Latest / The Ben Ferguson Podcast / Why Israel's & America's Interests are Intertwined-An Exclusive Interview w Dr. Victoria Coates

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Why Israel's & America's Interests are Intertwined-An Exclusive Interview w Dr. Victoria Coates · The Ben Ferguson Podcast

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome.
0:02
Speaker 2: It is Verdict with Center, Ted Kruz, Ben Ferguson with you,
0:05
Speaker 2: and to all of you listening right now, I hope
0:07
Speaker 2: you had a fabulous Thanksgiving Center. I hope you had
0:10
Speaker 2: a great Thanksgiving with your family as well.
0:13
Speaker 3: A wonderful Thanksgiving, and I hope everyone had a chance
0:16
Speaker 3: to have some turkey and stuffing in Cranberry and be
0:19
Speaker 3: with family and pause to just reflect on the many
0:23
Speaker 3: things we have to give thanksful, thanks for being Americans,
0:26
Speaker 3: being free, living in the greatest country in the history
0:29
Speaker 3: of the world.
0:30
Speaker 4: And I hope that that.
0:33
Speaker 3: You're taking these few days a break from work, just
0:36
Speaker 3: a hug on people you love and to remember, you know,
0:42
Speaker 3: I've never met anyone at the end of life who says,
0:45
Speaker 3: you know, I just wish I'd spent less time with
0:47
Speaker 3: my kids. That's not what people say, and so spend time,
0:52
Speaker 3: you know. This past weekend was my mother's ninetieth birthday,
0:56
Speaker 3: and Heidi and I hosted a dinner and we had
0:58
Speaker 3: family and friends come in and just went around the
1:01
Speaker 3: table and everyone took the chance just to talk about
1:04
Speaker 3: my mom, talk about what an amazing person she is,
1:06
Speaker 3: talk about how she had touched each of our lives.
1:10
Speaker 3: My mom is ninety and still going strong, and I'll
1:14
Speaker 3: tell you it was kind of fun, Ben, So I
1:16
Speaker 3: had everyone also record a little video that we played
1:19
Speaker 3: played for her at the restaurant, and as a surprise
1:24
Speaker 3: to her, when I was flying with Trump on Trump
1:27
Speaker 3: forcewan down to Boco, Chica for the rocket launch, I
1:30
Speaker 3: asked Trump if he'd be willing to record a video
1:33
Speaker 3: for my mom for her birthday. So I pulled out
1:35
Speaker 3: my cell phone and he was happy to do so.
1:37
Speaker 3: He recorded a very very nice video and wished her
1:40
Speaker 3: happy birthday, and in classic Trump style, he said, Eleanor,
1:43
Speaker 3: I hear you're an amazing woman. I understand you're turning ninety,
1:46
Speaker 3: although everyone says you look forty.
1:50
Speaker 2: That's a Trump fashion right there, and that's exactly what
1:55
Speaker 2: you would expect from him.
1:56
Speaker 1: Did she absolutely love the moment?
1:58
Speaker 4: Yeah, she laughed out loud. She was astonished.
2:02
Speaker 1: I got a brag.
2:02
Speaker 2: I just got to brag on you for a second
2:04
Speaker 2: because it was so fun election night, getting to spend
2:08
Speaker 2: a little time with your mom to watch how much
2:12
Speaker 2: fun she was having and how proud she was of you.
2:14
Speaker 2: You would never talk about this, so I'm just gonna
2:17
Speaker 2: do it. I've never enjoyed watching a parent. And I've
2:22
Speaker 2: been around your dad a lot, and your dad is incredible,
2:24
Speaker 2: but I think it's a little bit more normal for him.
2:27
Speaker 2: He's in the fight, he kind of he's he's really
2:29
Speaker 2: in there. He gets into it and that's fun. And
2:32
Speaker 2: if you've ever seen Sinnaker's dad, he's such a he's
2:35
Speaker 2: just a blast to spend time with, and he's so animated,
2:38
Speaker 2: and he loves a campaign trail. It's different with a mom.
2:42
Speaker 2: Just to see the pure I think joy it's when
2:46
Speaker 2: when parents, when when a kid succeeds, it's like a
2:49
Speaker 2: hundred times more excitement. And to watch her on election
2:53
Speaker 2: night in the war room and just the pure joy
2:56
Speaker 2: on her face watching you get to do what you
2:59
Speaker 2: do and watching the room react to you winning. I
3:02
Speaker 2: don't know, because there was so much going on, if
3:04
Speaker 2: you got to see it from the angle I did.
3:06
Speaker 2: I just got to say, I have never enjoyed a
3:09
Speaker 2: moment on the campaign trail, and I mean that sincerely
3:11
Speaker 2: more than I did that moment watching your mom watch
3:13
Speaker 2: you win reelection. I don't know if you got to
3:15
Speaker 2: see that moment, but she was so proud of you.
3:18
Speaker 4: That's awesome. She's an amazing woman.
3:20
Speaker 3: Maybe we'll do a podcast and have my mom on
3:22
Speaker 3: because she's got quite the life story. That'd be kind
3:24
Speaker 3: of fun to let her tell her story.
3:27
Speaker 2: I love that idea, no doubt about it. And it
3:30
Speaker 2: was Yeah, it's fun. So to everybody, we hope you
3:32
Speaker 2: had a fabulous things canning be safe on the road.
3:35
Speaker 2: Many of you download this listening on your way home.
3:37
Speaker 2: Even during this holiday season, there are still attacks that
3:41
Speaker 2: are happening each and every day against the people in Israel,
3:45
Speaker 2: and that is incredibly sad. The International Fellowship of Christians
3:49
Speaker 2: and Jews is wishing you a blessed Thanksgiving as you
3:53
Speaker 2: gather with your families, grateful for the blessings that God
3:56
Speaker 2: has given all of us. But we need to remember
3:59
Speaker 2: those who are faith unbelievable hardship and a real need
4:03
Speaker 2: right now of food and hope in Israel. The people
4:08
Speaker 2: of Israel, they're being threatened and the attacks continue from
4:11
Speaker 2: enemies all around them. And during these hard times, Israelis
4:16
Speaker 2: are thankful for the Fellowship, for the food and the
4:19
Speaker 2: basic assistance that they so desperately need. We're talking about
4:22
Speaker 2: life saving aid that the rest of the world seems
4:24
Speaker 2: to have turned their back on the people in Israel.
4:27
Speaker 2: And that's why I'm asking you to pause and give
4:29
Speaker 2: a gift of twenty five dollars right now that will
4:32
Speaker 2: help provide food a box of food to an elderly
4:35
Speaker 2: Jew or a Jewish family who are suffering and are
4:39
Speaker 2: in desperate need. A gift of one hundred dollars will
4:41
Speaker 2: help provide four of these life saving food boxes this
4:45
Speaker 2: Thanksgiving season. Take a moment and help the people in Israel.
4:49
Speaker 2: Please consider standing with Israel and the Jewish people. How
4:53
Speaker 2: do you do this? Go to support IFCJ dot org.
5:00
Speaker 2: That is support IFCJ dot org. To make a gift now,
5:05
Speaker 2: that's support IFCJ dot org. Or you can call and
5:10
Speaker 2: give as well over the phone eight A eight four
5:13
Speaker 2: eight eight I f c J. That's eight eight eight
5:18
Speaker 2: four eight eight four three two five or support IFCJ
5:23
Speaker 2: dot org Centaer. This is one of those fun episodes
5:26
Speaker 2: for us. You get asked, I know, to lend your
5:30
Speaker 2: name to certain things here and there. And there is
5:33
Speaker 2: a book that is coming out you're excited about. You
5:36
Speaker 2: The Ford was written by you and it deals with
5:39
Speaker 2: a very very important issue. The Jewish State and the
5:44
Speaker 2: people of Israel and America and this connection.
5:47
Speaker 3: Well, that's right, And we've got a special guest on
5:49
Speaker 3: the podcast today, and our guest is a very dear
5:52
Speaker 3: friend of mine, doctor Victoria Coats. Now doctor Coates is
5:57
Speaker 3: the vice president of the Heritage Foundation for now national
6:00
Speaker 3: security and foreign policy. And Victoria is an amazing woman.
6:05
Speaker 3: She has a PhD in art history, which she's one
6:08
Speaker 3: of the pre eminent foreign policy and national security experts
6:11
Speaker 3: in the country. And those who doubt her sometimes sometimes
6:16
Speaker 3: scoff at the fact that she's an art historian. She
6:19
Speaker 3: actually was a professor at Penn and was teaching art
6:23
Speaker 3: history at Penn. And I'll tell you an amazing story
6:26
Speaker 3: of how Victoria got full time into the national security
6:30
Speaker 3: and foreign policy world, which is twenty some odd years ago.
6:35
Speaker 3: She was blogging anonymously on Red State and she had
6:38
Speaker 3: a pseudonym, and Don Rumsfeldt was the Secretary of Defense
6:42
Speaker 3: at the time, and he was reading what she was
6:45
Speaker 3: writing on Red State and it was really profound and
6:47
Speaker 3: insightful about foreign policy. And rumsfeld called in his staff
6:52
Speaker 3: and said, hey, I want you to figure out who
6:54
Speaker 3: is writing these columns because and he said, listen, this
6:58
Speaker 3: is obviously a colonel buried sore in the heart of
7:02
Speaker 3: the Pentagon who understands military policy, foreign policy, national security.
7:07
Speaker 3: This guy is an expert. I want to hear what
7:09
Speaker 3: he has to say. Well, they tracked the colonel and
7:12
Speaker 3: the Pentagon down and it turned out it was a
7:14
Speaker 3: professor of art history at Penn named Victoria Coats, and
7:18
Speaker 3: she ended up coming and working for Don Rumsfeld when
7:20
Speaker 3: he was writing his autobiography.
7:22
Speaker 4: She worked with him on.
7:23
Speaker 3: That, and when I was newly elected to the Senate,
7:26
Speaker 3: she was my very first national security advisor, and Victoria
7:30
Speaker 3: and I worked hand in hand for four years. She
7:32
Speaker 3: was amazing helping advise me on the very complicated and
7:37
Speaker 3: dangerous world in which we live. And when Trump became president,
7:41
Speaker 3: she went into the Trump White House, and she went
7:44
Speaker 3: into the Trump National Security Council, and she managed to
7:47
Speaker 3: actually survive. For National Security advisor, she was hired initially
7:52
Speaker 3: by Mike Flynn. I remember Mike Flynn lasted just about
7:56
Speaker 3: thirty days, and then she ended up staying through h R.
8:02
Speaker 3: McMaster and then staying through John Bolton, and then staying
8:06
Speaker 3: through Robert O'Brien, and she rose to be Deputy National
8:09
Speaker 3: Security Advisor to President Trump. And then she finished the
8:13
Speaker 3: trumpet the Trump administration at the Department of Energy, where
8:18
Speaker 3: she was a senior advisor to the Secretary of Energy,
8:22
Speaker 3: and she was dealing with the Middle East in particular.
8:25
Speaker 3: And Victoria is an expert on many things, but one
8:28
Speaker 3: of the things she's an expert on is the Middle East.
8:31
Speaker 4: And this book.
8:31
Speaker 3: She has a brand new book that is coming out
8:33
Speaker 3: right now, and the book is called The Battle for
8:36
Speaker 3: the Jewish State, How Israel and America Can Win. And
8:41
Speaker 3: with that, Victoria, welcome to Verdict.
8:44
Speaker 5: Well, thank you for having me on. I'd just like
8:46
Speaker 5: to correct the record a couple of things.
8:49
Speaker 4: Sure.
8:50
Speaker 3: Yeah, although my first boss said never let truth stand
8:54
Speaker 3: in the way of a good story.
8:56
Speaker 5: No, I'd just say it wasn't quite twenty years ago.
9:00
Speaker 1: Uh, there we go.
9:02
Speaker 3: I like that maybe a little bit less. Wait a second,
9:07
Speaker 3: when was Rumsfeld Secretary of Defense.
9:10
Speaker 5: This was more twenty five, twenty six, and we're eighteen
9:14
Speaker 5: nineteen years ago. The hairs there on that one, I
9:20
Speaker 5: didn't like to be dated, but no, it's it's been
9:24
Speaker 5: an extraordinary journey. And the other data I'd like to
9:27
Speaker 5: mention is twenty fourteen when you and I made my
9:31
Speaker 5: first journey to Israel together, I think your second, if
9:34
Speaker 5: not your third, in May of that year, which was
9:38
Speaker 5: our first trip broad on, you know, as a senator,
9:43
Speaker 5: And to go to Israel and have that experience together
9:47
Speaker 5: with our then chief of Staff Chip Roy, who has
9:51
Speaker 5: obviously become something of a name on his own right.
9:55
Speaker 5: But to have that experience was really profound, and I
9:59
Speaker 5: would just we went from Israel to Kiv, We went
10:04
Speaker 5: to Ukraine, and so we got to see these two
10:09
Speaker 5: theaters that are so important to us right now ten
10:13
Speaker 5: years ago and experience this, meet these people. But the
10:19
Speaker 5: book was really very much a document of these ten
10:23
Speaker 5: years that have gone on since then. And I think
10:27
Speaker 5: for both of us watching Israel, observing it, studying it,
10:32
Speaker 5: and then in your case, actually legislating on it has
10:36
Speaker 5: been quite an extraordinary experience.
10:41
Speaker 3: It has been an amazing journey, and it is a
10:43
Speaker 3: very dangerous world. Let's start with Israel itself, and let's
10:48
Speaker 3: start with maybe the simplest question, why is it Israel
10:52
Speaker 3: at warwork right now? What happened to take us from
10:56
Speaker 3: four years ago? We had peace and prosperity, We had
10:59
Speaker 3: the Abraham Cool words being signed on the south lawn
11:02
Speaker 3: of the White House. And now we've had October seventh,
11:04
Speaker 3: the worst mass murder of Jews in a single day
11:07
Speaker 3: since the Holocaust. We have war throughout Gaza, we have
11:11
Speaker 3: war in Lebanon. What happened to change things so dramatically, Well.
11:16
Speaker 5: Clearly it was a change of the executive branch. And
11:20
Speaker 5: one of the most obvious policy contrasts between the Trump
11:26
Speaker 5: administration and the Biden Harris administration was on Middle East policy.
11:31
Speaker 5: And so you had President Trump go in work on
11:35
Speaker 5: a number of the things that you and I worked on,
11:38
Speaker 5: moving the embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the recognition
11:43
Speaker 5: of Goal On Heights as sovereign Israeli territory, and conventional
11:49
Speaker 5: wisdom held by those like John Kerry among others, that
11:53
Speaker 5: this would cause upheaval in the region. Instead, it caused clarity.
11:59
Speaker 5: This is where the United States is. The United States
12:03
Speaker 5: stands with Israel, and if you want to stand with us,
12:07
Speaker 5: great And what we found was that many of our
12:12
Speaker 5: Arab partners, traditional partners and allies decided that's what they
12:17
Speaker 5: wanted to do. So we signed the Abraham Accords with
12:21
Speaker 5: Bahrain and UAE and Morocco and this led to peace
12:28
Speaker 5: in the region. And then we had Biden Harris come
12:31
Speaker 5: in and they decided that they were going to embrace
12:34
Speaker 5: the Obama era policy of having distance with Israel, trying
12:38
Speaker 5: to domesticate the Iranians, and this led to disaster and
12:44
Speaker 5: instead of you know, peace, we wound up with October
12:47
Speaker 5: seventh of twenty twenty three, now, I guess fourteen months ago,
12:52
Speaker 5: and you know, the horrific Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel,
12:57
Speaker 5: and I felt like so many Americans kept asking me
13:00
Speaker 5: why is this happening? And that's why I wrote the book.
13:03
Speaker 2: So tery gont to ask you this question, with all
13:05
Speaker 2: the news that has happened with Israel, when did you
13:08
Speaker 2: actually decide to write the book?
13:10
Speaker 5: And it was actually a fit of temporary insanity last
13:14
Speaker 5: April where I had the idea and I thought, I
13:19
Speaker 5: need to answer these questions that people keep asking me.
13:23
Speaker 5: And I got in touch with my publisher at Encounterpress,
13:27
Speaker 5: and Roger Kimball said, Okay, if you can get this
13:30
Speaker 5: to me in ninety days, I can get it out. Wow,
13:35
Speaker 5: as I said, a bit of temporary insanity, but we
13:39
Speaker 5: got it done just because the questions were so clear,
13:44
Speaker 5: Oh did this happen? Why Israel? Is there an alternative
13:49
Speaker 5: to Israel? And then what's next? Those are the four
13:53
Speaker 5: questions that drives the book, and it just kind of
13:58
Speaker 5: was a create a cur or, just needed to get
14:02
Speaker 5: it out there, and I did it in ninety days
14:04
Speaker 5: and here it is.
14:06
Speaker 4: So what's the answer to each of those four?
14:09
Speaker 5: So? How did this happen? Is a question, actually, Senator
14:13
Speaker 5: you really answered in the forward to the book, which
14:17
Speaker 5: is how did we get from October seventh to all
14:21
Speaker 5: of the demonstrations in the United States that are pro hamas?
14:28
Speaker 5: Most normal people responded to the terrorist attacks with horror,
14:33
Speaker 5: but then suddenly all of these people were flooding our
14:37
Speaker 5: children's campuses, our streets pro coma. How did that happen?
14:43
Speaker 5: And I thought you wrote very movingly about the testimony
14:47
Speaker 5: of the three university presidents, my president Amy McGill, the
14:52
Speaker 5: president of Harvard, your alma mater, and the president of
14:56
Speaker 5: MIT being unable to speak to why this was a problem.
15:00
Speaker 5: And it's why this is a war not just on Israel,
15:04
Speaker 5: but also on America, because we have anti Semitism here
15:09
Speaker 5: on our streets, we have it on our campuses where
15:13
Speaker 5: it's being taught to our children. This is a huge
15:16
Speaker 5: problem and we have to get after it. And the
15:19
Speaker 5: Biden administration clearly had no answer to that. Then many
15:24
Speaker 5: Americans want to know why Israel is a great ally
15:29
Speaker 5: to the United States, and that's a little bit of
15:31
Speaker 5: a history lesson. And as you mentioned, I'm an art historian.
15:34
Speaker 5: That just makes you able to write about history. Sometimes
15:38
Speaker 5: there are pictures, but in this case, it's going back
15:43
Speaker 5: to what is the connection between the Jews and the
15:47
Speaker 5: Holy Land, Why was the modern state of Israel founded?
15:52
Speaker 5: What is the relationship between the United States and Israel?
15:56
Speaker 5: That means is not well understood. And I tried to
16:00
Speaker 5: approach it like a one oh one class in college,
16:02
Speaker 5: so that you would have that kind of information in
16:06
Speaker 5: front of you. Then there's what I call the bike
16:09
Speaker 5: partisan history of failure, which is the third question is
16:15
Speaker 5: is there an alternative? And the answer to that question
16:17
Speaker 5: is yes. The two one is the Palestinians and the
16:21
Speaker 5: other is the Iranians. And we've had lots of folks
16:26
Speaker 5: on both sides of the Aisle try to domesticate both
16:28
Speaker 5: of those groups. As you and I know very well,
16:31
Speaker 5: that has not turned out well. And that's exactly where
16:35
Speaker 5: they biden. Inherris. People were heading God forbid if they
16:40
Speaker 5: had gotten another four years. And then the fourth question
16:43
Speaker 5: is what's next. And the amazing thing is is that
16:47
Speaker 5: we can right now talk about a deal between Israel
16:51
Speaker 5: and Saudi Arabia. If you told the eight years ago,
16:55
Speaker 5: when I first went into the Trump administration that I
16:58
Speaker 5: could talk on a pot cast about an Israel Saudi
17:02
Speaker 5: deal and not get angry phone calls from both sides,
17:06
Speaker 5: I would have been shocked. But now it's talked about
17:10
Speaker 5: as when, not if, And that's an extraordinary development. So
17:14
Speaker 5: we can build on that, we can we can go
17:17
Speaker 5: forward with that.
17:18
Speaker 3: And well, and that's the direct result of clarity of
17:25
Speaker 3: you know, for decades, the conventional wisdom in Washington was
17:30
Speaker 3: to deliberately embrace strategic ambiguity, that whatever you give to
17:34
Speaker 3: Israel with one hand, you take away with the other
17:36
Speaker 3: a little.
17:36
Speaker 4: Bit of this, a little bit of that.
17:39
Speaker 3: So Jerusalem, maybe Israel can have it, but maybe the
17:42
Speaker 3: Palestinians can have it. Maybe the West Bank needs to
17:44
Speaker 3: be go back to We need to go back to
17:46
Speaker 3: the nineteen sixty seven lines. And we saw with Democrats
17:50
Speaker 3: and with a lot of Republicans that that there was
17:52
Speaker 3: a very deliberate, strategic blurring of the lines and the
17:56
Speaker 3: most important thing that Trump did on on Middle East policy,
18:01
Speaker 3: and this is something that I advocated strenuously. It's something
18:04
Speaker 3: that you advocated within the White House for is have
18:09
Speaker 3: that clarity to say we stand with Israel, period the end,
18:14
Speaker 3: and that produced an historic flowering apiece. And Victoria, I
18:19
Speaker 3: want to pause on something you said at the outset
18:21
Speaker 3: when you're answering the first question. Then you were talking
18:23
Speaker 3: about those who hate Israel and hate America, and it
18:27
Speaker 3: just just occurred to me as you were talking that
18:29
Speaker 3: there is an almost perfect equivalence that if you look
18:34
Speaker 3: at the people on college campuses chanting we love Hamas
18:39
Speaker 3: chanting against Israel, to a person, almost every single person
18:44
Speaker 3: who hates and despises Israel hates and despises the United
18:48
Speaker 3: States of America. And I guess the question I wanted
18:51
Speaker 3: to ask you is is why, why is that if
18:54
Speaker 3: you're an anti semit if you hate Israel, we know
18:57
Speaker 3: that you are very very likely to hate America's.
18:59
Speaker 5: Well, now, this is an interesting phenomenon and it's a
19:04
Speaker 5: new phrase I learned, which is called settler colonialism, and
19:09
Speaker 5: at the Heritage Foundation, we were watching very carefully from
19:14
Speaker 5: our balconies as the thousands of pro Hamas protesters marched
19:19
Speaker 5: pasts Heritage to go down to Union Station when Prime
19:23
Speaker 5: Minister at Yahoo was here. I know you were there
19:27
Speaker 5: at the Addressed Congress in July, and they marched down
19:32
Speaker 5: to Union Station and dragged down flags and burned them
19:37
Speaker 5: and put up Palestinian flags, and those were American flags,
19:41
Speaker 5: those weren't Israeli flags. And then at being a Philadelphia
19:45
Speaker 5: and I was particularly offended that they defaced the cast
19:49
Speaker 5: of the Liberty Bill that also is there on Columbus Circle.
19:53
Speaker 5: But it's me, that's it. They hate us both, and
19:56
Speaker 5: the reason they hate us is this full issue of
20:00
Speaker 5: subtler colonialism, which is both Israel and the United States
20:04
Speaker 5: are the two countries that are theoretically settled by others.
20:11
Speaker 5: My particular ancestors came from Scott's Irish and Denmark. I
20:16
Speaker 5: know you are both Irish and Cuban. Then I don't
20:20
Speaker 5: know what your pedigree is. And I did want to
20:24
Speaker 5: take a minute to wish a very happy ninetieth birthday
20:27
Speaker 5: to Eleanor and sent her lots of love. But this
20:33
Speaker 5: is the thing is these are the two countries that
20:36
Speaker 5: they consider illegitimate because most of the people who live
20:41
Speaker 5: here come from other places. And so that's why it's
20:44
Speaker 5: a war on both of us. And if you look
20:47
Speaker 5: at our enemies, our enemies like Aron, they refer to
20:52
Speaker 5: Israel as the little Satan and the United States as
20:55
Speaker 5: the great Satan. But guess what, we're both Satan and
20:59
Speaker 5: in that, you know that we are the same to them.
21:03
Speaker 5: And what you're seeing from all of these enemies of
21:06
Speaker 5: the United States and Israel's, they're buying into that that
21:10
Speaker 5: we're more or less the same. And what you and
21:13
Speaker 5: I have discussed so many times, Okay, fine, let's make
21:16
Speaker 5: that a strength rather than a weakness. You say we're
21:19
Speaker 5: the same, great, then we're in this together.
21:24
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21:28
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21:32
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21:34
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21:36
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21:39
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21:40
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Speaker 2: AMO in your account today. Let me ask you a
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Speaker 2: question about college campuses. And we talked a moment ago.
23:43
Speaker 2: You mentioned in the Senate, and I talked about this
23:46
Speaker 2: a lot on the show. Those presidents that came before Congress,
23:50
Speaker 2: and it was shocking that they would not stop the
23:54
Speaker 2: just abuse of the Jewish students and not protect them.
23:59
Speaker 2: Do you feel like the pendulum will swing back watching
24:03
Speaker 2: what happened to some of those presidents and just seeing
24:05
Speaker 2: how extreme these college campuses have gotten, or do you
24:09
Speaker 2: think they're just so indoctrinated to hate Israel now that
24:12
Speaker 2: this is just the policy of almost all of these
24:14
Speaker 2: IVY schools.
24:16
Speaker 5: Well, the goodness then is as a sort of broken
24:21
Speaker 5: down academic myself, I can tell you one thing, which
24:25
Speaker 5: is the one thing they care more about than their
24:29
Speaker 5: parking spaces is their funding. And so if you hold
24:34
Speaker 5: their funding at risk, they will stop this behavior. And
24:39
Speaker 5: so I was at penn last April to give remarks
24:44
Speaker 5: on why I think it's a bad idea to hate Jews,
24:46
Speaker 5: and I required three layers of armed guards. I had
24:50
Speaker 5: Philadelphia City cops, I had pen cops, and Heritage was
24:55
Speaker 5: not satisfied with that, and they sent an additional armed
24:58
Speaker 5: guard with me because it was such radical thing for
25:02
Speaker 5: me to go on campus and make these remarks, and
25:07
Speaker 5: that speech isn't free. A lot of people had to
25:10
Speaker 5: pay for that, including the taxpayers of Pennsylvania amongst others.
25:16
Speaker 5: And it was a really enlightening moment that we have
25:21
Speaker 5: to hold this funding at risk. And I've heard President
25:24
Speaker 5: Trump talk about this. I think very forcefully that no
25:29
Speaker 5: university should get federal funding. And I think we can
25:34
Speaker 5: also look at this from the state perspective and hold
25:38
Speaker 5: that funding at risk, and that will actually change this behavior.
25:42
Speaker 4: Well.
25:42
Speaker 3: And I got to say, Victoria has a lot of
25:44
Speaker 3: courage going on to college campuses and facing the crazy left,
25:49
Speaker 3: the angry left, the Israel hating and America hating left.
25:53
Speaker 4: And we need to see.
25:53
Speaker 3: More of that courage, more of that courage among academics,
25:57
Speaker 3: more of that courage among students. You know, I think back,
26:01
Speaker 3: you know, I mentioned Ben at the outset that Victoria
26:04
Speaker 3: was my first national security advisor, and I think it's
26:06
Speaker 3: worth recounting a little bit of that story when we
26:09
Speaker 3: first started working together. So I was elected to the
26:13
Speaker 3: Senate twelve years ago. I show up in December of
26:16
Speaker 3: twenty twelve, sworn in in January of twenty thirteen. And
26:21
Speaker 3: when you're a brand new senator, when you're a baby senator,
26:23
Speaker 3: they put you down down on these little bitty basement
26:25
Speaker 3: offices and it's basically freshman hazing. I mean, there are
26:29
Speaker 3: one hundred Senate offices that are full offices, but they
26:33
Speaker 3: keep the new senators down in the basement for three
26:35
Speaker 3: four five months, just basically as an initiation. And then
26:39
Speaker 3: so Victoria was part of our very first team that
26:42
Speaker 3: came together right when I was newly elected. And she
26:45
Speaker 3: came and joined us initially for what was going to
26:47
Speaker 3: be two weeks and just to help us get started,
26:50
Speaker 3: help us hire some staff, and then she was going
26:52
Speaker 3: to move on. And when we got there. One of
26:55
Speaker 3: the very first things we had as we had a
26:57
Speaker 3: vote on John Carey, who had been dominated as Secretary
27:01
Speaker 3: of State and John Kerry. At the time I was elected,
27:04
Speaker 3: he was a senator, so he was a colleague of
27:05
Speaker 3: mine for like four minutes. And then Obama the beginning
27:08
Speaker 3: of the second term nominated Kerrie a Secretary of State.
27:11
Speaker 3: I remember John Kerry came by my basement office. Victoria
27:14
Speaker 3: was sitting in the office in the meeting, and and
27:16
Speaker 3: Carrie was let me, let me speak nicely, incredibly confident
27:23
Speaker 3: in himself. I'm trying to put that in a kind tone. Uh,
27:28
Speaker 3: And and he he gave me this this sort of
27:30
Speaker 3: long lecture, how I really need to it needed to
27:33
Speaker 3: embrace the Law of the Sea Treaty which the Law
27:37
Speaker 3: of the Sea Treaty, among other things, significantly undermines US
27:40
Speaker 3: sovereignty and gives away the ability of we the people.
27:42
Speaker 4: To make our own laws.
27:44
Speaker 3: And I remember sitting there just kind of laughing and
27:46
Speaker 3: being like, Okay, this guy has no idea who I am, like,
27:51
Speaker 3: none whatsoever, And and and we we then came to
27:56
Speaker 3: the vote on the floor of the Senate, and it
27:57
Speaker 3: was one of the very first votes I ever took.
28:00
Speaker 3: And I went down and voted no. And there was
28:03
Speaker 3: literally an audible gasp on the floor of the Senate
28:08
Speaker 3: when I voted no, because a freshman senator was certainly
28:12
Speaker 3: not supposed to do that. The vote was ninety seven
28:14
Speaker 3: to three, So ninety seven senators voted yes. There were
28:17
Speaker 3: only three of us that voted no. I was it
28:22
Speaker 3: ninety four to three? Okay, well, then I guess Carrie
28:24
Speaker 3: didn't vote for himself. And I remembered the three. I
28:26
Speaker 3: remember that I don't know who skipped. Whoever skipped, they
28:29
Speaker 3: did better than the ninety four. And then immediately thereafter,
28:34
Speaker 3: about concurrently with it, was the confirmation of Chuck Hagel.
28:39
Speaker 3: Now Chuck Hagel is who Obama had nominated to be
28:42
Speaker 3: Secretary of Defense, and Chuck Hagel had been a Republican senator.
28:46
Speaker 3: I didn't know Hegel, but as I looked at his record,
28:49
Speaker 3: his record was terrible. And so I ended up leading
28:53
Speaker 3: what was the very first filibuster in American history against
28:58
Speaker 3: a defense secretary, and it was it was successful. It
29:00
Speaker 3: was before Harry Reid had used the nuclear option, before
29:03
Speaker 3: he'd blown up the filibuster. So you can't filibuster now
29:06
Speaker 3: a cabinet nominee anymore, but you could then, and we
29:10
Speaker 3: successfully held forty one Republicans. We stopped his nomination, and
29:15
Speaker 3: then actually Republicans being what they are, several other Republicans
29:18
Speaker 3: who joined us went wobbly and decided to confirm him anyway.
29:21
Speaker 3: But that's another story. But what I will say is
29:25
Speaker 3: I think it got Victoria's attention that this was not
29:29
Speaker 3: going to be just to quiet go along to get
29:32
Speaker 3: a long tenure in the Senate, that we were there
29:34
Speaker 3: to fight battles and lead battles. And she ended up
29:40
Speaker 3: staying in. And I'll tell you something astonishing, Penn. So
29:44
Speaker 3: if you rewind the clock twelve years ago, twelve years ago,
29:47
Speaker 3: I am elected to the Senate, I'm elected to the Senate.
29:51
Speaker 3: I'm forty one years old, brand new elected to the Senate,
29:54
Speaker 3: and as I came into the Senate, I had areas
29:56
Speaker 3: that I knew a lot about. If you were talking
29:57
Speaker 3: about legal issues, if you're talking about criminal justice, if
30:00
Speaker 3: you were talking about constitutional law, I had a long
30:04
Speaker 3: background in all of those issues. When it came to
30:07
Speaker 3: foreign policy, I had essentially zero background. Just my professional career,
30:13
Speaker 3: I'd never worked in foreign policy. I'd never worked in
30:16
Speaker 3: the State Department of the Fence Department. I'd never dealt
30:18
Speaker 3: with foreign policy. My focus had always been domestic. When
30:22
Speaker 3: I was on the George W. Bush campaign twenty four
30:24
Speaker 3: years ago, I was the domestic policy advisor. That was
30:28
Speaker 3: my specialty, and so look economic matter, domestic matters. I
30:31
Speaker 3: had a lot of experience foreign policy I had essentially none.
30:36
Speaker 3: But I did have some strong beliefs. The son of
30:40
Speaker 3: a Cuban immigrant who had fought in the Cuban Revolution,
30:43
Speaker 3: I believed profoundly in freedom. I was inspired by Reagan.
30:49
Speaker 3: Peace through strength is a principle in philosophy that I
30:53
Speaker 3: believed deeply in. But I didn't have a terribly deep
30:59
Speaker 3: subject matter expertise, and so one of the things I
31:02
Speaker 3: give give that background because one of the remarkable things
31:05
Speaker 3: Victoria did is is basically convened a university in the
31:10
Speaker 3: United States Senate to train me up in foreign policy.
31:14
Speaker 3: And I say so with complete humility. And what preceded
31:20
Speaker 3: for four years is we would do deep dives. And
31:23
Speaker 3: when I'm in DC, Heidi and the girls stay back
31:26
Speaker 3: in Houston. So when I'm in DC, I'm solo. I
31:28
Speaker 3: don't have I don't have anybody at home. And so
31:31
Speaker 3: my philosophy, if I get to get to my apartment
31:34
Speaker 3: at seven or eight or nine o'clock at night, I'll
31:36
Speaker 3: be mad at my team. I'll be like, wait, what
31:38
Speaker 3: am I doing sitting in an apartment staring at a wall.
31:40
Speaker 3: There's work to be done. Like now, if Heidi and
31:43
Speaker 3: the girls were there, I'd want to be home with
31:44
Speaker 3: the kids, But if they're not there, I want to work.
31:47
Speaker 3: And so every night when I'm in DC, I do
31:50
Speaker 3: a working dinner. And what Victoria began convening as we'd
31:55
Speaker 3: do working dinners, and many of them were with subject
31:58
Speaker 3: matter experts, where we'd bring in, say a Middle East
32:01
Speaker 3: policy expert or a couple. We'd bring in an Israel expert,
32:03
Speaker 3: or an Iran expert, we'd bring in a Russia expert,
32:05
Speaker 3: we'd bring in a China expert, and we'd do a
32:08
Speaker 3: deep dive onto a subject matter and sit there and
32:13
Speaker 3: have a three four hour dinner really asking. You know,
32:16
Speaker 3: I'm a big believer that there are no stupid questions
32:20
Speaker 3: other than the question you don't ask because you're afraid
32:24
Speaker 3: to ask. And so I was perfectly happy to ask
32:26
Speaker 3: question after question after question. And I will just say, now,
32:29
Speaker 3: twelve years later, where I have been in the middle
32:34
Speaker 3: of virtually every foreign policy battle in the Senate for
32:37
Speaker 3: a long time, now, it's worth looking back to twelve
32:42
Speaker 3: years ago, the incredible job Victoria did systematically giving me
32:50
Speaker 3: a knowledge set to go along with principles that I
32:54
Speaker 3: started with. But I didn't have the subject matter expertise.
32:58
Speaker 3: And there's literally no person on planet Earth more responsible
33:02
Speaker 3: for my being able to develop that subject matter expertise
33:05
Speaker 3: than than Victoria Victor.
33:08
Speaker 2: Let me ask you a question following up on what
33:10
Speaker 2: he just stated there, and that is it's it's getting
33:13
Speaker 2: close to Christmas, a lot of people buying gifts.
33:15
Speaker 1: It's Black Friday right now.
33:17
Speaker 2: As people are listening to this, when you wrote this book,
33:21
Speaker 2: who did you envision reading it? Is this one of
33:23
Speaker 2: those books that you should absolutely get for maybe your
33:27
Speaker 2: kids are in high school or in college.
33:30
Speaker 1: Is this I mean when you when you write it?
33:32
Speaker 2: When I wrote my book, I'm like, I was trying
33:34
Speaker 2: to vision who do I want to read this book?
33:36
Speaker 1: Who am I trying to give information to?
33:39
Speaker 5: To give information ben to people who who are interested
33:44
Speaker 5: in American national security And not to correct Senator Cruise,
33:47
Speaker 5: but not that I ever would. But the only thing
33:49
Speaker 5: I would adjust to what he just said is it's
33:52
Speaker 5: not foreign policy. This is national security. This is what
33:56
Speaker 5: touches all Americans every day. And so I I would
34:00
Speaker 5: hope everyone from a high school senior to somebody who's
34:03
Speaker 5: just interested in the Middle East would be interested in
34:07
Speaker 5: this book because they want to know why this is
34:11
Speaker 5: in the United States' best interests. And I would boil
34:15
Speaker 5: this down to a single issue. And I remember so
34:18
Speaker 5: clearly when we made the decision to do this, which
34:21
Speaker 5: was when Senator Heller's bill to move the Israeli Embassy
34:26
Speaker 5: from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem came up right away in
34:31
Speaker 5: January of twenty thirteen, and it did not have a
34:34
Speaker 5: co sponsor, and I said the Senator Cruise, would you
34:37
Speaker 5: like to be co sponsor? And he said, yes, I would.
34:40
Speaker 5: This seems like a really good idea because this gives
34:44
Speaker 5: that kind of clarity that we were just talking about,
34:47
Speaker 5: and that's when I knew we were off to the races.
34:49
Speaker 5: Same thing with the vote on John Carey, same thing
34:52
Speaker 5: with Chuck Hagel, that we are going to take a
34:58
Speaker 5: new approach to the these issues. And it's one of
35:01
Speaker 5: the reasons it was not easy for me to leave
35:04
Speaker 5: Senator Cruz's staff to go into the Trump administration. But
35:09
Speaker 5: I had no conflict of interest because it was essentially
35:12
Speaker 5: the same policies. These are the America First policies, and
35:16
Speaker 5: one of those keystones of that is the relationship between
35:21
Speaker 5: the United States and Israel. And so that's really the
35:24
Speaker 5: purpose behind the book, to explain to people why that
35:28
Speaker 5: is and then to give them ammunition to spread that
35:33
Speaker 5: information around, because I think the disinformation about Israel, the
35:40
Speaker 5: very negative information about the Jewish people as well as Israel,
35:45
Speaker 5: is so pervasive. So that's why I wrote it.
35:49
Speaker 2: I know it's going to be an important book and
35:50
Speaker 2: a lot of people are going to want to try
35:52
Speaker 2: to grab this.
35:53
Speaker 1: Where can they get it? Where do you tell people
35:55
Speaker 1: to go?
35:57
Speaker 5: Unfortunately, they can get it anywhere they would like. They
35:59
Speaker 5: can he edited on Amazon, Barnes and Noble. They can
36:02
Speaker 5: go to the encounterpress website. But Amazon's probably the easiest.
36:07
Speaker 5: What we all have on our phones. So really appreciate
36:11
Speaker 5: any kind of pre orders and I hope it makes
36:14
Speaker 5: a great gift.
36:15
Speaker 3: So the book is the Battle for the Jewish State,
36:17
Speaker 3: How Israel and America can win. It's an excellent book.
36:21
Speaker 3: Victoria is a pre eminent expert. If you find yourself
36:26
Speaker 3: around the Thanksgiving table, or at work or at school
36:30
Speaker 3: with people arguing arguing about Israel, arguing, well, well, don't
36:33
Speaker 3: the Palestinians have a point? Aren't the Israelis really terrible
36:37
Speaker 3: to them? And you feel like something's wrong with that argument,
36:40
Speaker 3: but you're not sure what. This book is a really
36:42
Speaker 3: helpful tool to understand. Okay, wait a second, here are
36:45
Speaker 3: actually the facts. And I'll say something real quick that
36:49
Speaker 3: Victoria just said a minute ago. And this is something
36:51
Speaker 3: I think that is incredibly important for all of us
36:55
Speaker 3: who are strongly pro Israel. I urge everyone in the
37:00
Speaker 3: pro Israel movement to articulate a defense of Israel very
37:06
Speaker 3: directly from the perspective of why it is good for
37:08
Speaker 3: the United States of America. I think too many in
37:11
Speaker 3: the pro Israel movement talk about aid for Israel as
37:14
Speaker 3: if you're giving welfare to some down on his luck
37:18
Speaker 3: neighbor who just needs help. And I think that's a
37:20
Speaker 3: profound mistake. If you look at every year the United
37:23
Speaker 3: States provides roughly three billion dollars in military assistance to Israel.
37:28
Speaker 3: That is incredibly beneficial to America. If we tried to
37:32
Speaker 3: recreate the intelligence network of the Massad, the benefits that
37:36
Speaker 3: America gets from the Masad spying on, sabotaging, engaging with
37:43
Speaker 3: the enemies of America Hamas, Hesbellah, Iran, it would cost
37:48
Speaker 3: tens of billions of dollars and we wouldn't recreate it
37:51
Speaker 3: half as good. The enemies of Israel are the enemies
37:55
Speaker 3: of America. And when Israel defeats Hamas as they are
37:58
Speaker 3: doing now, and when israe Real defeats hesbalas they are
38:01
Speaker 3: doing now, that benefits America. And this book explains that
38:06
Speaker 3: it's powerful and useful to know. So I'll say, with
38:08
Speaker 3: Christmas season coming up, you should go and order a
38:11
Speaker 3: copy The Battle for the Jewish State, How Israel and
38:14
Speaker 3: America can Win and it's by Victoria Coats.
38:17
Speaker 1: There you go, be safe on the road.
38:19
Speaker 2: For all of you that are driving home from Thanksgiving
38:21
Speaker 2: with your family and your friends, don't forget Center Cruise
38:24
Speaker 2: and I do the show Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
38:26
Speaker 1: Hit that subscribe or auto download button.
38:29
Speaker 2: We also have on Saturday, the Week in Review what
38:32
Speaker 2: you may have missed during the week. We've got that
38:34
Speaker 2: for you on Saturdays as well, and don't forget on
38:36
Speaker 2: those in between days. Grab my podcast, the Ben Ferguson Podcasts.
38:40
Speaker 2: I'll keep you up to date on the latest breaking
38:41
Speaker 2: news there and the Senate and I will see you
38:43
Speaker 2: back here Saturday for the Week in Review