- It's challenging to go to the UN
and participate in the
system where the UN says
we have this formula,
and every country gets
to have a certain amount of
people get jobs at the UN.
So they look at the formula and they say,
oh, well, how many people
do we have from Nigeria?
Oh, we need more.
Go hire people into the
system from Nigeria.
It tends to not be whether
or not someone is qualified
or has the skill set,
it is, are we being fair and equal
on the disbursement of jobs?
- We're hearing a lot of this idea lately.
All over the place.
- Right.
And that's where it breaks down.
Because you're hiring people
that really don't know
what they're doing, and they waste money,
and the UN becomes a jobs program.
(upbeat music)
- Hey, I'm Dave Rubin, and
this is "The Rubin Report".
As always, guys, make sure you subscribe
to our YouTube channel and
click that notification bell
so that you have a small chance
of actually seeing our
videos in your feed,
and more importantly, joining me today
is the former US spokesman at the UN,
and currently the American
ambassador to Germany.
Rick Grenell, welcome
to "The Rubin Report".
- Pretty amazing.
This is really cool.
- Pretty amazing,
this is really cool.
I gotta tell ya, I thought,
and my team thought,
we're bringing in our first ambassador.
The ambassador to Germany.
Big country, important powerful guy.
We thought you were
gonna be in a sharp suit,
you'd bring us German
chocolates and treats,
things like that.
I have never had a more
casual guest in this studio,
Mr. Ambassador.
- I would say that
this is because of you, right?
- (laughs) Yeah.
- Because I figured I'm
in a suit all the time.
But if Dave is gonna interview me,
I better be pretty casual.
I know your crowd is pretty casual.
- My crowd is casual.
I feel like I should be wearing,
I have that same UGG hoodie.
I could be, should we stop right now?
- But do you have the same T-shirt?
- I don't have the gay mustache T-shirt.
- Available at Target.
- Is that a Target?
- Yeah, it's Target.
- You truly are
a man of the people.
- Yeah.
- All right, we got a lot to talk about.
So I realized yesterday when
I was doing a little research
on ya, 'cause that's what I do--
- Don't believe it, don't believe it.
- That even though,
right, everything they say
about you must be true, right?
I'm pretty sure that's how it
works online and Wikipedia.
They're not messing with it or anything.
- Right.
- But even though we've
been friends for a couple years now
and I know you pretty
well, I realized that
I actually don't know
anything about your life,
like, childhood or anything.
I don't even know where you're from.
And then I started doing
some reading and I was like,
nah, let's pick it up here,
'cause you're the ambassador of Germany.
Where the hell are you from?
How did this whole thing happen?
- I was born in Muskegon, Michigan.
I'm the youngest of four kids,
and so my parents moved to California
in Redwood City, actually.
And so I went to elementary
school in Redwood City,
moved back to Michigan in seventh grade.
So I went to junior high and high school
all in Jenison, Michigan.
And then I went, my
parents are Evangelical,
which I know you know.
I grew up Evangelical and I went
to Evangel College, which is the national
liberal arts school
for the Assemblies of
God Evangelical movement.
Great school, had an amazing experience.
Small, it's in Springfield, Missouri.
And then worked on Capitol
Hill for a little while.
Worked on presidential campaign of '92,
and then went to the Kennedy School
and got a Masters at the Kennedy School
and then kinda kept doing political stuff.
- Were you always into politics as a kid?
- Yes, which is crazy.
I loved the media, I loved
watching the news with my dad.
And we'd sit down together
and watch the news
and talk about these issues.
My dad was pretty political in a sense
that he liked to talk about politics
and would always be involved
in the local congressional
race of supporting somebody,
basically, and stuffing envelopes.
And so he gave me that kind of excitement.
I like the pure competition
of it in many ways.
I'm a very competitive person.
There's nothing like having two campaigns
that are jostling, and then
there's an election day,
right, there's like a finish line.
There's a day that everybody
votes, who did it better?
And who do I like?
And that pure competition--
- Well, that all depends
on what the Russians decide.
- That's true, that's true.
But I like that whole
competition thing about politics.
And I think a lot of people go into it
because of the pure fun and
political competition of it.
I also am geeky and care about policy.
And I love to dig deep on
policy and make change,
make the world a better place.
- Does it shock you
the amount of people that are in politics
that are endlessly miserable
related to politics?
Like, I see so much of that now,
where it's like, these
people who think that
all of their life and their
whole salvation is politics.
It's like, it only can
lead you to disaster
or depression somehow.
Where if you have a certain different look
where it's not everything,
it's not everything,
then you can kinda have
a smile on your face
when you talk about it.
- I think that it's largely
if you live in Washington DC.
I mean, it's an incestuous
town of people who,
on both sides of the aisle their kids go
to the same school, and
they go to the same church,
and so they protect each other
and they live in Washington
and they just kind of flip.
When it's the Obama Administration,
all my democrats friends are connected
and they include me in the
local dining experience
and social circles,
and then when my guy
is in and they're out,
I'll take care of them, and
lobbyists are all there,
and the whole city is growing.
It's such a terrible place.
The real world outside of Washington, DC,
I think gives you perspective.
And so I have worked
in the political realm
for, like, more than 25 years.
I've only lived in
Washington from 1993 to 1995.
I got out, I can't stand going back.
And I think that gives you perspective.
It's not unlike here, in
LA, where we both live.
If you're a part of Hollywood,
and you're working at a studio
and all you live and breathe is the blogs,
and the TV, media, Hollywood stuff,
you don't get a very good perspective.
It's the actors who move to Atlanta,
or who move their production
companies to Chicago
or Montana who I think
have better perspective
and they do better work 'cause they have
just a different view.
- How has, then,
being in Germany, living in
Germany as our Ambassador
in Germany changed your
perspective on American politics
when you see it from,
not just living in DC,
but actually living abroad?
- Yeah.
So I actually asked for the job
to be Ambassador of Germany.
And one of the reasons why
is my eight years at the UN
taught me this kind of lesson.
If you've ever been to the UN and you walk
into that huge general assembly hall,
193 placards looking at you,
it feels like the super friends,
the hall of super friends.
- I took the tour when I
was in, like, ninth grade.
That's the only time I was there.
- Yeah, it does feel like
the hall of super friends.
But as an American--
- It's more like
the legion of doom, though.
- Yeah, for sure.
When you walk in that hall
and you see 193 countries,
as an American, you quickly say,
where are my European friends?
Because we view the world the same way
when it comes to democracy,
rule of law, human rights.
You're not trying to
convince European countries
that they shouldn't shove a
gay person off a building.
We have the relatively
the same perspective.
And so I found that in
my eight years at the UN
in dealing with the Europeans,
we tend to, as Americans, negotiate
with what we call the E3,
the British, the French, and the Germans.
Our experience with the E3 became that
the Germans were the weakest of the E3.
They were dragging down our
negotiations with the Europeans.
- Can you give me an
example of how they would
do that sort of thing?
- So I'll give you
a recent example.
I would say when the
UN finally came around
and gave a second report
that Bashar al-Assad
had gassed children and gassed people.
And we, the West, the
Western Alliance wanted
to respond to that.
The Americans approached the British
and they said, "We're in".
We approached the French and
they said, "What do you need?"
We approached the Germans and they said,
"We don't like war, we're against war."
We've had this special history
and so we really don't want
to participate in war anymore.
And so I've actually
said to Chancellor Merkel
and to the Foreign Minister,
and to lots of people of Germany,
that's the wrong lesson of World War II.
The lesson of World War
II for the Germans is
that they should be the first ones
to recognize a madman
who's gassing children,
and that they should be
in the front of the bus.
And they should say, let's form a collate.
Now, I get that because
of their special history,
they don't wanna do it alone anymore.
And so they literally want
to be surrounded by multi-lateralism.
Great.
But you had that with the French,
the British, and the Americans.
And they still couldn't participate.
So I think we're in a
slide over the last years,
and one of the things I wanted to solve
was this Germany first economic model,
but Germany wanting to have
a Switzerland foreign policy
where they're gonna be
friends with everybody
and just cash in.
I mean, Germany is
really the first country
in terms of the economics to
be a Germany first policy.
And America first is only coming along
a little while later, but the Germans have
been doing it for awhile.
- So that's a pretty big split, sort of,
if Germany is going,
Germany first economically,
but then on the world stage,
we kinda gotta dip out,
'cause of our history.
Did Merkel respond to
you in a positive way
when you said that
maybe we should be more,
we, you should be more involved?
- Look, I think the Chancellor does have
an innate good reaction
to say we should do more
and we should participate,
and we should pay our NATO
bills even though they're not,
and try to get to that spending--
- [Dave] Yeah, I wanna talk
about that, by the way.
- I do think that she thinks
that that's important,
but that it's a lofty goal
because they really want
to bring the public along first,
and no politician in Germany wants
to step out and be a leader.
Now, remember the German
word for leader is fuhrer,
which is too close to the word
that they used for Hitler.
And so many times, talking
about being a leader
conjures up really negative stereotypes.
And so try being the US
Ambassador to Germany,
asking the Germans to do more
without using the word leader.
How do you say, you can't say be a leader.
You have to say, step
out and what do you say?
You can't even say, lead by example.
- Do you think there is,
like, an actual sort of
psychological condition, then,
that they will ever be able
to get out of?
Do you think it's just, like, so embedded
in the ethos of what it
means to be German now,
because of the history?
- I mean, first of all,
let's just say what it is,
it's pretty serious.
It's an incredible monumental stain
that lasts through generations.
And I'll tell you one of the things,
the dynamics that we've
experienced in Germany
is that there are now
young people who are trying
to be tech entrepreneurs
or run businesses.
And you hear little whisper
campaigns of to say,
oh, they have their money or their house
because they were
sympathizers with the Nazis.
Or they didn't stand up against the Nazis.
So there is still this
very societal competition
of finger pointing, who
was good, and who was bad?
And imagine if we had to
talk about our grandparents
as whether or not they stood up,
or whether or not they took cover
and they tried to do what they had to do.
Pretty incredible kind of
monumental things to think about.
And so I would say one
of the things that I see
is we, as the Westerners,
when we hear never again,
we all think never again means never again
will you slaughter people
and get to the point
where your hatred becomes the
systematic killing, right?
Never again, for many
Germans, means never again
are we gonna have any military role.
They don't necessarily
believe that never again means
you can have a working military
that defends your country
and participates in good
around the world, and
never again just means
don't let it get out of hand.
But for them, in many ways,
never again just means
no military operations whatsoever.
- God, I mean, we could
do show upon show of that.
I'm sure in Germany they're
doing that all the time
and trying to work through that.
- You'd be surprised, the German
media is pretty groupthink.
Not many step out.
- Well, I told you last night
about my experience with the German media.
- (laughs) Oh, yeah.
- They called me--
- I could have solved that for you so easy
if you would have just said to me,
I got a call from a "Speigel" reporter,
I would have said, Dave, hang up now.
I mean, come on, they've made up stories
about Americans constantly,
they got caught making stories.
- They got caught, yeah.
- And then they took 'em
a year to kind of admit it.
And the whole time they're saying,
oh we have the best fact-checking
system in the world.
They couldn't fact check
to save their life.
It was like--
- Just for the people
that don't remember,
they put a picture of me
on the cover of the magazine saying
I'm the grand illusionist
of the Alt Right.
And you can see my big
American flag over there,
and I was sitting in front of
the American flag like this,
and it looks like I'm some,
like, Alt Right leader.
And they're talking about
my Scandinavian furniture,
which is IKEA, and my
fancy Italian coffeemaker,
which is Nespresso, I
mean, the whole thing.
All right, anyways, side bar.
Let's go back--
- I could have
saved you that pain.
- I know.
I mean, how did I not call you?
- Yeah, I don't know.
- God, I'm an idiot.
All right, well, let's
back up for a second,
because you mentioned your
Evangelical upbringing,
and then you showed me your
gay mustache shirt, Rick.
I thought, "This is not possible."
I thought Evangelicals can't be gay,
or Christian theology and
homosexuality are at odds,
or all of these things, yet you strike me
as a decent functioning person,
and we've had dinner with you and Matt
and all that good stuff.
So make some sense out of this.
- You know, I think being gay
makes me a better Christian,
to be honest.
I'll tell you this.
I have felt guilty, and
this is an admission,
that when I had cancer and
I was really kind of down
in terms of my physical outlook,
I felt like I prayed more
and I was closer to God
because I was in need, right?
I feel guilty about that
as I go through life
and of course the ups and downs of life
when things are going well,
you don't pray as much.
You don't really think about God
or the existence of the Creator.
And I started to feel
really guilty about that.
And so I just think
that every person needs
to have, whether it's a group of people,
or a philosophy of some sort
that keeps 'em in check.
That kind of questions
what life's ups are about.
And so for me being gay, I
think I get so much challenge
that you can't be gay and be a Christian,
that it makes me a better Christian.
I'm an imperfect follower of Christ.
I fail every single day.
But for me, what's the
beauty of this is that
the Bible talks about having
new mercies every morning
and grace every morning.
I get up every morning and I just think,
"Thank God that I believe in the Creator,
"and that every morning
I have a new beginning
"and a new chance to prove myself
"in this totally human
state that fails every day."
And so, I was made this way, right?
And the Bible says, "Everyone is fearfully
"and wonderfully made."
I was made this way, I was born gay.
So the fact of the matter
is is that I fully embrace
the fact that I was made
this way in the image of God,
and you can be gay and be a Christian,
and there's no problem with it.
I think the world is also
changing within the church,
that the church really believes that,
and when you look at the biblical
kind of mantra about this,
you really have to go back
to the original language,
the original Greek and really understand
what the words were when the translation
in the 1950s somehow takes
the word homosexuality
and puts it into a different context.
I don't know if you know Peter Gomes.
He passed away, but--
- No.
- Peter was the minister
at Harvard Memorial Church.
And he was conservative, and
black, and gay, and a minister.
And he was an incredible,
just literally an incredible mentor
to me to think about how God made me
and what the Bible says
about really a whole bunch
of these kind of 20th century issues.
The subjugation of women,
immigration, all these.
He wrote this book called "The Good Book",
and he takes all these
issues and goes back
to show how both sides of
the argument over the years
have used the Bible in their favor.
They've said things like God has told me
to have this position.
And you manipulate it on both sides.
And he kind of showed, look,
stop with the manipulators and look
at what the original language says.
I love things like that.
It's like an exogenesis
of the words and the time.
- Yeah, if you think that
something particularly good
or interesting is happening
with the evangelical community, generally,
I was telling you last night,
I mean, I spoke at Liberty University
in front of 14,000 people,
they know that I'm gay.
I didn't sense that one person cared
in some sort of negative sense.
I walked around campus,
everybody was incredibly nice.
The amount of emails that
I get from evangelicals
in the middle of country who, actually,
most of them say, they
usually say they don't care
that I'm gay, or they
don't even know, often.
And they'll say, I was
watching you for two years
until I even found out.
And it's like, I don't even care.
Which is sort of how you want it to be.
- Then, like, all of the sudden
do the shirt, announce it.
- And now you've really
blown my cover here with
your gay mustache shirt.
But do you sense that
something has shifted
with evangelicals where maybe
during the George W. Bush re-election year
where they made gay
marriage such a wedge issue,
and suddenly evangelicals
were not behaving, maybe,
Christ-like, or however you wanna put it.
- So I think there's two issues in there
that I would confront.
One on the political side, yes.
It's completely changing.
I went to the 1992 convention in Houston,
and I've been to every
convention since then.
And let me tell you, the 1992 convention,
when speeches got up there
and were very anti-gay,
it's much different.
- So this is,
that was Bob Dole?
- No, that was Bush/Quail re-election.
- Oh, okay, okay, yeah.
- And so,
we've made dramatic changes.
Every four years, I can see the convention
and the political process
completely changing.
But let's also talk about the fact
my brother is a very well-known
evangelical minister.
I've got nephews who
are evangelical pastors,
and so I know this crowd really well.
And I think there's a difference
between the political
nature of the issues by them
embracing things like the
decriminalization of homosexuality
around the world.
They don't think countries
should arrest someone
for being gay, or kill
someone for being gay.
Evangelicals believe that.
They say, no, no, no,
you shouldn't do that.
It's quite different, though, to say,
are you gonna jump up
and down and be happy
that two men are getting
married, and do you approve that?
I don't necessarily need the
answer to the second question.
- Yeah, I don't, either.
- I don't go around
and approve the marriages
of people in my own family--
- (laughs) Right.
- Or people that come
into my life, I don't sit there and say,
I don't know if this should work.
I don't agree with this.
- Right, we know plenty
of straight couples like that,
but I don't wander around
all day worrying about it
or--
- Or if you did bring it up
every single time you were around 'em,
you probably wouldn't have
a very good friendship if,
when you were at dinner with them to say,
like, I don't get how this works.
Like, you're an accomplished
person and you're a slouch.
(Dave laughing)
You just don't
say things like that, and we don't judge
other people's marriages, so to speak.
And so that's worked with me.
I just say to people,
I don't need applause.
I don't need you to jump up and down
and scream happiness that I am gay.
I just want to be equal.
And so I think there is an element,
I hate to say it like this
'cause this is way too simple.
But it is an agree to disagree.
- Well, as long as the rights are equal,
I'm fine.
- Correct.
- You can think whatever you want.
I mean, this is, people get pissed
because I'm friends with Ben Shapiro.
And it's like, he has his
orthodox Jewish perspective
on gay marriage.
He's not trying to stop
me from being married.
He may not be thrilled personally
that I'm married, or have
his own religious belief
attached to it--
- But he's not
denying you your rights.
- Yeah, so what do I expect
in this world, do you know what I mean?
Or what do I expect from this country,
in a free country?
- I went to the 1993
March on Washington for,
when Bill Clinton and
Al Gore had taken over.
And that march was incredible
because I'm gonna get the number wrong
and somebody's gonna come at me.
- Oh, back on that, yeah.
- Yeah, I think it was,
like, a million people, right?
Gays, and lesbians,
and straight supporters
all came out to Washington and marched.
And it was dramatic in that I think it was
at that point that things became political
on gays and lesbians
and the LGBT movement.
Before then, we kind of
all were on the outs.
And so we were together
when Washington people,
Republicans and Democrats
were not making this
the wedge issue.
But I will say that
the march on Washington
left our community with a sense of,
we just want equality.
And if you go back to that march, Dave,
the mantra was tolerance and diversity.
We recognized that other
people were not going
to agree with us, and our whole request,
our ask was just embrace diversity.
We know you don't agree with everything
that we stand for,
but let's just be tolerant of each other.
Remember, hate is not a family
value was this whole thing.
Now, the entire leadership
of the LGBT movement
in Washington, DC is
all about cancel culture
and absolutely pushing
people out of the argument
to say, I don't even
wanna be friends with you
if you voted for Trump or
you're a gay conservative.
I can't even fathom
being friends with you.
- Well, now they also wanna
take your gayness away, right?
So they'll write articles,
that famous article
in "Out Magazine" about how
Peter Thiel is not gay--
- Enough.
- Because it's not
who you have sex with or who
you love that makes you gay,
it's actually a political way of thinking
that makes you gay, which is psychotic.
- Which is why GLAAD has this
whole, like, immigration.
And it's a movement
beyond anything that has
to do with gays and lesbians.
And I think they're
trying to survive, right?
- Well, it's not just the
cops need a certain amount
of crime type of thing.
It's like, we got equal rights.
And not to say everything is
perfect and there are some--
- Right, but I work around
the world and let me tell ya,
people around the world who
are fighting for equality,
and I really mean this,
they are totally annoyed
at the New York, Hollywood,
West Hollywood gays
who raise a lot of money
for black tie events
and aren't doing a thing to help
our brothers and sisters in Lebanon
who are getting arrested, or
look what happened in Zambia,
they literally prosecuted
two guys for being gay
and the court said,
"Oh, no we're doing this
"because they're gay."
They didn't make up some pedophilia thing.
- No, no, but if you
say something about that
you're somehow racist, right?
Or you're a xenophobe
or something like that
because you're pushing your values.
But some values are better than others.
That must be the number one thing
you have to fight all the time, right?
At the UN, or over the years at the UN
that you had to fight
that now as Ambassador.
- Well, I'm now fighting this thing
at the State Department where,
when it comes to the
decriminalization campaign.
- So you're spearheading
this thing, right?
- I'm spearheading this thing.
There's 69 countries that
criminalized homosexuality.
10 will kill you for being gay,
and we've launched a process,
we've done a whole bunch.
We're trying to stay out of the media
in terms of telling
them every little thing
because the media's pretty hostile
to something like this.
We're making great progress.
- The media is pretty hostile
to something like decriminalizing--
- From the Trump Administration.
- Right, yeah.
- Honestly.
- I know, well, we'll get to that.
I was about to tell you a
second ago that we've talked
for about a half hour or so,
and until about a minute ago,
the T-word had not come up
yet, which I think is a record.
- Yeah.
- But so we'll get
to that in a second, but sorry, go ahead.
- But the de-criminalization campaign,
we're making so much progress.
Granted this is gonna be a long fight,
trying to convince 69 countries
to do a change in domestic laws
to not criminalize homosexuality.
And that's all this is is step one
is just to work on criminalization.
Others are working on step two through 20.
I felt the need to do step one
because when I look around the world,
step one wasn't really being pushed.
I'd been working with,
now this is gonna be bad
'cause they're probably
gonna go after them,
but I've been working with Stuart Milk
of the Harvey Milk
Foundation, who's fantastic,
who's totally focused on this problem.
And so what we're trying to do is
to have 69 different campaigns, basically,
'cause you've gotta work
with the local community.
Remarkable stories that I could just go in
over and over that I don't
because I don't wanna
highlight it and scare people away
that are working in these countries,
but suffice to say this was a fight
that needed to happen
that was not happening.
And right now, I have to
face, at the state department,
resistance from people
who don't want Americans
or Westerners to go into other countries
and take a stand for the
decriminalization campaign,
because literally there
are countries that believe
that the West and specifically America
have imported into their
country, being gay.
And so they're like, oh
no, no American should
talk about this 'cause
you're gonna emphasize.
My position back is
that's the stupidest idea
that Americans brought in the gay.
- Right.
- I'm not--
- There were gay people before America.
It's only about 200-year thing.
- Right, so I'm not gonna
actually be silent on that
and participate in letting them silence me
because they've got some
crazy conspiracy theory.
I'm gonna bust the
conspiracy theory wide open
and say you're wrong.
- How do you decide,
though, when to use extra pressure
to get a country to do something?
Because I know generally as a conservative
and from what I know about you,
you don't love the idea of
telling countries what to do.
Like, it's not really, like,
in the conservative ethos.
- Right.
- And yet I understand,
you want people to be free.
So how do you decide when we
can apply more pressure, or--
- Such a good question.
- Yeah.
I get one, I get one every interview.
That's the one.
- I would say
that I have this philosophy
that as a diplomat,
I am working at the State Department,
and I have to be successful
in order to avoid war.
Because if you have diplomats
who are not successful,
that file of a problem
gets transferred over
to the Pentagon, and they don't negotiate.
They just solve the problem.
And so I firmly believe
that diplomats should be
at the forefront of pushing and prodding
and demanding talks and
demanding that we have
a table to air our grievances on.
Like, if we're planning to bomb,
if DoD is ready to attack, I would hope
that we have brave
diplomats that are saying,
wait a minute, I got one more chance,
let's sit down, let's
try the diplomacy thing.
So I get hit constantly for,
oh, you're undiplomatic,
or you're too tough.
And I thought, "That's what
you want in a diplomat."
'Cause you wanna have
somebody that's working hard
to avoid war through talk,
through pushing and prodding,
rather than transferring the file over
and having a problem solved
through military action.
- Has some of that been
tough for you, though?
Because you used to fight on Twitter more,
or be more of, like, a battler there,
where you're an Ambassador now,
you're a guy in a hoodie.
You've calmed it down a little bit.
- I still think that I pick my fights.
I don't feel like I've backed off.
What I do think is that I wanna make sure
that someone is in that fight,
and so I look to see,
like on a media bias issue
I still get really charged up
if the groupthink in Washington,
or the political circles is one way
and nobody's challenging that,
I'm willing to jump in.
I don't care if I have
the title of Ambassador,
I'm still gonna jump in and try to push
and correct the record where I see fit.
If others are doing it,
and thank God you're
in there to do it, then sometimes I can--
- A little ground support.
- Yeah, I can let it go
and look for the next problem.
- Yeah, can you talk a little bit about
just generally what
the state of the UN is,
and what it was like to be there?
And you know that so many people think
that it's like this sort of perfect thing
that the countries come together
and figure out what's right for everybody.
Like, they love the idea of it more than,
I think, functionally how
it works or does not work.
- Well, first of all, the,
I always try to correct people that
the UN doesn't really exist.
The UN is member states, right?
So when somebody says, oh the UN says no.
I always say, the UN doesn't say no.
Members at the UN, maybe
Russia and China got together
and the Security Council and said no,
but the UN doesn't take a position.
And so I try to not
just reflexively blame,
oh, the UN's stopped something,
'cause it's really member
countries, that's the first thing.
The second thing is,
is the UN does not work
unless the US is leading it.
Whether it's the World Food Program,
UNICEF, UNDP, the development programs,
whatever it is, the US has to be there,
otherwise the UN does not work.
The UN system is based on
every country is equal,
not every person is
equal, it's every country.
And that's where I think, as Americans,
we say, that's just
fundamentally not true.
Every country is not equal.
So in the general
assembly, when we pretend
that these small island countries get
the same vote as China,
or the United States,
or the bigger economies,
that's kind of laughable to be honest.
I get that we wanna
have a general assembly
where people have the ability to talk,
but I don't love the idea
of one country, one vote,
which I think is balanced
by the Security Council
and the idea that the
substantive work goes
to the Security Council.
So I get the kind of separation.
But it's challenging to go to the UN
and participate in a
system where the UN says
we have this formula,
and every country gets
to have a certain amount of
people get jobs at the UN.
So they look at the formula and they say,
oh, well, how many people
do we have from Nigeria,
oh we need more, go hire people
into the system from Nigeria.
It tends to not be whether
or not someone is qualified
or has the skillset, it is,
are we being fair and equal
on the disbursement of jobs?
- We're hearing a lot of this idea lately,
all over the place.
- Right.
And that's where it breaks down,
'cause you're hiring people
that really don't know
what they're doing and they waste money
and the UN becomes a jobs program.
- Is the UN better at certain things
and worse at others?
So like, when it comes
to food disbursement
or helping development, that kind of stuff
it seems like they're
probably pretty decent at,
and then the Security Council,
or a lot of the rest of it seems like
90% of it is just voting against Israel--
- Yeah, for sure.
- Moving a rock.
- Yeah, I think you hit
it on the head is that
we pay 25% of the UN bill.
And that's for the
Secretariat and for the,
kind of, UN Administration.
- And all the
parking tickets, right?
(Rick laughing)
Isn't the whole thing
just parking tickets?
- Exactly.
- Isn't that what they say?
Just Ambassadors--
- You get
to park wherever you want.
- Yeah.
- But at the same time, there are these
what they call extra
bodies, independent bodies.
And those are funded through
voluntary contributions.
So World Food Program and UNICEF,
they don't get monies
from the general fund
of the 25% money that we give.
UNICEF only gets its budget by appealing
to people to say we've got a crisis.
We need to go out, and who
wants to write us a check?
The Europeans, the Germans, the Americans?
We fund the most on
those World Food Program,
UNICEF type independent bodies.
That's why they're well-run,
it's because we demand
management, transparency,
and accountability, in
these independent bodies.
We don't have that ability to do
in the UN General Assembly.
So you get this kind of
really blob-type management
and mission from the actual UN operations.
- What is the obsession with Israel
with the General Assembly?
I mean, every time you look at that chart,
it's like 90% of the
condemnations and actions.
- Well, you know, there's only one country
that can't serve on the Security
Council and that's Israel.
I'm outraged by it.
I'm telling you, I think that
the US government should just
put its foot down and say
we're gonna clear the deck
and Israel should be
on the Security Council
just to prove a point of getting them
on the Security Council.
There's this fascination
with condemning Israel.
It's why we got out of
the Human Rights Council
is because you've got
nine resolutions on Israel
and nothing on Iran, or,
I mean, the word is out.
If you don't wanna be condemned by the UN,
and you're a human rights abuser,
then go run for the Human Rights Council
so you can protect yourself.
- Right.
Trump somehow just gets all this?
Like, he really has fixed a lot of this
or is in the process of fixing it, or--
- He's not of the political establishment.
And so he's willing to be a disrupter.
We all know about disruptive technology
and people who go in and say, gosh,
everybody has a groupthink
and you're missing
the big reform effort.
I think Americans really want Washington
to be disrupted, or the UN.
They look at it and say, what a waste.
Why are we spending all that money?
But the system in Washington
filled with lobbyists
and all the people that
take care of each other,
they don't want an outsider coming in
and somehow wrecking their
good fortune, you know?
And we see that in Hollywood.
We see that same thing in Hollywood.
And so I want to applaud
and do everything I can
for President Trump because first of all,
he's got really thick skin.
All of the people who just
constantly come at him.
Thank God we got a president who's just
really tough on that and doesn't care.
And two, he sees it for what it is
and he's not really that partisan.
I mean, I look at what
I'm starting to call
the Trump doctrine, which I think,
the Trump doctrine to foreign policy,
which is a dual approach
to every single issue,
where you use every tool
of the US government.
Economic, dual sanctions, pressure
to change the behavior of a country.
And you really utilize that
pressure in a strong way.
At the same time, there's
this separate path to say,
let's talk, let's sit down
and have a diplomatic talk.
He's doing it with Kim Jong Un.
And the Neocons and the
traditional Republicans
did not like him saying, I'm gonna just
go talk to Kim Jong Un.
They only wanna do the squeezing.
They don't always wanna say, well,
why not talk to see if we can test this?
Talking is a tactic.
It's not the goal.
- So when you see, then, like,
the never Trump conservatives,
so like the Bill Crystals,
or just those guys
that have sort of been around forever
and usually you've gotten
everything wrong always,
are they different privately?
Like, are they privately kinda like, yeah,
I like what he's doing,
and he's even more--
- I don't think so.
I think they're creatures of Washington.
I think they live in Washington, DC
and they want people to play by the rules.
The people who benefit from the rules
and they want everybody to
come in and play by the rules
are on both sides of the aisle.
This is not a partisan thing at all.
It's you gotta come to our
city and play by our rules
because we got lobbyists to take care of,
and we got a system, and
everybody is participating
in the system.
Marco Rubio actually talked
about this just the other day,
and I thought it was really good.
He was saying, look,
when I came to Washington
and I didn't go to their cocktail parties,
I eventually didn't get invited
to their cocktail parties
and then they started sniping at me
because I wasn't going
to their cocktail parties
and they recognized that I
wasn't playing by their rules.
And he said, "Trump has done it tenfold."
He's come in and completely
doubled down on that.
And I think it's right.
I think we're getting senators.
Ron Johnson, I think is
another great senator
who doesn't play that game,
and he comes from Wisconsin
and plays a different tune,
which is, I'm fighting for
the people of Wisconsin.
Marco Rubio, I think is doing that.
We have senators that
are beginning to do that
and challenge the system.
And I think it's what the people want.
- So what's it like when
Trump, Donald Trump,
New York businessman Donald
Trump, guy becomes President.
Then assume your phone rings one day
and he says, looking to send
somebody over to Germany.
Is it a phone call, is it an email,
does someone else reach out to your first?
How does that all work?
- Well, so I had been
in and around the campaign quite a bit.
And so there's always a
constant conversation.
And there's also, I
think, the question of,
like, who's loyal, right?
Who was here before all of
the jobs were available?
Who was committed?
And I think they saw
that I was very committed
in the campaign.
And so the conversation, to me, was,
where do you see yourself
in the administration?
Or do you wanna join the administration?
And so from the beginning I just said,
some sort of a foreign policy role.
Let's discuss and then
we had that conversation.
And eventually I was like, I
think Germany is a good fit.
- Yeah, so let's actually back up,
'cause it's sort of related
to what you just said there.
So you, at one point
when Romney was running,
you were an advisor for foreign policy
for the campaign, right?
- When Romney was the nominee.
- Yeah, when he was the nominee.
- Yeah, so what was that?
2012.
- And this is now,
it was really only for a couple weeks,
'cause then some strange stuff happened,
which is so related to everything
else we're talking about
here, actually, right?
- Yeah, I mean the reality is
that it wasn't a couple of weeks,
because I had been in the
primary doing all this work.
So I had been with him for a long time.
They made it official
once he got the nomination
with a big title.
But I had already been there
and doing all this work,
just because I'd worked in
foreign policy for a long time,
and as a spokesman, I know the media,
so I know kind of how to define the issue
and what the media are
thinking is the issue,
or how they define it.
And then being on the inside,
understanding where we wanna go,
having somebody to help
you get there, right?
If the goal is here
and the media are here,
how do you educate?
And so with the relationships that I had
with many reporters, it
seemed like a natural fit
to be on the campaign as the spokesman.
But then as you're pointing to,
I, of course, had been
out for a very long time
and had written about, I
had wrote an article called
"The Conservative Case for Gay Marriage"
for the fight, when we were fighting it.
And many social conservatives at the time
didn't like the fact that
Mitt Romney had hired
a openly-gay foreign policy spokesman.
And so they came at me pretty hard
and the campaign pretty hard by saying,
this guy is for gay marriage.
You're not.
How is this gonna work?
- You gotta finish that story, though.
So the story ends with you
stepping down voluntarily, right?
- Yes.
So I needed, in that instance,
I needed somebody to
say this is irrelevant.
This doesn't matter.
He's our foreign policy
spokesperson and, you know?
- So you were looking for
Donald Trump then, actually?
- I was.
I was looking for somebody
that would define the issues
for the conservatives
as, this is my campaign
and this is my beliefs
and to make the case.
And clearly the campaign
knew that I was gay
before they hired me.
That shouldn't have been a secret.
And so I was just
looking for a protection.
And once I saw that this is gonna be
a complicated issue for the campaign,
that they don't know how they view this,
and their reaction to me was it's best
if you just stay quiet and
not make any waves for awhile,
let's let his blow over.
My reaction was, well,
it's not gonna blow over
'cause I'm gay, and two,
it's not gonna blow over
'cause it's a campaign.
People like to inflate
issues on campaigns.
It's now in your lap.
You're gonna have to solve this.
And what I eventually saw was that it was
too complicated of an issue for them.
They couldn't detangle it.
And they just wanted me to stay quiet.
And as the spokesman,
you can't stay quiet.
You're the spokesman.
- The quiet spokesman, yeah.
- So I consulted with
a couple of my mentors
and they just said, you know what?
Just resign and give them the ability
to go do what they want.
And so they never replaced
me, actually on that campaign.
- So it's funny, 'cause I
can see you're being honest,
obviously, but also slightly
diplomatic, here right,
'cause you're not trying to throw Romney
under the bus, I get it.
But without maybe speaking
to him specifically,
is that thing that you're talking about
exactly what you're
describing Washington is?
- Yeah, you know--
- Complete inability
to grapple with something straightforward,
let the media do whatever they want,
and then all the good
people who are trying
to do something real are
the ones that have to resign
or get thrown under the
bus, or the rest of it?
- Yeah, I mean, I hope I'm
not like that guy that's like,
oh, I'm a purist, and I'm the best, and--
- No, no.
- Everybody should be like me,
because that's certainly not the case.
I think, though, Dave,
that it's a good question
and I would say that the
answer is more I joined this
kind of conservative movement in 1992,
and I had been seeing movement.
And I'm somebody who the
glass is always half full.
And so I always try to make
sure that we're growing
and changing the party from the inside.
And so I think the answer is I felt like
there was change always happening,
that we were on a right trajectory,
and that even being
hired was a great moment.
And I'm not the candidate.
So I don't wanna be the story.
I really don't want, I
wanna help the candidate.
And so I recognized that I
had pushed as far as I could
in that particular situation.
And I wrote an article,
I think a week later,
saying how I think that
Mitt Romney would be
a better president than Barack Obama,
and that I fully endorsed him.
So I'm not sure that I'm being diplomatic
as I am being more truthful
about the progress.
And maybe, I mean, some people, I think,
could say you're jaded, right?
Because you've been on the inside too much
that you weren't a purist,
and it's probably true.
I'm more of let's have small improvements,
and as long as we're making improvements
and the goal is up here,
I can kind of justify
why I'm a part of the process.
- So Trump, okay, so
just sort of piecing this
all together then, now you have this guy
who you don't have to
walk that tightrope with.
- We had 17 candidates in the primary.
And Donald Trump really just stuck out.
And so I was really
excited to work for him.
I mean, look, this is a
guy who was very clear
in the campaign that he wanted
to treat everybody the same.
He really did.
And so I liked working
for him because he was
challenging us on the
Iraq War implementation
and saying I thought it
was a disastrous decision.
He was critiquing Bush, and McCain,
and Romney's positions on the Iraq War
in a Republican primary.
Now, everybody around me
had said, oh, he's done.
But that was all the
Washington type people
who were playing by the rules.
And if you took the rules,
he would have been done.
But the primary is really about the people
outside of Washington.
And that's where I felt like I was
reading the situation
better than what they were
because my sphere wasn't
what the Washington crowd
was saying about he's
done and he's not acting
like a Republican.
It was what the Republican
base, or the people,
and how they were responding to,
yeah, that's an obvious,
the Iraq War management
didn't go well.
And so that was an honest assessment
of some people say, touching
the third rail of politics,
of saying the things
you're not supposed to say.
And I like that.
- But Rick, I don't understand.
Everybody says if you listen
to the mainstream media
that everyone in the world,
they don't respect us anymore,
and they think he's a
buffoon, and all these things.
Could that possibly not be true?
I mean, that's what "The New
York Times" is telling us.
Really, joking aside,
like, what are you seeing?
Like, now as an Ambassador, when you go
to all the NATO things, and
all those places you go to,
and all the meetings, do you sense, like,
that people suddenly don't respect us?
They used to respect us and they don't,
or we're not the patsy anymore, perhaps?
Or, like, what is the real temperature?
- So I think what you're really asking is,
does his style work or
does it not work, right?
Compared to Barack Obama's
style, which is much different.
I think we should be honest and say
we got two different styles.
Absolutely.
Washington rule-making will tell you that
Trump's style does not work because
he doesn't participate
in what their rules are.
But let's look at that.
Let's look at whether
or not his style works.
Because I'll take this
argument all day long.
I don't wanna be political here,
but let's just talk facts.
Barack Obama was wildly
popular in Germany.
Wildly popular, they loved him.
- Didn't he give that
speech before, it was
before he was president--
- When he was campaigning,
yeah.
- When there was still,
like a million people or something crazy.
- Yeah, and he maintained his popularity.
People loved him.
But he didn't get any of
his signature programs
or policies through, and I mean that.
You look at TTIP, which was
the economic signature program
of the Obama Administration.
The Germans killed it.
They literally led the fight to kill it.
Nord Stream 2, we said, don't build it.
They went ahead and built it.
Jakiw Palij, the Nazi prison guard living
in New York City for 12 years,
the US court said, get him out of here,
he lied to us, we want
him back in Germany.
The Germans wouldn't take him.
The entire eight years of
the Obama Administration,
they asked, will you take
this Nazi prison guard back?
They ignored him.
Defense spending.
We asked in very nice ways,
can you raise your defense spending?
We think that you should
be a better NATO member.
They largely didn't do it.
And so all of those issues were solved
under the Trump Administration.
And so I've actually
said to Chancellor Merkel
and to the Foreign minister
and to others in Germany,
you're gonna have to deal
with some tough tweets,
you're gonna have to
deal with some pushing
and some ribbing, because the only way
that we can read this is
that the Donald Trump style
has worked.
- Do you think they
secretly like it, but sort of publicly,
I don't mean Germany specifically,
but generally that countries and leaders,
they have to sort of pretend
that they don't like Trump,
but as they see the US
sort of re-assert itself,
and maybe even as he forces
them to pay a little bit more,
actually pay their share,
that in a weird way
they almost do like it
because it helps give them
a little bit of their sovereignty back?
- For sure.
- Or leadership
to look for?
- No, that's 100% for sure.
I think the publics in Europe like
to have the ability to have
their sovereignty back.
They love, and President
Trump has said this
to Chancellor Merkel.
I don't blame you for not
paying your NATO bill--
- (laughs) Right.
- And for buying
cheap Russian gas, and having
a $69 billion dollar surplus
over us, and having a surplus
and 50,000 American troops protecting you.
I don't blame you.
Who wouldn't do that if you
were the Chancellor of Germany?
But then he says, but now it stops here,
because you outsmarted
all these other presidents
and now I have to stick up for my people.
- So if Trump is right about all this,
that now countries are paying
more and all of these things--
- Which he is totally right.
- Yeah, so granted--
- Millions, hundreds of billions.
- Right, so suddenly,
countries are starting
to pay their share.
Is it just what you're saying,
that it was just the way
Washington always worked,
or is it just that we
refused to use any influence
on countries, like, that we were just,
it was just always easier to just be like,
ah, we'll pay for everything.
You know what I mean?
- I think some of it
is our own fault, and you're getting
at it a little bit.
- Yeah, I guess
that's what I'm asking.
That it was just we kept
bringing in people that just
were always like, ah, we're paying,
and why wouldn't we pay?
- Yeah, and we gotta be nice
and oh, they're pushing back,
and we wanna be pro-European,
and so let's just have a dinner party,
and sit--
- Man, these people
are having a lot of parties.
- Yeah, and sitting in European capitals
and really, we spent, we
have all of these people
in European capitals
working at our embassies.
Look, I think our embassies should be
mini-commerce sections.
I've got a whole bunch
of people at the Embassy
who are super smart and very committed
to the United States, and
do great public service.
But I have come to the
conclusion that having
a whole team of people watching
the German political system
and reporting back to
Washington by writing cables
about what's happening
in the governor's race,
minister, president's race
in a state in Germany,
and all of that stuff.
Super interesting, completely
irrelevant in many ways.
We can get that information
off the internet
after it happens.
We don't need reporting
officers to do that.
What we do need are economic specialists
on LNG, liquid natural gas,
or economic specialists on medical devices
to help us get US companies
growing in Europe.
I think that our embassies
need to be transformed.
Less on the political side,
less about the politics of the country
that we can get through the internet.
All this was established
before we had the internet,
and now we need to turn these embassies
into America first economic models,
just like what other countries do.
We're the only country in the world
that gets in trouble for
pushing ourself forward.
Everybody's doing it, but we're the one
that gets in trouble for
saying, oh, how dare you?
- Yeah, did you by any
chance read that book
that I've got right there?
Yoram Hazony, "The Virtue of Nationalism"?
- No, I haven't.
- Because his whole idea is that--
- I am reading--
- Which one?
- Douglas Murray's, though.
- Oh, there you go.
Well, there's plenty of his,
a couple good Douglas
Murray books over here.
But the basic premise of the book
is that strong nations, that you have
to be a strong nation first.
So be America first, be Germany first,
be whatever your country is first.
And that's how you, by
being a strong nation first,
then you can create some sort
of international community
if that makes sense, but that really
we're just doing it all back,
or we've been doing it
backwards for decades,
which is we put ourselves
down and thinking that we're
achieving some higher goal or something,
and then we end up
screwing over everybody.
- Yeah, I think that makes a lot of sense.
And sometimes you have
to be able to put forward
in a pushy way, your position in order
to get things done.
And that doesn't mean that
the relationship is ruined.
It just means that this is a priority.
And so you're gonna push it harder.
I think that's been one of
the problems that we've had,
is just this kind of status quo,
let's all, you're supposed
to say what you want
and I'm supposed to say what I want,
and then we kind of cut the baby in half
and we go away and go to lunch.
To me, that's not diplomacy.
I mean, we have to be able
to push forward our agenda.
By the way, I've never,
I've been in thousands
of diplomatic discussions.
Thousands.
I've never been in one
where the other side
doesn't ask for something
and we ask for something in return.
Happens all the time.
This is called diplomacy.
What do you want?
What do I want?
It's this whole thing.
And the idea that you're
asking for something
is not a quid-pro-quo.
It's called diplomacy.
This is exactly what we do.
We show up to a meeting
and we give our agenda
of what we'd like you
to do, and what we need,
and then you do that.
And then we pick and choose.
And when you make it a priority,
this is what I could
say on the Jakiw Palij,
the Nazi prison guard thing.
When I showed up in Germany,
and I made this a priority,
and I said this return
of the Nazi prison guard,
I brought it up in my first meeting
with the foreign minister.
And you know what the
foreign minister said
to me after I brought it up?
I've never heard of this case.
- [Dave] (laughs) I
mean, that's incredible.
- The State Department had told me,
oh, we've asked for 12 years.
It's gonna go nowhere, but
you should bring it up.
In my Senate confirmation,
I got a written question.
"Will you make Jakiw Palij,
"the return of the Nazi prison guard,
"will you make it a priority?"
I said, "Yes".
And I did it.
And then, President Trump said to me,
"You should really get that
Nazi prison guard returned."
I'm like, "I'm on it."
I brought it up in every meeting,
I made it a priority.
Had to educate them.
They returned him.
- Does Trump basically just say,
do whatever you want until--
- No. (laughing)
- Not fully that, but like,
I sense what he does with
people is he gets people
he kinda likes and trusts
and let them do their thing,
and then--
- He--
- He gets involved in some way after that,
or something like that.
- What I would say is,
I'll give you the perfect example.
He gave me, he called one day and said,
"We're getting killed on medical devices."
And I was like, "Oh, I don't
know anything about it."
And he goes, "I know, but
you'll figure it out."
(Dave laughing)
And I said,
"I'm on it, I'll report back and tell you
"what we're getting killed on,
"and what I think the solution is."
And he's like, "Good, make it soon."
So suddenly, you have a directive
from the President of the
United States to figure it out.
So what do I do?
I immediately go out and I meet with
the medical device companies in Germany,
and then the ones providing
jobs in the United States,
and then the US ones.
Figure out what's your problem.
I figured out what the problem was,
or I should say, one of the
problems, a big problem,
and then we tackle it and we try
to deal with the whole FAA,
and US trade negotiator.
And to be an ambassador, I think,
you have to be able to know how to work
the inner agency process
of the US government.
You gotta be an expert
on the US government.
Not an expert on giving dinner parties.
You have to be an expert
on how to maneuver
within the US government,
to help companies.
I help German companies
only if they have US jobs.
I view my job as solely trying
to create more economic
opportunity for Americans,
more jobs, better paying jobs.
And so that can be done through Lufthansa,
the great German airline, who
has 15,000 American employees.
That can be done through Siemens,
that has 60,000 American employees.
BMW in South Carolina.
So I'm constantly trying
to help grow American jobs,
but sometimes it's
through German companies.
- So I thought it'd be an
interesting way to end,
which is that when we met, so I sorta,
we knew each other about five years ago,
just through Twitter,
the way everyone knows
everybody these days.
(Rick laughing)
But I was a lefty
at the time, I mean, I
was a full-on progressive.
I worked at "The Young Turks",
and I had you on my show
one time you came in,
and you were the scary conservative,
and it was a very
different show than this,
and we just did hot topic kind of stuff.
But it was very clear
that the other panelists
didn't like you, and we
disagreed on some stuff,
and whatever, it doesn't even matter.
- Who doesn't like me?
- Yeah, well you were--
- I'm so nice.
- I remember,
it was specifically, it
was right before Christmas
and we were talking about how everybody's
going crazy at stores for
Black Friday and everything,
and you were saying how great it is,
and people are out there, and they're--
- Shopping.
- Shopping,
and blah, blah, blah.
And they were basically saying,
oh, you capitalist pig, and blah, blah.
- Right, right.
- Anyway, it doesn't
even matter the specifics.
But I mention all that
because I would assume
that you must be pretty freakin' thrilled
at the way the world is tracking.
That now it's four or five years later
and you see someone like
me who was a former lefty,
that, even though I think we still have
some minor political disagreements,
doesn't even matter what it is,
but that there really
is, like, this rich thing
happening on the
conservative side right now.
And for somebody that was
an out gay conservative
way before really there
was anybody out there,
you must be pretty happy
that it does feel like
a pretty freakin' wide tent right now.
- I also feel pretty old--
- How was that for a question?
I just lofted you something there.
- I also feel pretty old.
(Dave laughing)
When I look at, like, being
at the 1992 convention,
being friends with Andrew Breitbart,
when Andrew Breitbart came to me and said,
"CPAC is now allowing gays to have a boot
"at the log cabin."
And I was like, "Andrew, it's ridiculous."
And he's like, "What do
you think if I boycott?"
And I was like, "You'll be a hero."
And then he did, and then
he had this huge party
and it just transformed.
I mean, so much of what
Andrew Breitbart did,
and this is not an
endorsement of everything
that Breitbart.com does.
- Yeah, isn't it
so sad you have to say
that with almost everything
these days, you have to, like, qualify.
- But Andrew, who helped
launch "The Huffington Post",
and I met him when he was
working for Ariana Huffington.
And I guess the answer is
is that the fight and debate
for making our country better is something
that I'm really passionate about.
And I've seen the utility
of the fight and the debate.
As long as you do it in a respectful way.
I have to say one of
the most hurtful things
when I went through
confirmation is how the left
completely took two or three of my tweets
that were meant to be funny,
and turned 'em into a sexist.
I mean, I became the sexist thing.
And democratic senators took to the floor
and were like, he's a sexist.
They didn't even know me.
Matter of fact, some of
those democratic senators
I've asked 11 times to meet with me
and they've refused to meet with me.
- Of course.
Well, also, the whole time during your,
well, first off, they kept
delaying your confirmation,
too, right?
- Yeah.
- So they're saying
Trump hates gay people.
Trump's got the openly gay guy he's trying
to get confirmed as Ambassador to Germany.
- Yeah, Washington is a mess.
I mean, it's such a mess.
And so all I'm saying
is is that I always feel
like a thoughtful debate.
Right?
Tolerance, diversity, right?
I can sit, I have so many liberal friends.
I can sit with my liberal friends,
have a good discussion.
I sometimes learn from them.
Oh, that's interesting.
They learn from me.
This is what happened with,
I think, your journey.
I have some of the same journey.
I don't have the same views as
I had eight, nine years ago.
Everybody changes.
If you're listening in the debate,
you are absolutely going
to learn and change.
- I can't believe it took
us so long to do this.
You had to go be the Ambassador to Germany
and bouncing all over the world.
It was a pleasure, my friend.
Next time, I'm wearing a
hoodie and you're gonna
wear a suit, how does that sound?
- Can I just say that I think you have
the best show on the internet?
We do not have the ability to
talk about issues like this.
Thank you for doing it.
I know that it's not
always easy, but it's huge.
It's huge.
And it's so healthy.
And for everybody that's
listening to these debates,
and learning, if you're
in your car or whatever,
I mean, it's amazing.
It's amazing.
We need more of this, not less.
- Follow him on Twitter, @RichardGrenell.
If you're looking for more honest
and thoughtful
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check out our politics playlist.
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