Why Israel's & America's Interests are Intertwined-An Exclusive Interview w Dr. Victoria Coates

you know. This past weekend was my mother's ninetieth birthday, and Heidi and I hosted a dinner and we had family and friends come in and just went around the table and everyone took the chance just to talk about my mom, talk about what an amazing person she is, talk about how she had touched each of our lives.

My mom is ninety and still going strong, and I'll tell you it was kind of fun, Ben, So I had everyone also record a little video that we played played for her at the restaurant, and as a surprise to her, when I was flying with Trump on Trump forcewan down to Boco, Chica for the rocket launch, I asked Trump if he'd be willing to record a video for my mom for her birthday. So I pulled out my cell phone and he was happy to do so.

He recorded a very very nice video and wished her happy birthday, and in classic Trump style, he said, Eleanor, I hear you're an amazing woman. I understand you're turning ninety, although everyone says you look forty.

in there. He gets into it and that's fun. And if you've ever seen Sinnaker's dad, he's such a he's just a blast to spend time with, and he's so animated, and he loves a campaign trail. It's different with a mom. Just to see the pure I think joy it's when when parents, when when a kid succeeds, it's like a hundred times more excitement. And to watch her on election night in the war room and just the pure joy on her face watching you get to do what you

do and watching the room react to you winning. I don't know, because there was so much going on, if you got to see it from the angle I did. I just got to say, I have never enjoyed a moment on the campaign trail, and I mean that sincerely more than I did that moment watching your mom watch you win reelection. I don't know if you got to see that moment, but she was so proud of you.

and that is incredibly sad. The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews is wishing you a blessed Thanksgiving as you gather with your families, grateful for the blessings that God has given all of us. But we need to remember those who are faith unbelievable hardship and a real need right now of food and hope in Israel. The people of Israel, they're being threatened and the attacks continue from

enemies all around them. And during these hard times, Israelis are thankful for the Fellowship, for the food and the basic assistance that they so desperately need. We're talking about life saving aid that the rest of the world seems to have turned their back on the people in Israel. And that's why I'm asking you to pause and give a gift of twenty five dollars right now that will help provide food a box of food to an elderly Jew or a Jewish family who are suffering and are

in desperate need. A gift of one hundred dollars will help provide four of these life saving food boxes this Thanksgiving season. Take a moment and help the people in Israel. Please consider standing with Israel and the Jewish people. How do you do this? Go to support IFCJ dot org. That is support IFCJ dot org. To make a gift now,

that's support IFCJ dot org. Or you can call and give as well over the phone eight A eight four eight eight I f c J. That's eight eight eight four eight eight four three two five or support IFCJ dot org Centaer. This is one of those fun episodes for us. You get asked, I know, to lend your name to certain things here and there. And there is a book that is coming out you're excited about. You The Ford was written by you and it deals with

a very very important issue. The Jewish State and the people of Israel and America and this connection.

scoff at the fact that she's an art historian. She actually was a professor at Penn and was teaching art history at Penn. And I'll tell you an amazing story of how Victoria got full time into the national security and foreign policy world, which is twenty some odd years ago. She was blogging anonymously on Red State and she had a pseudonym, and Don Rumsfeldt was the Secretary of Defense at the time, and he was reading what she was writing on Red State and it was really profound and

insightful about foreign policy. And rumsfeld called in his staff and said, hey, I want you to figure out who is writing these columns because and he said, listen, this is obviously a colonel buried sore in the heart of the Pentagon who understands military policy, foreign policy, national security. This guy is an expert. I want to hear what

he has to say. Well, they tracked the colonel and the Pentagon down and it turned out it was a professor of art history at Penn named Victoria Coats, and she ended up coming and working for Don Rumsfeld when he was writing his autobiography.

by Mike Flynn. I remember Mike Flynn lasted just about thirty days, and then she ended up staying through h R. McMaster and then staying through John Bolton, and then staying through Robert O'Brien, and she rose to be Deputy National Security Advisor to President Trump. And then she finished the trumpet the Trump administration at the Department of Energy, where she was a senior advisor to the Secretary of Energy, and she was dealing with the Middle East in particular.

And Victoria is an expert on many things, but one of the things she's an expert on is the Middle East.

an extraordinary journey. And the other data I'd like to mention is twenty fourteen when you and I made my first journey to Israel together, I think your second, if not your third, in May of that year, which was our first trip broad on, you know, as a senator, And to go to Israel and have that experience together with our then chief of Staff Chip Roy, who has obviously become something of a name on his own right.

But to have that experience was really profound, and I would just we went from Israel to Kiv, We went to Ukraine, and so we got to see these two theaters that are so important to us right now ten years ago and experience this, meet these people. But the book was really very much a document of these ten

years that have gone on since then. And I think for both of us watching Israel, observing it, studying it, and then in your case, actually legislating on it has been quite an extraordinary experience.

war in Lebanon. What happened to change things so dramatically, Well.

this would cause upheaval in the region. Instead, it caused clarity. This is where the United States is. The United States stands with Israel, and if you want to stand with us, great And what we found was that many of our Arab partners, traditional partners and allies decided that's what they wanted to do. So we signed the Abraham Accords with Bahrain and UAE and Morocco and this led to peace

in the region. And then we had Biden Harris come in and they decided that they were going to embrace the Obama era policy of having distance with Israel, trying to domesticate the Iranians, and this led to disaster and instead of you know, peace, we wound up with October seventh of twenty twenty three, now, I guess fourteen months ago, and you know, the horrific Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel, and I felt like so many Americans kept asking me

why is this happening? And that's why I wrote the book.

to Israel? And then what's next? Those are the four questions that drives the book, and it just kind of was a create a cur or, just needed to get it out there, and I did it in ninety days and here it is.

And I thought you wrote very movingly about the testimony of the three university presidents, my president Amy McGill, the president of Harvard, your alma mater, and the president of MIT being unable to speak to why this was a problem. And it's why this is a war not just on Israel, but also on America, because we have anti Semitism here on our streets, we have it on our campuses where it's being taught to our children. This is a huge problem and we have to get after it. And the

Biden administration clearly had no answer to that. Then many Americans want to know why Israel is a great ally to the United States, and that's a little bit of a history lesson. And as you mentioned, I'm an art historian. That just makes you able to write about history. Sometimes there are pictures, but in this case, it's going back to what is the connection between the Jews and the Holy Land, Why was the modern state of Israel founded?

What is the relationship between the United States and Israel? That means is not well understood. And I tried to approach it like a one oh one class in college, so that you would have that kind of information in front of you. Then there's what I call the bike partisan history of failure, which is the third question is is there an alternative? And the answer to that question is yes. The two one is the Palestinians and the

other is the Iranians. And we've had lots of folks on both sides of the Aisle try to domesticate both of those groups. As you and I know very well, that has not turned out well. And that's exactly where they biden. Inherris. People were heading God forbid if they had gotten another four years. And then the fourth question is what's next. And the amazing thing is is that we can right now talk about a deal between Israel

and Saudi Arabia. If you told the eight years ago, when I first went into the Trump administration that I could talk on a pot cast about an Israel Saudi deal and not get angry phone calls from both sides, I would have been shocked. But now it's talked about as when, not if, And that's an extraordinary development. So we can build on that, we can we can go forward with that.

and this is something that I advocated strenuously. It's something that you advocated within the White House for is have that clarity to say we stand with Israel, period the end, and that produced an historic flowering apiece. And Victoria, I want to pause on something you said at the outset

when you're answering the first question. Then you were talking about those who hate Israel and hate America, and it just just occurred to me as you were talking that there is an almost perfect equivalence that if you look at the people on college campuses chanting we love Hamas chanting against Israel, to a person, almost every single person who hates and despises Israel hates and despises the United

States of America. And I guess the question I wanted to ask you is is why, why is that if you're an anti semit if you hate Israel, we know that you are very very likely to hate America's.

Minister at Yahoo was here. I know you were there at the Addressed Congress in July, and they marched down to Union Station and dragged down flags and burned them and put up Palestinian flags, and those were American flags, those weren't Israeli flags. And then at being a Philadelphia and I was particularly offended that they defaced the cast of the Liberty Bill that also is there on Columbus Circle.

But it's me, that's it. They hate us both, and the reason they hate us is this full issue of subtler colonialism, which is both Israel and the United States are the two countries that are theoretically settled by others. My particular ancestors came from Scott's Irish and Denmark. I know you are both Irish and Cuban. Then I don't know what your pedigree is. And I did want to take a minute to wish a very happy ninetieth birthday

to Eleanor and sent her lots of love. But this is the thing is these are the two countries that they consider illegitimate because most of the people who live here come from other places. And so that's why it's a war on both of us. And if you look at our enemies, our enemies like Aron, they refer to Israel as the little Satan and the United States as the great Satan. But guess what, we're both Satan and in that, you know that we are the same to them.

And what you're seeing from all of these enemies of the United States and Israel's, they're buying into that that we're more or less the same. And what you and I have discussed so many times, Okay, fine, let's make that a strength rather than a weakness. You say we're the same, great, then we're in this together.

right now. Go to amosquare dot com slash bend today amosquared dot com slash bend today to get free AMO on your account. There's no minimum to buy, no memberships needed, and no exor fees. You can buy AMMO on the small budget amosquare dot com slash bend and get free AMO in your account today. Let me ask you a question about college campuses. And we talked a moment ago. You mentioned in the Senate, and I talked about this

a lot on the show. Those presidents that came before Congress, and it was shocking that they would not stop the just abuse of the Jewish students and not protect them. Do you feel like the pendulum will swing back watching what happened to some of those presidents and just seeing how extreme these college campuses have gotten, or do you think they're just so indoctrinated to hate Israel now that this is just the policy of almost all of these IVY schools.

and I required three layers of armed guards. I had Philadelphia City cops, I had pen cops, and Heritage was not satisfied with that, and they sent an additional armed guard with me because it was such radical thing for me to go on campus and make these remarks, and that speech isn't free. A lot of people had to pay for that, including the taxpayers of Pennsylvania amongst others. And it was a really enlightening moment that we have to hold this funding at risk. And I've heard President

Trump talk about this. I think very forcefully that no university should get federal funding. And I think we can also look at this from the state perspective and hold that funding at risk, and that will actually change this behavior.

twenty twelve, sworn in in January of twenty thirteen. And when you're a brand new senator, when you're a baby senator, they put you down down on these little bitty basement offices and it's basically freshman hazing. I mean, there are one hundred Senate offices that are full offices, but they keep the new senators down in the basement for three four five months, just basically as an initiation. And then so Victoria was part of our very first team that

came together right when I was newly elected. And she came and joined us initially for what was going to be two weeks and just to help us get started, help us hire some staff, and then she was going to move on. And when we got there. One of the very first things we had as we had a vote on John Carey, who had been dominated as Secretary of State and John Kerry. At the time I was elected, he was a senator, so he was a colleague of

mine for like four minutes. And then Obama the beginning of the second term nominated Kerrie a Secretary of State. I remember John Kerry came by my basement office. Victoria was sitting in the office in the meeting, and and Carrie was let me, let me speak nicely, incredibly confident

in himself. I'm trying to put that in a kind tone. Uh, And and he he gave me this this sort of long lecture, how I really need to it needed to embrace the Law of the Sea Treaty which the Law of the Sea Treaty, among other things, significantly undermines US sovereignty and gives away the ability of we the people.

to three, So ninety seven senators voted yes. There were only three of us that voted no. I was it ninety four to three? Okay, well, then I guess Carrie didn't vote for himself. And I remembered the three. I remember that I don't know who skipped. Whoever skipped, they did better than the ninety four. And then immediately thereafter, about concurrently with it, was the confirmation of Chuck Hagel.

Now Chuck Hagel is who Obama had nominated to be Secretary of Defense, and Chuck Hagel had been a Republican senator. I didn't know Hegel, but as I looked at his record, his record was terrible. And so I ended up leading what was the very first filibuster in American history against a defense secretary, and it was it was successful. It was before Harry Reid had used the nuclear option, before

he'd blown up the filibuster. So you can't filibuster now a cabinet nominee anymore, but you could then, and we successfully held forty one Republicans. We stopped his nomination, and then actually Republicans being what they are, several other Republicans who joined us went wobbly and decided to confirm him anyway.

But that's another story. But what I will say is I think it got Victoria's attention that this was not going to be just to quiet go along to get a long tenure in the Senate, that we were there to fight battles and lead battles. And she ended up staying in. And I'll tell you something astonishing, Penn. So if you rewind the clock twelve years ago, twelve years ago, I am elected to the Senate, I'm elected to the Senate.

I'm forty one years old, brand new elected to the Senate, and as I came into the Senate, I had areas that I knew a lot about. If you were talking about legal issues, if you're talking about criminal justice, if you were talking about constitutional law, I had a long background in all of those issues. When it came to foreign policy, I had essentially zero background. Just my professional career, I'd never worked in foreign policy. I'd never worked in

the State Department of the Fence Department. I'd never dealt with foreign policy. My focus had always been domestic. When I was on the George W. Bush campaign twenty four years ago, I was the domestic policy advisor. That was my specialty, and so look economic matter, domestic matters. I had a lot of experience foreign policy I had essentially none. But I did have some strong beliefs. The son of a Cuban immigrant who had fought in the Cuban Revolution,

I believed profoundly in freedom. I was inspired by Reagan. Peace through strength is a principle in philosophy that I believed deeply in. But I didn't have a terribly deep subject matter expertise, and so one of the things I give give that background because one of the remarkable things Victoria did is is basically convened a university in the United States Senate to train me up in foreign policy. And I say so with complete humility. And what preceded

for four years is we would do deep dives. And when I'm in DC, Heidi and the girls stay back in Houston. So when I'm in DC, I'm solo. I don't have I don't have anybody at home. And so my philosophy, if I get to get to my apartment at seven or eight or nine o'clock at night, I'll be mad at my team. I'll be like, wait, what am I doing sitting in an apartment staring at a wall.

There's work to be done. Like now, if Heidi and the girls were there, I'd want to be home with the kids, But if they're not there, I want to work. And so every night when I'm in DC, I do a working dinner. And what Victoria began convening as we'd do working dinners, and many of them were with subject matter experts, where we'd bring in, say a Middle East

policy expert or a couple. We'd bring in an Israel expert, or an Iran expert, we'd bring in a Russia expert, we'd bring in a China expert, and we'd do a deep dive onto a subject matter and sit there and have a three four hour dinner really asking. You know, I'm a big believer that there are no stupid questions other than the question you don't ask because you're afraid to ask. And so I was perfectly happy to ask

question after question after question. And I will just say, now, twelve years later, where I have been in the middle of virtually every foreign policy battle in the Senate for a long time, now, it's worth looking back to twelve years ago, the incredible job Victoria did systematically giving me a knowledge set to go along with principles that I started with. But I didn't have the subject matter expertise.

And there's literally no person on planet Earth more responsible for my being able to develop that subject matter expertise than than Victoria Victor.

in the United States' best interests. And I would boil this down to a single issue. And I remember so clearly when we made the decision to do this, which was when Senator Heller's bill to move the Israeli Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem came up right away in January of twenty thirteen, and it did not have a co sponsor, and I said the Senator Cruise, would you like to be co sponsor? And he said, yes, I would.

This seems like a really good idea because this gives that kind of clarity that we were just talking about, and that's when I knew we were off to the races. Same thing with the vote on John Carey, same thing with Chuck Hagel, that we are going to take a new approach to the these issues. And it's one of the reasons it was not easy for me to leave Senator Cruz's staff to go into the Trump administration. But I had no conflict of interest because it was essentially

the same policies. These are the America First policies, and one of those keystones of that is the relationship between the United States and Israel. And so that's really the purpose behind the book, to explain to people why that is and then to give them ammunition to spread that information around, because I think the disinformation about Israel, the very negative information about the Jewish people as well as Israel, is so pervasive. So that's why I wrote it.

helpful tool to understand. Okay, wait a second, here are actually the facts. And I'll say something real quick that Victoria just said a minute ago. And this is something I think that is incredibly important for all of us who are strongly pro Israel. I urge everyone in the pro Israel movement to articulate a defense of Israel very directly from the perspective of why it is good for

the United States of America. I think too many in the pro Israel movement talk about aid for Israel as if you're giving welfare to some down on his luck neighbor who just needs help. And I think that's a profound mistake. If you look at every year the United States provides roughly three billion dollars in military assistance to Israel.

That is incredibly beneficial to America. If we tried to recreate the intelligence network of the Massad, the benefits that America gets from the Masad spying on, sabotaging, engaging with the enemies of America Hamas, Hesbellah, Iran, it would cost tens of billions of dollars and we wouldn't recreate it half as good. The enemies of Israel are the enemies of America. And when Israel defeats Hamas as they are doing now, and when israe Real defeats hesbalas they are

doing now, that benefits America. And this book explains that it's powerful and useful to know. So I'll say, with Christmas season coming up, you should go and order a copy The Battle for the Jewish State, How Israel and America can Win and it's by Victoria Coats.