hello everyone it's another historic day
here at the white house and i have with
me ambassador rick grinnell
national security advisor robert o'brien
and senior adviser jared kushner
to talk to you about the history that
was made here at the white house today
and then they'll take a few of your
questions
thank you kaylee again it was a
a great morning in the oval office with
president trump president vucic and
prime minister hoti
we brought together through the hard
work of a great diplomats primarily led
by
rick grinnell acting at the president's
direction uh
serbia and kosovo uh and they've
normalized
their economic relations this is a the
serbia kosovo conflict has gone on for
decades
uh they've been stuck uh unable to move
forward
for many many years and the president uh
some time ago decided that we tried we
needed to try something creative try
something new
break the deadlock and bring try to
to move forward with the peace process
with serbian kosovo
to have the prime minister of kosovo and
the president of serbia
together in the oval office with
something given the history of those two
countries
and given the history of the united
states with respect to serbia
and the conflict in the balkans is
something that is is quite remarkable
uh and to have this happen uh just in
the uh
the shadow a few days after uh jared and
i were on a the the flight from
uh ben gurion airport to abu dhabi
international airport
uh the first commercial flight between
israel and a gulf arab state
it shows the sort of momentum that's
coming one of the side benefits of the
normalization of economic ties
between serbia and kosovo was a
the establishment of diplomatic
relations between kosovo a majority
muslim state
and the state of israel this is now uh
the second time in in less than a month
that israel has made peace with and has
normalized its ties
with a majority muslim country it's
again it's another
uh really uh signal accomplishment of
president trump
uh the fact that
uh this has happened uh
on the heels of a a peace agreement
uh with the taliban in afghanistan uh
that it's happened
uh in response on the heels of of last
year negotiating a peace
uh a cease-fire between the kurds and
the turks
you're seeing a pattern here of the
president uh
being a true peacemaker and
there's been plenty of criticism of the
administration
but what's been interesting to me is as
the president has undertaken these
historic
uh initiatives uh and brought together a
team to perform
and deliver these accomplishments uh
others have uh
have even tried to take credit i was
just watching uh the vice president
without making a political comment the
vice president was welcoming
uh these moves today but the the these
things could only
happen under a trump administration and
under the president's uh leadership
peace through strength foreign policy
and national security policy he put the
pieces in place
uh and now we're reaping the uh uh the
peace dividend
and it's it's happened to the balkans
it's happened in the middle east
uh and we have more to come i'll leave
some of that to to uh
senior advisor kushner to address in a
moment so uh
with those opening comments i want to
turn the uh
the time over to uh the special envoy
for serbia and kosovo the presidential
invite for
serbia kosovo ambassador rick grinnell
uh he'll have a few comments and then
we'll make ourselves available for some
questions after
uh rick and jared address you thank you
very much
thanks robert um i know there's a lot of
reporters who have worked a long time
uh in your industry and for any reporter
that has
been working for more than 10 years you
will know this story
there was a terrible war and this story
has been lingering for decades
and so i really want to appeal to you
all as journalists
to dig deep on this story this is one of
those good news stories
that i'm not asking you to do anything
but look at the facts
and look at really what's been happening
here we've been working
very hard on this agreement for a long
time
we had three agreements last year
that went largely unnoticed by
washington reporters
and i just really have to say i think
it's a shame when we
when we talk a lot about symbolism and
we don't dig
deep on these stories that last
21 years what we've been able to
accomplish here
by pushing the two parties together
is truly historic the the way that this
came about is that the politics were
stuck
everybody knows that we've been fighting
and talking about the same
thing for decades they have been
fighting about the same symbolism
words verbs adjectives
it's been a nightmare and what president
trump said to me
was they're fighting politically about
everything
why don't we give it a try to do
something different and creative
why not try to do economics first
and let the politics fall follow
the economics that proved to actually be
a formula that they were eager for no
one had been talking to them about this
we have an establishment foreign policy
team
in washington dc that literally
keeps pounding the same meetings
and issues over and over i'm telling you
that
the only way that this agreement could
have happened is from an outsider
all of the insiders in washington said
you're not talking about recognition
you're not talking about this symbolic
word
and what we tried to do is ignore that
and from an outsider perspective
go in and dig deep i ask you to look at
this agreement
and see all of the details
that have been hard fought negotiated
that will
move both economies and the
entire region forward this is economic
normalization
it's a first step i think the europeans
are going to be very
happy we've been on the phone a couple
of times with the national security
advisor in germany
the national security advisor in france
to be to brief them
we briefed them on the strategy and we
are briefing them again today
on the details of this agreement
this is something that i feel very
strongly about
it will make americans safer it'll make
american companies
more prosperous this is a region that's
been largely shut out because of a
perceived
conflict whether or not there's been a
conflict there has been a perceived
conflict european businesses and
american businesses
largely have refused to go in and grow
in the in these areas now
we will be able to open this up whether
it's in energy
water construction of roads railways
mines these are all industries that are
going to be opened up to european
and hopefully american businesses to go
in and help the people
create an industry which means creating
jobs
in the in the region but also u s jobs
jobs for americans and american
companies the
last thing i'll say before we turn it
over to jared
the people of serbia and the people of
kosovo
are ecstatic about this agreement
and are very thankful that there was an
outside administration to look
at this situation and not do the typical
political thing if we would have done
the typical political
thing and listened to all of the
really smart people at ngos and think
tanks here in washington dc
we would not have this agreement take
just a quick look
at the criticism and the lead-up to this
of
what we should have been talking about
and what we weren't talking about it's
all been squarely in the same old
political dialogue
that was stuck and i'm really thankful
that president trump
challenged us to say think differently
think from an outsider's perspective and
that was the key to the whole thing
so i really urge you to look at the
details and see
and talk to the the leaders in kosovo in
serbia
ask them how this came about ask them
how the process went and i think you'll
see that
this outsider perspective of doing
things differently
is what worked
thank you ambassador grinnell an
incredible job working through this
historic agreement and ambassador
o'brien
this is just another chapter that this
administration has been able to write
towards making the world a safer and
more peaceful place
president trump when he ran for politics
was not a politician
he sees things in a through a prism that
not a lot of politicians
look through which is how can i truly do
things that will make
people's lives better make people find
common interests and opportunities
and figure out ways to resolve conflicts
that quite frankly
politicians have allowed to go on for
far too long
today's breakthrough really is historic
and we have had so many historic things
this week that
we shouldn't be uh minimizing the
significance of
all the different things that happened i
started the week with ambassador o'brien
uh
in uh jerusalem where we met with the
prime minister and then took the first
ever
flight commercial flight from israel to
united arab emirates we broke that
barrier which brought a lot of hope to
the middle east and for
the last years i've been listening to a
lot of people tell
us in the administration all of the
things we were doing wrong while we were
looking at this the wrong way
and what the president's done is he's
reversed now 20 years of bad foreign
policy in the middle east where we've
allowed our country to get trapped in
a lot of these wars that quite frankly
you know don't do much for our country
we have to make sure that we're keeping
our country safe and we need to figure
out how we can get people in the middle
east
uh and in europe to get along so that uh
we can spend our resources and our
treasure
uh on building up our countries and
building up our cities and helping our
citizens and
what you've seen through president
trump's first three and a half years is
he's
ended he's trying to end a lot of these
endless wars he's making peace
agreements he's bringing people together
and he's bringing our troops back home
to america while
figuring out how to get along with
different countries and reducing the
foreign threats that we have
second this week obviously we're in
saudi arabia and then saudi arabia
announced
the historic opening of their airspace
which again brings people in the middle
east closer together
and then yesterday bahrain announced the
same thing that they'll be opening up
their airspace
which again will allow flights and
better commerce and interaction between
peoples
to happen in the middle east in a much
quicker way today we announced another
normalization with israel which
quite frankly a lot of the divide
between
uh the anti-semitism that we have in the
world the terrorism we have in the world
comes from the notion that people are
divided and
and leaders will exploit divisions and
and religious differences to try and
keep people divided to cause conflict
often to maintain power for themselves
that they mask in an ideological way
this breakthrough again brings people
closer and shows people in the world
that
anything is possible if we push for it
and again
fundamentally president trump believes
that no matter who you are no matter
where you're from no matter what country
you're in
all people want the same thing which is
they want the opportunity to live freely
live better lives have economic
opportunity and live in peace and today
again is another historic step forward
that
politicians have spoken about for for
decades but haven't been able to deliver
on
and it's another uh victory for this
administration and really for the world
and so i want to give my congratulations
to the people of
serbia and the people of kosovo and uh
and to the people of europe and also to
the people of israel who will you know
reap tremendous benefits from this
agreement
so thank you
ambassador o'brien the us government
determined that russians are seeking to
quote
undermine faith in the electoral process
by spreading disinformation
about the accuracy of voter data for
expanded vote by mail
and president trump has also said that
state's voter data is not accurate
and he's telling people to not trust
that their mailing ballots are counted
so is the president helping russia
spread disinformation
well i think what we have with when it
comes to elections and what the
intelligence community has made very
clear is that
first you have china which has the most
massive
program to influence the united states
politically you have iran and you have
russia
these are all three adversary countries
that are seeking to disrupt our
elections
some of them prefer biden some people
say some of them prefer
prefer the president my position is it
doesn't matter what these countries want
that any country that attempts to to
interfere with free and fair elections
in the united states
has to be stopped uh we've taken
unprecedented action the president has
taken unprecedented
precedent action in funding uh the
the hardening of our election
infrastructure whether it's cyber
or otherwise obviously there are
tremendous concerns about mail-in
ballots
in the news every night there seems to
be another picture of some apartment
building in some city with thousands of
ballots stacked up in the foyer of the
apartment building of that sort of thing
so i think there are concerns about
mail-in ballots i think that
that those concerns are very different
than being concerned about foreign
adversaries trying to influence our
elections
and we've made a red line we've made it
very clear to the to the chinese to the
russians the iranians
and others that uh that haven't been
publicly disclosed uh
that anyone who tries to attempt to
anyone that attempts to interfere with
uh the american elections
will face uh extraordinary consequences
but russia said
russia mr a question on serbia in kosovo
then i just have a follow-up on that
um in terms of the the two parties
agreeing to freeze the recognition and
de-recognition campaigns
how long will that last and how
important is it to the administration
that serbia recognized both of those
independents so i think it's a year
freeze
so that that and that the idea of that
freeze is to give the parties time
uh to negotiate some of the political
issues that are between them and our
european partners there's a european
special envoy mr lychek
who's involved in those those talks
we're going to be supporting the
europeans and those political talks
uh there are a lot of issues involved
there whether it's eu membership
or mutual recognition so so there are a
number of issues that the
the serbs and kosovars will address will
support the europeans as they address
those issues
what we wanted to do in this agreement
was create some breathing space
for the parties to engage in those
without
the back and forth campaign of
recognition and derecognition what's
striking though is that as part of that
deal uh
kosovo was allowed and uh i shouldn't
say a lot that kosovo did make the
decision
as a muslim majority country to
normalize its relations with israel
uh to recognize israel and to to
establish an embassy
in jerusalem in the capital of uh of
israel
and uh and uh we appreciate the fact
that the uh
uh the the sir the serbs not taking a
position on that so
although we have d where we're gonna
have a suspension of the d recognition
campaign and the recognition campaign
it's two sides of the same coin
for the next year uh we were able to
achieve uh
uh with the courage and bravery of the
of the leaders of president vucic and
prime minister hauti and
and prime minister netanyahu we were
able to treat this you know very
remarkable breakthrough
again the second time in in now a month
it took i think 40 years to have two
muslim majority countries recognize
israel now we've had two muslim majority
countries recognize israel
in in less than a month so it's a
remarkable
achievement in the context of this this
overall freeze that will give the party
space to negotiate a deal
just to follow up on what ben was asking
you attorney general barr said earlier
this week
that he feels china is being more
aggressive in meddling in the election
than russia is
do you agree with that assessment i
agree with him 100 percent
and then i just want to follow up on
that and i've also got a question about
israel
and can you just characterize at this
point uh the extent
and the level to which both china russia
and other foreign countries are right
now
trying to spread disinformation about
the 2020 campaign
yeah look it it's it's hard to know uh
you know what impact they can have or
how they're spreading things i think
some of our tech companies are doing a
good job in in trying to police
uh whether it's facebook or twitter
others are trying to police things in a
way that they didn't before
our intelligence community is doing a
good job and trying to track these
things
uh dhs department of homeland security
uh with with increased funding from this
administration
uh is doing a good job in hardening our
infrastructure to make sure that uh
whether it's cyber infrastructure or
or physical infrastructure to make sure
that we're not susceptible to having our
uh the the the choice that the american
people make on election day change by
some foreign party
uh there's always going to be propaganda
there's always gonna be efforts to to
influence us
and again we know that the chinese have
taken that the most active role but uh
but the russians and the iranians and
and other countries are involved and
well as well so we're going to keep
monitoring it
and we're going to do everything we can
to protect uh the sanctity of our
election that's the foundation of our
democracy that's that's what makes us
america
and we're just not going to tolerate uh
you know these other countries trying to
get involved in our elections
the president had said uh in the oval
office earlier that there are other arab
countries that are also interested in
following
in the uae's footsteps can you talk
about where we're at on that process
what countries are
interested in turn that over to senior
vice president jared who's just returned
from the region
and uh and may be able to give you some
some background there thank you
not going to give as much background but
bottom line is is when we did the
israel united arab emirates deal that
caught a lot of people by surprise
because of the diplomacy that we were
able to do was to keep things private
obviously we had some great discussions
in the region
and and we are hopeful that more people
will want to move forward i think a lot
of the countries are
quite envious of the opportunities that
will now be available to unite to the
united arab emirates
in terms of mutual investments mutual
tourism
investing in technology security
partnerships so
we're seeing that that peace agreement
actually starting to really pick up a
lot of momentum and the delegations that
uh traveled with ambassador o'brien and
myself had a very very fruitful
discussions i think both sides were
surprised to see the eagerness of the
other side to move forward
and the level of getting agreements
adjudicated and completed is happening
much quicker than people thought
other countries again see the benefits
of having a middle east and
that's that's united and if you look at
what president trump
did on his first foreign trip he went to
saudi arabia and he outlined
very clearly what his strategy was going
to be what he saw as the challenges and
again if you just go from that snapshot
to now three and a half years later
you have middle east where isis is
defeated iran has been significantly
rolled back
uh the proxies that they've been funding
that have been spreading terror and
instability throughout the region
uh are are much shorter on cash than
they were before
he's brought the different sides
together and you know one story that i
think doesn't get enough attention is
the fact that
uh in the last election a lot of what we
were talking about was the
uh the spread of of extremism through
the internet and then also the funding
of terror groups
and president trump on that first trip
set up two different organizations in
saudi arabia one was the
counter-terror finance organization that
unified
a lot of the middle eastern systems with
our treasury department and we got more
transparency than we've ever had
that's significantly reduced the amount
of funding that's gone to terror groups
over the last
three and a half years the next thing we
set up was the counter
extremism center which has been fighting
the ideological battle
online and has been making really a
tremendous amount of progress
towards towards reducing the
misinformation
that's been used to pervert a lot of the
youth so we're seeing a lot of progress
in the middle east
and i think a lot of countries at this
point see it as see it as an
inevitability
that they're gonna have normal relations
with israel and that in order for people
to live better lives it's not dissimilar
to
serbia and kosovo where you know their
leaders are coming together to realize
that while there are differences
uh you know human beings want to get
together they want to have better lives
and opportunity
and the more that the leaders in the
middle east you know put old differences
behind
they're creating a new opportunity for a
new middle east and a bright future
where people can live securely practice
whatever religion they they choose
respect each other and have economic
opportunity which is
uh critical towards people you know
seeing a pathway to a better life
thank you this is actually if your
journey with two questions i'll just
combine them to make this easier
with the election coming up in two
months i'm curious as to how you feel
about what you've accomplished so far
but whether or not you feel pressure to
get more done
before november and secondly because i
know you
would have been part of these
conversations the time i do want to ask
you about that atlantic report that we
saw today
and how in a 2018 planning meeting for a
military parade
the president reportedly said he didn't
want amputees there
he said nobody wants to see that have
any of you but particularly you ever
heard the president talk like that
the answer is no look at what i find in
washington is is strange is sometimes
you'll have a couple unnamed sources and
the media treats that as a panacea
and then you'll have you know 10 people
on the record saying it didn't happen
and you give no credence to that that
does not represent the way that i've
seen the president
conduct himself he has tremendous
respect for the military for our
veterans he's
uh you know again the media tries to
ascribe a different way but you have to
look at his actions and
i think his actions have been incredible
towards supporting the military
strengthening the military and
strengthening
our veterans but with regards to uh your
question on timing
uh look deals uh deals happen when deals
are ready and and i do think that
you know you can't just come in wave a
magic wand and make impossible deals
happen right people
you know describe peace in the middle
east as something that's so it's it's
less a deal than more of a saying for
what is impossible
and it's taken a lot of building blocks
that had to be moved a lot of
untraditional moves when the president
moved the embassy to jerusalem
when he recognized the goal on heights
when he got out of the iran deal when we
did our economic conference in bahrain
it's probably 50 decisions that the
president's made that allowed him to
create a different course and each one
along the way you've had people like the
magazine you mentioned before
criticizing his foreign policy saying it
wasn't strategic it didn't have a plan
but again you know he's not a
traditional washington person and the
traditional washington people
have a track record of creating those
wars that we have sent our soldiers to
that have
you know led to a lot of them getting
you know killed or or hurt
and president trump's been ending those
wars and bringing his soldiers back home
and so
uh i would say deals happen when deals
are ready and the deal that you saw last
week
had nothing to do with the election it
had everything to do with the fact that
you know it's it's it's it's it's time
for the president to start harvesting
some of the accomplishments that he
spent years building
the foundation in order to achieve and
what i would say too is that
if you look at you know the world
foreign policy is is a big chess game
and you have a lot of pieces all over
the board in different
places and the president's been
masterful with the way that he's
built different relationships taken some
pieces off the board created different
issues in other places and i think that
he set the board up
very very well now to have continued
successes in the years ahead so
obviously the voters will decide
uh whether they give president trump
four more years but if they do
give him four more years i think you'll
see that iran is in a much weaker
position than they were four years ago
north korea we've had obviously a much
better situation they had four years ago
venezuela is in a different situation
the middle east went from a place that
you know again when president trump got
in
libya was a mess syria was a mess yemen
was a mess
all of our allies felt alienated iraq
was a mess and you see a much different
middle east today
than we had three and a half years ago
and that's not an accident that's
because president trump has had
a good strategy and he's worked very
hard
to to manifest that so now we're
starting to see some of the fruits from
his labor
but i do believe that we'll see even
more and more of that as time goes on so
we're set up for more successes
hopefully in the weeks ahead the months
ahead
but definitely in the years ahead to
take president trump's america first
foreign policy where he's making
trade deals for the first time that are
endorsed by our workers and our labor
unions that are bringing jobs back home
uh he's representing our farmers he's
representing our ranchers he's
representing our manufacturers
um and he's also ending these endless
wars
and figuring out how to bring our
soldiers home and and fighting the
threats from overseas so that americans
can prosper here at home
let me just weigh in for one second on
on your
last question about the atlantic article
which i i thought was really a
a sad article for for any magazine uh to
have published and while i wasn't in the
meeting
uh that's that's described there i've
worked for this president for two and a
half years first as a hostage ongoing
for last year's national security
advisor
in both those jobs i've had to uh to
meet extensive with the president
on uh on military issues whether it's a
hostage rescue mission or
uh uh how we're gonna deploy our troops
uh around the world
uh and i look i've had my current job i
have the sad duty of having to call him
sometimes in the middle of the night if
we lose
uh soldier sailor airman or marine uh in
combat which
which hasn't fortunately hasn't happened
since february or in a training accident
we've had some of those recently
i and i can tell you how hard those
calls are for me to make
but also for the president to receive
i've spent a bunch of time with the
president
on numerous trips to dover and uh and
seeing how he's been with the families
of our fallen heroes for those dignified
transfers
and i can tell you that's the toughest
job any president has is to go up to
dover
and and bring our fallen heroes home and
uh and and and mourn with their families
and grieve with their families and
comfort their families
uh and and i think if you if you talk to
any of them uh who had been there
uh uh for the transfers when the
president's been there
i i've seen him uh uh send me to dover
uh i've got you know when he couldn't go
because of scheduling issues or him
being overseas
uh and asking me to represent them there
i've been with them at walter reed where
we've seen our wounded heroes
and and the interaction between the
president and our wounded
uh heroes at walter reed is something
that's that's pretty
incredible to see i can tell you when we
discuss
options and sometimes we have to discuss
military options for some of the foreign
policy and national security issues that
we face
the president will ask me you know is
there a way that we can do this without
sending u.s soldiers
or sailors or marines or airmen into
harm's way
if we have to send them into harm's rate
way and it's going to be a tough
situation
like the baghdadi raid for example how
do we make sure we protect them
to the maximum extent available and
if that means putting three or four
levels of air power over them
uh it means doing that uh and and the
president
is is unstinting in in what he's willing
to to provide to our our troops
he's he's funded the military so we can
give them every tool necessary
uh to accomplish our missions and come
home safely uh
you know so i think if you talk to any
of any of us who work at the nfc any of
us have worn the uniform before whether
it's keith kellogg or
matt pottinger or myself or mark milley
over at the pentagon or
or those that spend a lot of time with
the president especially when military
matters are discussed when
when our current military personnel our
troops are discussed or veterans are
discussed
you're not going to find you know
anybody who's more sympathetic
to their situation the president united
states so i don't believe a word of what
was in the atlantic article because i've
had two and a half years
of working side by side with the
president i've never seen anything like
that
and and i thought it was it was pretty
disappointing that some magazine would
write that
ambassador brian on the topic of service
members first thanks to all three of you
for hosting this is the us going to
respond to russia's recent aggression
toward u.s forces in syria yeah so so
one of the things that we do
uh uh constantly is we respond to uh
uh to forces we were you know
operational security opsec is critical
to us anywhere our
soldiers sailors airmen and marines
operate whether it's in a maritime
environment
on land in the air and and we do see
aggressive behavior from the russians uh
we've seen that uh with with some of the
intercepts
uh that we've seen we've seen it over
the past couple years and how they've
interacted with our naval vessels
uh we've seen it in the screen on the
current uh uh
situation with the uh with the patrols
coming across
each other but i can tell you that you
know
american forces have rules of engagement
designed to protect them
uh to allow them to defend themselves uh
you know there was a
an unfortunate incident when uh russians
purportedly russian mercenaries
attempted to over one of our forward
operating bases in syria
uh a couple years ago that didn't end
too well for them
and because again president trump gave
our
our soldiers in that instance the
ability to defend themselves
uh you know with with you know air power
with with
long-range fires uh uh with their own
resources so
uh you know we're gonna make sure that
everywhere we we we operate whether it's
uh
operating a place that's in close
proximity to the russians to to any
other adversary
uh that the men and women in uniform
will be able to defend themselves and
protect themselves
has that warning been communicated to
the to the russian government yeah it's
been communicated to him very clearly
you were by the president uh it's been
communicated to at the appropriate level
it in russia specifically
i i'm not going to get into those
details because we want to have those
channels open but they've received a
very strong message
thank you thanks ambassador brian i
wanted to follow with a couple on china
i'm wondering what specifically you're
seeing from china that makes you
believe that they have a bigger harder
working electoral interference
operation than russia or other countries
and then based on that or
you know the litany of other concerns
that you've described about china if you
could kind of tell us the status of
efforts by the administration to either
go after
chinese firms or imports or diplomatic
uh issues with china yeah so let me talk
about the china situation overall so
so probably the the biggest failure uh
of
of american foreign policy over the past
40 years is how we've dealt with china
there was this mantra uh that that
somehow as china became richer
uh as we turned a blind eye to chinese
malign activity whether it's stealing
our ip or engaging unfair
trade practices or or bullying its
neighbors
if we just turned about bullying its own
people at tiananmen square if we would
turn the other cheek turn a blind eye
that china would become richer as it
became more as it became richer and the
middle class and china grew
they'd become more like us and we always
want to you know we want to believe that
that everyone wants to become like us
that they become more western more
democratic
in fact all the opposite occurred
china's human rights violations have
gotten worse and worse over the years
whether it's the uyghurs or
religious minorities uh or their
neighbors uh the
people who enjoyed democracy in hong
kong until just recently
uh the bullying of taiwan uh so so we've
seen very malign chinese activity the
theft of intellectual property has
gotten so bad that christopher wray the
director of the fbi
uh recently called it the greatest
wealth transfer in human history was a
theft by the chinese
of our intellectual property now that's
not just an
abstract concept okay that's sweat
equity that's american innovators that's
that's people that are putting their
put their whole life into dreams people
have invented things in their garages
people who built companies who
who've done everything they can to to to
create
uh an idea and turn an idea into reality
and then what happens
that idea gets stolen by china and it's
not just that they've lost the economic
value of of their innovation
or of their of their method of doing
business the chinese have taken it
sometimes using slave labor but using
cheaper labor often manufacture
products that compete at a lower price
and then put the original person who
invented the
the uh the technology out of business
and and then kill the industry for the
united states and
whole industries go to china whole
manufacturing plants go to china
i mean it's been really astounding chris
frey said that i also said that the fbi
is
opening a new espionage case against the
chinese every 10 hours
the scope of chinese activity against
the united states is relentless
it's we've never seen anything like it
there's nothing like this in the cold
war with the soviets
uh so so this president president trump
stood up to the chinese for the first
time in 40 years he put tariffs on the
chinese
uh we had a trade uh a phase one trade
deal that partially addressed some of
the unfair trade practices
and was a huge step in the right
direction but as soon as that was signed
we ended up with the the
was the president calls it the china
plague or the covid uh
outbreak here which made that you know
somewhat irrelevant
because of the tremendous losses we
suffered again because the chinese
wouldn't share the virus
samples with us early wouldn't let cdc
doctors come into china early to
investigate
wouldn't let who doctors come into china
to investigate
uh wouldn't restrict travel from china
to overseas especially to europe
when they were restricting travel within
china uh so
so again you know you know
you know well look when it comes to the
to the election
everything that they're doing across the
board whether it's political influence
through the confucius institutes
uh whether it's it's them trying to
influence uh
business leaders by saying if you don't
support us in the us
your companies won't have opportunities
in china and convey that to your
governors and
convey that to your political leaders uh
the massive i'm not going to go into all
the intelligence but but the the the
massive
activities of the chinese and the cyber
realm it's really an extraordinary thing
that we're facing
and again this is the first president
that stood up to the chinese
i hope he's not going to be the last
president who stands up to the chinese
and as difficult as the problem is let
me tell you i'm confident
in the united states of america i
believe at the end of the day
we're going to prevail we've got to
peace through strength foreign policy
finally
uh that we've been missing for for some
time now we're investing in our defense
we're taking strong action on the
diplomatic front uh against the chinese
we're taking strong action on the trade
front
uh we're protecting our intellectual
property uh we're not gonna you know
we we we've called out the communist
chinese party
uh we're taking strong action and have
massive sanctions
on the chinese for the first time
because of their treatment of the
uyghurs
or the treatment of democrats in hong
kong i think at the end of the day
our allies are going to follow us which
you've seen happening with 5g and huawei
and we're seeing many many countries
including our closest allies turning
away from the chinese
turning away from huawei and going with
trusted providers on
on 5g so i think at the end of the day
america is going to prevail i think
president trump's vision
of free markets and free women and free
men uh
is an attractive message not just to our
allies but but to even people within
china so
you know i'm confident in the future but
i'll tell you this is a challenge it's a
heck of a challenge
but but i'm convinced that under
president trump's leadership the
american people are up to the challenge
i think we'll turn things over to if
there's if there's a closer if there's a
code
if there's a kosovo serbia question
raise your hand and otherwise i'm going
to turn things over to uh
right here mr ambassador thank you
actually
i appreciate your calling on me but this
question may be more appropriate for
rick or jared in the sense that they
deal with both policy and politics
and if i may as you know in 1992
president george h.w bush ran for
reelection largely
on his foreign policy successes and
americans largely
rejected him for a second term what
makes you think
based upon the announcement that you
made today regarding
kosovo and serbia the announcement that
came out just a few weeks ago regarding
israel
and the uae that americans are more
focused on foreign policy
that they care about foreign policy and
that these announcements mean something
to them
look i think that these announcements
are about president trump keeping his
promise to
take on the hard fights to end the
endless wars and to bring his troops
home and to keep americans safe and i
think that that's what it shows
it also shows that president trump has a
track record of continuing
uh to get things done you know he he
really has a great track record
for success our economy was going great
until the
until obviously the virus hit we we did
a dip people predicted we'd be down to
25
unemployment and that we wouldn't get to
single digits unemployment until early
next year
and obviously we had a great jobs report
that came out today and we have more
coming so
the answer is is people will vote for
whoever they think will make their lives
better
president trump just happens to be doing
a great job at foreign policy delivering
a lot of wins that
had previously plagued the last
administrations and quite frankly the
last administrations that had a lot of
mistakes and a lot of adventurism that
you know got us into these uh tough
situations in these regions and today's
uh agreement and all the success this
week just shows again that president
trump is
uh is is getting things done and and
keeping americans safe and keeping his
promise the american people so
but he's not running on his foreign
policy he's running on his track record
as
uh the president who built the greatest
economy um
in our country and and somebody's going
to keep americans safe and continue to
get things done for them
another question for both of those
please uh ambassador grinnell uh
clearly uh you were effective here as
the special envoy
to these talks between serbia and kosovo
but i wanted to ask you about another
initiative you led
uh last year you kicked off the trump
administration push to decriminalize
homosexuals
i'm gonna just talk about custom service
i don't know if you can find it on a map
but this is atrocious i have to tell you
guys you might be too young
to understand what this issue is about
maybe the older journalists
should step up and say this is a big
deal
this is a big issue i'm astounded
at what happens in washington d.c and
especially in this room
i i got to tell you get substantive
maybe it's too complicated of an issue
for you all
right i believe this is the first time
we've had the opportunity to speak with
these individuals
okay but today let's take a little time
and talk about this 21-year issue
peter i mean 21 years shoot we're
getting the same
questions that are all politics i don't
you guys don't understand what's
happening outside of washington dc
people aren't listening to you anymore
it it's really a crisis in journalism
and i think it's because people are too
young to understand issues like kosovo
and serbia
how about a substantive question i don't
think any of us came here for a lecture
about our questioning
i didn't the question i would like to
ask you the question i would like to ask
you is
is it accurate to say that it's full
economic normalization
there was some ambiguity as to whether
that is what the deal is about and
what do you mean by full well i that's
the question for you
i don't know it's a question for you
what's your definition of full
this is economic normalization for
whatever the two parties could bring
together
a whole bunch on rail a whole bunch on
water
a whole bunch on a whole different
industries
so i could just say working towards
economic normalization is that fair
no i think it's incredible economic
normalization
air rail motor
opening borders uh a whole bunch of
industries so again i don't know what's
missing
and i defer to you to say what
what's outside of of economic
normalization that's not included here
you tell me
genuinely asking so that we can write
our stories accurately
can we say that they i would say it's an
economic normalization deal
and then from you know a few months ago
when
they pulled down the tariffs to today
what is the substantive you've read to
the agreement you haven't put
it out it's up um a whole bunch
a whole bunch has changed since the
dropping of the tariffs
the tariffs were the political sticking
point of why
we couldn't have the parties come
together the serb side was not going to
even start negotiations
when there is a 100 tariff from the
coast of ours
the substantive thing to change today
like what is there's a whole bunch of
stuff that changed today
in terms of economic development in
terms of
identification for uh even some
political problems that are going to be
resolved
um i i would really refer you to
to look at the entire agreement one one
sticking point that
has been for a long time
something that the two sides couldn't
agree on was the recognition of diplomas
if you were trained as a nurse in serbia
and your degree was from a serbian
university you couldn't get a job in
kosovo
because you weren't qualified you didn't
have the proper certificate
that now with this agreement goes away i
think that's economic normalization for
people who have certificates and dental
high
hygiene in pharmacies
uh pharmaceutical experts there are a
whole bunch of people who could not
work simply because they didn't have the
proper
career credentials and this
agreement completely will recognize all
diplomas
from universities from either side i'll
give you one more example
american companies were telling us they
were pulling out like rental car
companies
because if you rented a car in kosovo
you couldn't drive over the border you
couldn't leave
so people who were wanting to
go for tourist purposes or to visit the
region
or to try to do business deals they
couldn't
actually leave with that rental car
and so we had american businesses
beginning to pull back to say just
doesn't make sense
uh the europeans were complaining just
as much there was a perceived conflict
and i think what we have now with
this historic air agreement rail
agreement motor agreement
all of the things that they've committed
to implement will create
normalized commerce and that is
something that has never been tried
we have been stuck on literally verbs
and symbolism in terms of negotiations
on the politics
and we're going to try something new the
president of serbia said
today to local reporters that um i can
read their quote we have made a
bilateral agreement with the u.s
not kosovo can you clarify what that
means
yeah well first of all i don't i would
never try to clarify what president
means when he's talking to the serbian
press uh
i can tell you what he said inside the
oval office which was that this was a
historic
agreement to normalize the region he
talked about
the mini shenzhen zone which is now
going to be an economic
region so i think it might have been
lost in translation a little bit
but make no mistake that the agreement
that they signed is definitely
an agreement to expand commerce in the
region
and there's no question that when you
look at
uh diplomas for instance or the one-year
freeze on
recognition and de-recognition um
on even the rail agreement there's a
there's a depart
us department of energy study
that will take place on a lake that is
largely in kosovo a portion is in serbia
we're going to do a feasibility study to
figure out what kind of jobs can be
created
in around the water there's no question
that that's a shared
uh agreement did they sign an agreement
with each other or did they sign an
agreement with the united states
they signed an agreement to work with
each other
they didn't they did not sign with the
united states we're not a signature
president trump signed something we we
watched him
yeah correct what did he sign what did
he see
he signed a how would you describe it a
basically a letter acknowledging that
they are going to work together
and do this agreement maybe it's easiest
to ask this way
can you just lay out very specifically
what each gentleman signed today
what was that they both signed
agreements to work together to normalize
their
economic and commerce relationship the
agreements are not the same right
they are 99.9 the same but of course
there's
there's one there's one point that's
different at the very bottom
which is that serbia is going to
move its embassy by july of next year
that's on the serbian agreement and for
kosovo
their last point everything is identical
to the last point the last point for
kosovo
is that they have a mutual recognition
with israel
and and the infamous item 10 they were
mentioning yesterday
that's taken out right i mean that's
what president
was saying today yeah first of all it's
wrong to say that that was item 10
none of these were uh numbered so i
don't know where that that came from
when we were negotiating there were a
whole bunch of issues on the table
uh a whole a lot of things were changed
and edited as you can imagine
in negotiations that this does um for
someone to
leak a partial sentence and pretend like
this was the
entire agreement i think is typical
politics
but nothing was numbered certainly
wasn't number 10
and nothing is agreed to until
everything is agreed to so something
leaked out in terms of negotiation but
it was partial and i think it was
highlighted in a way that that gave a
false impression
let me just ask one more thing uh maybe
it's semantics but we
have been having this dilemma for quite
a while now when you say
shenzhen do you think shenzhen is in
china's
uh province or sheng again like in
europe
because we couldn't figure it out
so just just to clarify what did
president trump sign
so we're not a party to the agreement
and i guess this is super important to
remember is that
we didn't come and there's a whole bunch
of conspiracy theories out there about
what we were coming to the table with
we were not forcing the two parties to
do anything this was a real
chance for the two parties to talk we
didn't have any grand scheme
we didn't have any absolute demands
we certainly didn't have i don't even
want to say the word of
of what some conspiracy theorists say
about past agreements
with land would was never discussed in
my presence
what the two parties did was agree
to move forward economically what
president trump signed
is as a witness to say this is a great
agreement
and the united states is happy for it
right would you support it yeah
eu has tried and failed for the past 10
years to accomplish what your team
is celebrating today um how confident
candidly all of you how confident are
you that
leadership in the eu leadership around
the world is looking at this as a
template for success
or are is it going to take a whole
generation of new leadership in order to
kind of
study what you have accomplished here
and in the middle east so so i
i really have to own this to say i think
we all failed
for the last 10 years i wouldn't just
put this on the europeans
i would say that it's the establishment
foreign policy thinking
that has failed both in in
europe and here berlin paris london
washington dc um
we had great support from the french and
and from the germans
to try this new way of economic
development and let's also be very clear
the europeans have a lot of economic
development that they can do
and they will do they're the the team is
meeting on monday in brussels
and so there's a whole new aspect to
this um and and let me also just
say on on the question on this item 10
um one of the reasons why we were
willing to not talk about it here
was because it's on the agenda monday in
europe and we're trying to team this
with the europeans to say what can you
do what can we do to kind of move this
forward
so on monday that issue will be dealt
with
very much in detail
in brussels and so i felt confident that
we could kind of let
and work with the europeans on this
issue and so that's why it was
it was taken out but at the end of the
day
we need the europeans we need them to to
help on this issue
we will help them but their calculus on
the political side is a little bit
different because both kosovo and serbia
want eu membership and so they're
looking at this very long
path of how to get into the eu
we're supportive of our european
partners
on their process but we are not making
any demands
uh we're not a member of the eu so we
don't have a seat at that table
but we certainly will help in any way
possible but that is a separate
political process i think
that that also complicates it because of
the
uh eu membership rules and regulations
and processes
thank you guys very much
so the president is bringing back the
hottest economy in modern history
today's job numbers are proof
there were 1.4 million jobs added in
august speeding expectations
unemployment fell by 1.8 percent
also beating expectations now nearly 50
percent of job losses since march have
been reversed a clear
v-shaped recovery also i want to address
what is
quite clearly fake news the story in the
atlantic
has been categorically debunked by
eyewitnesses and contemporaneous
documents
the atlantic claims quote when president
trump cancelled a visit to the ain marn
american cemetery near paris in 2018
he blamed reign for the last minute
decision according to the atlantic
saying the helicopter couldn't fly and
that secret service wouldn't drive him
there
neither claim was true says the atlantic
that has been
debunked behind me you will see a
email from one of the president's
military aides that clearly
reads we are a bad weather call for
today's
lift the atlantic reporting is based on
four
cowardly anonymous sources who probably
do not even exist
meanwhile within hours ten sources
ten went on the record debunking these
lies
eight with first-hand knowledge stating
on the record
one common truth that this story is
false
it never happened adding to the eights
that were previously counted i'm
bringing you two
new ones one is from derek lyons steph
sacra
staff secretary and counselor to the
president who says this
i was with the president the morning
after the scheduled visit
he was extremely disappointed that
arrangements could not be made to get
him to the site
and that the trip had been cancelled i
have worked for the president for his
entire administration
one of my responsibilities is working
with him on the many letters he
signs to the families of our nation's
fallen heroes
in all my time at the white house derek
writes i have never
heard him utter a disparaging remark of
any kind about our troops
in my view he holds the brave men and
women of our armed forces in the highest
regard
i also bring to you today another quote
from a former and member
member of this administration dan walsh
deputy chief of staff former deputy
chief of staff who is also a retired
military officer i got off the phone
with dan just before coming out here and
he wanted me to share with you all
i can attest to the fact that there was
a bad weather call in france and that
the helicopters
were unable to safely make the flight
overall the president's support
and respect for our american troops
passed and present
is unquestionable and dan recounted to
me several
events he went on with the president
like a world war
ii veteran who flew with the president
on the helicopter in normandy
visits the president had with our
wounded warriors special ops teams who
came to the oval office
um including the team that got al-bag
daddy and they brought along
conan the dog as well um he met with
families at the army navy game he does
this routinely i mean at the world
series when he got an opportunity to go
watch the nationals
he brought veterans with him and i can
tell you from what i've seen for this
from this president i have heard him
describe
his visits to walter reed and in detail
and uh the angst he has had
and the compassion he has had and the
hurt he has had viewing these warriors
who have um been been absolutely injured
um in the line of duty and are
courageous heroes and i've heard him
recount
how meaningful those visits are i've
also seen him just a day before this
article came up
talk about there was rain and lightning
popping around and he said i want to go
out there and i want to talk to
our world war ii veterans this is
america's greatest generation and the
president
holds them in the highest of regards so
why would a publication
abandon all journalistic integrity and
publish this story
it's because the liberal activists at
the atlantic are uninterested in the
truth and they are only
interested in peddling conspiracy-laden
propaganda because here is the one truth
no one
and i mean no one loves and cares for
our service men and women
as much as president donald j trump
thank you
