09/04/20: NSA O'Brien, Advisor Grenell, and Press Secretary McEnany Hold a Press Briefing

Hello everyone, it's another historic day here at the White House and I have Ambassador Rick Grinnell, National Security Advisor Robert O'Brien and Senior Advisor Jared Kushner with me to talk to you about the history that was made here at the White House today. and then I'll take some of your questions thank you kaylee uh again it was a great morning in the oval office with president trump president vucic and prime minister hoti we came together through the hard work of great diplomats led primarily by rick grinnell acting under the direction of the president, serbia and kosovo, and have normalized their economic relations, this is a conflict between serbia and kosovo that has lasted for decades, they have been stagnant, unable to move forward for many, many years, and the president, for some time.

A while ago we decided that we were going for it, we needed to try something creative, try something new, break the stalemate and try to move forward with the peace process with Serbian Kosovo. Having the prime minister of Kosovo and the president of Serbia together in the oval office. 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 quite remarkable and for this to happen right in the shadows a few days later Jared and I were on the flight From Ben Gurion Airport to Abu Dhabi International Airport, the first commercial flight between Israel and an Arab Gulf state, shows the kind of momentum ahead, one of the side benefits of the normalization of economic ties between Serbia and Kosovo.

It was an establishment of diplomatic relations between Kosovo, a Muslim-majority state, and the state of Israel. This is now the second time in less than a month that Israel has made peace and normalized its ties with a Muslim-majority country. It's another really significant achievement for President Trump, the fact that this happened on the heels of a peace deal with the Taliban in Afghanistan, that it happened in response to last year's negotiation of a ceasefire between the Kurds. and the Turks are seeing a pattern here in which the president is a real peacemaker and there has been a lot of criticism of the administration, but what has been interesting to me is that the president has undertaken these historic initiatives and has put together a team to carry out and achieve these achievements others have even tried to take credit I was just watching the vice president without making a political comment the vice president welcomed these moves today but these things could only happen under a Trump administration and under the leadership of the president, peace Through force, foreign policy and national security policy, he put the pieces in place, and now we are reaping the dividend of peace, and it happened to the Balkans, it happened to the Middle East, and we have More to do come, I'll leave some of that for Senior Advisor Kushner to address in a moment, so with those opening remarks I want to turn it around to the special envoy for Serbia, Kosovo, the presidential envoy for Serbia, Kosovo.

Ambassador Rick Grinnell will have some comments and then we'll be available for some questions after Rick and Jared speak to you. Thank you very much, thank you Robert. I know there are many reporters who have worked for a long time. in your industry and for any reporter who has worked for more than 10 years, you will know that this story there was a terrible war and this story has persisted for decades, so I really want to call on all of you as journalists to dig deeper into this History is one of those good news stories where I'm not asking you to do anything other than look at the facts and really observe what's been happening here.

We have been working very hard on this agreement for a long time. We had three. agreements last year that went unnoticed by Washington reporters and I really have to say that I think it's a shame when we talk a lot about symbolism and don't delve into these stories that span 21 years. able to achieve here by uniting the two parties is truly historic, the way this happened is that politics was stagnant, everyone knows we have been fighting and talking about the same thing for decades, they have been fighting over the same symbolism. words verbs adjectives has been a nightmare and what President Trump told me was that they are fighting politically over everything, why don't we try to do something different and creative?

Why not try economics first and let politics follow? the economy that turned out to actually be a formula that they were anxious about, no one had been telling them about this, we have an establishment foreign policy team in Washington DC that literally keeps harping on the same meetings and issues over and over again, you I assure. that the only way this deal could have happened is by an outsider, all the insiders in Washington said you're not talking about recognition, you're not talking about this symbolic word and what we're trying to do is ignore that and a external. perspective, go in and go deeper.

I ask you to look at this agreement and see all the hard-negotiated details 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 move forward. to be very happy, we have been on the phone a couple of times with the national security

advisor

in Germany, the national security

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in France, to inform you, we informed you about the strategy and today we will inform you again about the details of this agreement It's something that I firmly believe will make Americans safer. It will make American businesses more prosperous.

This is a region that has been largely left out because of what is perceived as conflict, whether or not there has been a conflict. perceived conflict, European companies and American companies have largely refused to enter and grow in these areas, now we will be able to open this up, whether it is energy, water, road construction, railways, mines, these are all industries that they are going to open up for European and, hopefully, American companies to come in and help people create an industry that means creating jobs in the region, but also jobs in the United States, jobs for Americans and companies Americans, the last thing I'll say before I hand it over to Jared, the people. of serbia and the people of kosovo are elated with this agreement and are very grateful that there was an external administration that would deal with this situation and not do the typical political action if we had done the typical political action and listened to all the people really people smart in NGOs and think tanks here in Washington DC, we would not accept this deal, let's take a quick look at the criticism and the lead-up to this what we should have been talking about and what we weren't talking about, everything has been squarely in the same old political dialogue that was stuck and I'm so grateful that President Trump challenged us to say think differently, think from an outside perspective and that was the key to it all so I really urge you to look at the details and See and talk to the leaders in Kosovo in Serbia, ask them how this came about, ask them what the process was like and I think you'll see that this outside perspective of doing things differently is what worked.

Thank you, Ambassador Grinnell, incredible work. this historic agreement and ambassador o'

brien

this is just another chapter that this administration has been able to write to make the world a safer and more peaceful place president trump when he ran for politics he was not a politician he sees things through a prism that not many politicians look at what is how can I actually do things that improve people's lives, have people find common interests and opportunities and find ways to resolve conflicts that, frankly, politicians have allowed to continue for too long in the present. The trailer is truly historic and we've had so many historic things this week that we shouldn't downplay the importance of all the different things that happened.

I started the week with Ambassador O'Brien in Jerusalem where we met with the Prime Minister and then we took the first commercial flight from Israel to the United Arab Emirates, we broke that barrier that brought a lot of hope to the Middle East and over the last few years I have I've been listening to a lot of people tell us and the administration all the things we were doing wrong while we looked at this the wrong way and what the president did is reverse 20 years of bad foreign policy in the Middle East, where we have allowed our country to be caught up in a lot of these wars that, frankly, you know, don't do much for our country, we have to make sure we keep our country safe and we have to figure out how we can get people in the Middle East and Europe to get along. so we can spend our resources and our treasury building our countries and our cities and helping our citizens and what you've seen over the first three and a half years of President Trump is that he's done, he's trying to put an end to many of these endless wars, it's making peace deals, it's bringing people together and it's bringing our troops back to America while figuring out how to get along with different countries and reducing foreign threats that we have second this week, obviously, we are in Saudi Arabia and then Saudi Arabia announced the historic opening of its airspace, which again unites people in the Middle East and yesterday Bahrain announced the same: it will open its airspace, which will again allow flights and better trade and interaction between peoples. happen in the Middle East in a much faster way today we announce another normalization with Israel that, frankly, a lot of the division between the anti-Semitism that we have in the world and the terrorism that we have in the world comes from the notion that people are divided and leaders will exploit divisions and religious differences to try to keep people divided to cause conflict, often to keep power for themselves, which they mask ideologically.

This breakthrough again brings people closer together and shows people in the world that anything is possible if we push it and again, fundamentally, President Trump believes that it doesn't matter who you are, it doesn't matter where you're from, it doesn't matter what country you're in. , all people want the same thing, that is, they want the opportunity to live freely, to live a better life. economic opportunity and live in peace and today again is another historic step forward that politicians have talked about for decades but have not been able to deliver and it is another victory for this administration and really for the world and that is why I want to give my congratulations to the people of Serbia and the people of Kosovo and the people of Europe and also the people of Israel, who, as you know, will gain tremendous benefits from this agreement.

Thank you, Ambassador Brian um, the United States government has determined that the Russians are seeking to subpoena, undermine faith in the electoral process by spreading disinformation about the accuracy of voter data for expanded mail-in voting and President Trump as well. has said the state's voter data is not accurate and is telling people not to trust their mail-in ballots being counted that's right the president helped russia spread disinformation well i guess what we have when it comes to the elections and what the intelligence community has made very clear is that first there is china, which has the most massive program to influence the united states politically, there is iran and you have russia, these are the three countries adversaries who are seeking to disrupt our elections some of them prefer biden uh some people say some prefer the president my position is that no matter what these countries want any country that tries Interference with free and fair elections in the United States, we have taken unprecedented actions, the president has taken unprecedented actions, by funding the hardening of our election infrastructure, whether cyber or otherwise, obviously, there are tremendous concerns about mail-in ballots uh, in the news all over nights there seems to be another photo of some apartment building in some city with thousands of ballots stacked in the lobby of the apartment building and that kind of thing, so I think there are concerns about voting by mail I think those concerns are very different than be concerned about foreign adversaries trying to influence our elections and we have drawn a red line, we have made it very clear to the Chinese, the Russians, the Iranians and others who, uh, have not publicly revealed that anyone who tries interfering with the American election will face extraordinary consequences, but Russia said that the central side of Russia, Mr.

O'Brien, a question about Serbia in Kosovo, so I only have a follow-up on that in terms of the two parties agreeing to freeze the campaigns of recognition and derecognition, how long that will last and how important it is for the administration that Serbia recognizes the independence of Kosovo, so I think it is a freezing year. that and that the idea of ​​this freeze is to give the parties time tonegotiate some of the political issues between them and our European partners. There is a special European envoy, Mr Lychek, who is involved in those conversations that we are going to have. support the Europeans in those political talks, there are many issues involved, whether it is EU membership or mutual recognition, so there are a number of issues that the Serbs and Kosovars will address.

We will support the Europeans as they address these issues. What we wanted to do in this agreement was create breathing space for the parties to engage on those issues. Without the back-and-forth campaign of recognition and derecognition, what is surprising is that, as part of that agreement, Kosovo was allowed and it should not say much that Kosovo made the decision, as a Muslim-majority country, to normalize its relations with Israel . recognize israel and establish an embassy in jerusalem uh in the capital of uh of israel and uh and uh we appreciate the fact that the serbs are not taking a position on this so even though we have known where we are going to have a suspension of the derecognition campaign and the recognition campaign are two sides of the same coin for next year.

We were able to achieve this with the courage and bravery of the leaders of President Vucic and Prime Minister Hauti. and prime minister netanyahu we were able to discuss this very remarkable development again for the second time in a month. I think it took 40 years for two Muslim-majority countries to recognize Israel. We have now had two Muslim-majority countries recognize Israel. in less than a month, so it is a notable achievement in the context of this general freeze that will give the party space to negotiate an agreement to follow up on what Ben was asking of them.

Attorney General Barr said earlier this week that he feels China is being more aggressive in meddling in elections than Russia is. Do you agree with that assessment? I agree with him 100 percent and then I follow up on that and I also have a question about Israel. Can you just characterize at this point? To what extent and the level to which both China, Russia and other foreign countries are trying to spread disinformation about the 2020 campaign, yeah, look, it's hard to say, 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 of trying to control, whether it's Facebook or Twitter, others are trying to control things in a way that they didn't before our intelligence community is doing a good job and trying to track these things. dhs department Homeland security with increased funding from this administration is doing a good job of strengthening our infrastructure to make sure that, whether it's cyber infrastructure or physical infrastructure, to make sure that we're not susceptible to our uh the choice that the Americans people make changes on election day by some foreign party, there will always be propaganda, there will always be efforts to influence us and again we know that the Chinese have taken the most active role, but the Russians, the Iranians and others The countries are also involved, so we're going to continue to monitor it and do everything we can to protect the sanctity of our elections, which is the foundation of our democracy, that's what makes us and the United States.

We're just not going to tolerate, you know, other countries trying to get involved in our elections. Sure, fast tracking. Yes, I want to make sure everyone has the opportunity. The president had said before in the oval office that there are other Arab countries. who are also interested in following in the footsteps of the United Arab Emirates, can you talk to us about where we are in that process? Which countries are interested in giving the floor to Senior Vice President Jared, who just returned from the region and maybe he can provide? Some background, thank you, I'm not going to give that much background, but the bottom line is that when we made the deal with Israel and the United Arab Emirates, that took a lot of people by surprise because of the diplomacy that we were able to do and that was keeping things private. .

Obviously, we had great discussions in the region and we are hopeful that more people will want to move forward. I think many of the countries are quite envious of the opportunities that will now be available to the United Arab Emirates in terms of mutual investment, mutual tourism, uh, investing in technological security partnerships, so we are seeing that peace agreement really It's starting to gain a lot of momentum and the delegations that traveled with Ambassador O'

brien

and I had very, very fruitful discussions, I think both of us. The parties were surprised to see the enthusiasm of the other side to move forward and the level of awarding and finalizing agreements is happening much faster than people thought, other countries are again seeing the benefits of having a Middle East and that is be united and if you look at What President Trump did on his first trip abroad he was to Saudi Arabia and he described very clearly what his strategy was going to be, what he saw as the challenges and again, if you go from that snapshot to now , three and a half years later.

You have the Middle East, where Isis is defeated. Iran has retreated significantly. The proxies who have been financing and sowing terror and instability throughout the region have much less cash than before he brought the different parties together. And you know, one story that I think doesn't get enough attention is the fact that in the last election a lot of what we were talking about was the spread of extremism through the Internet and then also the financing of terrorist groups. and President Trump on that first trip created two different organizations in Saudi Arabia, one was the counter-terrorism financing organization that unified many of the Middle East systems with our Treasury Department and we got more transparency than ever and it was reduced significantly. the amount of funding that has gone to terrorist groups over the last three and a half years, the next thing we created was the counterextremism center that has been fighting the ideological battle online and has been making tremendous progress toward reducing uh, the misinformation that has been used to pervert many young people, so we are seeing a lot of progress in the Middle East and I think a lot of countries right now see it as something inevitable that they are going to have. normal relations with Israel and that for people to live a better life is no different than Serbia and Kosovo, where you know that their leaders are coming together to realize that, although there are differences, you know that human beings want to unite, they want have something better. lives and opportunities and the more leaders in the Middle East leave all differences behind, they are creating a new opportunity for a new Middle East and a bright future where people can live safely, practice any religion they choose and respect each other. others. and having economic opportunities, which is essential for the people you know to see a path to a better life.

Thanks, this is actually via Jared with two questions. I'll combine them to make this easier with the election coming up in two months. I'm curious to know how you feel about what you've accomplished so far, but whether or not you feel

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ure to get more done before November, and secondly, because I know you would have been a part of these conversations at a time when I want to. ask you about that Atlantic report we saw today and how, in a 2018 planning meeting for a military parade, the president supposedly said he didn't want amputees there, he said no one wants to see that, but in particular, did he ever hear the president talk like that The answer is no, look what I found in Washington.

It's strange, sometimes you have a couple of anonymous sources and the media treats it like a panacea and then you know 10 people on the record saying no. It happens and you don't believe it, that doesn't represent the way I've seen the president behave. He has tremendous respect for the military and our veterans. Look at their actions and I think their actions have been incredible in supporting the military, strengthening the military and strengthening our veterans, but with respect to your question about timing, look at the agreements, the agreements occur when the agreements are ready and I think you know that you can't just come along, wave a magic wand and make impossible deals happen.

People you know describe peace in the Middle East as less of an agreement and more of a saying about what is impossible and much needed. of building blocks that had to be moved many non-traditional moves when the president moved the embassy to Jerusalem when he recognized the target in the heights when he left the Iran deal when we had our economic conference in Bahrain there are probably 50 decisions that The president's decisions They allowed it to create a different course and in each of the paths there have been people like the magazine you mentioned before criticizing its foreign policy saying that it was not strategic, that it did not have a plan, but again you know that it is not. a traditional washington person and traditional washington people have a history of creating those wars that we have sent our soldiers into and that has led to many of them being killed or injured and president trump has been ending those wars and bringing the soldiers home and I would say that agreements happen when agreements are ready and the agreement that you saw last week had nothing to do with the elections, it had everything to do with the fact that you know it's time for president start to reap some of the achievements that you spent years building the foundation for and what I would also say is that if you look, you know that global foreign policy is a big game of chess and you have a lot of pieces. all over the board in different places and the president has been masterful in the way he built different relationships, removed some pieces from the board created different problems in other places and I think he set the board very, very well now to have continued successes in the coming years, so obviously the voters will decide whether to give President Trump four more years, but if they do, if they give him four more years, I think they will see that Iran is in a much weaker position than it was four years ago, Korea North.

Obviously I have had a much better situation than they had four years ago Venezuela in a different situation The Middle East went from a place that you already know when President Trump arrived in Libya it was a disaster Syria was a disaster Yemen was a disaster all our allies I felt that Iraq was a disaster and today we see a very different Middle East than the one we had three and a half years ago, and that is not an accident, it is because President Trump has had a good strategy and has worked very hard to manifest it, So now we're starting to see some of the fruits of their labor, but I think we'll see more and more of that as time goes on, so we're set up for more successes, hopefully, in the coming weeks and months. , but definitely.

In the coming years, we will embrace President Trump's first American foreign policy, where he for the first time will enter into trade deals backed by our workers and our unions that will bring jobs home. He represents our farmers, he represents our ranchers, he represents our manufacturers. um and he's also ending these endless wars and figuring out how to bring our soldiers home and fight threats from abroad so that Americans can prosper here at home. Let me weigh in for a second on his last question about the Atlantic article which I thought was a really sad article for whatever magazine had published it and while I wasn't at the meeting, that's what was described there.

I worked for this president for two and a half years, first in a hostage environment for the past year. As national security advisor in both jobs, I've had to meet extensively with the president on military issues, whether it's a hostage rescue mission or how we're going to deploy our troops around the world. See, at my current job I have the sad duty of sometimes having to call you in the middle of the night if we lose a soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine in combat, which thankfully hasn't happened since February. or in a training accident, we've had a few of those recently and I can tell you how difficult they are for me to make those calls but also for the president to receive them.

I have spent a lot of time with the president on numerous trips. to Dover and uh and see how he's been with the families of our fallen heroes for those dignified transfers and I can tell you that the hardest job any president has is to go to Dover and bring our fallen heroes home and uh and and and cry with their families and cry with their families and comfort their families uh and I think if you talk to any of them uh who had been there for the transfers when the president was there, I've seen him uh uh send I to Dover, uh, I know you when He couldn't go due to scheduling problems or because he was abroad, andHe asked me to represent him there.

I was with them at Walter Reeve, where we saw our wounded heroes and and the interaction between the president and our wounded heroes at walter reed is something 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 national security issues that we face. The president will ask me, you know, is there any way we can do this without sending American soldiers, sailors, Marines or airmen to a dangerous place? If we have to send them to a dangerous place and it will be a difficult task.Situation: I like the attack on Baghdadi for example, how do we make sure we protect them to the maximum extent possible?

And if that means putting three or four levels of air power on them, it means doing it, and the president doesn't skimp on what he's willing to provide our troops, he's funded the military so we can give them all the tools necessary to accomplish our missions. and come home safely, you know, so I think if you talk to any of us who work at the NFC, any of us have worn the uniform before, whether it's Keith Kellogg or Matt Ponder or me or Mark Milley at the Pentagon. or those who spend a lot of time with the president, especially when discussing military matters, when, when, our, uh, current military personnel talk about our troops or our veterans uh, you won't find, you know anyone who is more understanding of Your situation, the president of the United States, so I don't believe a word of what was in the Atlantic article because I have had two and a half years working side by side with the president.

I had never seen anything like this and thought it was pretty disappointing that some magazine would write to Ambassador Brian about the service members first issue, thank you. To you three for organizing this: The United States will respond to Russia's recent aggression toward American forces in Syria. Yes, one of the things we constantly do is respond to forces for which operational security is critical. us wherever our soldiers, sailors, airmen or marines operate, whether in a maritime environment, on land or in the air, and we see aggressive behavior from the Russians, we have seen it with some of the interceptions that we have seen.

I have seen it over the last two years and how they have interacted with our naval vessels. We've seen it on screen in the current situation with the patrols meeting each other, but I can tell you that. uh you know that American forces have rules of engagement designed to protect them, uh, to allow them to defend themselves, uh, you know that there was an unfortunate incident when the Russians, supposedly Russian mercenaries, tried to attack one of our forward operating bases in Syria a couple of years that didn't It didn't end too well for them and because again President Trump gave our soldiers in that case the ability to defend themselves, you know, with air power, with long-range fires, with their own resources, so which you know, we.

We will ensure that wherever we operate, whether it is a place that is in close proximity to the Russians or any other adversary, the men and women in uniform will be able to defend themselves and protect themselves if that warning has been communicated. to the Russian government yes, it has been communicated very clearly that you went for the president uh, it has been communicated to them at the appropriate level and who it was specifically to in Russia. I'm not going to go into those details because we want to have those channels open but they have received a very strong message thank you, thank you Ambassador Brian.

I wanted to follow a couple in China. I'm wondering what you're seeing specifically in China that makes you believe they have a harder job. election interference operation that Russia or other countries and then based on that or you know the litany of other concerns that you've outlined about China, if you could tell us the status of the administration's efforts to go after Chinese companies or imports. or diplomatic problems with China, yeah, so let me talk about the China situation in general, so probably the biggest failure of American foreign policy in the last 40 years is how we've dealt with China, there was this mantra that somehow way like China.

We got richer, uh, when we turned a blind eye to Chinese malign activity, whether it's stealing our intellectual property or engaging in unfair trade practices or bullying their neighbors, uh, if we just went about bullying their own people in the Tiananmen Square, if we turned the other cheek. Turning a blind eye, that China would become richer as it became richer and the middle class and China grew, they would become more like us and we always wanted, we want to believe that everyone wants to be like us, that become more. more democratic western uh in fact the opposite happened human rights violations in china have gotten worse and worse over the years whether it be the uyghurs or the religious minorities uh or their neighbors uh the people who enjoyed democracy in hong kong until recently uh the bullying of Taiwan, we've seen some very malign Chinese activity, the theft of intellectual property has become so serious that Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, recently called it the largest transfer of wealth in the history of the humanity, it was a theft by the Chinese of our intellectual property. property now, that's not just an abstract concept, okay, that's sweat equity, they're American innovators, meaning people who are putting their whole lives into dreams, people who have invented things in their garages, people who have built companies, which have done everything.

They can create an idea and turn it into a reality and then what happens? China steals the idea and it is not just that they have lost the economic value of their innovation or their method of doing business. The Chinese have taken it over sometimes using slave labor, but using cheaper labor they often make competing products at a lower price and then put the original person who invented the technology out of business and then kill the industry to the United States and entire industries. go to china entire manufacturing plants go to china i mean, it's been really amazing chris frey said that he also said that the fbi is opening a new espionage case against the chinese every 10 hours i mean the extent of chinese activity against the America is relentless it's we've never seen anything like it there's nothing like this in the cold war with the Soviets so this president President Trump stood up to the Chinese for the first time in 40 years he put tariffs on the Chinese , we had a commercial phase. a trade deal that partially addressed some of the unfair trade practices and was a big step in the right direction, but as soon as it was signed we ended up with what the president calls the Chinese plague or the covid outbreak here, uh, which one made you would know something irrelevant because of the tremendous losses we suffered again because the Chinese did not share the virus samples with us early they would not allow the CDC doctors to come to China early to investigate they would not let the doctors come to China to investigate they would not restrict travel from China abroad, especially to Europe, when they were restricting travel within China.

So, again, you know, you know, you know well, look when it comes to the elections, everything they're doing across the board, whether it's political influence through the Confucius Institutes, whether it's them trying to influencing business leaders by saying that if they don't support us in the US, their companies won't have opportunities in China and they will convey that to their governors and they will convey that to their political leaders. leaders uh uh, the massive ones, I'm not going to go into all the intelligence, but the massive activities of the Chinese and the cyber realm, uh, it's something really extraordinary that we're facing and, again, this is the first president that stood up to the Chinese, I hope I'm not the last president to stand up to the Chinese, and as difficult as the issue is, let me tell you, I have confidence in the United States of America, I think at the end of the day. we're going to prevail we have a piece through foreign policy strength finally uh that we've been missing for some time now we're investing in our defense we're cracking down on the diplomatic front against the Chinese We're cracking down on the trade front, we're protecting our intellectual property, we are not going to know that we have called out the Chinese Communist Party, we are cracking down and we have massive sanctions on the Chinese for the first time because they are treating the Uyghurs or the Democrats in Hong Kong.

I think at the end of the day our allies will follow us, which they have seen happen with 5G and Huawei, and we are seeing many countries, including our closest allies, move away from the Chinese, move away from Huawei and go for reliable suppliers in 5G. , so I think at the end of the day, America will prevail. I think President Trump's vision of free markets and free women. and free men is an attractive message not only for our allies but also for the people inside China, so you know, I am confident in the future, but I will tell you that this is a challenge, it is a big challenge, eh, but, I'm convinced that under the leadership of President Trump the American people are up to the challenge, raise your hand and if not, I'll turn it over to uh if I do it right here Mr.

Ambassador thank you in fact I appreciate call me, but this question may be more appropriate for rick or jared in the sense that they are about politics as much as politics and if I may, as you know, in 1992 president george h.w bush ran for reelection in large largely thanks to his foreign policy successes and the Americans largely rejected him for a second term, which makes Do you believe, based on the announcement he made today about Kosovo and Serbia, the announcement that came out just a few weeks ago about Israel and the United Arab Emirates, that Americans are more focused on foreign policy than they care about foreign policy and do these announcements mean anything to you?

Look, I think these ads are about President Trump keeping his promise to fight hard to end endless wars and bring his troops home and keep Americans safe and I think that's what it shows, too. shows that President Trump has a track record of continuing to get things done, you know, he really has a great track record of success, our economy was doing great until obviously the virus hit us, we had a crash, people predicted we would crash at 25 unemployment and we wouldn't get to single digit unemployment until early next year and obviously we had a great jobs report that came out today and we have more to come so the answer is people are going to vote for whoever they think is It will make your lives better, President Trump.

It turns out that he is doing a great job in foreign policy achieving many victories that had previously plagued the last administrations and, frankly, the last administrations that had a lot of mistakes and a lot of adventurism that got us into these very difficult situations. in these regions and today's agreement and all the success this week simply demonstrates once again that President Trump is getting things done and keeping Americans safe and keeping his promise to the American people, but he is not implementing his foreign policy, is implementing its foreign policy. track record as the president who built the greatest economy in our country and someone is going to keep Americans safe and continue to do things for them for both please ambassador grinnell clearly you were effective here as special envoy for These talks between Serbia and Kosovo, but I wanted to ask you about another initiative that you led.

Last year you started the Trump administration's push to decriminalize homosexuality. I'm not even just talking about customs. I don't know if you can find it on a map, but this is atrocious. I have to tell you that you may be too young to understand what this problem is about. Maybe older journalists should step up and say this is a big deal. This is a big problem. I am amazed at what happens. in washington d.c. and especially in this room, I have to tell you to be substantial, perhaps it is too complicated a topic for you.

I think this is the first time we've had the opportunity to talk to these people. Okay, but let's take a little time today and talk about this issue of 21 years, peter, I mean 21 years, we're getting the same questions that are all political, I don't know, you guys don't understand what's happening outside of Washington DC, people aren't listening to you. 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, but the question I would ask.

The question I would like to ask you is: is it accurate to say that this is an economic normalizationtotal? There was some ambiguity as to whether that's what the deal is about and what he means by completely fine. the question for you, I don't know, it's a question for you, what is your definition of total? This is economic normalization for whatever it is. I could just say that working towards economic normalization is that fair, no, I think it's incredible economic normalization, air, rail, open borders, uh, a lot of industries, so, again, no I know what is missing and I leave it to you to say what is outside of economic normalization that is not included here, tell me, genuinely asking so that we can write our stories accurately, yes, we say I would say economic normalization and then a few months ago, When they reduced tariffs until today, what is the substance? at this moment you haven't published it, it's a lot, a lot has changed since the tariffs fell, the tariffs were the political sticking point of why wethe parties couldn't meet, the Serbian side wasn't even going to start negotiations when There is a 100 tariff from our coast, the substantial thing that needs to be changed today, like what it is, there are a lot of things that changed today in terms of the economy. development in terms of identifying even some political problems that are going to be resolved. um, yeah, I would really encourage you to review the entire agreement, a sticking point that has long been something that the two sides couldn't agree on. the recognition of diplomas, if you 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 right certificate and now with this the agreement disappears, I think that's economic normalization for people who have certificates and high dental hygiene in pharmacies, pharmaceutical experts, there are a lot of people who couldn't work simply because they didn't have the right professional credentials, and this agreement will completely disappear.

Recognize all diplomas from universities on both sides. I'll give you one more example. The American companies were telling us that they were withdrawing as car rental companies because if you rented a car in Kosovo you couldn't cross the border and you couldn't get out. So people who wanted to go for tourism purposes or to visit the region or to try to do business, they couldn't really leave with that rental car, so we had American companies start to pull out to say it's just no good. In the sense that the Europeans were complaining so much about a perceived conflict and I think what we have now with this historic air agreement, rail agreement, motor agreement, all the things that they have committed to implement will create normalized trade and that It is something that has never been tried, we have literally gotten caught up in verbs and symbolism in terms of policy negotiations and we are going to try something new, the president of Serbia told local journalists today that I can read the quote, we have made an agreement bilateral. with the United States, not Kosovo, can you clarify what that means?

Yes, well, first of all, I would never try to clarify what President Buchich means when he speaks to the Serbian

press

. I can tell you what he said inside the oval office. was that it was a historic agreement to normalize the region. He talked about the Shenzhen mini zone, which will now be an economic region, so I think that might have been lost in translation a little bit, but make no mistake, the agreement they signed. It is definitely an agreement to expand trade in the region and there is no doubt that when you look at the diplomas, for example, or the one-year freeze on recognition and derecognition, and even the railway agreement, there is an outing of the US Department of Energy study that will be carried out in a lake that is located mainly in Kosovo and a part in Serbia.

We are going to do a feasibility study to determine what kind of jobs can be created around the water. There is no doubt that it is a shared agreement. They signed an agreement between themselves or they signed an agreement with the United States They signed an agreement to work with each other They did not sign with the United States We are not a firm President Trump signed something that We saw it, yes, right, what did he design?, what He said, he signed, how would you describe it, basically a letter acknowledging that you are going to work together and make this agreement, maybe it's easier to ask this way, can you just lay it out?

Specifically, what each gentleman signed today was that they both signed agreements to work together to normalize their economic and commercial relationship. The agreements are not the same, it is true that they are 99.9 the same, but of course there is one point that is fundamentally different, which is that Serbia it is going to move its embassy by july next year that is in the serbian agreement and for kosovo its last point everything is identical to the last point the last point for kosovo is that they have mutual recognition with israel and the infamous point 10 that they mentioned yesterday and that was removed, I mean, that's what the president was saying today, yeah, first of all, it's wrong to say that that was point 10, none of these were numbered, so I don't know where that came from and when.

We were negotiating, there were a lot of issues on the table, uh, a lot of things were changed and edited, as you can imagine, in the negotiations, this causes someone to leak a partial sentence and pretend that this was the full agreement. I think it's a typical policy, but nothing was numbered, it certainly wasn't number 10 and nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, so something was leaked in terms of negotiation, but it was partial and I think it stood out in a way. way that gave a false impression. impression, let me ask you one more thing, maybe it's semantics, but we've been having this dilemma for quite a while, when you say shenzhen, do you think shenzhen is in the chinese province of uh or schengen like in Europe because we couldn't figure it out?

Europe so just to clarify what President Trump signed so we are not part of the agreement and I think it is very important to remember that we did not come and there are a lot of conspiracy theories about what We were coming to the table and we were not forcing both parties to do nothing. This was a real opportunity for the two sides to talk. We didn't have any big plan. We had no absolute demands. We certainly didn't have. I don't even want to say the word about what some conspiracy theorists say about past land deals it was never discussed in my presence what the two sides did was agree to move forward economically what President Trump signed is as a witness to say this It's a great deal and the United States is happy about it.

Would you support it? Yes, the EU has tried and failed over the last 10 years to achieve what your team is celebrating today. EU leaders around the world are looking at this as a model for success or it will take a whole generation of new leaders to be able to study what you have achieved here and in the Middle East, so I really have to take it on board. I mean, I think we've all failed over the last 10 years. Not only would I blame this on the Europeans, I would say that it is the establishment's thinking in foreign policy that has failed both in Europe and here in Berlin, Paris, London, Washington DC, um, we had great support from the French and the Germans. to test this new form of economic development and let's also be very clear: Europeans have a lot of economic development they can do and will do.

The team will meet on Monday. in Brussels, so there is a completely new aspect to this and let me continue with the question on this point 10. One of the reasons we were willing not to talk about it here was because it is on Monday's agenda. in Europe and we are trying to bring this together with the Europeans to say what can they do, what can we do to move this forward, so on Monday that issue will be discussed in a lot of detail in Brussels, so I felt confident that we could leave and work with the Europeans on this issue and that is why it was removed, but at the end of the day we need the Europeans to help us on this issue.

We will help you. But their calculation on the political side is a little different because both Kosovo and Serbia want to be members of the EU and that is why they are considering a very long path to reach the EU. We support our European partners in their process, but we are not making any demands, we are not members of the EU, so we do not have a seat at that table, but we will certainly help in any way we can, but that is a separate political process. I think that also complicates it because of the EU rules, regulations and membership processes, thank you very much everyone, so the president is bringing back the hottest economy in modern history.

Today's employment numbers are proof that 1.4 million jobs were added in August, accelerating expectations. Unemployment fell 1.8 percent and also exceeded expectations. Now almost fifty percent of the job losses since March have been reversed, a clear V-shaped recovery. I also want to address what is clearly fake news. The story in the Atlantic has been categorically debunked by eyewitnesses and contemporary documents that the Atlantic claims cite when President Trump canceled a visit to the Ain Marn American Cemetery near Paris in 2018, blaming rain for the last-minute decision according to the atlantic saying the helicopter couldn't fly and the secret service wouldn't take it there neither claim was true says the debunked atlantic behind me you'll see an email from one of the president's military aides clearly saying we're a bad weather call for today's lifting.

The Atlantic reports are based on four cowardly anonymous sources that probably don't even exist meanwhile, in about hours 10 sources. 10 left on the record debunking these lies eight with first hand knowledge stating on the record a common truth that this story is false it never happened adding to the eight that were previously told I bring you two new ones one is from derek lyon steph sacred

secretary

of staff and advisor 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 take him to the site and that the trip had been canceled that I have worked for the president throughout his administration, one of my responsibilities is to work with him on the many letters he signs to the families of our nation's fallen heroes throughout my time in the White House, Derek writes.

I never heard him utter a derogatory comment of any kind. about our troops, in my opinion, he

hold

s the brave men and women of our armed forces in the highest regard. I also bring you today another quote from a former and member of this administration, Dan Walsh, deputy chief of staff, former deputy chief of staff who is also a retired military officer. I spoke on the phone with Dan just before I came here and he wanted me to share with you as much as I can attest to the fact that there was a bad weather call in France and the helicopters couldn't get there safely. making the flight overall, the president's support and respect for our American troops past and present is unquestionable and Dan told me about several events he spent with the president as a World War II veteran who flew with the president by helicopter in Normandy and visit the president.

I had with our wounded warriors special operations teams that came to the oval office, including the team that got Al-bag Daddy and they also brought in Conan the dog. Met with families at the Army Navy game. He does this routinely, I mean, in the world. series when he had the opportunity to go see the nationals, he brought veterans with him and I can tell you from what I have seen of this president, I heard him describe his visits to Walter Reed in detail and the anguish he has. he had and the compassion that he has had and the pain that he has felt in seeing these warriors who have been absolutely wounded in the line of duty and are brave heroes and I have heard him tell how meaningful those visits are.

I've seen it too. Just the day before this article appeared there was talk of rain and lightning and he said, I want to go out and I want to talk to our World War II veterans. This is America's greatest generation and the president has them at the top. Greetings so why would a publication abandon all journalistic integrity and publish this story? It's because liberal activists in the Atlantic are not interested in the truth and are only interested in selling conspiracy-laden propaganda because here is the only truth, no one and I mean. No one loves or cares about our servicemen and women more than President Donald J.

Trump. Thank you.