Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed Tennessee Star National Correspondent Neil McCabe to the newsmakers line weigh on his recent exclusive at The Tennessee Star and the different stylings on foreign policy between the Biden and Trump.
Leahy: We are joined by our good friend our longtime colleague the Washington correspondent for the Star News Network, which is The Tennessee Star, and five other state-based news sites. Neil McCabe with another breaking exclusive story on American foreign policy with the founder of the Gold Institute, Eli Gold. Neil, how do you keep getting breaking these exclusives? And what did Eli Gold tell you about Biden’s foreign policy?
McCabe: Eli Gold is an amazing guy who started the Gold Institute because after spending about 10 years in the sort of Washington think tank community he decided that nowhere was anybody actually doing things. They were creating a lot of policy, but nobody was ever getting anything done. And he wanted to create a place where there are practitioners, who are actually advising the decision-makers. And I guess I’ll let the cat out of the bag Mike. I am a media fellow at the Gold Institute. And so I just called Eli and I talked to him.
Leahy: Well, of course, that’s how you get these things. It is up now on The Tennessee Star. Exclusive: Gold Institute Founder Says Biden’s Foreign Policy Rejects Trump’s Successful Style, Substance. Tell us more about that Neil.
McCabe: Mike, if you look at it, I just made a quick list of 12 countries. Mexico, England, China, India, Japan, Canada, Russia, North Korea, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Afghanistan. And in every single instance, the Trump foreign policy was better than what was going on before Trump. And that’s not just Obama but Bush and everyone else that actually our posture towards those countries or with those countries was better under Trump.
And so what Eli was saying is that there are two things at play with the buying foreign policy vis-à-vis Trump. number one. He is bringing back sort of the left-wing establishment way of doing business. So the policies are going to be different. But almost more importantly the second thing is that Biden operates in a different way than Trump. Trump was revolutionary. Trump broke the mold.
And what he means by that is that is the Washington National Security foreign policy establishment believes or acts as if the rest of the world acts like they do in Washington. so the way you get things done in Washington is the way you get things done with the world. And so you talk to foreign leaders just like there are groups of congressmen trying to help you get through a farm bill. And it just doesn’t work.
And it never worked. and so what Trump did is Trump brought a personal one-on-one type of diplomacy. One that he honed as a New York City developer. He developed personal relationships. He got personally involved and he figured out how to get things done. And the key example for that in the article is what’s called mesa which was it was proposed as the Middle East Strategic Alliance.
And that was going to be sort of an Arab NATO and that came out of the Riyadh Summit which was you Trump’s first trip to Saudi Arabia. Trump signed off on it. He talked about it at the Riyadh Summit. They got things going and then the state department just sort of muddled through it. And the state department basically was just telling these countries to sign on to this thing and then we’ll figure out later what it is.
And countries were saying no, we’re not going to sign something and then find out later what it is. Like Nancy Pelosi saying you have to pass Obamacare to figure out what it is. And Trump got personally involved. He saw what was good, what was bad, what was working and not working. And out of what was supposed to be the Middle East Strategic Alliance Trump’s personal involvement led to what’s called the Abraham Accords.
And that’s where you know he was able to get Sudan, Morocco, Tunisia, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates to sign agreements recognizing Israel and sure of dropping that sort of War posture that these Arab countries have had with Israel. And in the second term, obviously, the big enchilada was going to be Saudi Arabia joining the Abraham Accords.
But this is sort of a result of Trump’s personal involvement. Whereas Biden is not personally involved. Biden wants to run everything by a committee. He wants to go back to the old ways and that’s why you’re seeing a sort of muddle through foreign policy. I think people can feel it where we are 40 days into a Biden administration and there just isn’t the speed and the action that we were used to in a Trump administration Mike.
Leahy: Well Neil, here’s my take on it. Just looking at it from afar. You are the expert on this. You deal with all these Washington foreign policy people. It strikes me that what we have now with the current occupant of the Oval Office the legal but not legitimate president of the United States Joe Biden. It looks to me like we have Neville Chamberlain with early-onset dementia surrounded by a bunch of third-rate lefty propagandists. Tell me where I’m wrong about that Neil.
McCabe: No. You’re absolutely right to the extent that I think you’re being a little unkind to Neville Chamberlain. (Leahy chuckles) I think he would stack up a little better next to Biden. But you know, this is one of the problems with a monarchy, right? Because the reason why is kind of like the son succeeds the father kind of monarchy because a civil war every time the King dies is not worth it.
And so sometimes you get a great king and sometimes you get a stooge but it’s better than a civil war and then maybe the next son will do alright. And we sort of watch this in England. But one of the problems is what if you have somebody who is not mentally functioning properly. And we saw that the other day maybe it was yesterday the day before yesterday Biden is doing this live stream with House Democrats and somebody says hey Mr. President will you take questions?
And he says, sure I’ll take questions. And as soon as he offered to take questions the White House shut the feed off. They just shut it off. Who knows what it’ll be like if you ever had to take a real press conference. We saw President Trump speak for 90 minutes with 150 international reporters from the U.S. And when he was in Europe, he would take all comers and he would keep taking questions until the reporters were tired.
And I’ve been in situations where Trump just keeps talking and talking and talking. Whatever questions are coming up he’ll take it. Even when someone’s nasty he’ll take the questions. Biden doesn’t take questions. It’s almost like those game shows where he’s in the soundproof booth. The president has to be protected from himself Mike
Leahy: Neil McCabe our Washington correspondent for the Star News Network. A big final question for you. How much damage will this somnambulant Biden administration’s foreign policy do to Americans’ interest? And will we survive it after the next three-plus years of the Biden/Harris administration?
McCabe: Yeah, Mike, I think that some severe damage can be done. If you look at the way President Biden’s administration is trying to reboot what was really becoming an American Iranian Alliance in the Middle East. You’ll see what he’s trying to do with China. Who knows what’ll happen the NAFTA. You have the negotiations for free trade with England. There’s a lot of things on the table. You have Germany, which is supposed to be like the heart of Europe is really absent without leave from NATO.
And Trump was pressuring Germany to step up and pay more for its defense. In the meantime, Germany got rid of its draft. Germany is giving billions of dollars to Russia, the country wearing NATO to defend Germany against. And these are the kinds of things that Biden is going to roll with. And if you go down that list of 12 countries, he’s every single one of them is postured to get worse. The Americans are going to lose out and it’s not good Mike. I’m not optimistic Mike.
Leahy: Neil McCabe the best investigative journalist in Washington, D.C. He’s our Washington correspondent for the Star News Network. We look forward to talking with you again next week on The Tennessee Star Report. Always look forward to your exclusive stories Neil. Thank you so much for joining us.
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