From the Kitchen Table: The Duffys - Where The Biden Administration Went Wrong ft. Richard Grenell
Episode Date: September 4, 2021This week, Sean and Rachel invite former Acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell to their kitchen table to discuss everything from the situation in Afghanistan to stories from the Ova...l Office with President Trump, to discussing Sean and Rachel's time on reality TV. In addition, he details his experience as a gay Republican, and why he feels former President Trump has expanded the Republican Party's appeal to the gay community. Follow Rachel on Twitter:Â @RCamposDuffy Follow Sean on Twitter:Â @SeanDuffyWI Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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Hey everybody, welcome to From the Kitchen Table. I'm your host, Sean Duffy, along with my co-host for the podcast, but also in life, Rachel Campos Duffy.
Thank you, Sean, and hello to everyone. We're back with more conversations from our kitchen table, and today we have another special guest.
I tell you, I've been dying to speak with him. In fact, I'm a little annoyed that we're doing it at the kitchen table and over a podcast because he and I connected via Twitter. And I want to go out to dinner and drinks with
this guy. This guest is amazing. He is the former director of national intelligence for the Trump
administration. He acting as the United States ambassador to Germany. Please welcome Richard
Grinnell, somebody who is going to be able to
break down Afghanistan and every other topic under the sun for us. Rick, can I call you Rick,
or do you want me to call you ambassador? Yes. No, no, no. You definitely can be Rick.
I'm so excited and honored to do this because I'm huge fans of both of you. But
Sean, more importantly, I just have to tell you, I'm this, you know, fan girl of your girl.
I reckon well, I married well.
And you know what?
She does.
She does have a lot of fan girls.
So I've been watching.
I've been watching her since the early days of MTV.
And I just loved her in San Francisco so much.
So we are definitely going to have some MTV real world talk.
And I can't wait to get to that.
Rick.
But no,
hold on.
Like,
like you,
I,
I saw Rachel on the real world,
San Francisco,
and I didn't know her.
I didn't,
I watched her like everybody else and then had the privilege of meeting and
marrying her later in life.
And then doing nine kids with her.
I know this is going to sound so crazy, but when I was watching her, I felt like this, you know, I've always been political my whole life.
Me too, Rick. Me too.
I could sense that she was going to be a superstar in politics. She just had, you know, you have the ability to take a stand
but not be totally belligerent about it
but to be really firm and passionate about it.
And even way back then in San Francisco,
I was like, this girl's going places.
She totally did.
And still does.
She's fierce with a smile on her face.
She's a warrior and can laugh through it, which is what we need in politics. I think you're absolutely right. But let's come back to that later, Rick. Let's go to the to the burning issue of of the of the week in the last month, maybe for the last 20 years, Afghanistan.
following the news, it's been a disastrous withdrawal. I was one who supported us getting out of Afghanistan. I think so did Rachel. I'm not sure where you were on that. But
the way we've done this and the calamity from the Biden administration, what's your take on
what Biden did so poorly and where we are today and the consequences of Afghanistan looking forward.
Well, I'm so glad we're doing a podcast so that we have time to kind of get into this.
Yeah.
Let me just say that, you know, for anyone who knows my career, I spent eight years at
the UN.
I was the American spokesman when we went into Iraq.
I was the guy articulating the talking points about UN Resolution 1441, the need for the French to join us. And, you know, I've had a long kind of metamorphosis on the Iraq-Afghanistan policy. Certainly in the Bush administration, I was passionate about stopping terrorism. I mean,
we were, I was in New York working at the UN, you know, as we were putting together the post
9-11 strategy. And to see the world come together and then us quickly spoil that unity, I think,
spoil that unity, I think, caused me to really think about, okay, what do I believe about military action? And when do we go in? And how do we go in? And what I've come to the conclusion
is that we need to go in with military men and women, boots on the ground when our US national security is
immediately threatened. And that should be the goal. And that should be the short term goal.
I jumped on board of the Trump campaign early in 2016, because I saw only one person kind of
articulating this America first short term defense of a threat to national security
and a rejection of nation building. Remember, in the primary, Donald Trump really mocked the Bush
strategy, the Romney strategy, the McCain strategy. And I remember very clearly people in the
Republican Party telling me don't work for Donald Trump because he's attacking in the primary the policies of, you know, Bush, Romney and McCain.
Can I stop you for a second?
Is that so interesting to me?
So here you are, somebody who worked for those administrations.
Yeah.
You've had this, you know, change of heart or change of thinking prior to Donald Trump getting the nomination. Is that correct?
Yeah, that's why I was attracted. That's right. And so you're attracted to him.
And now how does it was there? Did you feel any pressure? Like, look, I've this guy's talking the way I like.
This is my experience. I've had this change. I think he's right about this.
But you have all this network of friends and politics.
Colleagues.
And colleagues that, I mean, you're offending them.
You're offending what they stood for and all the policies they put into motion.
What was that like?
Yeah, it's such an interesting question because going back to that time, it was incredibly risky
because I've had people, I won't name names, but I've had people say to me in 2016,
you will never work in foreign policy again if you work for Donald Trump.
And it was the establishment that was really trying to say,
don't, you know, you can't take on McCain, Bush, and Romney in a Republican primary and expect to
win. And yet I saw not so much from the pure politics standpoint, but from my eight years
of watching, eight years at the UN of watching the U.S. policy morph from defending our U.S. national security into saying,
well, little girls need to go to school. And so that's why we're spending billions of dollars.
And that's why we're there. Now, look, everybody wants little girls to go to school,
but little girls can't go to school in the Congo. Where do we stop? And so as being somebody who spent so much time at the United Nations, I began this crash of, well, what is the U.S. role here?
We have this thing called the U.N. Maybe it's the U.N.'s job to do kind of democracy building or pointing people in the right direction.
As messy as that is and as you know, it's not always going to be achieved but we should plant the flag
and march towards it um but is it really the u.s government's responsibility we also i have to say
as being somebody who worked at the state department for 10 years i saw the state department
shoved aside every time we had a crisis we sent in the military with guns rather than having diplomats trying to talk our way.
And by the way, it's a lot cheaper to have the State Department diplomats trying and not having the U.S. military utilized for every conflict.
So but getting back to.
But wait, but Rick, the State Department was in charge, has been put in charge here, and it's been a disaster.
But Rick, the State Department was in charge, has been put in charge here, and it's been a disaster.
Well, look, my attitude is you can't put the State Department in charge after you close Bagram.
Secretary Blinken should resign in disgrace.
Wendy Sherman, the deputy secretary of 2,500 U.S. troops,
5,000 NATO troops, while keeping the U.S. Embassy Foreign Service officers in a conflict zone, in a war-torn country, and you're going to keep the diplomats and remove the military? Why didn't
Secretary Blinken say, no, this is unacceptable. I have to have my
people out before you remove the troops. The fact that he sat there, allowed this decision to happen.
He put Foreign Service officers at risk and did not remove them properly and care for their safety.
I think he needs to resign because of that alone.
And Rick, do you think he had the political juice, for lack of a better word, to step out, whether it was publicly or within the administration and say, listen, President, you can't remove our troops and keep my guys on the ground.
This is going to be a disaster for them.
I mean, how should we handle that?
Let's remember he has to go and convince Susan Rice of that.
Right.
Because Susan.
The de facto president, you mean?
Yeah, this is not a joke.
Yeah, no, I agree.
Her title is domestic policy advisor.
That's what Susan Rice's title is.
Does anyone believe she's working on Medicare, Medicaid policy?
No.
And by the way, when she was the national security advisor for Barack Obama, do you know who her two deputies were?
No.
One was Anthony Blinken, who is now running the State Department.
The other deputy was Avril Haines, who is the Director of National Intelligence.
So she picked the intelligence leader
and the diplomatic leader
because they both were her deputies.
They both reported into her.
And they'll still report to her, right?
Of course.
This is what so many conservatives have thought, Rick.
And I hope we can all, you know,
I think we all have to speak very honestly now because everything's going to anyway.
I mean, like we might as well speak honestly. All of us have been afraid that Obama is actually running this.
And is she an Obama person that's, you know, sort of, you know, Biden's the shell and she's running our foreign policy?
Is that what's happening? One hundred percent. And she's very our foreign policy. Is that what's happening? 100%. And she's very close to Obama.
She served on the Netflix board
where he was getting the big Netflix contract.
That's why I canceled my Netflix, Rick.
I canceled my subscription.
Our kids hate us, but we canceled Netflix
because of Susan Rice.
Well, let me just tell you,
Reed Hastings, who is the CEO of Netflix, gave so much money to protect Gavin Newsom that he has to have his name listed on the Gavin Newsom vote, no on the recall vote.
All of the commercials that are being run by Gavin has Reed Hastings name at the bottom. He gave so much money that the reporting requirements require that you run his name with the commercials.
But can I ask you this, Rick?
So, again, I started this conversation off by telling you I thought we should get our troops home.
I agreed with you and President Trump in that effort.
We have 20 years is too long.
Nation building is not the right approach. We spent, you know, blood and treasure in a place that many Americans had forgotten.
But when we look at saying, hey, let's bring our troops home, does that mean we absolutely walk away from a country and don't offer air support or we don't maybe even retain Bagram Air Base?
I mean, it butts up to China and Iran.
It's one country away from Russia.
Strategically, it's a pretty important place.
Rare earth minerals, trillions of dollars in the ground.
Should we have kept the base in Afghanistan?
Should we have still offered air support? Listen, our guys are on the front lines in Humvees with their gear on, with machine guns.
But we're offering support to the Afghan military so they can actually stand up against the Taliban.
military so they can actually stand up against the Taliban. When we say bring our troops home,
does that mean completely pull up every route and walk away after 20 years and two plus trillion dollars? Or does it mean, no, no, no, we bring our guys home, but we still offer support to the
government that we set up to run Afghanistan as opposed to completely walking away and letting a radical
Islamic organization like the Taliban take over Afghanistan? Does that question make sense?
Yeah, it's such a great question, Sean. And it's really the heart of, I think, the conservative
philosophical debate about foreign policy. And what I would say is this. Donald Trump came in in 2017,
and he had articulated, bring our troops home, no more starting wars. Let's bring our troops home.
I can tell you, because I've been inside the Oval Office on many occasions for these conversations,
Donald Trump wanted every man and woman home. That was the goal. But when faced with facts on the ground,
intelligence on the ground, and military advisors saying, sir, we're trying to meet that goal.
We got to go down at a slow pace. We're going to have to do some different things.
When faced with the experts and the facts, Donald Trump as the businessman, as the outsider,
with the experts and the facts, Donald Trump as the businessman, as the outsider, always adjusted the strategy as long as it was moving towards his goal. He wasn't a politician who had to say,
you know, look, it has to be out under my watch. Remember, his deadline reluctantly
gave the deadline early on at the end of 2020.
And then by the end of our administration,
he had adjusted it to the following summer.
That pained Trump to be able to have to move that deadline so many times,
but he did it because he was paying attention
to the reality on the ground,
to the intelligence and to the facts.
He deferred to reality.
We have a team right now in Jake Sullivan
who has issued a white paper on how to remove ourselves from Afghanistan, and they've refused
to look at the facts, and they are just doing their political timeline. So it's a long answer,
Sean, to say we have to be able to read what's going on on the ground. We don't have bases in every country, but finding a way. Maybe it's from Iraq and you share this kind of Iraq-Afghanistan small presence and utilize technology and utilize air power in order to make sure that the Taliban didn't take over.
Now, look, lastly, I'll say is that I don't find it to be a problem talking to the Taliban.
Trump did it. Biden did it. And the Taliban clearly heard when talking to the Trump team, if you make a move, you're going to get blown away.
Militarily, we're going to wipe the earth. They didn't make a single move towards cities when
Trump made this deal. Donald Trump on January 20th handed the keys over to Joe Biden. We had
a stable Afghanistan. We had no Americans killed in over a year. And we had a functioning embassy in Kabul.
That quickly went to chaos because the Taliban started little by little taking over cities, taking over regions.
And then they took over the whole country.
And there was no pushback.
No consequences.
Right.
No consequences. So I think you've got to find a happy medium or maybe not a happy medium,
but you've got to utilize the information on the ground to then make your policy. Let that
information drive policy. We'll have more of this conversation after this.
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close to you please go to connexontario.ca so that's interesting though that's a very big
difference between donald trump i mean with all the different foreign leaders they all found him
kind of unpredictable and and tough. And I think
that made him an adversary that they were afraid of in many ways, whether it's because they didn't
want to, they were, you know, whether it was you better pay up at, and you know this well from your
job as an ambassador, making people pay their share of security. And then here with the threats
with the Taliban, you know, the Taliban being afraid
of what Donald Trump would do if they got out of line. Here's another big difference I see, Rick.
And you would probably know better than me because you probably have more interactions with Donald
Trump than Sean and I have. But one of the things that any observer or anyone who's interacted with
him and had a conversation with him is that
he's kind of cheap and he treats the American taxpayer money like it's his own. And I remember
Sean being on a phone call with him on the, on an airplane and, you know, him saying, you know,
this phone, this, this phone's not working well. You know, he's calling Sean from air force one
and, and complaining like, how much should we pay for this plane? And we can't get a phone call that works. Everybody knew that he was looking at how much was
being spent on the military and so forth and really trying to give us the biggest bang for our
buck. The idea that taxpayers who funded this military would now that this our weapons and our technology and our helicopters and our Humvees
would be in the hands of the Taliban. There is no way in hell I can imagine that Donald Trump
would have put up with that just on the basis of him being, you know, this protector of our money
and treating it like his own. Yeah. Look, I'll tell you a story of being inside the Oval Office with Secretary Esper and President Trump directing him to bring every piece of equipment home from Iraq and Afghanistan. tribe about making sure we collected every single tent that we were utilizing because those tents
are huge institutional tents. They are weatherproof. They are really good tents and they
must be returned. We are not leaving one thing. And Donald Trump would say to Secretary Esper,
and if you can't bring it home for some reason if it's too large if we've
assembled a big piece over there and now we can't get it back you disable it or destroy it so they
cannot let the opposition have one piece of equipment including tents now this is a guy
who is the outsider i know it's true this is this is a guy who is the outsider. This is a guy who's the outsider, who doesn't think like a politician, who thinks, why would I leave equipment in for free to anybody, number one, but number two, to people that are radical Islamic terrorists that actually hate us, that have spent 20 years killing and maiming the men and women in our military?
That's insanity. And it's interesting to listen to all of the really smart advisors who've been around Washington for so long and they're so smart and we're all supposed to listen to them and take their advice.
They're more intelligent and more informed than anyone who is elected.
Was it 500 national security officials, the swamp of Washington, D.C., that signed a letter in support of Joe Biden in opposition to Donald Trump?
Right. What's your take? Right.
What's your take on the egg they have on their face and what we should think about the in quotes, the experts on national security or on anything when they give us advice on who we should vote for, as opposed to our own gut on what's best for America? Yeah, it's a great
question. I think it relates to also the advice we get from the intelligence community as well.
We have to remember that the advice we get from intel officers is an estimate.
It's their best estimate. And I think we can put the CDC in here as well. They give advice to policymakers, and the policymakers are the ones who have to balance that advice and say, okay,
what are the other aspects of this? And we don't do a very good job in Washington because we have a whole
bunch of smarty pants people, especially in foreign policy, who want to control the whole process.
You know, when I was appointed the presidential envoy for Kosovo in Serbia
and tried to do these negotiations, I was told by the foreign policy establishment,
you better immediately go get a briefing from these people who have worked on the Balkans for
20 years. And I said, I'm actually not going to get a briefing from them. Because my judgment is,
is if you've been working on the Balkans for 20 years, you probably should say I've failed,
I haven't been able to do this. And I'm going to go work on a different policy.
And so we don't have that system in Washington where common sense rules, where you would say,
gee, if I'm going to ask the military planners for advice, they're probably going to give me
military advice. Just like when you ask a real estate
agent, should you sell your house? They're going to say yes. Of course you should, right?
So I think we've just got to have better policymakers who are confident when they
ask the military for advice, they put it in perspective. Okay, here's somebody who's been
trained in military planning. They're going to give you military planning strategy because that's their expertise.
You can't ask someone from the Pentagon, should we not go to send military U.S. military men and women overseas because that's what they do.
They like to be overseas. They're going to give you the
strategy of how to make it work. It makes me think of, Rachel and I had this conversation,
thinking back to Ronald Reagan, when he went to Germany and gave his famous, you know, tear down
this, you know, wall, Mr. Gorbachev. The State Department numerous times took that out of a
speech. And he kept putting it back in. And eventually, I don't know that it was,
I think it might have been Nancy Reagan or one of his advisors said, listen, Mr. President,
you're the president. They didn't run for anything. You ran, you won. You can put whatever
you want in that speech. You don't have to listen to the State Department. And he put it back in and
he gave it. And it's, you know, I listened, even I listened to it today on YouTube, and it still
gives me goosebumps to watch him there giving that address.
But again, I think you're right.
Policymakers have to remember that they need to listen to advice.
But in the end, they were elected to make decisions on the course of the country.
And that requires confidence from politicians to be able to balance that.
And that doesn't exist today.
Yeah, it's so true.
You know, one of the saddest things that I heard over the last couple weeks was that interview with the dad,
a dad whose son had died there at that airport in Kabul.
On Tucker.
And he said, you know, yeah, on Tucker, exactly.
And he said, you know, I'm just a carpenter.
I'm not a military general.
I'm not an expert on military strategy,
but I could tell that my son was a sitting duck there,
that this was going to be a turkey shoot.
I could predict what was going to happen.
And I remember, Rick, that weekend before,
we were on Fox and Friends,
and Pete has more military experience than me,
but all three of us were saying,
this is not going to go well.
There's one entrance. There's all these Americans coming to, you know, one point.
The Taliban's in control.
We know ISIS is around.
We know Al-Qaeda is around.
And everybody coming and rushing to the store is claiming to have worked with the Americans.
So, I mean, this was an obvious thing that was going to
happen. And that's why when those bodies came to Dover and the president was so callous and
treated those families so poorly, I was pissed because it was his fault, but also because they
sold him to us. They sold Joe Biden to the American people as this man that was full
of empathy. He was the consoler in chief. And all he had was like going back to to Beau Biden and
making it about himself and looking at his watch. I felt like, God, this guy's a real phony.
Yeah. And, you know, I was struck with the same thing in that here's
somebody who was sold to us to be the experienced 40 year hand on foreign policy. And you look and
you think, how did he mess this up so badly? I really have come to the conclusion that the lessons that we're learning is that we should
never hire a senator for president ever. Because a U.S. senator believes that when they vote,
they go on the floor and they vote, that their job is done, that they've taken their position
and that's it. And now the policy will be implemented. But a governor or somebody who
runs corporations, they know how to implement. The decision is only the beginning. Senators
usually vote and then they're done. And then they go out and they claim, well, I voted for that.
And they miss the point of, OK, great, but who's implementing it? You got to
follow through on the implementation. Joe Biden made his policy known and didn't implement it.
He didn't follow through. They're called executives because they have to execute the policy and the
strategy. And you're right, Rick. I was there. You come in, you study a piece of legislation,
And you're right, Rick.
I was there.
You come in, you study a piece of legislation, you vote for or against it, but then oftentimes you can forget about it, where you have a whole other set of people, usually in the
executive branch, that are forced to implement the policies that you vote for, or in business
as well.
You have to execute and implement a strategy.
And you're right, senators or congressmen don't have that skill set and experience.
Governors and executives of companies do.
I want to switch gears.
One thing to add to that, too, is that every time in the debates that you ask Joe Biden about a policy position or implementation, he would say, well, I co-sponsored Bill so-and-so.
Like, that's actually going to help us.
That's a red herring right there.
That I co-sponsored anything, when anyone gives you that answer, all you're doing is
saying, I'm going to sign on to someone else's legislation, someone else's work, someone
else's thought process to co-sponsor.
And a lot of people don't understand.
They're like, oh, he did the work behind this.
No, he just signed his name and said, I'll join in the effort. It's kind of like voting for a bill. It's no better. But I want to turn to California, Rick, because we have a big election coming up in the recall of Gavin Newsom.
radio show host is the lead opposition if the recall happens. Can you give us kind of your take on what you see happening on the ground? I mean, that California could actually vote for
a conservative like Larry Elders, that they could kick out Newsom. Again, the sun may still be
rising in America as opposed to setting. if something like that could happen in the state
of California? Where are we at? What's happening? What do we need to know about the California
recall? Well, let's hope that Gavin is recalled. He's just a disaster and people are really
furious. Left, right and center. People look at his leadership and say he's not an executive.
He's a politician, just like what we were talking about. And so I hope that it happens. I'm very concerned about the current voting process in California. You COVID, we have to do all mail-in ballots. So if you're on
the voter list, on the voter roll in California, you get a ballot. The problem with that is that
voter rolls are just a mess. And so we're finding already, I mean, I just saw one person who's not an American stand up and say, I got a ballot. I'm not even an American. We see residency requirements, people in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Nevada, who haven't lived in California in years getting ballots.
ballots. We've documented people who are dead, who are getting ballots. I got kicked off Twitter in September of last year. Congratulations. Good. That's a badge of honor, Rick. Good work.
For just a couple of days, though. Oh, darn. Not a permanent ban.
I got kicked off because I posted about my neighbor's parents who had received ballots,
and one had been dead for 10 years and the other had been dead for 12 years. So we've got a real problem here, and I think
that's going to go in Gavin's favor. And remember, too, that Gavin, he appointed the replacement for Kamala Harris, Alex Padilla.
And Alex is now the U.S. Senator.
But Alex was our Secretary of State.
So when Alex moved from Secretary of State to the U.S. Senate to replace Kamala,
Gavin also got to replace single-handedly the Secretary of State. He put in there a woman who has no political experience no experience running elections
and she has announced that under certain circumstances you can print your ballot from
home what you can print your ballot from home and you can send it in and it's all under the
auspices of COVID is terrible
and people can't go out of their homes.
This is why they keep going with this.
Rick, there was some speculation that you were going to run.
Why didn't you?
Well, I think multiple reasons
and they're all kind of equal reasons.
But one, I really do care about the long-term effects
in California and this voter roll problem needs to be solved. It's not going to be solved by somebody who's running a short-term campaign. So I have launched this organization called Fix California. You can go to fixcalifornia.com. We'd love every county in California to clean up their voter rolls. We're dramatically expanding voter outreach to include people like conservatives who are not registered to vote. ballot, an initiative asking Californians, do you want to upend the way we fund education and
have the money that the state spends per pupil follow the family and the student's choice?
Amen to that. Democrats are really in favor. I mean, we're seeing polling that after this year with the school closures, but also because some Democrats are mad in states where, you know, where they're mask mandates and no mask mandates.
Anyway, parents just want more control. And even Democrats are saying, yeah, just give me the money. I'll decide where I want to send my kid.
I want to switch gears to you really quick before we get to real world.
I've been I've been wanting to this is this is what I would ask you if we were sitting at a bar with Sean and your husband with a with a margarita. I was an early Trump supporter and so were you.
And I knew it was pretty hard as a Hispanic woman to be an early Trump supporter.
as a Hispanic woman to be an early Trump supporter.
What was it like for you as a gay man to be a Trump supporter?
A Republican Trump supporter.
A Republican Trump supporter.
I mean, you had, you know, as you mentioned before your own history in the Republican party.
So people you were offending there,
then you had the gay world seems really offended by Trump,
which I found very perplexing just as an observer.
But anyway, I'm going to let you answer that because I'm dying to hear what you have to say.
Well, it was a lot easier to support a Republican like Trump than anyone else.
I will say that within the gay world. But really, yeah, because I think people looked at him as a New Yorker.
You know, he transformed the way gays vote in 16 and 20.
I mean, we have gotten more gay and lesbian vote voting Republican and voting for Trump than ever before.
There's like a massive movement now and it's scaring the crap out of the gay left.
And we continue, I mean, we're having this big conference
in Nashville next weekend with gay conservatives
and it's massive.
We've got so many people
and I've been waiting for this moment.
In 1992, I sat in Houston, Texas,
listening to Pat Buchanan deliver a speech at the Republican
Convention in Houston. And his speech was very derogatory towards gays and lesbians. And really,
the summary of it was gays and lesbians are not welcome in the party because we're going to be a
party of family values. And I remember sitting there thinking, I'm going to work and change this party because I couldn't think of a better party for gays and lesbians than the
party that stands for smaller government and more personal responsibility. Let's get government out
of our business. And freedom, right? And freedom. And gays and lesbians need to realize that if
you're going to vote for the big government party expecting to get some sort of piece of the pie, that your piece is going to be pretty, pretty small.
You are better going with advocating for the party that's going to let you keep more of your money, let you make more of your decisions.
let you make more of your decisions. And thereby, and let me just give you the example on guns,
for instance, gays and lesbians are wildly supportive of the Second Amendment, because they know, you know, take a drag queen in San Francisco, they're going to be attacked in a,
you know, dark alley, and they're not going to be able to call 911. They need to be able to protect
themselves. And I think a lot of gays and lesbians realize, I got to take this fight on myself. I
can't rely on the government or the police to come in a nick of time. So my point is just the gay and
lesbian community is really recognizing that conservative small government
gives them more personal responsibility, gives them more freedoms. And so we've opened up
the community to vote Republican like never before. It's it's pretty exciting.
I love that. That's a Trump phenomenon. You think that's a Trump phenomenon that Trump is
or do you think this is just a
natural? Oh, it was OK. I wasn't asked you. Is this the natural evolution of what's happening
culturally that people are just, you know, more accepting of gays, including Republicans,
or you think this is a direct result of Trump? And if so, explain that.
I think it's both. I think the evolution was inevitable. We were moving in that direction.
But Donald Trump opened us up like he blew the doors off the situation.
He was a New Yorker. Remember in in the in the primary when he was running in 2016 in the primary, he said when the North Carolina bathroom issue came to to the the public's attention, Donald Trump said, you know, look, anybody can use any bathroom they
want in a Trump property. And this is what he said in the primary. And most people thought,
oh, that's it. You know, now he's going to be done. And yet he got more support. I really
believe that Republicans are the party and the people who want to see more freedoms and the government out of the way.
Look, the left has now convinced everybody that all they want to do is control us.
And that's scaring gays and lesbians even more.
I'll also say this.
A lot of gays and lesbians are absolutely against a vaccine mandate
because they think quickly behind that is going to be a HIV status on your passport.
Yeah, of course. 100%. You know, it's the same with the abortion issue, by the way. I mean,
Sean and I, as you know, we're pro-life, but having a disabled child, a special needs child,
I should say, a Down syndrome child has made us even more pro-life because we know that there's
an effort to, you know, exterminate children with special needs,
especially Down syndrome, because you can get that diagnosis, you know,
in the middle of your, you know, pretty, you're quite early in your pregnancy.
It's surprisingly early in your pregnancy. You can get that diagnosis.
You know, you think about all the genes, things that are coming up.
People talked about, could there be a gay gene and god
forbid if that happened what would what would happen rick i actually in muslim country i
introduced a bill right before i left congress banning this is great you should hear this ban
banning any um uh sexual preference selection in abortion um you know the technology is not there
um but if it was i wanted to ban it. I was obviously
putting Democrats in a really hard spot, right? And they kind of lost their minds over this piece
of legislation that I introduced. We tried to get Mark Pocan to co-sign.
Gay Democrat representative from Madison, Wisconsin.
He was not interested.
Yeah, he was not interested in that.
We'll have more of this conversation after this.
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Let me move on because I know we're running short on time, but I want to talk to you about
the real world. And so those of you who are listening who don't know, Rachel and I met on
a reality TV show called The Real World. It was on MTV. It was seven strangers picked to live in a
house. They came from all different walks of life and were forced to live together and had their lives filmed for six months, roughly.
And so let me ask you this.
Why do you think the San Francisco season,
which was a season that Rachel did on The Real World,
was so culturally profound?
And why was Rachel so great on the show?
Oh, that's so nice, Sean.
I love the way that you worded that question.
Well, first of all, she looked amazing.
She did.
And still does.
She hasn't aged at all, Rick.
She looks better or the same as she did when she was 22 years old.
I love it.
She's like a fine woman.
I know, it's true.
I would say that she wore her heart on her sleeve.
She was opinionated, but not too much.
She was confident at a time when, you know,
seeing a Latina young woman be so confident
and also smart, political.
I think that San Francisco, you know,
I went to elementary school in Redwood City,
a suburb of San Francisco,
and my brother was born in San Francisco. My family lived there at the corner of Haight, let's be honest, Pedro really, you know,
trying to be honest. He was so likable. I wish I would have met him because he was incredibly
likable. But the conflict, I think, between Rachel and Pedro and having a honest conversation, I thought that your talking about him and really
bifurcating, you know, how we felt sorry for him and what he was going through, but you were able
to do that and then also separate and do the experiment of the real world and say, look,
I don't always get along with everybody and your personality and my personality doesn't always get along. And we can talk about these issues.
You weren't willing to, to just give someone a total pass just because they were going through
one particular thing. And, and I, it was incredibly delicate, but I thought you handled it really well
and also showed incredible love towards him in moments when he needed it.
Yeah, you know, it was interesting that they cast him and I, because in some regards, we were very opposite, right?
And again, I think people really have to, I think it's hard for young people to understand what 1993, 94 was like. There was no cure for AIDS.
You know, here was this guy. No, we all thought that it was an immediate
death sentence. Right. You know, honestly, back then
you know, I remember people just saying, you can't even breathe
the same air, you're going to get it. Right. And here you're sharing a bathroom
and talking with him and your confidence was
I think electrifying. Well, I was, I think, electrifying.
Well, I was like, hey, we're sharing a bathroom.
We don't know.
I don't know anything about this disease.
Like, can we talk about that?
And that was nobody else wanted to talk about it.
And I know it was on people's minds.
And so I wanted to put that forward.
But it was interesting, the casting, because in some regards,
you know, we were very far apart in like where he was coming from, where I was coming from.
But on another angle, he and I had the most in common.
He may not have been a practicing Catholic, but he came from a family that was very Catholic.
He knew exactly, you know, what what my background was, probably more so than anybody else in the house.
So it was a really interesting juxtaposition. And, you know,
I, he, I really wish you could have met him. He really was a great guy. I thought he wasn't very,
you know, tolerant of, of puck. I, I, I, I felt like, you know, there were good sides about him.
And, and I think, you know, Pedro was facing death. His time was limited. He basically just didn't have time to waste with people.
I mean, when your time is limited, you're like, I'm going to spend time with who I want to spend time with.
And that guy is kind of, you know, not someone I want to spend time with.
One of the reasons I love the show so much is that, you know, 27, 28 years later, the things that you were saying and doing are still timeless.
Like you weren't the radical.
There's nothing on that show that you should be embarrassed for.
All these years later, as you're grown up, you know, we still want to treat, we still want to hold people to great standards. I don't care if you're dying or you're HIV positive or, you know, as me, I struggled through non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and, you know, was bald and looked a mess and, you know, thought I was dying.
But that's no excuse to be intolerant or to be mean spirited.
Yes, you're going through a tough time and we can,
we can help you open doors and be there emotionally,
but that doesn't give anybody an excuse to,
to still not be tolerant.
And that's the lesson.
And that's the lesson Rick, I learned on when people go,
what did you learn on the real world?
I mean, the best part about the real world is I ended up with Sean but the lesson i learned on the real world and it was a it was a
lesson i learned very early in life from doing that show and i'm very grateful for i was only
22 years old when i did it i learned the myth of liberal tolerance they truly i i was the
conservative on the show but i was open to hearing all of their stories.
I went to gay pride. I went to you were you were such a shining example of tolerance.
And that's why I loved it from the moment I saw you on it.
It was like, thank you. This is the type of conservative that we need.
Stand your ground. Articulate when you're pro-life and when you're for religious freedoms and that you are a Christian and that you can be bold about all these things, but you also can listen to other people's point like you and I reject you, but I don't know anything
about you. And I think Rachel is one who goes, listen, I will go to Gay Pride. I will do all
these different things that the liberals in her house wanted to do. And she joined them and then
made a fact-based decision on a number of different issues. And I think that's what we
should all do in life. We shouldn't stick our heads in the sand and come up with opinions.
do in life. We shouldn't stick our heads in the sand and come up with opinions. The best opinions,
the best decisions come from life experience and you can't get life experience unless you engage.
And I thought Rachel did that well. I don't think you could do the real world today,
by the way. Sean and I talk about this all the time. No, there's no way you could.
You can't do it. You can't. Everybody's, you know, you give, express an opinion,
you might be, you might not ever have a career.
You know what I mean? Like, I mean, it's crazy.
You won't have a Twitter account.
You'll be banned.
You know, you're all Facebook and Instagram.
I have to ask you this question though, Rachel.
I've been dying to ask you the show and and totally balance the tolerance
with being this conservative catholic woman um did you stumble into that or did you have tools
from your family like because it's so interesting at a young age i just wonder if if it was planned or if it was
just kind of dumb luck so no i think i think sean would agree it's my mom my mom that's what i was
gonna say it's her it's my mom my mom is the most uh she can be tough if you don't if you don't
know her well you might and you kind of people got to know her a little bit on the show she was like
everyone's favorite parent on that season because she was not afraid to say what she what she's not
afraid to say what she thinks um she came she was born in spain and her family suffered from
communism um during the spanish civil war so she is somebody who um understands what that ideology
can do to a country to a a people, to a family.
It nearly destroyed her family.
And so I grew up just like you, Rick, with very political.
And I think it's because my mom came from a family that had suffered persecution at
the hands of atheist communists.
And so I think that hearing those stories growing up, growing up in a family where and we're raising our kids this way, Rick.
And that is that, you know, people go, well, you don't talk about impolite things at the dinner table.
And that's why we started this podcast.
We're like, that's all we talk about. these conversations because if people can't learn to have these conversations in their homes with their families debating ideas talking about life talking about politics talking about culture
um what happened at school what happened on the news what happened in hollywood and having these
deep conversations in a circle of love how are we going to have these conversations outside of house
no wonder um there's so much dissension.
So I think it was growing up in that environment.
We're trying to have that with our own kids.
And we love being around people like you who kind of, you know, I mean, everything you've said here, I just I'm like, I wish you could see me.
I'm like shaking my head.
It's like I knew you were our kind of people because you're a truth teller.
You're somebody who, you know, is isn't a group thinker. You're somebody who who, you know,
I love even the story in the beginning where you said, I live through, you know, this idea of of
what America foreign policy is like. And then I actually experienced it. And I'm humble enough
to go, I'm going to change my mind about that. I mean, people who learn and change their mind and evolve as people.
And if we're not evolving, what are we doing?
So I just can't tell you how excited I am to not just have you on this podcast, but I just know we're going to be great friends.
That's awesome.
I'm so appreciative.
You know, I grew up evangelical Christian, and I have lots of ministers, evangelical ministers in my immediate family. And I've been
really taught sensitivities about, you know, religious freedom and the crash that that
causes with the gay community is so hard for me to understand. And it's, it's because I have this
loving family that similar to yours wants to talk about everything and there's no taboo subject.
Yeah. Yeah. And, and you, by the way, you've, you've done amazing work, um, with advancing,
um, gay issues in, you know, on, you know, bringing out in Muslim countries and, and talking about
the intolerance there. I think that's a taboo subject on the left. And I was really, I was
really impressed that, that you did that, that you, you know, were part of an administration
that championed that. So, yeah. Wow. Thank you. Thank you very much. Listen, we're grateful that
you would jump on and we know how busy you are.
Thanks for joining us at our kitchen table.
And again, wide ranging from Afghanistan to the real world to California politics.
And again, it just shows how interesting you are and how many things you have going on.
And again, you take the time with us.
We appreciate it.
And continue the great work.
Good luck in California cleaning up those voter rolls.
I agree with you.
Sometimes people look on how they can make a difference and they might run for office.
And that's great.
You looked at governor and said, well, this is a short term run.
I can have a bigger impact on politics in the state that I love by making sure we have
fair elections and the way you have fair elections, especially if we're going to have these COVID
restrictive voting requirements. It's not even restrictive, they're
actually very loose. I'm going to make sure that anyone who gets a ballot or prints a ballot
are actually legal voters in our state. And I think that could be more noble work. So thank
you for what you're doing there. And thanks for all the great service, you know, with the Trump
administration. I just ask that you give us the opportunity to vote for you one day here here very high in office why would you wish that on somebody
i know because i know i know you know how bad it is to when you know it's hard to do but we need
people like you and i i that is definitely something i would like to do say i did that
i voted for rick grinnell for for president for for senator for
something well that thank you and thanks for allowing this long format i mean we're missing
these long formats and it's so enjoyable and uh thank you both i'm huge fans all right wonderful
thank you thank you rick thank you appreciate it well that was such a great conversation sean i
want to thank rick so much for joining us at The Kitchen Table.
We've enjoyed the conversation.
And if you did too, let us know.
Subscribe, rate, review this podcast at foxnewspodcast.com or wherever you download podcasts.
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Bye-bye.
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