The Daily Signal - The Daily Signal Presents “The “Signal Sitdown - Inside Trump and Rubio’s Restructuring of the State Department | Tommy Pigott

Episode Date: October 25, 2025

While President Donald Trump did not receive the Nobel Peace Prize this year, he could be the odds on favorite to win the distinguished award in 2026 because of his work brokering peace deals or ceasefires in eight different conflicts this year.  Trump’s deal-making diplomacy comes as left-wing critics thought this level of success impossible because of Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s efforts to completely reform the State Department. The critics were wrong.  State Department Deputy Spokesman Tommy Pigott joins ⁠“The Signal Sitdown”⁠ to provide an inside look at the State Department overhaul and how Trump has managed to find pathways to peace all over the world. The Biden administration’s poor prioritization of America and its interests was painfully on display inside the State Department that Trump and Rubio inherited. Things were so bad, in fact, that Trump’s political appointees had a difficult time simply tracking down just how many people actually worked for the state department. While many challenges remain, Pigott told The Daily Signal, “I think as Americans, we can be proud that we have a president who is a peacemaker.” Keep Up With The Daily Signal   Sign up for our email newsletters:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.dailysignal.com/email⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠     Subscribe to our other shows:    The Tony Kinnett Cast: ⁠https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL2284199939⁠ The Signal Sitdown: ⁠https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL2026390376⁠   Problematic Women:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL7765680741⁠   Victor Davis Hanson: ⁠https://megaphone.link/THEDAILYSIGNAL9809784327⁠     Follow The Daily Signal:    X:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠https://x.com/intent/user?screen_name=DailySignal⁠ Instagram:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.instagram.com/thedailysignal/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Facebook:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://www.facebook.com/TheDailySignalNews/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Truth Social:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ https://truthsocial.com/@DailySignal⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  YouTube:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/dailysignal?sub_confirmation=1⁠    Subscribe on your favorite podcast platform and never miss an episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We'd love to talk. Business. Hi, Bradley Devlin here, politics editor of The Daily Signal, and I'm excited to share this episode of my show with The Daily Signal with you. The Signal Sitdown is one of the Daily Signal's other podcasts, and each show I bring you inside the biggest battles in Washington, D.C., with some of the biggest names in politics.

So if you like what you hear today, make sure you subscribe to the Signal Sitdown for weekly episodes. We'll see you there. So you have conflicts breaking out under the previous administration, and how conflicts being solved under President Trump. So from a geopolitical context, you had an administration that had not prioritized the right things. We've seen conflicts breaking out all over the world. We see a United States that's no longer respected.

That's what we inherited. President Trump had addressed a lot of these problems in the first term that he had in office. And then you have Joe Biden coming in and really reversing a lot of that progress and doing a lot of damage from his policies that were on full display for the entire world to see. On top of that, what they pursued and what they pushed at the State Department, but this goes back many decades, is really empowering the bureaucracy, not empowering meritocracy. Thank you so much for tuning in to The Signal Sitdown. But before we get to the interview, we'd love it if you'd hit that like and subscribe button on YouTube, Spotify, or wherever you may be joining us. And please remember to give us a five-star review because we love your feedback.

Remember, it's your government. And together we'll expose how it really works and how to affect real change. Without further ado, here's the interview. Tommy Piggott, welcome to The Signal Sitdown. Thanks for having me on. Of course. So you are a deputy spokesperson at the State Department. Yes.

There's a lot that we can talk about today, but three things that we're going to be discussing. And I think that's been the focus of the American people through this first 10 months now almost of this administration, is the State Department restructuring, what the State Department is doing. doing vis-a-vis student visas and other visas. And then finally, eight conflicts now have been solved by this administration. Some of them more major than others. Others still working on a solution actively. So we're going to talk about all that and more.

But first, how did you get over to the State Department? What made you want to take a job when it seemed like a pretty thankless job, given what you guys inherited it? Well, I mean, I think it was the fact of President Trump's leadership. I mean, coming from my background, I worked at the Republican National Committee, then at the honor of being part of the Trump campaign during the last cycle. And really the promises that he made, the record that he had from the previous administration, the problems he had identified, and really the solutions that he was willing to put forward.

I think all of that together really kind of led to this real enthusiasm across the administration to get this done. And I think the evidence of that is how quickly this administration has moved. This is an administration under President Trump's leadership that is delivering on promise after promise after promise, a border going from in crisis to being secure, conflicts being ended, the bureaucracy being reformed, things that would have taken years, multiple terms for any other president to accomplish. President Trump has accomplished it in just a matter of months. So I think from that background, coming from the background of working on the campaign, seeing President Trump's record, the plans that. had really made this an honor to be part of this administration. And I still feel that way every single day. It's hard to believe actually what we're able to do for the American people. Yeah. And State Department itself, I mean, I don't even want to know what you guys inherited,

but I'm going to ask you anyway from this Biden administration. I mean, one of the major talking points over the course of the campaign was, do you live in a more stable world under Joe Biden or a less stable world under Joe Biden as compared to Donald Trump? And the answer for a lot of the American people was, no, I live under more instability now under Joe Biden than I did during Donald Trump, even with coronavirus, even with some of the crazy curveballs that was thrown the administration's way in the first four years, namely Israel, Hamas, namely Russia, Ukraine. What did you inherit from the Biden administration in terms of the geopolitical context and the internal workings of the State Department?

Well, from a geopolitical context, I mean, we saw what happened under the previous administration. Actions that, as President Trump has said, are some of the most embarrassing days in our country's history, really terrible days from the Afghanistan withdrawal to the wars that broke out. And so you have President Trump inheriting all of these wars that broke out under the previous administration. So you have conflicts breaking out under the previous administration and how conflicts being solved under President Trump. So from a geopolitical context, you had an administration that had not prioritized the right things. We've seen conflicts breaking out all over the world. We see a United States that's no longer respected.

That's what we inherited. President Trump had addressed a lot of these problems in the first term that he had in office. And then you have Joe Biden coming in and really reversing a lot of that progress and doing a lot of damage from his policies that were on full display for the entire world to see. On top of that, what they pursued and what they pushed at the State Department, but this goes back many decades, is really empowering the bureaucracy, not empowering meritocracy. And you see that with woke policies. You see that with DEI policies.

You see that with the State Department that has so many different offices, that one office could be doing something in a country that the embassy has no idea about. And both of those entities could potentially be doing something that is contrary to the policy of the duly elected president of the United States. I don't care what your background is, what your beliefs are. That's not how our government should work. Our government should work to implement the policies of the duly elected president of the United States.

Okay, so let me get this straight. there were offices in Foggy Bottom that were serving, which is where the State Department headquarters are, if folks aren't familiar with D.C. speak, that were performing similar or duplicate functions to not only other offices in Foggy Bottom, but also to our embassy and consulates. And sometimes these were not directives or priorities set by the administration. this was just the Leviathan taking on a life of its own. Do I understand that correct? Yes, in many ways that that's the case.

I mean, you had a scenario where, for example, many of the aid programs that were in place could actually be doing things that are counter to the relationships we're trying to build in many of these countries are actually counter to policies that we're trying to implement. Sometimes the ambassador didn't even know about the aid programs happening in the country where they were the ambassador. So we're talking about this huge bureaucracy. And the secretary spoke to this as well. Before you got any sort of action memo, any sort of decision-making paper, if you will,

to the secretary, there would be something like 30, 40, 50 clearances on that. And if one person said, no, we're not going to proceed, sometimes then the paper wouldn't even reach the secretary. And he's the one that's supposed to be making a lot of these decisions. You're not supposed to be able to destroy policies or block policies by virtue of bureaucracy. We're supposed to be empowering people, not bureaucracy. So there's a lot of examples of all these specialized offices who had a mandate when there's these offices were created to pursue a certain policy. And that policy may be counter to what another office was doing or even counter to what the policy of the administration is.

So that's interesting. Some of it's baked into how the bureaucracy has evolved or what Congress has required of the bureaucracy. And sometimes, I mean, it makes my blood boil because it's almost like treasonous. Like you're just doing what you want as a member of the State Department. you're not accountable to the secretary, you're not accountable to the president. It drives me up a wall. And some of these offices, for example, we have a lot of critics of the administration talking about. You have these specialized office, for example, on women's issues or other offices like that that were completely separate from the regional bureaus.

Why are those separate? If we have issues with countries we want to address, they should be based in the regional bureaus. They shouldn't be independent offices acting independently with no sort of correlation connection with the regional bureaus or sometimes even counter to what the bureau. as we're doing. So our reform at the State Department was saying, instead of having all these specialized offices that are almost doing their own thing here, let's consolidate this, let's empower people, let's empower the embassies, let's actually make a structure that can implement the president's policies that's not running on autopilot almost from this bureaucracy pursuing all these many agendas. We pursue one agenda and that's the president's agenda.

So did you guys know how many people worked at the State Department when you guys came in? Well, this is part of the problem, actually, the bureaucracy here. So many different offices, So many different HR functions. Over 730 of them when you guys came in? Something around that number, yes, a huge number of these different bureaucracies that made it hard to get simple answers. So you'd almost think more people, more bureaucracy, at least the bureaucracy could keep track of itself. Maybe you'd be thinking that at the very least. That wasn't the case.

It was hard to get simple answers of who is working where, who is doing what. Because sometimes someone would have part of the answer. But a whole other office would have the rest of the answer. So even finding out who to ask was very difficult at the beginning. And I can say someone coming in new to the State Department. Finding out who to ask was half of the challenge to getting an answer to not policy questions, but just did something happen? What is the fact of the matter here?

Finding out who to ask was part of that problem. So that's why we undertook a lot of these reforms to make it, first of all, less about bureaucracy, like I said. But if an embassy wants to do something, making sure that can be expressed back to Washington, D.C., making sure people that actually know these issues can make, make it. sure the facts are expressed and then make sure policies are implemented. And we have that oversight and we have that ability to drive home the president's agenda. Okay, so let's talk about the reorganization. So this effort starts in April of this year when preliminary plans are announced. And the State Department

says, listen, we're going to close about 150 offices and we're going to consolidate another 130. So about 280 offices are going to be moved around. This is going to involve a general reduction in the workforce, et cetera, et cetera. Fast forward to May, and those plans are finalized and then started to be acted on. And you guys end up closing or consolidating over 300 offices. You increase the number of people that are going to be either pushed out of the State Department system by asking to retire or elimination through reductions in force and restructuring, etc. Tell us about this overhaul of the State Department. It seems like everything's been flipped

on its head where even though these offices have the same name, they have different responsibilities, they report to different departments now. It's a complete overhaul of the system. It really is. And I think part of what we're talking about here is, first of all, you laid out that timeline. One of the key important parts of this was the transparency that we did this with. We did this completely transparently making our argument from the beginning, communicating with the workforce, communicating with the American people, communicating across the board saying, here's our goal, here's the problem we identified. Sorry, just to catch you off real quick. So you said consulting with the workforce.

Yes. This is you guys consulting with bureaucrats and careers. Well, I mean, there's a lot. Yeah, so I think there's a lot of elements here in terms of, first of all, just communicating with your workforce as an important part of being that manager. But it's also making sure a lot of careers, for example, did not like the bureaucracy. This This wasn't just this mentality that the entire bureaucracy was for what it had become is incorrect. We're talking about a mandate we had from the American people to make the government work for them. And a lot of the problems we identified were actually problems that people that had worked in the field or people that had worked in a certain area brought to our attention.

This was definitely working with them to say, how can we consolidate this, people that have been there for a long time. And there are a lot of people at the State Department that have worked there for a long time that are patriotic Americans that want to implement the president's agenda that were handcuffed by the bureaucracy in a lot of ways. So there was that consultation with the workforce. We want to do one thing. What's the unintended consequence we might not know? Is there some way we need to adjust that? Is there another sort of effort we can take here to consolidate this? And when I say consolidation, I think it's also important to recognize we're not talking about necessarily things the State Department does. We're talking about offices. And those two things are really different. We've seen the

mainstream media try to make this argument that just because we're getting rid of an office doesn't mean we're no longer doing X, Y, Z. In fact, we may be able to do it. better. Maybe it'll do it better because it's not in some isolated office that no one's paying attention to. It's actually part of a coherent strategy with that strategy being the presidents. But consolidation of offices does not mean elimination of functions. What it means is we're doing this better, more streamlined where we have meritocracy, not a bureaucracy. Right. I mean, for our publication, right, if our video production team isn't working closely with their social media team, then what are you doing? Yeah, no, exactly. Yeah. So, I mean, if it's a

complete different office, there's so many different issues that we raise with these countries, things that we're working on. And one of the core pillars of our reform was that the regional bureau, so the way the State Department is very complicated, it took me a long time to learn this. Right. Everything's lettered. There's more acronyms than you could even like just as much as the military. Yeah, yeah. So you have basic, but basically speaking, you have functional bureaus and you have regional bureaus. The functional bureaus focus on some sort of overarching function. Let's call it sanctions or counterterrorism or emerging threats was one of the new functional bureaus that we had in our reform.

And those are the ones with the letters. Yeah, everyone might have seen on the chart that was published by the free press and many other outlets. Yes, many letters. And then you had the regional bureaus, which are the world is divided into roughly, I believe, six or seven regional bureaus, Western Hemisphere, Europe, et cetera. So part of this reform was empowering the regional bureaus because the regional bureaus and the embassies were the experts in these regions.

So, of course, we kept some of the functional bureaus that we needed to, sanctions experts and things like that. But the idea was empowering the regional bureaus because the people that are part of those regional bureaus know the country's the best. We shouldn't have functional activities that are counter to what the regional experts think we should be doing in each country. That is counterintuitive. That's oftentimes actually counterproductive.

And this is actually how the State Department used to work, if I'm not mistaken. It is. Much more. I mean, you think about the days of George Kennan and these other folks where word from these regional desks or word from the embassies meant a whole lot more than it does now, right? Like I mean, some of these embassies, people joke every four years about where you're big donors are going to end up? Are they going to end up, you know, are they going to prefer the Bahamas, or are they going to prefer Micronesia? Or what's tropical vacation would they like to go on for

four years after helping the president get elected, whether Republican is Democrat or that president is Democrat or Republican, right? But this is an older model that that predates the type of State Department bloat that you guys have drawn attention to over these past 10 months. I mean, people think that the size of the State Department is a function of the Cold War or it's a function of World War II. And the State Department grew a lot during World War II. No denying that, right. I mean, it grew from about 1,000 to 20,000 people. But by the end of the Cold War, the State Department employed about 30,000 people. Well, in the last 30 to 40 years, we've added three times as many employees. I mean, the State Department is between 80 and 90,000 people now. In an

era where seemed like the United States was a hegemon. Some say, well, that requires a big diplomatic corps. Others would point out and say, I think the Cold War, where you're facing down Russia and its proxies every day, seems to be a scenario that demands more career bureaucrats and things like that. You're exactly right to say if you would pull out an org chart from 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago, 40 years ago. Every one of those 10 years, you would see this thing grow like a plant or octopus out into all these different sort of legs and different wings. I mean, there's a constant growth. And I think the fundamental question is, have we actually gotten bang for our buck on that?

Have we actually seen results that would justify that type of growth? And I think the argument that many have made is no, that actually we saw a lot of things from implementing a policies that were not in line with other policies from slowing down our ability to react to things. we've seen actually a lot of harm from that. One of the things the secretary says, and it sounds a bit like a slogan, but it's really not, the speed of relevancy. I mean, we're dealing in a world where you have something across the world happen,

and we are asked to respond in a matter of minutes, if not seconds. And if you need to get 150 people, this bit of an exaggeration, but not really, to sign off on three-letter response or three-sentence response, that is going to delay your ability to influence events. So instead, let's not be quick about this, let's be thoughtful about it, But let's find a way to streamline this. Let's not empower bureaucracy. Let's make sure people can respond appropriately, move at the speed of relevancy, and also

implement those policies and not have those policies be bogged down by bureaucracy. Yeah. And one thing that folks, when they come from across the street over at Capitol Hill, saying this studio is, for every dollar that we spend in Congress, there is always an advocate for it. And I'm sure that is the same for the State Department, whether that's outside groups or whether that's folks within the State Department itself, right? There are diplomats who have served their country,

but also been in close proximity to a lot of these other countries for decades of their lives. Most of them lived there for long periods of time. One of the commitments that the Secretary has made, the President has made routinely is no more nation building. This is of a piece of that where we can enter the USAID, conversation or the foreign aid conversation through this. But the advocates for foreign spending, increased foreign spending, there's never enough aid, there's never enough infrastructure

programs, there's never enough money being taken from the U.S. taxpayers and sent to foreign countries. That's sometimes how these special interest groups or sometimes these bureaucrats approach these problems. And when people look around and say, well, we haven't seen. solved the problem with $2 billion sent to some faraway country to solve their latest problem with not having electricity, the bureaucrats first response or the special interest group's first response is, well, we need to throw more money at the problem. As a political appointee, coming into this massive institution that you're trying to overhaul, I mean, how do you navigate those relationships with career staffs who might,

not be inclined to say, you know what, you're right, this program isn't meeting the challenges that we face. It isn't helping us advance the president's agenda. Well, it's part of that honest conversation. I think I'd reiterate here that there are many people that were careers in the State Department that saw a lot of the wasteful spending, saw the bureaucracy, and were some of the loudest advocates for changing that because they had been in that system for so long and seen how it wasn't working. I think the aid example, you can, you can't. gave is another example of how we talked about consolidation doesn't mean we're doing less. Spending more does not mean we're solving these problems. With the aid example, sometimes that was a

self-perpetuating cycle. The point of aid should be that we no longer need to send any aid, that we have built capacity up in these countries. It's not nation building. What it is is saying working with governments to build a health infrastructure so we can cut off that aid. We're not spending more and more aid into the future forever. That should be successful aid. The successful aid is aid that stops. The system previously that worked with these NGOs and these special interest groups and sometimes corrupt institutions that diverted aid to really bad actors, which was well documented in the previous administration. Their goal was just to keep the money flowing, just to keep the aid flowing. So you would sometimes see only cents on the dollar

actually going to people who needed it. All of the rest would go to these different groups, different priorities. And then on top of that, you had this Biden administration that was prioritizing DEI and other wokenness as opposed to results. So you would have instead of a results driven program, you'd have these DEI metrics that actually would lead to worse results. So coming in as a political appointee, I think one of the things that we bring is knowledge of the policy, of course, being from the campaign in other areas from different institutions, knowledge of the policy. We bring in connections in terms of people that we know from the interagency that we've worked with. We also bring in a renewed energy. I think every single time a political appointee comes in,

you see that renewed energy to accomplish this mission, whether it's over four, eight years, however long someone's going to stay. So you see that energy. But it also is about learning this bureaucracy. And sometimes there were elements where it was, like I mentioned, hard to figure out even what was going on on the ground because he didn't even know who to ask. So learning that bureaucracy, learning how to navigate it, learning all those letters, and then saying, how can we change this?

What do we want to accomplish? And making sure that we're pushing the agenda forward as opposed to being bogged down by bureaucracy. Foreign aid. President Trump issues a executive order triggering a review of these grant programs of foreign aid programs, Secretary Rubio, acts on that with the speed of relevancy. Yes, indeed. I mean, it's true. Jumping at the bit to get that underway.

Yeah, I mean, it really is, that sounds like a slogan, but it actually is a driving principle here. The other one that is really a fundamental test for us is does it make America safer, stronger, and more prosperous? That, again, sounds like a slogan, but it really is the North Star of every single thing we do. It's the test that we apply constantly. Aid is a perfect example.

Does it make America safer, stronger, and more prosperous? And for a lot of the aid, the answer was no. From the very minimal part of it being having very little oversight over how money was actually spent. I mentioned that all these people, all these offices and very little oversight. Yeah, that's what's interesting about this, right? And that's part of why the reform was so important. How do you get effective oversight?

How do you implement the president's policies? No oversight. And really, it goes from all the way to wasteful and bad decisions, maybe at best for how money was spent a lot of ways to purposeful diversion in some of these countries. Some of this money documented going to terrorist groups or other bad actors that were countered to our interests by going to these NGOs and other things. I think the question of how much money should we be giving to terrorists, the answer is zero, right? That should be the answer. That's the easy case. So I mean, the problem was with this aid, we saw a lot of diversion that is very well documented in many of

these countries. So we said enough of that. We also said that, like I mentioned before, the best aid is aid that ends. We should not be, as an example, we announced a new global health strategy, where instead of working with NGOs, what would happen a lot of countries is you'd have NGOs building a completely parallel health structure to the government and to the existing health structure. What that meant was that you could never pull that money away from those NGOs because there was nothing there that could substitute it. There was no capacity building of these governments. Brilliant on the part of the NGOs. Yeah, so what that meant is the money had to keep flowing, right? Had to keep flowing. So we said enough of that. Instead of

doing that, let's work directly with governments. If governments want to work with certain NGOs they trust, great, that's their decision. But let's have oversight of that. Let's make agreements with them. Let's build that capacity. So we can say this aid is not going to go forever. We're going to spend this aid to stop the spread of infectious diseases, right? That it could come to America. We're going to have life-saving assistance. But we're going to work to build capacities, not a parallel capacity that in many ways, and the only word for it, is corrupt in a lot of ways. That was lining the pockets of a lot of people. And instead we're saying, let's work with the governments, let's have efficient oversight that the money reaches the people that need it.

Let's build capacity so we can say in a couple years, five, ten years, whatever it happens to be, we can remove that aid. And what is there is a legacy of a healthcare system or whatever have you that can exist on its own. For every American taxpayer dollar that's devoted to these systems or these programs, what percentage gets to the end user? Right? Like if you are supporting health care in Zimbabwe. Is it 80 cents for every dollar? Is it 50 cents for every dollar? Do you have any...

Has the State Department been able to find that out? I mean, it really... It depends a lot on the program, but I could say in some of these programs, the previous administration was very happy to get this to 15 cents on the dollar in terms of reaching the end user. 15 cents on the dollar.

Okay, so... If not less than that, I mean, there was many indications that it was even less than that. They were very happy with that 15% of the money. spent going to the end user. And that was considered a very significant achievement of the PFC administration. So if you ran a nonprofit that operated like that, you would probably be in jail,

to say the least. This required a massive review of the grants. And I think a lot of these grants or these programs come to people's desks. They sign them and they don't bat an eye. They just think, oh, another $200 million. That's a drop in the bucket compared to what's going out the door in total for the U.S. government. But you guys went through systematically to review every single one of these. Yes, systematically is exactly right. Yeah. In light of the president's policies, I mean, had there been an effort like that before? When was the last time there was review like that? Oh, this was certainly historic effort. Nothing I'm tracking in terms of the scale and the effort that went into this. And systematically is exactly right. I can say, for example,

with each one of these grants. There was a system in place, a series of checkmarks, as much as 30 different criteria that went into saying, does it meet these different goals, all the way from oversight to what's the benefit for the American taxpayer, a series of different benchmarks, and a team went through and reviewed each one of these grants to make sure that it was meeting those benchmarks. There are some examples of money that was earmarked by Congress where then we're looking for creative ways, of course, to apply by the law, but then still use that money in a way that advances the president's agenda, that advances what the American people want to see. But there was a systematic review of aid here. Life-saving assistance continued. Efforts to combat infectious

disease in many ways continued. We're looking at this, though, to make sure the money is spent appropriately. We have that oversight, and there was, systematic is exactly the way to put it. A systematic review of how best to spend the taxpayers' money. Well, at the same time, encouraging burden sharing. We're not talking about just taking away American taxpayer money from certain systems. We're talking about working with countries in the region, for example, or in other places saying, you guys need to step up. America's the most generous country in the world, but we can't solve every problem in the world. We can't not do that. We need our regional partners to step up. We need our allies to step up. And there's actually been examples of our

allies increasing their own aid to certain areas. So even as we've reviewed our aid, even as we've restructured how our aid is, we're working to get burden sharing in appropriate areas in ways that still aligns with our interests, but working with our partners to do that. Yeah, I think it was an exchange that the secretary had with George Stephanopoulos a few moons ago where George Stephanopoulos's first question was essentially, why are you letting people die all over? the world. And then Secretary Rubio did not respond with a policy answer. He responded with a you're a bad journalist answer. Do you ask Australian politicians? Do you ask Chinese politicians? Do you ask any politician other than the President of the United States and the Secretary of State

on why they're letting people die because they don't send foreign aid? And George Stephanopoulos just looked like a deer in that. Yeah, I mean, America is the most generous country in the history of the world, bar none, bar none. Even half the time you hear of international organizations doing XYZ, most of their budget comes from the United States. And we're in the process of reviewing a lot of that as well, of course. But the American people is the most generous country in the history of the world. But the American government is not a charity. The American government needs to have that benchmark, safer, stronger, more prosperous. This is American taxpayer money. It is not a charity. There are a lot of great charities. There are a lot of great charities that are also

doing a lot of great work, but the American government is not a charity. Yeah. And meanwhile, I mean, I remember the narratives, the weeping and gnashing of teeth from corporate media about what this would mean for the State Department, this reorganization and this review of federal aid. And one thing that they said over and over and over again is you guys would not have the knowledge or capacity to do diplomacy properly. Meanwhile, eight different conflicts have ended or have been given a ceasefire. because of the diplomatic work of the Trump administration. This includes Cambodia and Thailand, India and Pakistan, Israel and Iran, Azerbaijan and Armenia.

The list goes on and on and on. First, let's talk about, I think, India and Pakistan, because that was in May of this year. This has been a decades-long conflict. And it provides, I think the scenario provided a little bit of a preview on how the president goes about negotiating with foreign leaders and kind of set a standard for each one of these conflicts. And so this conflict in May was about the Kashmir region. This has been a longstanding problem between Pakistan and India.

And the president announces on May 10th suddenly that there is a ceasefire in that conflict after days of an escalatory spiral and a lot of people getting really, really concerned. Yeah, I mean, that was a very scary moment, I think, for everyone. I mean, you've heard leaders from across the world talk about the stakes that were involved, especially when you're talking about two nuclear armed powers and the danger for miscommunication. This was really an effort where, first of all, the president applauded the leaders of both India and Pakistan without ceasefire. I mean, talking about the courage it takes to step back instead of escalating, to step back

and say we didn't instead approach the way of peace and have conversations, a ceasefire instead of escalating. That was one of the first things he did when announcing this ceasefire, if not even before that. But we saw members of this administration from the vice president, the president, the secretary across this administration, reaching out, having conversations at all times of the day to make sure that we're communicating with the partner, with the different countries here, and really trying to find a way to keep this from escalating. And that was the refrain we kept down repeating over and over again is we want to see an end to the escalation. We want to stop the escalation, let's take a step back. So I think it's an example of President Trump,

again, being able to have these conversations, or at least be willing to be part of these conversations and say, let's not escalate. And when President Trump says it, leaders listen to him in a lot of ways because he's not a typical politician. He knows the type of prosperity, the type of peace building that we can have when you have peace and prosperity instead of conflict. So it was an example of a whole administration being involved in this and really create this action, as the president said, from these leaders to take a step back. from escalation. Well, it was interesting to see India downplay the president's impact on the ceasefire at the same time they're trying to negotiate a trade deal. And Pakistan leaning in and saying,

no, thank you, Mr. President. Your impact and your diplomacy was invaluable here. And I say that because the president had come out and said that he was using trade policy in order to stop the bloodshed. There's been a lot of people who've talked about the link between Trump's economic policy and Trump's diplomatic strategy, and that is the type of leverage you can create through trade policy and tariffs. And I think we see that on display here. Yeah, well, I think it's another example of President Trump where people are saying you can't do that with trade policy.

You can't do that. And President Trump's saying, well, actually, this is a policy that works. And undeniably, it works. economic prosperity is important for everybody. I mean, that's what everybody wants to see fundamentally is the ability to live in peace with their family, provide for their family, and every year get a little better economically,

have their children live a better life than they're living. That's what everybody in the entire world wants, pretty much. And so it's an example of President Trump, again, looking at this whole toolbox of tools that he has and saying, how can we look at this entire picture and bring about an end to conflict. I think as Americans, we can be proud that we have a president who is a peacemaker.

I mean, the president talked about the United Nations at Ungah, how the United Nations was nowhere to be found when we're talking about these eight conflicts. But President Trump was there. President Trump was there of being that peacemaker. And we can be proud as that, you know, the most powerful nation in the world, you think of different leaders throughout history,

who have been the most powerful nation in the world or the leaders of it and how they've acted. And we have a president now who is a peacemaker. That is what he is. And I think we can be proud of that and the results back it up. From the economic standpoint, I mean, the fact that he has completely reimagined what our trading system should be, I think is very important.

It's something he's obviously been talking about for decades. But it makes sure that America is strong, that we have fair and balanced relationships. And then also, we're identifying common interests. It sounds so common sense to identify common interest and work towards them. But that is not what was happening before. There are so many different priorities from DEI to whokeness to you name it. President Trump is saying, let's actually identify what we have in common and work towards it. And that simple principle, that simple principle getting back.

to that leads to so many great results for the American people in the entire world. Another one of these conflicts was the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the DRC, and Rwanda. Brokers a ceasefire in that conflict. The White House was the mediator for these conversations. But these conversations started during the Biden administration, seemed to kind of peter out and then just came back. in a major way when the president took the oath of office in in January of this year and they've got they got things wrapped up by June obviously that is a bad neighborhood in the world you had some disarmament some withdrawing of troops the ceasefire etc and I'm wondering was the Biden

White House letting a lot of these conflicts that we're talking about now they're not the major conflicts of Israel versus Hamas or Russia and Ukraine. But these are major conflicts that displaced tens of thousands of people that killed hundreds, right? These aren't like small, tiki-tack things. And many people thought that they were intractable conflicts, that there was no solution that was possible. I think President Trump rejects that out of hand. He rejects the idea that peace is not possible. He thinks peace is always possible. So I don't want to speak for what was in the mind of some of the Biden administration necessarily, but it was clear that once you had this, our administration come in, President Trump's administration come in, a renewed energy at the very

least, and also key people he put in these positions, senior advisors like senior advisor, Bulos, who are able to go into these areas and have frank conversations identify those common interests and really work towards those agreements because they had credibility to do so. President Trump's credibility, his leadership backing that up. Yeah, and it's just remarkable to me that if you're the Biden administration and you're struggling to make headway with Israel and Hamas, you've got your own. own domestic political problems with that conflict. You're struggling to make any headway with Russia, Ukraine. You've got your own domestic political considerations with that foreign conflict as

well. You wouldn't expend a lot of effort diplomatically to solve these other problems that were right in front of your face the entire time. I mean, even though it wasn't hot between India and Pakistan, they've been fighting over that region for decades. You could have been more involved there. You could have been more involved with the DRC Rwanda conflict and solved that. And it just, it just really brings to mind what exactly Tony Blinken and the Biden administration's diplomatic strategy was at the end of the day. I mean, here's Tony Blinken, like, was there for four years. He was touted as the nation's top diplomat by the time, even before he was named Secretary of State. he was doing rock concerts in Ukraine.

I can't understand why the Biden administration wasn't wanting to put diplomatic wins on the board. Well, I think it almost goes back to how they view diplomatic wins in some ways in the sense that you had a lot of people in the previous administration that were claiming that they were experts. The president of the, you know, President Joe Biden included in that always would say that if you had one expertise, it was foreign policy. I think they judged, though, that expertise as how well they knew the status quo, not how well they could solve it. those problems. I think that was a very different change in terms of this administration coming in, and you saw it in the first Trump administration as well. Who thought the Abraham Accords were possible? And yet President Trump delivering on that. So it's a different way of viewing this where we're saying we're not going to judge success by how well we know the status quo. We're going to judge success

by how well we can actually deliver results for the American people and solve these conflicts. To your point about getting diplomatic wins on the board, Steve Whitkoff mentioned this in a recent interview where he talked about how these peace deals are now infectious because you see these conflicts that have lasted for decades, hundreds of years, thousands of years sometimes even, being resolved. And when people see that, they recognize that these conflicts that have lasted for a long time don't need to continue forever. So there is this infectious desire to be part of these peace deals. And he talked about that. Steve Wickoff talked about that. So the president, too. I mean, the president referenced it at the summit. I mean, another conflict he solved was the Armenia-Azerbaijan

conflict, right? And there's a lot of progress to me made there still. But, but, you know, the joint declaration and the White House summit was major. And the president said, made a joke about Joe Biden's diplomatic strategy and his capabilities. And the Armenian and Azerbaijani leaders laughed. Like there in the White House on camera was laughing at the prospect or at a joke that Trump made about the prospects of Joe Biden finding peace in any conflict. Well, it's clear that that just didn't happen. We went from administration, the previous one, conflicts being created to now conflicts being solved. It's another example also of what you're talking about earlier about the connection between economics and peace.

These two things go together. You need to have security to have economics, but sometimes the prospect of economic prosperity can lead to security. So sometimes knowing that we can head in that direction is what leads these parties to say, let's stop this conflict. And you're exactly right in saying that President Trump has identified this as an important tool that we can use. That also benefits the American people, by the way. This is not just something that benefits these other parties. Of course, it benefits these parties when these conflicts end. But it also benefits the American people and the investment opportunities, critical minerals, for example,

different sort of avenues saying, how can we be part of this investment as well? And when countries see this, they say, oh, we want to be part of that economic prosperity. We want to be part of that. And so that lets a lot of these security discussions then to happen in tandem, but they know that the end result is going to be very good for everybody. And President Trump has enormous credibility there, just looking at our own economy. our own country, the economy he's been able to build and what he's been able to build. Yeah. Let's talk about the grand eddy of them all, shall we? It's real Hamas. This is the one that I think

potentially won Trump, certain states in the last election, was solving this conflict. Michigan from a very interesting constituency was that, you know, Muslims who were voting against Joe Biden and his capability to solve the conflict. And here we have. of Trump brokering a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas coming forward with a 20-point peace plan. This is going to be a long road to hoe. But first, tell us a little bit about how this deal came about. I think everybody remembers that moment where Marco was writing down a note furiously and passing it behind Pam Bodies back to the president in a White House meeting.

That was all on camera, which was awesome. So how the deal came about, where we are today. Well, ultimately, I mean, what we're seeing as a president that wanted this conflict to end and was able to bring the partners together necessary to get that done. I mean, think of the global coalition that President Trump has put together here. The truly global coalition, perhaps not a single country that has spoken against this peace plan and the amount of countries that are involved in implementing it. That was essential here.

And only President Trump could have gotten that done. Only President Trump could have brought in all these different countries together to solve this conflict. And that's why also there's a chance here at longer-term peace and prosperity. No one is denying how hard this is or how complex this is. There, as Jared Kushner said recently, 10 things were trying to do simultaneously in terms of implementing this peace plan. But there is a chance here for long-term peace and prosperity for the people of Gaza, Israel, the entire region, because the entire region, the entire world, is behind this peace plan, really unprecedented. And think of the contrast here.

You have President Trump building a global coalition of countries together while his critics in Congress are shutting down the government. I mean, what a contrast there between real leadership we are seeing in President Trump. So where we are today, as Jared Kushner, Steve Whitkoff and others have described, is implementing this peace plan, moving on those 10 different items simultaneously trying to get that done, working with our partners that President Trump has brought together in order to see what this will look like. Of course, we saw those moving images of the hostages coming home being reunited with

their families. There's a focus of priority on seeing the remaining, the remains of the hostages being released. That's a huge priority of the administration. And which is also part of the 20 points, right, is that there will be continued exchanges of hostage remains for prisoners held by Israel, Palestinian prisoners held by Israel, right? There's already conditions to meet that. So in order to have people released on one side, you need to release on the other side. Well, and we saw that, Again, those images of these hostages being returned home, really moving, moving images. I think even from a broader perspective, as the president has discussed, you saw people dancing in the streets, not just in Israel, but in other countries, that you wouldn't think

they'd be dancing in the streets about the same thing. But they were. They were. And that is the historic chance that President Trump has so often been talking about. He did it with the Abraham Accords. We're seeing him with this peace plan now implementing this. Again, no one is downplaying how hard and complex this is going to be. But it is a huge priority.

We're seeing already a great moves forward in terms of getting countries involved, identifying how different countries can help, trying to see what this plan is going to look like and proceed to. But there's a real enthusiasm for getting this done because people know that President Trump, if anyone can deliver, it's President Trump. Yeah, the Vice President is in Israel and was talking about dealing with challenges to long-term peace as they come up, right? You can only predict so much in a 20-point peace plan.

One of those items is Gaza being governed for a time as security is guaranteed, right, by an apolitical Palestinian body headed essentially by President Trump. Then you bring in the economic angle where there's going to be a Trump economic prosperity plan that's going to be formulated not only by U.S. economic experts but regional experts there, allies and vested parties from around the world. This kind of gets back to the nation building point, right? It's that some have criticized the administration saying, okay, I understand what's trying what everybody's trying to do here. We'd rather have peace than war, that's for sure. How do we think about these provisions in light of failed nation building

experiments in the past, right? How do we make sure that we don't enter another phase of U.S. Nation Building abroad? Well, as the president has described, we're talking about a true global coalition of partners that are stepping up and actually taking a lot of these concrete steps and actions. As the vice president discussed, we're not talking about U.S. boots on the ground. That's not what we're talking about. We're talking about a global coalition coming together in order to provide security in order to fund a lot of these projects. And I keep on saying that global coalition because it is so unprecedented. I mean, we're talking about almost every country in the world being a part of this.

And so what we're seeing here is a chance for peace, broader prosperity. And it's a completely different model from what you might have thought in the past. We're not talking about a model that has failed and been tried previously. We're talking about a new model, an unprecedented time where we're seeing all of these countries on the same page to move forward. And also all offering different capabilities. Each one of these countries maybe has a capability that they specialized in. Maybe that's a certain capability in terms of identifying, unfortunately, remains that are in Gaza. Maybe it's a specialty in terms of money that they can provide in terms of if they're a rather rich country.

Each one of these countries has different things that they can provide and they want to step up and be a part of this. So it's very different than what we've seen in the past. That's a critique from, let's say, the restraint-oriented right. There is also a critique on the, I don't even know if I want to call it the neo-conny wing of the right, which is in the 20-point plan, there is acknowledgement that a Palestinian state is the design. of the Palestinian people, but first, those preconditions have to exist in order for it to exist in the first place. No surprise whatsoever. In my book, at least. The prime minister of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, has said that they will not be supporting a Palestinian state. Of course, in the final phases of getting that ceasefire inked, I'm sure this was not a big help to the United

States diplomatic team, but various European countries were going around saying that, you know, I've declared a recognition of the state of Palestine. It's like, okay, where is that state? It's like, we don't know. As we look forward, you know, what type of preconditions should folks at home be thinking about, you know, what preconditions need to exist before you can have a serious conversation about long-term governance in Gaza and potentially, you know, the long-term governance situation in the West Bank? Whether of those, we will be united, we don't know yet.

Again, so much up in the air. Yeah, I think that's part of the conversation. You're part of the point. And we've heard Jared Kushner, for example, speak to this and saying, our focus now is making it livable. Making guys a livable. Let's be practical. Let's be realistic.

Let's focus on the progress we can make today on the ground. Let's focus on that. There have been debates for a very long time on different words and meanings and other things, sort of theoretical exercises. That's not where our focus is currently. Our focus is on making it livable, making sure that we're not. we have peace, making sure we have a ceasefire that lasts, that aid is reaching those that need it, that we have the development of some of those points that you've outlined.

Now we're making progress on those. So that is the point here. Our focus is on making Gaza liveable, on making Gaza, focus on realistic day-by-day sort of steps we can take and not letting these theoretical discussions get in the way of the progress we can make. Make sure that the life expectancy is like north of 50 would be a good stuff. Yeah, and we're talking about, yeah, it's, it's, it. We were very clear at the time when there were those recognitions that were coming from many of our partners in Europe. The secretary is very clear in terms of how we viewed those recognitions.

What we're focused on now is implementing this peace plan. And it's very concrete steps, those 10 things all at once that we're working towards and pushing, that we can make progress on. That was the focus, as Jared Kushner and Steve Whitkoff have described. Of course, the challenging and elusive one has been peace in Russia and Ukraine. the president said he had a very productive phone call recently, such a productive phone call that there's no need to meet in Budapest in the coming days or weeks. Where do things stand with the Russian-Ukraine conflict? What challenges does this administration see in getting something done?

Well, there's a lot of back and forth in those diplomatic conversations that I don't want to detail here or detail through the media. But what I can say on this is that we have been... We understand secrecy of dispatch. We understand the executive branch of the daily signal. We have been... The president has been very clear from the beginning what his goal is, and it has never changed, and that is to end this conflict.

It is a war that he inherited, a war that would have never broken out if he was president of the United States. And I think the evidence in history bears that out and proves him right. His goal has never changed to end the conflict. conflict. As he recently said, that people can drop their weapons and go home, can go home and be with their families, live prosperous lives. That is the motivation here. That's what we want to see. Of course, we've seen steps, and only the president could have done something like this to bring the parties together, to have conversations with both sides of this conflict, entering into

certain agreements with Ukraine, for example, regarding critical minerals and otherwise. Only the president could have done that. So we've seen steps towards reaching that ceasefire and then along and enduring peace. But our fundamental goal here has never changed. We want to see an end to the conflict. And not an end to a conflict for 10 days, 20 days, 30 days, an end to the conflict that lasts. That is a long and enduring peace. Final thoughts from you, Tommy, have to, I'm going to ask you about student visas. This has been an attack on the left's sacred cow, which is an infinite supply of four students and foreign workers coming into the country and basically doing whatever they want to

destroy the country, it seems like, all while being, you know, given the stamp of the approval of the United States government. There are, I think, two or three different ways that we could approach this issue. The first is these F&J class visas for Chinese educators and Chinese students. that's a separate issue. And then, of course, we have the issue of various different nationalities and national groups. Engaging in violent action or violent speech that is like questionably protected by the First Amendment, you can't really, you don't really know. Well, let's just say, let's, so on this point in terms of the actions they're taking, the United States is under no obligation to host foreigners here that wish death to our country, wish death to our people, celebrate that death, engage in lawlessness or break our law. Right. They've tried to make it a First Amendment issue. It's not a First Amendment issue in this case.

Yeah, so, I mean, what we're seeing here fundamentally when we're looking at visas is every single visa is a national security decision, every single one. And that is a responsibility that we take incredibly seriously at the State Department. And the Secretary has described that very much. When we're talking about the examples of lawlessness and otherwise, I mean, the fundamental principle of this as well is if somebody had told us something when they applied for the visa, that's that. that we find out later would have denied them, then they may see that visa revoked. That is common sense. That is common sense that if somebody acts in a way that's counter to their visa, counter to our laws, or counter to the national security of the United States in ways that are so clearly outlined in our laws

that the secretary and consular officers have authority of. So we're talking about efforts to really make sure that when we say every visa decision is a national security decision, we're taking that seriously at the State Department. It's probably not a good idea to let people into your country who say that I want to see your political leaders assassinated. in broad daylight.

It's common sense. It's common sense. And we're under no obligation to allow foreigners, like I said, into our country that wish death to Americans celebrates the death of Americans. That is common sense. And we're going to continue revoking visas as appropriate based off that standard of saying every single visa is a national security decision. And if you act in a way that we would have denied you the visa in the first place once

you're in the United States or otherwise, you may see that visa revoked. That is common sense. That's our policy. We're going to keep on implementing it. Yes, the idea, and it's so funny people invoking the founders in this argument. Of course, the founders will always be invoked. There's a very interesting piece of the American political landscape that is always battling over the moral high ground vis-a-vis the American founding.

But like the idea that we're going to import ad infinitum people who are openly hostile to the country and openly hostile to its political leaders, violently hostile to his political leaders, is hilarious. I actually wish we could go back in time and see what would have happened if these types of visa applicants came across the desk of secretary, you know, secretaries of state in the early Republic area and era and what, you know, President George Washington would have thought about that. What would Thomas Jefferson? Yeah, I mean, it really is, it's ridiculous. I mean, and ultimately this is also an important part of border security. I mean, we always talk about border security on the southern border.

This is part of it, too. And it's just a common, it's common sense. It is a common sense approach that is based in the law, based in the authorities that the Secretary of State has, the State Department has, the administration has. Really, it's what should have been the policy. It is what it is the policy, and we're going to keep on making sure that every visa decision is approached from that angle of, is this a decision that is in the national security interest of the United States. Tommy Piggott, thank you for coming on the Signal Sitdown. Thanks for having me on.

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