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Home » Richard Grenell has a few things to say to the press

Richard Grenell has a few things to say to the press

The New Neo Posted on by

First, some information about how the Trump administration managed to negotiate the historic agreement between Kosovo and Serbia:

And next, some helpful advice about how to do their jobs:

Comments

Richard Grenell has a few things to say to the press — 35 Comments

  1. ‘I don’t think any of us came here for a lecture’

    If that doesn’t perfectly represent the millenial ‘journalist’ I don’t know what does. They know all the answers and don’t need things explained. Especially by a nasty Trumper.

    Where’s Ben Rhodes maybe he can help.

  2. The first “question” is an attempt to shift to homosexuality as a topic!
    Grenell’s remarks are totally correct. These young pinheads, all self-righteous, all-knowing products of journalism “schools”, need to be excluded from all discourse. Maybe exile them to Portland?

  4. I believe Grenell lives in California now. It would be so awesome to see him run for senate there because he would be great but it would also be a sight to see the media and the left attack a gay, Christian, cancer survivor running for office and they would attack him big time.

  5. “First, some information about how the Trump administration managed to negotiate the historic agreement between Kosovo and Serbia:…”

    Just more evidence why the deep state hates Trump; he showed the morons in the State Dept. just how incompetent and really stupid they are.
    But what do you expect from career diplomats; govt. employees who are never, ever held accountable for their performance because there are no objective measures to grade their performance.
    (Recall how they vehemently objected to Reagan’s “Tear Down This Wall Speech.”)

    They hate Trump because an “outsider,” showed them that they are simply incompetent.
    Just think about the performance of the State Dept over the last 125 years; the Spanish American War, WWI, WWII, the Korean War, Vietnam, a few Middle East Wars, the never ending Afghan War, a dozen or so Caribbean/Mexican/Central American minor conflicts; the Korean War and of course, having the USA (the US taxpayer) pay into NATO – for what, 40 years !!- a disproportionate share of the defense of (the technologically advanced and industrialized) Western Europeans.

    Further, it is the State Dept that spent $750,000,000 DOLLARS !!! to build a US embassy in Baghdad. (how many US citizens could have had their medical insurance premiums paid for this? how many college scholarships could have been funded with this ?)

    The State Dept should either be abolished or have their size reduced by 95%. They are a waste of US taxpayer $$$; they are incompetent.

    By the way, I just happened by happenstance several years ago wander by the US embassy in Paris, France. It is simply beyond belief that the US taxpayer has to pay for this monstrous facility, in a friendly nation no less, so American diplomats can “work” in luxury.
    Honestly, if 90% of all US Federal Agencies were abolished, nobody would notice and the taxpayer would save billions.

    No wonder they hate Trump.

  7. Grenell might end up being the impetus for dems to change their minds about homosexuals being good!

  8. Kate, neo,

    Yeah, of course Rhodes knows little but the millenial ‘journalists’ listen to him and faithfully report his proclamations as diplomatic genius because Obama.

  10. My introduction to the foreign policy establishment, where I worked for nearly 30 years, came at an American Embassy in Asia. I was a Junior Officer, a newly minted diplomat trying to learn the ropes. An issue (I no longer remember what it was, which tells you how insignificant it was) came to our office. My boss, also my mentor, handed it to me and said “handle this.”

    I looked at it and asked “how?” I remember it was not self-evident where America’s interest lay on the issue, and I was hoping my mentor could give me an insight to guide me.

    “Look in the files,” he replied, “and see what we’ve done in similar circumstances. Follow precedent.”

    The war in Viet Nam was building at the time, with American troops being sent in increasing numbers to fight a war they didn’t understand. The country I was serving in (Laos) bordered Viet Nam and our embassy was managing an undeclared — and large — war in the east of the country that very few people back home knew about. Some of the young men who worked with me were questioning why we were doing what we were in Laos, and one U.S. Army major resigned his commission over his personal disagreement with what was going on.

    But our seniors had few qualms that I ever heard — if bombing the Ho Chi Minh Trail wasn’t stopping supplies from going south, the solution was more bombing.

    And my boss wanted me to “handle” this issue by looking in the files for similar examples and recommend we do the same thing.

    Rick Grenell is a welcome breath of fresh air in an establishment that only knows one solution to a world problem: do what we’ve done before.

    The same myopia has guided our Mid East policy, especially regarding the Palestinians, since before I lived as a student in Beirut (1956-7). I used to pass huge collections of goat-hair tents on the way to the Beirut Airport and learned they were “Palestinian refugees.” The UN had a massive program to take care of them (UNRWA). I flew into that same airport nine years later (1965). The same tents covered the same hillsides under our landing aircraft. The USA was still giving large sums of money to the UN to “take care” of the problem, and Yasir Arafat was still making the same impossible demands he had been making since he came to power. Arafat knew that nursing a grudge was an effective strategy before American SJWs and race-hustlers picked up on that tactic.

    It looks to me as if Trump, Jared Kushner and Rick Grenell have begun to look for new ideas and new solutions. I have no doubt my erstwhile bosses (Dean Rusk, William Rogers, Henry Kissinger, Cy Vance, Ed Muskie, Alexander Haig, et.al.) would be horrified that we’re ignoring precedent!

  11. Ric Grenell is very handy to have around, and his utility and willingness to be the tough-guy reminds me in a few ways of the Jimmy Baker role in the Reagan administration. Baker was supremely gifted, intelligent and savvy, pragmatic. He ultimately ended up holding a multitude of offices (Chief of Staff, Treasury, State, etc). He made it look easy.

    Grenell might not bring the same portfolio, but he has already proven his worth as the interim DNI. If you recall, John Ratcliffe was nominated to this role by Trump and rejected (in a smearing way) by the Senate from both parties. After getting a good taste of Grenell with a few months’ worth of embarrassing declassified documents, suddenly Ratcliffe seemed like a terrific choice!

    I hope Grenell sticks around for a second term, as honey-badger-plenipotentiary.

  12. John Tyler:
    McCarthy was correct.
    But let us not forget the bumbling in Iraq was on George W.’s watch.

  14. Cicero, G.W. Bush made one very serious mistake.
    He went with Colin Powell and Richard Armitage after the victory instead of Donald Rumsfeld. If he had gone with Rumsfeld’s recommendations, we would have turned it over to the Iraqi ex-pats who had been organizing to take charge for a long time. They knew who in the police and the military they could work with.

    We would have declared victory and left.

    Alas, Powell and Armitage, and their guy Paul Bremer had a more grandiose scheme.

  15. “We would have declared victory and left.”

    People forget that we knocked off Saddam pretty quickly, the problems came after he was defeated.

  17. “what do you expect from career diplomats; govt. employees who are never, ever held accountable for their performance because there are no objective measures to grade their performance.” JohnTyler

    I beg to differ. Though I can’t speak from direct experience, my strong impression is that, CYA, do as your told and the degree of obsequious obeisance rendered to those above you are the objective measures used to grade performance and thus advancement.

    What few exceptions may exist only go to prove the rule.

  18. Given the tribal/religious/political dynamics, a permanent victory was never possible. But by backing the Iraqi ex-pats, arguably a more lasting ‘containment’ might have been more achievable.

    Among GW Bush’s mistakes was in failing to understand that Powell was just another politician but one in a uniform.

  19. F, thanks for the inside look at being a diplomat. The DOS is a huge bureaucracy, much like the military. Junior cogs in the machine look to more experienced hands to guide them. Sometimes it’s there, but often it’s not. I worked for many bosses in the Navy who were just doing heir best to not screw up and were unable to offer guidance to their juniors. What a breath of fresh air it was to work for those occasional senior officers who knew how to lead and how to teach leadership by example and through good counsel.

    Considering the size and unwieldy nature of so many of our bureaucracies, it’s a wonder they function as well as they do. It appears to me that State has been working off the old model of “The Pentagon’s New Map,” which was a globalist dream of how to bring the Gap nations into the Core. They need a new direction, which they seem to be getting under Trump and Pompeo. It seems the new direction is “pragmatic” – i.e. don’t follow precedent and custom, look at everything with an eye for different solutions that may work.

    It’s great to see more competent people like Grenell following Trump’s lead in taking on the MSM. The MSM is a DISGRACE to our nation and the vocation of journalism. That they persist in being such partisan hacks shows how arrogant and foolish they are.

  22. Clarification.
    Should be:
    “….PRECISELY WHY it doesn’t matter to the Democratic Party’s upper echelons—its leaders, advisors, campaign strategists and nomenklatura—that the Democratic Party’s Antifa/BLM shock troops go….”

    And with this addendum:
    Nor does it matter to the MSCM.

  23. The DOS is a huge bureaucracy, much like the military.

    IIRC, the military budget is 60x that of the Department of State and the military and civilian workforce of the Department of Defense is 40x as large.

  25. F: The insistence on “nursing a grudge” is just it. Grinnell knew that the tried-and-true approach was to get the parties together to nurse their grudges over the same old ground. He got them thinking about a completely new way to find common ground that wasn’t already a minefield of old grudges. And the Deep State hated it.

  26. Art Deco, does the relative size of bureaucracies matter when they are both quite large? DOS ~ 75,000 people. U.S. military ~ 1,250,000. Yeah they aren’t the same size, not even close. But both are big bureaucracies. Unless you consider 75,000 people a small, light-on-its-feet, easily-managed organization. My intent was not to equate the organizations in size, but in the manner of their management and customary operations. You always seem to scrutinize comments with an eye toward finding a statistical or arithmetic item that you can critique. Your tendency to grade and criticize other’s comments is interesting. Are/were you a quality control expert, or perhaps an editor of a technical journal? Or do you just like to feel superior based upon your ability to pick nits?

  27. J,J.

    I doubt Art was in Quality Assurance/Quality Control. Both fields rely heavily on statistical sampling and statistical methods but require objective standards, requirements, specifications for acceptability, not an inspector’s or auditors subjective opinion. Citing a stat (measurement) that is unrelated to an argument (required specification) is irrelevant and a waste of everyone’s time.

  28. Well, Mr. Grenell has now appeared in two of my dreams in the last couple of days. In the first one, he and I were doing some testing in the lab in which I claim to work, only not on an instrument with which I’m routinely involved. But it turned out to be a real test that we have. It doesn’t seem to be his typical line of work, though I’m sure he could get the hang of it quickly in real life. I don’t remember what the second one was about, as his appearance in that one was more transitory.

    He seems to have made an impression.

  29. In re Barry’s link at The American Mind –
    Michael Anton is scaring me.
    Because, he was right that 2016 was a Flight 93 election, and he isn’t even giving 2020 a name.

  30. “…made an impression…”

    He cuts to the heart of the matter.
    He takes no crap from anyone.
    He’s a straight shooter.
    He loves his country.

    Germany was VERY glad (and RELIEVED) to see him leave his ambassadorship there.
    The Democratic-controlled House was extremely glad to see the end of his temporary position at National Intelligence. (In fact, it has been said that his bulldoggedness helped to get Ratcliffe confirmed more quickly.)

    All tremendous points in his favor.

    And I would surmise—and certainly hope—that we haven’t heard the last from him.

  31. “…scaring…”

    Yes, it’s Palestinian Rules all the way down the line:
    Trump is “illegitimate”. His supporters are “deplorable”. (And worse…)
    Therefore Trump (and his supporters) MUST be destroyed. All manner of aspersions MUST be cast. All kinds of demonization are entirely appropriate.
    And yet, Trump REFUSES to be destroyed. RESISTS being destroyed.

    Therefore he MUST CLEARLY and UTTERLY be destroyed.
    By all means necessary. By any means possible.
    By those who proudly label themselves “the Resistance”….

    It becomes a moral crusade. An ethical IMPERATIVE.
    (Remember: by ALL MEANS NECESSARY. By ANY MEANS POSSIBLE.)

    If TRUTH must be trampled, so be it.
    If the Constitution must be shredded, so be it.
    If the previous MESSIANIC administration must go to great and devious lengths to torpedo the incoming ANTI-CHRIST, then so be it.

    And if the country has to be destroyed so as to “RESTORE” to power those truly deserving to be the rulers of the country, then destroying the country thus becomes THE moral crusade of our times. THE ethical imperative of the age.

    What is fascinating / curious / nauseating—and yes, scary—is that so many liberal, decent, caring, ethical, moral, bright, talented, sophisticateed and intelligent people have been persuaded that this is what must be done. Have bought the finely-wrought lies, the “moral imperative”—the EVIL—of those who wish to do all this hook, line, and sinker.

    Have they not read their Orwell? Have they not pondered the brutal and perverse consequences of the mass brainwashing of entire groups and countries? (Some of the most cultured countries the world had ever known, in fact?)

    Well, yes, they have, actually. But everything has been turned on its head. Everything is mirror-image.
    Everything is topsy-turvy.

    Their reality has been totally, entirely—successfully—perverted.
    (Lewis Carroll has merged with George Orwell to create everything that the Founders feared…and yet nothing really new, known as it has been since at least the times of the Psalmist.)

    So that Orwell shows them—proves to them—that Trump and his supporters must be destroyed. The tragedy and destruction of the 20th century, likewise proves to them that Trump must be thwarted.

    How are such gross perversions corrected?
    How are the brainwashed “deprogrammed”?
    How is the listing ship righted?

    How does one step back from violence.
    How does one avoid civil war?

  32. Paraphrased: But this is a press conference! The last thing we want is for you to tell us what’s going on!

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