. I found three more gears that I didn't know I had and working with a man that is in 10th gear. He is hitting the ground running. I've never seen anything like him.
his engine just does not stop and it's part of it's keeping up with him part of it's building the team and part of it is really having a lot of conversations about how we're going to conform the system to his style Frankly, I think some of my predecessors who were who were great tried to conform him to the kind of the national security apparatus. And that just did not work for a lot of reasons. And then coordinating with the.
fantastic team that he's putting together between Pam Bondi and Marco Rubio and Pete Hegseth and Tulsi Gabbard and crew to really make sure we are all on the same page with him going forward. So it's a lot. But and it's not exactly like, as you said, the world is going to sit back and wait for us to get this kind of all together and have a transition with the Biden people, as we just saw with Syria. The world continues to spin. One of the fascinating things that's happened here is that...
I mean, internationally, President Trump is already being treated as the president. I mean, just the way that the world is reacting to the incoming administration, it is very clear that they are looking to January 20th, understanding that a change is coming in terms of America's approach. to the world. You saw that when President Trump went to Notre Dame and basically he was...
being treated as already the president of the United States in a lot of ways. This transition process has moved lightning fast. So what has that been like for you on sort of day-to-day level? Well, look, I want to be clear, and I've said this multiple times publicly, our adversaries should not see this as a moment of opportunity.
You know, you can't play mom against dad. You can't play the administrations off from each other. I'm in regular contact with my counterpart, Jake Sullivan. We don't agree on all things by no means. uh but we are talking we are coordinating uh and and we'll continue to do that all the way through uh january 20th yeah look i mean it's just a kind of a statement of common sense
There's only one president at a time. The world is still dealing with this administration, but they obviously are looking to President Trump and seeing how he responds to all things. And on some things, he absolutely wanted to make his voice known. like the truth that came out on the hostages. Enough is enough. By the time January 20th comes around these poor people, those that are still alive, will have been held longer than the Iranians.
held our hostages in 1979 with the carter to reagan uh transition that's totally unacceptable and i think writ large there has never been enough consequences and that's what we need to be talking about with these people you take an american You illegally detain them. If you're a nation state or if you're a terrorist, you hold them hostage. There is going to be all hell to pay. There are going to be nothing but consequences for you financially and maybe even a bullet in your forehead.
if you take an american period and so that the next time you think about it you know what a lot of these groups are going to say whoa it's just not worth it under donald trump let's try it yeah they'll go try to mess with america somewhere else
but not when it comes to taking our people. Enough is enough, and I think that truth spoke for itself. One of the things that's been fascinating with President Trump, and this has been true since he was running in 2015, 2016, is all the attempts to sort of define what...
a Trump doctrine would look like. And the truth is that it seems to me from the outside that the Trump doctrine has always been, certainly was in his first term, and I think continuing on to his second term, fairly simple. I mean, he has suggested that it's peace through strength. And it is also that if you screw with America...
you're going to F around and fine. It's going to cost. Yeah, exactly. And he is perfectly willing to use leverage. He is perfectly willing to use threats and imprecations. And he's perfectly willing to build up the military such that those threats of force are credible. And he's willing to use other methods as well, ranging from tariffs to economic sanctions in order to achieve America's interest. I'm always sort of puzzled by folks.
who find his foreign policy mysterious. It's actually the most transparent foreign policy I think I've ever seen in my life. Well, I just think him as a person and as a president has been transparent. But, you know, just one more thing on the hostage piece, right? Whether it, whether... I mean, you name the bad actor. All they've seen is upside from taking our people. Right. And so what's the incentive? Take more people and get more for it.
We need them to see nothing but downside. And we are going to be sure they see nothing but downside. President Trump's a dealmaker. He's a business guy. He understands incentives. And if the bad guys are incentivized to take more because they keep getting more.
then they're going to keep doing it. If the bad guys feel nothing but cost and pain for taking our people, they're going to stop doing it, right? This isn't, as you just said, this isn't like overly complicated grand Kissingerian theory here. right uh it's about costs and consequences and incentives and then on the broader you know kind of trump foreign policy or trump approach it is constantly bottom line up front what is in america's interest what is america getting out of this
What is America having to give up to get this? And that's with our, look, we can be friends and allies and have tough conversations, whether that's on trade. or whether that's on some geostrategic issue like the South China Sea. And then finally, look, he sees our biggest lever as our economy and in our markets.
right of course we have to have a big stick of course we have to have a military that i don't know is actually focused on lethality and not social justice uh and that is capable of stepping in when needed but his first go-to is going to be hey can we let's resolve this economically let's resolve this diplomatically let's resolve this with thing that most countries care about which is their wallets
and then we'll talk about if we need to step in with any type of of military force and when we do like the soleimani hit it's going to be precise it's going to be very little collateral damage and it's going to be strategic
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a world that is on fire in a wide variety of spheres. So why don't we start the Middle East, since obviously that is sort of first and foremost in everybody's mind, given the Assad regime falling. That appears to be the sort of side effect of Israel having completely destroyed so many of Iran's proxies in the region, which were basically holding up.
Assad's regime. Hezbollah in Syria was holding up Assad's regime. Israel destroyed Hezbollah in Lebanon. They interdicted enormous amounts. And the Russians too. The Russians as well. With Assad uniquely. And I want to kind of save that part of the conversation for the Ukraine part because that is the other part of it for sure. Assad was being held up by, on the one hand, the Iranians. On the other side, the Russians. Israel destroys the Iranian axis, moving all the way from Iranians.
territory all the way to the Mediterranean Sea via Lebanon, then curving around into the Hamas areas and all the way down to Yemen with the Houthis. The situation in Syria now is devolving into what will probably be some sort of prolonged civil war partition. That's what it appears to be. What do you think is the future in Syria? And also, why should Americans care? Should Americans care? What exactly should America's role be in a place like Syria that's been a mess?
forever and will likely continue to be a mess going forward. Well, I'll talk about the Iran piece in a moment. But on Syria, just because it's kind of top of, you know, top of mind right now, I want to be crystal clear. America's interest here. are the tens of thousands of ISIS fighters that are holed up right now, thanks to the actions President Trump took in his first term. Remember the ISIS caliphate?
attacks all over Europe, inspired attacks across the United States. I mean, they were dominating a space the size of Texas across the Middle East. This was Osama bin Laden and al-Baghdadi's grand dream. that was actually realized and it was horrific uh president trump cleaned it up but the the simmering leftover piece was now literally tens of thousands of fighters and families that are sitting in prison camps guarded by our friends the kurds
supported by us, and we can't have that unleash again. That's our key interest. Number one, ISIS. Number two, Israel and its borders. They're taking aggressive action right now. They took the rest of Golan. Finally, and are hitting key sites that we don't want following following uh excuse me into terrorist hands like chemical weapons factories like missile factories you know things like the air force that's right yeah yeah right yes yeah exactly
So to keep that at bay. And then thirdly, look, there's this dynamic with our with our Arab partners there that we just have to keep an eye on. So President Trump is absolutely right. His mandate overwhelmingly was do not drag us into Middle Eastern wars. We do not need American boots running around Syria in any way, shape or form. But we're keeping an eye on those things. ISIS, Israel's border and kind of the broader dynamic with our Gulf allies.
And all of this has been unleashed because of what Israel and its leadership under Bibi Netanyahu did to Hezbollah, the pager and walkie-talkie op. There's going to be some amazing movie about that one day. I think one of the gutsiest, most effective covert action ops in modern history. Because of that, taking down Hezbollah that everybody said couldn't be done.
and would be too provocative, exposing Iran's air defenses so that they literally are naked right now and on their back foot. And then importantly, I think that's being overlooked, is hitting their finances across the region. And the money that has been flowing out of Tehran into Beirut, into its proxies in Syria and elsewhere. And I hope all of this.
Has Hamas so isolated? They really thought the cavalry was coming from the north with Hezbollah. Now that that has shown not to be true, Hamas has every exit blocked. except one, and that's to release our hostages if you want to live. And you mentioned Iran. The future of what happens in Iran is very unclear at this point. Obviously, they had this sort of octopus-like...
terror network that was all over the Middle East. All of those arms have now been chopped off, essentially, with the possible exception of the Houthis, who I think will be finished by probably the Saudis in the future. With all of that...
being the case. And with the Trump administration. That's fair. The Houthis are still an outstanding issue. They definitely are. And, you know, the Biden administration handled that in a particularly egregious way. I guarantee one thing you're going to see is a redesignation. of them for what they are as a terrorist organization. And I'm standing on the House floor month after month as the Democrats were just railing on the Saudis, railing on the Trump administration, right?
you know yemen yemen yemen and it was a humanitarian absolutely a humanitarian crisis but i don't see a lot of them. I think there's maybe been one or two that kind of said, yeah, maybe we were wrong on that one. Yeah, exactly. It's insane. I mean, they're still holding up shipping in the Red Sea. I mean, enormous amounts of shipping are now going around the Horn of Africa. Talk about an inflationary action. 80% of shipping.
is having to divert all the way around South Africa as though the Suez Canal didn't exist. Exactly. I mean, so hopefully the maximum pressure campaign that President Trump has already talked about, exerting economically with regard to Iran, is going to starve the Houthis of funds, for example. And there's the question of the Iranian regime.
The United States, President Trump has made clear we have no interest in war in Iran. We're not interested in getting into a shooting battle with Iran. With that said, the reality is that that regime looks like a paper tiger in the same way the Assad regime looks like. a paper tiger and falls apart pretty quickly. And so, you know, Israel obviously has a very strong interest in preventing the development of nuclear weapons. And the Iranians, it looks like, are going to have a choice, which is...
They can try to rush forward toward a nuclear weapon and turn themselves into North Korea, which is a pariah state with a nuclear weapon, just maintaining its rule through sheer terrorism against its population. Or... Theoretically, they could sign a deal or they can get hit. I mean, and if they choose the former path seeking nuclear weapons, I think there is very little doubt that Israel is going to be on the preemptive side of this ledger after October 7th. Yeah, is this a moment?
where the Ayatollah who is not in good health and is looking at his own secession, is this a moment where they say, we are completely exposed, therefore we rush towards a nuke? or is this a moment they say we are completely exposed, don't provoke the Israelis by rushing towards a new, and we'll see. which way they go. And then I don't want to get too much in revealing our cards and revealing our hand, but we're watching very closely what President Trump has been clear on.
is the other thing they care the most about is their cash. And I mean, they went from exporting 4 million barrels a day to less than 400,000 under the maximum pressure campaign. And now they're right back to where they were. And they're selling 90 percent of that oil to China. And as President Trump said on the campaign trail in his first term, he looked at China and said, you've got to stop buying from them or you can't buy from us. I mean.
Foreign policy speak, that would be secondary sanctions on Chinese buyers, refiners, shippers of Iranian oil. So that's something we'll take a hard look at. The House already passed those sanctions. They've been sitting on Schumer's desk. Like a whole lot of other things that could have helped out Israel in the last couple of years. Those secondary sanctions have been sitting there for over a year. Right. So it is the cash. It's the nuclear program.
And you're right, Israel has taken decisive action to extinguish this vaunted ring of fire. That was threatening him. Meanwhile, nature abhors a vacuum and the Iranian vacuum is being filled by a couple of forces. Hopefully it'll be filled by the Kurds. The Israelis are defending their own security, as you mentioned, by taking the other side of Mount Hermon in Syria. Although they're basically attempting to...
delimit the border to prevent al-Qaeda and ISIS-associated forces from invading the Golan Heights. It's a defensive action, as Prime Minister Netanyahu has said. One of the things that's arising from this because of the rise of HDS is the threat of HDS to Jordan and Saudi, who are also American allies. The Jordanians are deeply afraid of extremism moving across the border of Syria. They've already closed all the border crossings. Jordan, of course.
He's a very tenuous regime. It's a Hashemite dynasty sitting on top of 70% Palestinian population. My wife is a Jordanian Catholic, so yeah, whose mother came through Ellis Island, Christian persecution, yo.
decades and decades ago. So I, yeah. Exactly. And so Jordan is deeply afraid, obviously, of Islamic extremism taking over that country. Saudi is deeply concerned with Islamic extremism extending into its sphere as well. Some of the rebels were seen on tape talking about how they want to take Mecca. You know, the Saudi regime, one of the priorities for the Trump administration had been in Trump.
Term number one, finishing off the Abraham Accords by getting Saudi into the Abraham Accords. Now that Israel has defenestrated so many of its enemies, that could be seen as an opportunity for the Saudis to take with President Trump coming into office. What do you think the prospects are?
of the Saudis joining the Abraham Accords, given that so many of their allied states, UAE, Bahrain, are already members of the Abraham Accords. I think they're good. I think they're good. I think it's a natural next step. I think if there had been the second Trump term was in 2020, I believe we'd already be there. The reordering was focusing on Iran as the common enemy that they are.
you know, their malfeasance, their malicious behavior versus putting the Palestinian issue right in the center. And what, you know, I firmly believe when, if you saw, remember the interview with Brett Baer and Mohammed bin Salman, when he held up and said, We are this close that Iran saw that as the existential threat that it was and lit the match with Hamas that October 7th and that horrific massacre and put that issue right back into the center.
We've had a lot of good discussions with the Saudis, the normalization. The pieces of it are there. I frankly need to really unpack a lot of the details. So we're in the process of doing that. But I think the overall prospects of moving that relationship forward, get our people out. Get the issue of Gaza to a better place, at least for now. And then we absolutely are talking about a broader deal. Which will be just generational and transformative.
and listen i just want to take a step back for a moment then like why does you know because i have to do this all the time as a member of congress why do you know my supporters in northeast st john's county in florida Why does this matter to them in their everyday lives? Number one, if Iran gets a nuke, the Saudis are going to want a nuke, the Turks are going to want a nuke, if the Middle East exploding, not literally, but figuratively, in a nuclear arms race.
should scare every American. This isn't World War III with them flying between the United States and the Soviet Union. But if you ever have nukes going regionally, that is catastrophic for the world. Number two. Israel is our critical ally, both morally, historically, and I think geopolitically. And we should believe in Ayatollah, who intends to wipe Israel off the face of the earth, if they have nukes. And then number three.
We can't take our eye off the ball of ISIS and terrorism. And with the withdrawal from Afghanistan that now is essentially Osama bin Laden's dream, and we haven't even talked about what's simmering over there, what happens over there will not stay over there. But to have another ISIS caliphate that we have to clean up again. I mean, those are all are critical.
national interest. And I always want to take it back to that because, you know, as I'm in my town halls and we're talking Drew's and this, you know, like, look, why does this, you know, I'm a mechanic. I'm going week to week. I'm trying to get my kids off to school. Why does this matter to them? All of those things matter, not to mention things like 80% of global shipping having to be diverted because of a ragtag bunch of terrorists that we couldn't take on.
in the Red Sea. That's exactly right. And the world has gotten really small. The fact is that, for example, Iran losing its financial capability... that's going to have a heavy impact on what happens in places like Ukraine, because actually it's Iranian drones that are being used by the Russians in Ukraine. And Russia, of course, was involved in the Middle East, and Russia is involved in Europe, and Russia has a burgeoning...
relationship with China. And all of these issues are interconnected and trying to sort of separate off regions of the world. There are some regions of the world that don't have major impacts on the rest of the world. I mean, frankly, large portions of Africa. But the reality is that if you're looking at...
you know, the Middle East, which, again, has many thoroughfares for shipping, or is the supply of oil for many of America's adversaries, or is this... And allies. Right, and allies, or is this a source of... a lot of military tech. I mean, a lot of the military tech that America uses is actually developed in Israel as add-ons to, for example, the amount of Chinese money going to Tehran, buying their oil for cents on the dollar.
And then the drones flying into Russia and the missiles going into Russia that we're then spending against in Ukraine and the terrorism that's exploded across the Middle East. I mean, one could argue it's our money with our trade. with our trade deficit going into China, going into Iran, then flowing into Russia in the Middle East. So it's one of the reasons the president is so focused on these trade deficits because it's really, in many ways, our money.
From our market that's flowing around the world and then often our adversaries are using against us that we then have to spend against in our own defense budget. So it's a it's almost a double counting. So let's talk about Russia, because Russia obviously.
That was the other pillar that Assad was standing on. That got destroyed largely because of the war in Ukraine. The war in Ukraine continues to fight on. The Biden administration's approach to the war in Ukraine has been at best ambivalent. It's been... bizarrely vague from the very beginning of the war when Joe Biden's first response was, can we get you a plane for Zelensky to get out of Ukraine to...
you are going to be able to fight as long as you want for whatever ends you want, but we're not going to define the ends, but also we're not going to give you the weaponry to actually allow you to achieve the end. Yeah, literally said, we're not going to define it, it's up to them. Right.
I think we have an inherent interest in how that ends. For sure. And not only that, even if you're going to do that, if you're going to say to Zelensky, however you want it to end, that's how it should end. And then he says, OK, then I need these resources. Well.
If A, then B, if he wants the end to be liberating the Donbass in Crimea, then you have to give him the weaponry to do that. Or just admit that that's actually not in the United States' interest to provide that weaponry. And that's not what the end of the war is going to look like. And the Biden administration refused.
sort of both sides of that bargain. And I never, I mean, behind closed doors, in compartmented facilities, or even publicly, you can never get that answer. As we were really having that last funding debate. i mean there were a number of republicans who had been you know got to stop putin can't let them roll through ukraine and hit nato and and then suck us in that way and wanted to vote for it but said you
You refuse to define what the end state is in line with our interests. You refuse to define the strategy to achieve that end state. And then what resources... that are needed for that strategy in the military it's ends ways and means right the goal the strategy to achieve the goal and the resources needed for the strategy all they just wanted to talk about was more money right and and stop asking us these annoying questions like
you know where is this all going and i do think it's a valid question i certainly get asked by my constituents is it in america's national interest to expect every russian off of every inch of ukraine including crimea how long is that going to take how much money is that going to cost how many lives will be lost uh it is that even a realistic goal at this point valid questions something we're certainly talking about uh and you know it's really now
The president's been very clear the war's got to end. What's been interesting is to see all of the shifts, both European leaders, Ukrainians, everyone, now adopting that framework. So part of my job and our job with the team he's put together is...
Who's at the table? How do we get people to the table? And then what's the framework for an agreement that best meets our interest? We'll get to more on this in just a moment. First, let's talk about something that affects all of us responsible, hardworking Americans.
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Visit their website at tnusa.com slash Shapiro. That's 1-800-958-1000 or visit tnusa.com slash Shapiro today. Don't let the IRS take advantage of you. Get the help you need with Tax Network USA. One of the things that's been fascinating about President Trump's approach to this is that he actually has not taken...
The sort of more isolationist position that all funding will definitely go away no matter what. The one thing that President Trump is very clear about is that he doesn't like losing. And one definition of losing would be Russian tanks rolling through Kyiv. And so that what he's doing, as he's stated openly with regard to NATO, for example, is he's getting everybody else to pay their freight. He says, OK, well, if you want to make sure that NATO actually does its job, then.
All you other nations have to increase your defense spending and you have to be contributing more to the fight in Ukraine. Meanwhile...
He understands that if all leverage disappears against Putin, he's going to get a bad deal. This is one thing that President Trump understands probably better than anyone in American politics. Instinctively, more than anybody I've ever seen. Yeah, I mean, he understands leverage. And he understands that if the leverage were to go away against Putin, then he's not going to get a good deal. So he needs enough leverage to get Putin to the table. But also...
Obviously, the United States has tremendous leverage on Zelensky and Ukraine to also come to the table. And so it seems to me that this has been the case for several years. But I guess what I just want to kind of foot stomp here is we've seen everybody's narrative go from as long as it tanks, blank check, don't dare.
say anything else or you're somehow pro-russian to how do we get this to a deal how do we get this to it just from the trump effect right yes since he was elected that we saw that in paris uh when he just went over we've seen that from everybody who's come to see it one of the first people that we had at mar-a-lago was the nato secretary general and that's where he was but i think the broader pieces that have been also missing are energy policy
We start flooding the world with, by the way, cleaner American oil and gas, and you're driving down prices. Now you're taking options away from Iran. russia venezuela our other adversaries and oh by the way people should be buying from us not them i had uh lunch uh with the speaker of the parliament of lithuania right there on the front line she said i buy 85 percent of my
gas from Louisiana and Texas. You now have an LNG ban. What do you want me to do? Right? I mean, you're leaving me no option. It was a bit insane. So better energy policy, better sanctions enforcement. And burden sharing from our NATO allies are just pieces that have been absolutely missing. It's gotten better with NATO, but it's like patting an F-student on the head for getting a D. They should have been at 100% back in 2014.
the first time russia invaded when they pledged to do it and now for example you know canada is on track to achieve the minimum by 2032. it's just It's completely unacceptable. We should be celebrating 3%, 4%, 5% like Poland and the Baltics are doing.
not achieving the minimum in 10 years. Now, one of the things that's happened, obviously, as a result of the war in Ukraine, which Russia thought was going to be very easy and turns out to be unbelievably hard for them, is, as we've mentioned, the impoverishment of Russia, the military breakdown of Russia, I mean, having to...
draw people from prisons in order to send them in, having to draw from North Korea troops, basically emptying out Syria. All of this has had a pretty negative impact on Russia. It has also led to... a closer relationship that was already burgeoning between Russia and China. At the same time, on the Russia piece, though, they are transforming their economy to a full-on, I mean, to a North Korea-style wartime economy. And they are just grinding.
grinding and grinding forward. So we just have to be cognizant of what's happening. The Ripple is in trouble. Other things seem to be in trouble. Putin sees this as a legacy defining moment. And we've got to get both sides of the table. So once that happens, and I think President Trump obviously is going to make that happen. As you say, the world's already shaping. to what President Trump wants to happen there, with that as part of the calculus.
The growing relationship between Russia and China is disturbing to an enormous number of people, as it should be. China has basically turned Russia in many ways into its client state. Basically, Russia is being sponsored by China in a lot of ways. Russia is providing cheap oil to China.
As you mentioned, China, in return, has been providing some military materiel. The real threat that lurks behind so many of these other issues, the Middle East, Russia, even South America, which we'll get to in a minute. is China. China is a geopolitical. This is one thing that President Trump in his first term totally shifted American politics on its head about. The entire national security community. Left and right. I mean, it's amazing. You can talk to Democrats.
who now will agree that China is a geopolitical threat. That was something no one was talking about before President Trump took office. There was this bizarre idea that China had moderated because they'd adopted free market mechanisms in some ways. Would moderate politically if we just engage enough economically. Right, exactly. And that had been sort of the going wisdom.
it turned out not to be true at all. It turns out that they could engage very comfortably in corporate fascism. That they could simply... subsidize certain aspects of their economy. They can absorb our IP, absorb all the giveaway. Yeah, steal everything. Steal everything. Exactly. And they would be a much more powerful version of the USSR for engaging in more market-based activity while subsidizing the increase of their surveillance state and Xi Jinping's dictatorship.
So China is lurking in the background of all of this. What should be the approach to China? Because it's manifesting in a variety of symptoms. The alliance with Russia, the alliance with Iran, the attempts to cudgel Taiwan, which is... truly a threat to the entire world economy i mean if they were to blockade or take taiwan that would destroy half the world economy overnight because of the the microchips and superconductors over there
Yeah, it's the microchips, but it's also the shipping lanes. Yes. Right. And that's what, you know, people look at a map and they see mainland China and this little island over there. And like, why are we, why are we so worried about it? But if you, if you really look closely. You see about 90% of the world's largest shipping flowing through the Taiwan Strait, about 50% of global shipping that are flowing all within proximity.
of Taiwan that feeds 50% of the global economy between Japan, South Korea, Southeast Asia, and of course, the Chinese Taiwan market. So look, I think that what, again, what President Trump knows is that A lot of the world, including China, needs our market, needs our economy more than we need theirs. So that is a, and you've already seen him truth out, tariffs. If we don't start changing some things, particularly on fentanyl.
production, number one. Number two, we have to get reduced dependency on those supply chains. A lesson from COVID was cheap everything isn't always better. Even little things like mask, gowns, and gloves. But when it comes to our pharmaceuticals, when it comes to chips, when it comes to critical minerals, Governor Burgram is going to be hot on. We have all of those things here in the Western Hemisphere. If we would only get out of our own way with this permitting.
you know, ridiculous maze of state, local, and federal permitting requirements to get the stuff out of the ground. So supply chain reduction, our markets. One of the lessons we should learn from Ukraine is you don't try to arm your allies after they've been invaded. You maybe arm them before to prevent the invasion in the first place, and we'll certainly be looking to clear the backlog.
when it comes to things that Taiwan is looking to purchase and that were required by law to help provide them. Enhancing our allies. One of the great things that... president trump did in the first term was reinvigorate the quad the united states japan australia and india which is also going to be a critical partner in all of this rebuilding our own military so that it's a deterrent recognizing
what China has continued to do and what I believe is the largest and most rapid military modernization since we've seen since the 1930s with Germany, tripling their nuclear arsenal, Navy that's now larger than ours. uh cranking out ships at a rate of three to five to one compared to us but uh but ultimately it is going to be as she uh you know as he looks at his own economic situation
Does he slow down to deal with things, his demographic problems and their indebtedness and other issues? Or does he try to speed up to distract from those problems? And that's something we have to keep a very close eye on. But all of those pieces, I think, will be critical from the economic to the supply chain, to our allies.
Taiwan's in particular, and to the state of our own military. It's definitely a worrisome moment because as China is facing all sorts of tremendous headwinds, and we mentioned the demographic headwinds, there are no children in China. I mean, the nation is going to be...
I believe, 30% above the age of 60 within a decade. They have a totally upside-down economic structure that is rooted in debt and overspending in a wide variety of areas, including, for example, real estate, which is totally bankrupt, over there. The suggestion by Matt Pottinger, who was a member of the administration the first time around, is that essentially the Taiwan Strait needs to be turned into what's been called the boiling moat. It has to be so armed up.
that it becomes clear to China that if you, in desperation, grab for Taiwan, exactly, that it's going to be a problem. Because I think what people like me are less afraid, I'm not afraid that China is going to go for a full-scale invasion of Taiwan, but you could easily see them attempting a blockade.
and then daring the United States to do something about it. Now, I think that actually that's the biggest danger in the next three weeks, frankly. I think that under President Trump, they may be much more deterred because President Trump has been much more stalwart and is obviously much more willing to threaten credibly.
the use of it for us. His foreign policy isn't just saying no into a camera and then that being violated over and over and over by the rest of the world. I thought it was don't. Don't. Yeah, don't. Exactly. Well, there are just two other key pieces, and this is globally, but also particularly when it comes to China, and that's space and then cyber. And in all the war games, the first shots, and sometimes they're just checkmate before anything even begins, are in space.
and in cyber and in space. Look, this is why everybody made fun. Everybody had their jokes and the Netflix series on the creation of the Space Force. Again, another instinct that President Trump had that... There were resistors within his administration. A couple of people got fired by tweet, and then the Pentagon actually saw some accountability for a change and got on board with their elected commander-in-chief.
But incredibly important and just a statistic and why Elon and what he's done with SpaceX is so important. In 2018, the Chinese launched more into space than us and the rest of the world combined just six years ago. Last year. SpaceX launched 80% of the global tonnage. And that's before Starship even comes fully online, which is going to take it by 10 to 100 to even 1,000x.
if he starts launching one per week over the next couple of years. So that is critical for what's up there and for everybody out there saying, why the hell do I care? You touch space seven, eight times a day before 7 a.m. or seven eight times before 7 a.m you don't even realize our entire modern economy agriculture
Obviously, global finance, telecommunications, how we get around, but how the world gets around, shipping, the military, what have you, with the GPS systems. The Chinese know that or developing the capabilities to take it out, which would send our economy dark.
and we have to be able to defend uh what's up there and what he's doing uh in terms of you know a few years ago they could take out a few big satellites big battleship satellites that we had up there now when you've got thousands of little ones circling around you can't take them all out and then in cyber I think we just have to completely rethink it right now we're totally on defense and we keep trying to get better and better on defense and the analogy I use back in the 50s
when you had the rise of nuclear ICBMs, we didn't respond to the Soviets by building better and better missile defenses. We responded by building better and better offense so that we both understood. Mutually assured destruction to keep the peace. We're not doing that in cyber. We're just totally focused on playing defense. And I think we need to change our doctrine when it comes to offense because the Chinese are clearly not getting the message.
to knock it off and when they shift as they recently did from spying and stealing to putting cyber time bombs in our critical infrastructure the volt typhoon uh systems that were or malware that was discovered
To me, that was a red line that was crossed, and we need to deal with it with a new doctrine. Get some more on this in a moment. First, did you know you spent a third of your life sleeping? That's around 25 years of your life in bed. It's a lot of time. With numbers like that, your mattress isn't just furniture. It's an investment in your own well-being.
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So meanwhile, one of the other areas that China has actually become quite involved is, in violation of the Monroe Doctrine, South America. They're very involved in Venezuela. They've become increasingly involved in places like Chile. The sort of Chinese involvement in South America is something that's been largely overlooked. South America has its own issues, a wide variety of issues, obviously.
There are some real green shoots in South America. Obviously, the administration of Javier Mille. I'm a huge Mille fan in Argentina. He's doing amazing things. First foreign leader to come visit. He's amazing. Emilia is tremendous. He and President Trump obviously see eye to eye in a wide variety of ways, including personally. Or Nayib Bukele in El Salvador, who's been doing great work cleaning up the gang problems.
in El Salvador while also doing real well on that Bitcoin bet, actually. He did very well on that. And when you look at South America and you look at the fact that that does have impact on particularly the immigration. systems and driving immigrants up north toward the Mexican border. What should policy look like in terms of outreach to some of these countries? Well, look, I think from a broad sense, we have all the food.
all of the critical minerals, all of the energy that we need in our hemisphere if we would only pay more attention to it. This administration's still buying uranium from Russia. with all kinds of sanction waivers and still having that dependency when you've got Uranium in Canada. You have uranium in Saudi Arabia. You have uranium in other places. So as we look at a new energy policy, if we look at unleashing our gas, if we look at going with small modular reactors.
uh you know we have a lot of the critical minerals that we need both for our computer chips for energy supplies for a modern economy all here uh and and we need better trade deals better partners I think a deregulation regime right here in the United States. And people are ready to deal. They're ready to come to the table. I'm really excited about this relationship with Argentina.
it could be i mean you want to talk about having some real fundamentals that could be there i think you should spend an entire show just unpacking how melee has done it so fast Despite the odds. I mean, everybody laughed when he had his famous afuera with all of these agencies. He's actually done it. He still needs some help in terms of his currency, and he still needs some help.
in terms of his predecessors that got so dependent on China for so many things, like space tracking stations right there in the mountains, that they were literally ceding away Argentine territory in China's debt diplomacy. We fully plan to help them in doing that. I think the other piece is, as we talk about decoupling some critical supply chains from China.
of course we want them to come right back to the united states with american jobs but if it doesn't make business sense how about we get them in the western hemisphere how about you incentivize some of these kind of you know uh you know lower skilled high output factories into Central America. Kamala Harris wanted to just throw aid.
down that hole down there with a lot of corruption and a lot of gangs and cartels that actually made the problem worse. How about we incentivize some production there and start helping those economies turn around? Now we're solving our supply chain.
problem in many ways. We're getting it in the Western Hemisphere. You're getting at your migration issue. And then the president's been very clear we're going to have a deportation regime. And for countries that want to do business with us, they need to take their people back.
You know, that needs to be first and foremost in our policy. So all of those pieces, I think you're going to see coming together. And what's great is you've got Stephen Miller, who's an expert. You've got Holman, who's going to do it. And you have a Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, who is a rare... I think a rare leader that's really invested in the relationships down there over 20, 30 years of his career understands the complex dynamic is going to spend the time on it.
Everybody just gets sucked in the Middle East and into Europe and into Asia. But I think you have a secretary of state that is really going to be focused on it. You're going to see a difference. That does leave the main question with regard to the United States southern border being Mexico. Mexico is a basket case. It's been a basket case.
For decades at this point, the new administration in Mexico seems to be just a continuation of the AMLO regime. Obviously, significant corruption issues, massive economic problems, and working closely with China to actually...
take the precursor ship from China to make fentanyl into Mexico and then smuggle those across the border via the drug cartels, which essentially do control huge swaths of America's southern border. I went down there last year and you can actually see the drug cartels flying drones over American territory.
It's an unbelievable thing. Let me ask you, if you renamed those cartels from Sinaloa and Jalisco to ISIS and Al-Qaeda, and they were pumping chemicals into our inner cities and infiltrating cells. uh into our cities and taking over uh swaths of them it would be it wouldn't even be a debate right so i mean the president has been clear we are going to take these cartels on
That doesn't mean, as the media likes to spin it, we'll probably even spin that statement of we're sending the 2nd Marine Division into Mexico City. No. But we have a lot of tools to support law enforcement in a much more forceful way. with cyber, with sanctions, even with space assets and others, with the more focused intelligence, to not only help the Americans, I mean to help the Mexicans.
but to help our own law enforcement. We cannot have a situation where these paramilitary organizations that are fighting the Mexican army, not police, army to a standstill with heavy armored vehicles shooting down helicopters. controlling huge swaths of our border and to some estimates 20 30 40 percent of the territory of our neighbor enough is enough uh and uh i think uh you know the president the team around him is ready to take the gloves off
So I want to turn to the personal side of this for a moment because you have this great book, Hard Truths, all about your time as a Green Beret. So walk me through sort of how you got to be the NSA nominee. Yeah. For a redneck kid from the west side of Jacksonville, yeah, it's kind of a pinchy moment. Look, I went to Virginia Military Institute. I served 27 years, a lot of it in the reserves.
uh in special forces i don't know many people realize both the navy seals and army green berets have reserve units so i kind of have a day job i built a company i worked in the bush administration in the pentagon I had to be one of the only idiots that was writing the strategy, briefing the strategy, then I would get mobilized with my reserve unit and have to go actually do the strategy out there with my guys.
who would then say who the hell thought this was a good idea yeah right the interesting part then would then be taking the uniform off coming back into the kind of policy apparatus and saying hey boss yo this isn't working i was just out there on the ground you're getting fed a line of crap uh from the kind of blob and you know try to fix it so i did that back and forth a number of times and you know both worked in the white house
worked in the Pentagon, worked out in industry. I've got more scar tissue from contracting officers in government and trying to do business with our own government than I do from the Taliban and brought all those experiences to bear. I think in Congress when I ran for Ron DeSantis' seat when he ran for governor. So that was the kind of the trajectory. And I saw with President Trump that his instincts on so many things were absolutely right.
whether it was the pivot on China, whether it was, hey, we can shift to focus on Iran rather than Palestinians and bring people together in the Middle East. Whether it was Europe, you've got the same size economy the United States does. Stop this great deal you've got with we're paying for your defense while you pay for your social programs. And so I've been 100% on board.
uh with his america first agenda and you look at what he got done uh on the abraham accords on china on the border uh on uh you know all kinds of reforms in the military that we've been asking for for years now i think he He gave me the nod to help pull all of that together for him. On the book, first, the proceeds go to the Green Berets that I lost. And nobody hates wars more than people that have to go fight them.
Much less endless ones that become this, you know, ever, you know, I don't know, grind and policy drift of funerals and people that were feeding into it. So that's a piece. The other piece is Green Berets are a little bit different. The SEALs, the Rangers are some of the best in the world. We can do it too. Two bullets in the forehead, middle of the night, Salma Bin Laden raid.
In and out. Lightning strike. And that son of a bitch is done. We stay a lot longer. We have to learn multiple languages, local cultures, blend in. And you take five or six of us, put us in a valley, put us in a village. We'll train tens of thousands of them to kick in doors for us. So we're that force multiplying effect and we specialize in regions of the world, all over the world. You know, case in point.
Drop a few Green Berets in after 9-11. Before you know it, they're riding on horseback in Afghanistan, out in the mountains of Afghanistan. Less than a couple hundred Green Berets overthrew the entire regime and kicked Al-Qaeda out. And then we had 20 years of policy drift from that. But that's what we do. And that's what we do differently. And that is a different mindset. And that's what I write about in the book.
If we can herd the tribes in Africa or of Afghanistan, then I can herd the tribes in Congress and in Washington, D.C., although I think D.C. was a little tougher sometime. So that each chapter is a different attribute. I tell a story that. you know what i learned downrange in combat how i've applied it now uh to this job and um how i think we need to think differently
And President Trump often thinks very differently and very unconventionally about these issues. Green Berets are kind of the masters of unconventional warfare, psychological operations, by, with, and through proxies. uh or allies or others um and so uh it's it's it's gotten a great uh reception and i think you know i hope hope people take a look at it you know final question for you the big thing that i think a lot of people who
voted for President Trump, or fans of the president, who donated and campaigned with President Trump, are worried about is, of course, the blob. You mentioned the blob. You mentioned what he called the deep state. The career employees were within every one of these agencies who, during his first term, spent inordinate amounts of time.
thwarting his agenda. Obviously, President Trump is appointing disruptors to this administration with the explicit purpose of attempting to clear out a lot of the deadwood. and to make this administration what it ought to be, which is a unitary executive that actually answers to his call when it comes time to make policy. What does that look like? Well, I'll just, you know, look, I'll tell you, for people out there, and look, there's a lot of good...
and great case officers out in CIA or civil servants or FBI agents that are out there doing bad things to bad guys. It's often in that kind of Washington leadership. where they get ensconced and really believe that they know better than the person that was elected. And that's not kind of a middle finger to him. That's a middle finger to the 70, 80 million Americans.
who put him there it's not like he's playing a bait and switch wasn't like he was totally transparent about what he wants to do and why we need to do it uh and the mandate that he's received and the popular vote and all seven swing states are not something uh that i don't think any uh bureaucrat needs to just you know think they can outweigh it or outlast or throw sand in the gears that said at the same time our government has become bloated it's become too large
It is completely focused on inputs. You know, the reflexive response, whether it's the Pentagon, State Department, you name the bureaucracy to a priority. Well, I need more people and more money to throw at it. with the interest in our debt exceeding now the entire defense budget and growing
That does not work anymore. And I think the president is focused on outputs. The team, whether it's Doge and Elon and Vivek and others, are focused on outputs. What are the American people getting for all of this money? And that, like any business, man or woman, needs to be, what are the metrics? What are the outputs? What are we getting? What can be done more efficiently? And if you think about it that way, you should be getting on board.
What I fear a little bit is that the most dangerous bureaucrat is one that's afraid for their paycheck, right? And if you're throwing sand in the gears, if you're leaking, if you think you know better just because you disagree... You need to look at the people across a wide swath, Hispanic, African-American, Jewish, you name it, that said, we want to go in the direction President Trump wants to go.
uh and and just always always keep that in mind and as an elected i think too many people lose sight of that they really do uh and so i've told uh senior officials in the pentagon and elsewhere come with me to a town hall come with me in a town hall or someone from USAID and tell a group of first responders why we need to pay first responders in another country and not them. Go ahead, explain that, right?
uh that that's a difficult conversation that you know i i you know i've told people if you think we're tough in hearings come come with me down you know and talk to our constituents who have very real questions it's their money It's their lives that we're taking from and that we owe it back to them to give them the most efficient government possible and one that is in line with their elected leaders' interests, period.
Well, Congressman Mike Waltz, the book, by the way, Hard Truths, again, it's terrific. And the NSA nominee, soon to be the NSA himself, with the help of God and the United States Senate, which will confirm you, really appreciate the time. It's been wonderful. Thanks. The Ben Shapiro Sunday Special is produced by Jessica Kranz and Matt Kemp. Associate producers are Jake Pollack and John Crick. Editing is by Olivia Stewart. Audio is mixed by Mike Coromina. Camera and lighting is by Zach Ginta.
Hair, makeup, and wardrobe by Fabiola Cristina. Title graphics are by Cynthia Angulo. Production intern is Sarah Steele. Executive assistant, Kelly Carvalho. Executive in charge of production is David Wormis. Executive producer, Justin Siegel. Executive producer, Jeremy Boring. The Ben Shapiro Show Sunday special is a Daily Wire production. Copyright Daily Wire 2024.