welcome to the richard nixon presidential library and museum. my name is jim byron and i the honor of being the president and ceo of the richard nixon foundation. it's my pleasure to begin this evening by recognize seeing a few special guests. and i'll start with a member of our board of directors the former governor of california, wilson and first lady gayle wilson. you. steve craig, a member of the board of directors of the richard nixon foundation. maureen nunn, longtime board member. sandy quinn, the board member and former president of the nixon foundation. dr. daniel stroupe, president of chapman university and a member of the board. and thank you to all of our board members that are here tonight. i'd also like to recognize lisa sparks, chairwoman of the orange county board of education and fred whitaker, chairman of the republican party of orange county. thank you both for being here. i want to acknowledge and thank all of the members of the president's council, the associates club in our audience and, those who are watching tonight online as well. because your support this distinguished speaker series at which the nixon foundation gathers business political and civic leaders from all across the country and across the world to advance the legacy of president nixon so you for your support. and if you're not a member, i'd encourage you to pick up the brochures, your seats, take a look, flip through it, and if you have any questions, you can call the number on the back. i now like to welcome another member of the board of directors hugh hewitt and you know him as the host of the hugh hewitt show on the salem radio and from his appearances on fox and his columns in the washington. but before all that, hugh was the founding of the nixon library, overseeing the design and construction of the building in which we now sit. and from 2019 to 2021, hugh served again as president of the nixon foundation, spearheading a number of important educational initiatives which he then dumped in my lap. he will have a conversation on stage this evening with our honored guest, mike pompeo. a businessman, congressman from kansas, director of the cia and the 70th secretary of state of the states. secretary pompeo now co-chairs the nixon seminar on conservative realism and national, a monthly educational program presented by the richard nixon foundation. and he is a recipient of the nixon foundation's of peace award. secretary pompeo's new memoir is never give an inch fighting for the america i love, which you should all have copies and you can purchase additional copies in the gift shop as you exit tonight's program. ladies and gentlemen, would you please now stand and join me in welcoming secretary pompeo hugh hewitt coming up, new york city. school bus driver the intersect features. david, to face his inner minnie route. looking at the promise of claire. one kid dreams, fame and fortune so ladies and gentlemen welcome this stand. i was able to interview the secretary for an hour on the radio show, and i ran out of time. so i've got 18 pages of questions that i didn't get through. but i'm going to start with a real tough one. all right. go tonight. lebron is going to surpass kareem abdul-jabbar as the all time nba scorer in. never give an inch. you you tell that you are a lakers diehard fan. yes. so if you had to pick between don't make me lebron. he kobe shaq magic and kareem who you start the team with wow goodness. so you know i'll take kobe because i took kobe's jersey because i because i took chairman kim. north korea was a kobe bryant fan and i took both a 24 and an eight jersey. so there is my pick. all right. well, you weren't you were a southern california kid. and i want people to know that you are self-described not so good basketball player. yeah, but there are some fellow love of fans here that would confirm that. oh, is there exactly are there some harbor people back? yeah. los amigos, lobos amigos. exactly. and where was the baskin robbins? costa mesa. okay. my sister and her family here tonight. she was the first one to work at the baskin robbins. then it became a family. all right. well, let's let's go to the important stuff right away. i am a baseball. that was i was play as one of the few people who have read the four fours. there are four memoirs of the trump administration by people who spent four years in jared. kellyanne conway, the vice president, and the secretary of state and cia director. and they're all good books. yours is by far, i thought, the most readable because. it talks about running agencies. these three have not run agencies were in the west wing. so what's the difference between being there for the morning brief with the president and then back and getting an agency lugubrious as the state department to do his job. oh, goodness. it's it's all the difference in the world in the sense of when you're the cia director, the secretaries say you're running big organizations, cia has a classified number. but the state department's got 70,000 employees. but that's 40,000. too many. but different. that's that's a different a different issue. these are real leadership challenges. this is just like those of you who've run businesses. i ran small companies, but had never run anything remotely like this. anything of this scale. the state department, three unions, civil service rules. it is not easily bent to the desires to break glass in the same way that we were, the way we were in the trump administration. so it was a constant challenge. it's you know, you hear references to deep state and resistance. those are those are shorthand for you have this as an institution. state bar was an institution that is fundamentally of washington and it is certainly left of center. but it is an established event bias that an inertial drag on change. and so when we wanted to move the embassy from tel aviv to jerusalem when the president said he wanted to go meet with chairman, the model that we developed in the middle east that deliver the abraham accords. these were things that were these were things that were going to cause world war three. when we want to take the strike, take the strike on kassam soleimani, the all just say, you can't that for deep historical reasons. so as the leader of that team to try and deliver is a really, really complicated problem. i think i've run seven organizations. tank platoon a couple of small businesses. i think i left them each better, maybe save for the state department. i'm not sure when i left, i'm just, you know, you try to put culture in and we all we all know that you've got to go focus on the mission and that machine hard. it would have taken more than a thousand days. i had to really leave and premature on the place we're going to guess now about the chinese because i you were going to ask if i got all the corvettes out of my great. i've got to get around to find there were lots of boxes downstairs when you were out. i want to ask about the chinese, because what do you think happened and what do you think would have happened if you had either been the director of the agency? and how in the world did not tell you that it happened before? if in fact that's true oh goodness, i, i try to picture walking in telling president trump hey, there's a balloon over the country. we're going to you're going to have to suffer this for five more days. i am confident i would have been the former secretary of state. i say that in all seriousness. i we were were decisive. both the obama administration and the biden administration are much more process oriented. that has risk both directions process is important you want to consider of different ideas, but president trump was prepared to take a brief consideration, hoping that the team had done the in-depth work and was decisive. i am confident that had we seen it approaching our airspace, we would have prepared for that. we have evaluated the risk. the president biden, you had the risk that we were going to have debris fall on folks like we would have evaluated that risk very, very differently. and i think when we came in, we would have told him, let's take this down. i mean, remember, we wouldn't have known precisely what was in it. to this day, we know exactly. it could have been the communist party has talked about weaponizing. there are lots of risks, lots of things they could have had in there. and think we would have evaluated risk. i talk about risk a lot in the book, inaction is a decision for risk to and i we would have been very decisive. you asked the second question that the biden team said that this happened on our watch. i remember when i had the first reporter call and ask him about that and i said, wow, i didn't realize i drank that much because my sister will vouch this diet coke. that's my problem. beverage. there was no recollection. all sudden, even general mattis who some thought when nobody remembers this and i think the story develops, what you're going to find is. we didn't collect against that. nobody knew none of them. no military. nobody really knew. i think they were glancing balloon flights around guam and. hawaii will wait to see what the story is, but fundamentally different than a balloon the size of three busses traversing the united, sensitive military for almost a week now. mr. secretary dealt with a lot of very interesting people from putin to kim jong un to the most evil man in the world, xi jinping, as you call him in the book. i am curious about their energy level. and i put this in the context of president, given the state of the union tonight, i'm a little bit worried about how that went i didn't get a chance to say anything up here. so i'm curious the energy level of foreign leaders that you dealt with, how did they ranged? did anyone appear to you in firm or were they all kind of on the top of their game? you talk about nbc and nbc, this book, they both seem to be highly energetic. what what are we up against? yeah, i hadn't been that question before. i mean, these these folks were all young. they were in they were in the beginning of their trajectory, with the exception, perhaps, of putin. they would be in the beginning of their career trajectory and maybe putin had a little less energy than some of the others. that is, his meetings were often. but he made up for that with variable. so that's true there was no absence of capacity there for sure but think xi jinping is still relatively young been the communist party apparatus for decades chairman kim was in his early thirties the crown prince was in the saudi arabia was in his early thirties when. we were interacting with him and emirati leader a little bit older than that. now. they were all people who were spending a lot of time working, a lot of time focusing on missions. and so the advantage that we have is that we a free country and we freely elect our leaders. the disadvantages the dictators get to go a long time and they get their standard operating procedures down in the longer run. obviously, we pick. but what advantages do they endure from the benefit of their time in office? a lot. there are many things that that time on station can teach you. i talked about my thousand days. i would have been a better secretary of state. the second thousand days. i was certainly a better cia director for the last six months than i was for the first six months i was there. you begin to learn the organization, its culture, how to make the machine operate. so if you're the leader of a country a couple of decades, you figured it out. the downside is you also have figured it out and the chance of you actually reacting to changes the risk profile or to the rest of the world is much lower because you believe now that you have figured it out. all right for secretaries of defense, for national security advisors, for chiefs of staff, two secretaries of state of which you are one, two cia directors of which you one and you pick the second one. how difficult is it to brief somebody in how in other words, how important should that transition team be to a president? oh, so this is the survivor question. how'd you do it. you know, that turnover mattered. it was incredibly harmful to our ability to work together as a team. you know, in the book, i talk a lot about this, whatever it is we accomplished. we did it together. the secretary state didn't pull any of this off on his own. the cia director didn't pull any of this on his own. this was absolutely a team and when the team is constantly changing, but it takes a long time to get them up to speed on the process and importantly, we worked for a very unique president. maybe maybe they're all unique. but to come to understand how the president processes information it works through his decision making process, takes real time. my my biggest advantage as secretary of state was i'd had the opportunity to brief him almost every day as the cia, which is unusual as president, wanted his director to be in the room with him for the briefing. it's usually a couple of very cia officers to do that. what the biden administration has returned to more traditional. but i had a to see him and observe him and see how he processed information and that was enormously helpful and there was nobody else who had that same of advantages. and so the teams would come in and you'd have challenges both up them dealing with what i called the white house circle and second, dealing out the rest of the world could see that there was of transition as well. and that meant they would often call me even if it wasn't in my lane because they'd had previous with me and knew me and had developed of a relationship with me. and so that that meant that i had more space to move as well both for good and for bad. one of the things i enjoyed about never give an inch. i always say the name of a book. times when you're on c-span, never give an inch. going back is that you brought friends with you into the government? and i think of harry hopkins and fdr, president reagan had a great friend and bibi ribadu and jack ryan. how important is it to bring some friends along with it was central to my success that is whatever worked well because i chose i had my two best friends in the whole world, a fellow named orrick and brookfield, a guy named brian buetow, who i have known each of them since july 1st, 1982, which tells you how old i am. that was my first day as a cadet at west point and. we spent our lives together. we ran business in wichita kansas together. we served in the army together. we were back in graduate school together. these are the folks who if susan and i had perished, would have taken care of our son. nick, this is close. they were and especially at sea. actually, that's not true. both places. they saved me a lot of nightmares. brian came in one day. brian became chief operating officer at the cia. right. he literally he called me. i was nominated on a friday morning. no one would have i mean, literally happened like lightning. i write about it in the book. i didn't get a chance to call anybody. my wife knew knew our son knew about it. and so brian calls me the announcement about 8:00 eastern, about 830. he me and says anything you want to tell me? oh yeah, i said, i'm sorry, brian. i didn't get to you. he no, i'm happy you'll be a great cia director. i said, the bad news is you're going to join me at the cia. and he said, what? and i said, yeah, you're going to be the operating officer. and brian, who is an incredible executive, does the cia have a chief operating officer to which i had to plead ignorant and say we're going to make one or 2 hours later? he called back, had cleared the deck. he was running a big operation in dallas. they said, i talked to my bosses. i'm good. when do i start? just amazing. amazing friends. amazing patriot to 82nd airborne guy he came in one day the state department it's do you know what's outside that door about 8:00 at night? i said, yeah, that's my elevator. it's how i get out of here. and he said, he said, that is fort apache, those are trying to cut your head off and i'm saving you every day as only friends can do. i've got to tell people, having read five never give an inch yet that the most important achievement that secretary had at cia will be near and dear to some of your hearts. and i tell my wife, i said he, got five guys into the agency. so explain to people how you managed to get five guys into the agency and why it mattered. yes. so i am literally a god at central intelligence agency because i brought greasy and french fries to the lunch every day. there's that there's that little plaque. you go there. there's all the famous logo that you see in the movies, all the portraits. but what i really about is there's a black director. established 2017. all right, let's go to this serious part of the book. and i think if i watch media reaction, they have all stayed away from russia. russia. and your chapter on when you got to the cia and did an after action report on the intel briefing that brought the president so much heartache and you eviscerate it in the same week your book comes out the columbia journalism review comes out with a four part series on how off or confirming your story your story to bed six months earlier and. they are a left wing organization. you were a trump secretary of state. do you think we yet understand how purposeful was the assault on donald trump. i know when you say we know the majority of the american people do can't how intentional fraud was that was perpetrated on the american people. i that's a strong word but it is fundamentally true it's definitionally accurate in the in the book i talk about january 6th and it's a little bit tongue in cheek because i talk about january six, 2017, a january 6th, that cnn and msnbc will never talk about. it was it was it was remarkable. i was still the congressman from kansas. i was the nominee be cia director. and i got a call from bannon. he said, you've got to come to washington or, to new york, to trump tower. the president's going to get a briefing from john brennan, the then head of the cia, jim clapper, then dni and jim comey, the head of the fbi. and i said i'm not supposed get involved with things. i got a confirmation hearing. i'll have to talk about this. and he says, you got it. you're the only one with the top six top secret security at this point. roger. i'm okay. so president trump was briefed day essentially by jim comey and told that he was a russian asset. you can imagine this is a guy who's been selling real estate in queens and bronx and running casinos in city and the head of the fbi says we have information that suggests you are a russian asset and. we can now see as we have unfolded and i did work cia director trying to unpack the his role in that document. we can see that it was completely without foundation and that relatively early on senior leaders at the fbi knew that it was without foundation and much after that they knew it was false. not only could you not confirm it, as you have to do with any intelligence report, they knew that much of what was contained there was untrue. and for and a half years we suffered under that and the administration, not just president trump, but all of us. imagine you're the secretary of state traveling around the world and that foreign that prime minister or that president has no idea if you'll be the secretary of a week from now. the president could get impeached and convicted and a new team will arrive, by the way, they don't know is it true that your president is a russian asset? cnn is saying that it is. congressman schiff is saying that it is the director of the fbi is saying that it is. i mean, you laugh this is the reality. i mean, congressman schiff, from your wonderful state here in congress, i, i left here with intention. and so, no, i don't think it is fully appreciated. what the columbia journalism review wrote fundamentally true. they didn't access to the intelligence collection. i did. and i couldn't share much of that. but they john brennan circumvented the analytic to prepare this president demanded a public intelligence report on russia and stuff that sent a clear signal about what he was looking for in that product. and they produced a product that didn't stand up for a week alone through recorded history. well, after i read never give an inch, especially on the impact foreign leaders. i began to think about the on his own team because your own team goes into the cabinet office and they begin to wonder, is there anything on the boss? is he going to make it? do i have to start? you never did. but did you see some of your colleagues distance themselves as the media got difficult to deal with? yes. okay. run away. yeah. oh, it. look, they didn't know. great. i suppose at some level, none of us knew i could have been missing a whole tranche of material as well. that was internal collection from inside the states that the cia director see. all i was what we knew from abroad and on top of that you had these other stories lines going on throughout. i mean, i was on the perfect phone call with zelensky. were you? oh, yes, i was. and by the way i don't even rank it among the top ten, i mean, it was a pretty good one. all in all, by the way, none of my phone calls were perfect either, right? just the president's of it. it it impacts. and so what happens is, here's how this really rolls your. best friends begin to call you and say, mike, you have a good reputation. everything that president trump touches to dust people end up in jail. mike. and they're telling every one of us is hearing from our friends leave your reputation is intact. when i was nominated to be secretary of state, lots of folks calling mike you you did it you did service as cia director. go tell them your family needs you home. right? whatever it is you're going to tell and that's hard because there were a lot of folks who did that and there were many folks who decided not join the administration for the same reason they just didn't want to be around president trump and the risk that they perceived that that would attached to them and. it made it much more difficult for us to do our mission every day. now, in terms of the intergroup, there's bill barr and there's and there's the white house team did it and the many secretary of defense as that came through. but white house team didn't work well on national security issues. yeah, it worked well. it was different than you'd see in the classic text how you should run the national security council, in part because we had four different national security advisers, each with their own touch and take on how to do that it did work. well, we also steven manoogian we don't you don't often think about treasury but an important tool in terms financial counterterrorism sanctions is a big player in the national security team too he was instrumental all four years he and i working together as well so yes it was a it was a very functional team that i think served the president the country pretty darn well. if there is a theme and never give inch, it is the chinese communist. today it was revealed that south park cut an episode refers to the chinese gulag in order to keep their television show on the air in china. that's just the recent of a thousand examples how we turn they're so interconnected to our economy how do we turn that around. i good leaders making the case to the american people that's how all good policy begins presidents with all candor speaking to you explaining why this matters. what are the actions that one would take? we will decouple materially from the chinese economy that doesn't mean we won't buy whistles and beach. it means that it means on things that matter. i think pharmaceutical oils, think semiconductors, think high. i think all the things that in a bad day, food security think of the things that if the chinese communist party decided for a moment they weren't going to send them, to us, america could find its way through. it doesn't mean it all be here. it can be in friends and allies, but it can't be sole sourced from the chinese communist party that that will happen partly because businesses will see the political risk, but partly because partly because we set the course mean this is probably my most famous speech was right here on a hot july during covid july of 20, where we funded mentally altered the course of american policy with respect to the chinese communist. so that's the element of it. there's a military element, got to go compete and seize in the navy, we got to go compete in space and cyber. i think we can do all of those. then have to convince you that this why why do you matter? it's because the chinese communist is working against every one of us. we shuttered largest spy operation ever conducted inside the united states. it wasn't the russians. they make the movies. the americans is a great stuff. i'm a big jack ryan, but but make no mistake about it, they were operating from the chinese diplomatic their consulate houston texas and we've known about this to your point we've known about this for years and the establishment said you can't shut that down costs will be too high. and i had seen as cia director and went to director chris wray it's their job, my counter espionage inside the states is fbi responsibility and said chris why can't you stop this. he said it's big. and i said, well, i can stop it as the told president, we need to close it, he directed its closure. it was a really fun episode. it's as as you detail the smoke rising it's a great story because i get to call the chinese ambassador and tell him, you got to be out in 72 hours. and and i tell them it's because spying and he denies it. you know, there were no spies in houston, texas like this was a weather balloon. same story story. and and it was it was it was great fun because because i literally get back to my and my friend brian comes in and flips the tv's and it's the houston fire department responding to smoke at the chinese consulate. houston, texas. so of all the leaders all the leaders that you dealt with will come back. the american category. who was the most difficult but to get a read on to prepare for and negotiate with fishing thing far and and explain to us why that is a close book no smiles no. sticking as did his foreign minister and state councilor who were my two counterpart john jay and wang yi just close but reading from lines dog of no willingness to engage even. even when i was in small meetings where it would just be myself and the president. no, no willingness to explore possibilities of how one might cooperate or get along. it literally dead evil eyes constantly. and so there wasn't much utility in those meetings nor, nor did we learn much from them as well. contrast with kim jong un about whom you produced windfall of american intelligence by willing to go. i'm not willing to go the way i don't want you. you never knew you were coming back right? i mean, that was part of the problem. yeah, very different. look, he hadn't been on the world stage. he was in his early thirties, the first senior western leader he ever met was me. he was very. so was i. he was willing to explore ideas? we talked about what would it mean if we took america's troops out from south korea right. which and he revealed to me very clearly he says no i prefer they stay there essentially. right. and because i said made no sense, he said now that's what jinping wants. the chinese want your soldiers. they actually provide a counterbalance me. my biggest threat is frankly, xi jinping decides to own north korea, not america invades. and so these were unique set of information that we gathered both his personal characteristics, manner, how he processes, but also about how he thinks in the end this was a failed diplomatic effort. our top line objective to get the weapons out of his hands were wholly unsuccessful, but we didn't manage the problem and america was a little safer. better off for that. let me ask by showing how many of you are catholic in here, by the way, that's me. i want to bring up a portion of never give an inch i got after that your interview with me on the radio. i got a nice note from archbishop who thanked me and asked me to thank you for bringing up the vatican's policy in china. would you explain what it is and why you put it in the book? yes, i had leaders around the world failed to meet with me, including pope. exactly which. i'm it's a good thing i'm a protestant. so is okay, but you don't want it wasn't it wasn't about this pope in china today? the vatican has permitted the chinese communist party to essentially select who the catholic leaders are in the country, who the bishops are inside the country, and they, of course, deny massive religious freedom to any faith. they're holding a million muslims in what amount to concentrate in camps. and so i, i had met with the pope early on and was headed back to talk him about a separate issue and decided i was going to take this on. and so had written an article that appeared in a catholic relative academic journal called first things. and it basically implored the vatican to use moral witness to make religious freedom possible inside of china, something that they just refused to do. whether it's jimmy lai, cardinal zen, they literally have refused to use their moral force and the catholic church can be enormously important in the world, their moral force to make it better. and so this article came out about a week i came in it it turned out the pope busy the day i arrived. yes, but it's a bad deal with it's it's really it's really they could do better. i think i think about ronald reagan having thatcher and pope john paul to that would nice. yeah we we had we did i'd be polite we didn't get we had yeah we had theresa may for most of time. oh you're right. yeah right exactly. let me go to putin. i've told a lot of stories about give an inch in the weeks since i read it and the story i told the most is angela merkel being afraid of dogs. and so putin, the biggest dog has to. that's just such a low brow move. but tell and what do you try with you make you wait. yeah he tried to no show me a dilemma hang on there's always a little theater around these things there's lots of staging around these meters i had little tolerance for that i think everybody wants to send these big communiques they mean nothing so i was less about theater. i was more interested. i could do it 15 minutes and not 5 hours. i was to. so that day, putin basically we're sitting or in sochi his beach beach he moved the location of the meeting from moscow to sochi and then the meeting was supposed to start a certain time at about 15 minutes later, i told my team, if he's not here in 10 minutes or 15 minutes, we're out of. and a woman named morgan ortagus, who was my spokesman turned to someone that was kind of says he used a adult word but he really means that now. and in a few minutes he showed and maybe it was a coincidence, but i think had we demonstrated like i probably have taken off and who cares what time meeting starts other than you make commitments you do your best to honor them. and he was trying to gain a little bit faster. there's very few people who have met our most significant enemies. and you met with putin when. the wagner group came over the hill in syria. what was your role, that decision making tell people about that? i think it's a the critical moment in the last 15 years with the soviet yeah. with the russians. so this is the wagner group is the russian private mercenary force run by a guy named pagos. he's known as putin's chef. i think he was a chef at some point they're active in ukraine today. they've they're very capable although less so now than they were we we ran into it. this is what i mean by never give an inch. we ran into a night where general dunford had called me and said that the agreement along the euphrates where the russians were on one side in syria and the southeast part of euphrates river, and we were on the other the deal was thou shalt not cross long established the military work this out and they were bridging they began to put bridges up across the river. dunford general dunford, then the chairman joint, chief of staff, called me and said, hey, we to stop this. he called his counterpart, fellow named gareth smock, who coincidentally, is now the leader of russian forces in ukraine, valerie grossman. general grossman and i, my counterpart in russia, and we both said guys, if you keep bringing, we're going to kill anybody who comes across. and they both denied there were bridges and we said we don't have time to take you to bring you the satellite. you know, we know and they kind of hand waved it off within a couple of hours. they crossed and we struck and killed about 300 russians, 300 bogner folks. and then was important. it was important not just for the tactical thing. our folks, our troops were actually at risk. so that mattered to. but we never had that problem again. and and these are the kinds of things by the way, had we told them not to bridge, they'd come across and we hadn't struck. we'd have been we would have had to pull every all the u.s. forces out of syria. and i am confident that the iranians have seen that with our troops in iraq. i'm confident that the forces that we have on the ground in other places in africa, they would have run table on us. rule one, draw a line, defend and we were pretty good drawing relatively few lines, relatively brightly and defending them right at the front edge of. that line and that night we did it and it worked. now i want to ask. chris is going to bring me my questions shortly, but i want to ask more questions before we go to the audience. i even get to my first page tonight. the question is, you've been on both sides of the congressional panel now you're on the benghazi investigatory committee and you appeared in front of congress many occasions dealing hostile majorities. what is your advice to the incoming republicans? the weaponization committee? mike gallagher during the china committee, the two most important ones on running productive hearings, given what you know about how agencies respond to hearings? yes, i have been both the obstinate person at state department and subject to an obstinate secretary clinton. yeah, i've seen them both. the best can do is make sure that you show with people who know answers to the questions you intend to ask. that is, don't don't bring folks who for the purpose theater bring them because they are subject matter knowledgeable whether they're in administration or experts outside. and second do your best to get the panel to be organized and disciplined because at the very least if the person on the other side of the table doesn't want to answer questions. you're not going to you're not going to cleverly goad them into it. but if you lay a logical sequence of the questions you present, you will force them to give you more than they intended. and stay on the mission, less grandstanding, better lots of preparation by the members themselves can you were disciplined in your questioning i remember you were on the radio back then a lot can they maintain discipline in their inquiry some. people go off i mean they just go off. it's hard. it's hard because you have and again, i'm a former diplomat you have with varying capacities, varying interests as. but thank you. there's a spectrum there. they then like america they look like america. okay, i'll leave alone right the first. before i go to the first question, i'm going to ask this question, is it possible to actually shrink? i you took constitutional law at harvard law. is it actually possible to shrink federal government back to anything, what it was intended to? it's tough. it's doable. but here's here's the rub. so i've seen it from the inside. i know where all the bodies are buried and i know the resistance that will be met. by the way, we should not be smug. we've submitted budgets. the state department, there were about 65, 70% of the previous year's budget, and it was republicans on the committee that were forced to call say, no, we're not going to do that. so this is a bipartisan challenge. lots of reasons for that. we could spend time on a president's going to have to be prepared to spend political on it. and i can see why presidents don't they? a busy world. lots going on we'll work the bureaucracy why take on that monster. i actually think that must be taken on. i think it is. you're going to need a congress to fix the union in civil service roles and then you just got to shrink it and bring it back. it is the only way to it back into the constitutional norm, which is they're supposed to do what the political team tells them to do. i don't i don't want to state department that thinks about the world like me i want a state department that when secretary who is duly confirmed tells them to left, they're going to go left and they're going to give me their ideas just like i did the president. but in the end, you an instruction, you should execute it. and we are long ways from that today. my first question from the audience, will you consider running for president. yes. yeah, i like that's a good question. yes. when will you make that decision? that was mine. when susan tells me i may i exactly, yeah. let me pause for a moment because gail wilson, the former first lady of california, is here. are you, gail? i just want you to stand up as a first lady. he had a wonderful first lady at the state department. how important? now you're first. oh, my goodness. all the difference in the world kept me humble when i thought i was all that and brought me up when the what and probably up when the washington post told me. i was a no good bum. okay. oh, good. very important. and daily. just the daily job. what has happened to our culture that no longer respect each other to longer question to answer? i hope we can get it back to you at harvard. when luke ritz arrived, i was there the very beginning of the year, the beginning of the real practitioner's phase of the critical studies movement. yeah. you know, i here's how i'll answer that. i can't tell you if we can get it back, but it won't come from washington. oh, it will it will come from little league teams and pta and churches and synagogues and school boards. it won't come from washington. who who presidents can set a tone for that i think by the way they speak the way they engage with others, but they can't fix it. it has to be fixed in hundreds of thousands of small places across america. have you received one question? you probably done 50 interviews on this show. have you received one question on the religious ministerial, first of its kind ever, that you organized. yes, from the christian broadcast network? yes. would tell people why. marianne glennon, this whole effort mattered so much to you. this was this was both personal and professional. when i show at the state department, we are setting a state department, executes its mission and gives guidance and what are these cables that go out they're basically emails they're messages that say if someone asked you a question actress opposed to answer why and we were sending out cables on rights that were incomprehensible me and worse yet, they would have been incomprehensible to the founding fathers. the central idea, our judeo-christian tradition here. and so i decided i'd fix that. first, i stopped those cables and then i tried to regroup and state department policy and what became called our committee on unalienable rights. so we drew people from all we drew people from all historical backgrounds was led by this amazing woman named marianne glennon, who's only the only professor is not hard left at harvard. it may not be true, but it's pretty close. and she had a fellow named peter berkowitz ran a process, and we delivered a document that, tried to re ground our diplomatic efforts in the fore, in the human traditions of our country and encourage other countries to do the same. and then we built out freedom opportunities, including this thing that you referred to. we had the largest human rights gathering ever at the state department. one would ever think that the trump administration did that right. they'd say, no, you don't care about human. the largest human rights gathering we had, i think, in by the end was 2300 religious leaders from around the world came the state department to talk about religious. we had catholics, we had --, we had we had we had it was fun because we had i'm sure we had wiccans. i mean, there are enmities there. we brought countries there that were that you wouldn't note for religious freedom because you know we talked about me being a bad basketball player i wanted to give out awards for most improved player to so countries that were trying to get there because countries that are more religiously free are less likely to come try and do bad things to us here at home and we worked and worked and worked at it. and we think expanded the scope of people to practice their faith in lots of places. controversy, alert. the temple mount has become a flashpoint. we're on the cusp of the third intifada. what is tim biden done wrong with our relationship with israel that you could correct if you did run, you did win. you know the kind of got the whole middle east challenge wrong, in my judgment. it's it's a different model. it's same model that the obama administration had right. their model is, can't we all just get along with israel? right. so criticize israelis as much as you criticize, the palestinians in judaism area cuddle up to iran and treat the gulf arab states as if they are near toxic, as a dangerous brew for that's that's the brew leads us to have to send our boys and girls to fight and risk their lives. they're all too often we grab the other end of the stick. so you go back to our model. our model was we have one other democracy. there's one friend that right for homeland of the jewish people in israel. the iranians are the world's largest state sponsor of terror. do your best to crush them. and goodness gracious. if there are bad times in the middle east, the saudis, the emiratis, the the omanis, the kuwaitis, they will be on our side and never forget that difference. they may well have and you know, we can all talk about human rights problems, lots of places but the cynics went on of american foreign policy is when the are tough who's going to be with you and who is going to be against you? the israelis will be with us. full throated. the iranians will try to crush us as. they are doing today in ukraine providing drones. they now say they're going to build a factory in russia to build drones to kill ukrainian civilians and the biden administration is negotiating the iranians. this is nutty. and then finally, the gulf states will be with us as well. they are great security partners. our fifth fleet is parked in bahrain our largest military base. that allowed is in and. these are security partners. they keep our lives safer here at home. how is it in a presidential campaign should one develop that someone have national security experience versus governing experience in a like a school board level and you got to make that the garbage get picked up and you got to build versus dealing with and putting in these sorts of things. oh goodness if the american people sort out where their priority is, i think i think it's hard to come in to the white house without experience dealing with things around. the world, they matter so much here at home how we all we all to talk about you know keeping everything here what happens. beijing matters to us right? what happens in moscow matters. what happens. the middle east draws us in. you have to get those things right. i would add, by the way, i it's great that someone comes from a place where been an executive as well. that's important. think equally someone who ran a business comes with that as well. how do you make organization mission focus and high performing those those are important skill sets and as say if you think about the biden cabinet my biggest regret is too few of them served in the military. no requirement but important that someone can say, hey, i remember when i on the back of an m-1 tank and almost none of them were responsible for making payroll. and so when you're thinking about taxes and the like, that's just it's i write about this in the book you you learn when you come to these jobs they are so overwhelming i speak for myself for me they were all so time consuming your to go back and go back to first principles right oh let me walk through what marginal tax rates mean. there's no time to go back. the textbook you bring with you what you show with in those roles and you are you are you are taking down the accumulated knowledge base that you brought. you are not creating that. and so i hope all we always elect folks to every position that are showing up with plenty of stuff there sack let me close with an important one both part audience part me the audience part is education can you explain why and where the education system changed from free thinking? hot, but at different ideas to indoctrination? and i want to add to that you were a great proponent of the quad, maybe the most significant security development since nato and we need indian-american friends and our indian to be our close allies. and right now they are the subject of discrimination. our common alma mater, harvard, another what do we do. education. it is totally broken in the united states. 60 years, 60 years that this didn't start just yesterday. we all think, oh, you know, just this last moment. don't fall prey to the recency phenomenon, which means you're not going to fix it. instant pudding either. but there central ideas here, right? i, i drawn lots of fire saying that randi wanger is the most dangerous person in the world. i mostly actually mean that. what do i mean? when when institutions, all of them. whether it's our military, our teachers, is when they lose focus on the thing they are designed do. and instead focused on building their own empires bad. things happen. and that is certainly happening in our public across america today. most especially in urban environments. you wouldn't and no one would send their kids there if they had any other option. so the answer i met someone tonight who's, part of the orange county board of education, and this is about running killer good races for school boards. this is about parents taking back an understanding what their kids are being taught. this is about rewarding who are really good teachers, and it's about giving kids choices about they go as best you can, delivering options. for parents to do if it is if begin i had. i had some great teachers at los amigos. daryl amanda scheid head coach of my basketball team. john these folks, these are people who have my i remember my first grade teacher, mrs. sattler these were these were people who cared about me. and i know those are there today. they need to be put in a system that rewards that and gives them the opportunity, work with parents to meet the kids where they are and good outcomes. we are certainly behind other parts of the world in our k through 12 school system and in our university system while it remains the finest anywhere in the world we're at risk. they're not reminding that these institute actions that this is a darn place this country this is an exceptional nation. and where there's a racist founding it is we are new. we don't have oppressor classes. this is a freedom loving, decent place. and our we need to transmit that to the next generation or we can end in a really, really difficult place and out in the quad on the quad. how important is. yeah it's a big deal. so the quad the quad a piece of countering china it represents between australia, india, japan. if start to now throw in singapore vietnam see south korea and new zealand you're you're close to 45 or 50% of the global gdp that is a force that trading together putting at risk chinese operations on national security things you can begin to change the inside of china which in the end is how deterrence will ultimately deliver. we have to convince other leaders around saying paying the global dominance is not the right outcome. does modi like us, had a great relationship with them? he did, yeah. and my counterpart, my second counterpart in india, a fellow named jaishankar, speaks english than i do and is a really talented diplomat who very much wants connect the united states. india, knowing full well have deep trade relationships in china. but think about this the indians banned tiktok and we haven't so it is it is possible to do and you should know the outcome in india was some really cranky parents for about a month because they had to listen to their kids and then they developed their own model essentially a homegrown just like any innovation it filled the gap the vacuum that was created when they took that chinese spying apparatus out of their country. mr. secretary, we're getting hook. please join me in thanking secretary of state colin powell for the.