July 20, 2025 13:45-16:06 - CSPAN
02:20:57
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
Source
Participants
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Welcome To The Committee
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unidentified
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Democracy. | |
| It isn't just an idea. | ||
| It's a process. | ||
| A process shaped by leaders elected to the highest offices and entrusted to a select few with guarding its basic principles. | ||
| It's where debates unfold, decisions are made, and the nation's course is charted. | ||
| Democracy in real time. | ||
| This is your government at work. | ||
| This is C-SPAN, giving you your democracy unfiltered. | ||
| Former National Security Advisor Mike Walz was questioned by senators on his involvement in the Signal app controversy, in which military plans were shared on an unsecured messaging platform with administration officials. | ||
| He also addressed his stance on U.N. priorities and U.S. funding. | ||
| This Senate confirmation hearing is just under two hours and 20 minutes. | ||
| The United States Senate Foreign Relations Committee will come to order this morning. | ||
| We have a robust calendar, and we want to welcome all our guests here. | ||
| I'll remind everyone, for those of you who haven't been here before, we love having you. | ||
| This is an official meeting, though, of the United States Congress. | ||
| We have a zero tolerance policy on interruptions or attempt to communicate with either members of the committee or with people testifying before the committee. | ||
| We've unfortunately had some people who don't follow that too well. | ||
| I will have them arrested, removed, and they'll be banned for a year from the committee. | ||
| We have some people suffering under that right now. | ||
| In any event, we welcome you all, though, and welcome your watching of the proceedings. | ||
| So with that, we have nominations today for Michael Waltz to be United States Ambassador of the United Nations and also to represent the United States at the UN General Assembly and Security Council, Christine Toretti to be U.S. Ambassador to Sweden, and John Arrigo to be U.S. Ambassador to Portugal. | ||
| We have a few members of the committee as well as a guest here with us to introduce our nominees. | ||
| And so we would, I'm going to start with Senator Graham. | ||
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Introducing John Arrigo
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| I know you always have a full dance schedule and have other things to do. | ||
| So I would recognize you and welcome to the committee center. | ||
| Welcome back to the committee. | ||
| Thank you very much. | ||
| Y'all have a lot going on here. | ||
| So anyway, thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| So I am proud to introduce to you John Arrigo. | ||
| I've known John for quite a while. | ||
| He wants to be ambassador to Portugal, and the people in Portugal would be lucky to have him because there's no closer friend to Donald Trump than John Arrigo. | ||
| And if you're a country, you want somebody as the Ambassador of the United States that has a line to President Trump or any other president, and he certainly does. | ||
| He was born in Chicago. | ||
| He attended Palm Beach State College where he graduated in 94. | ||
| He was the grandson of an Italian immigrant who arrived in the United States at age 16 with $6 in his pocket. | ||
| I don't know, adjusted with the inflation what that would be today, but not much. | ||
| So, from $6 to being one of the leading automotive dealers in the country is quite a journey. | ||
| And he is a generous man. | ||
| He helps so many people. | ||
| He's literally lived the American dream. | ||
| If you had to look up the American Dream, you would find him and his family's story. | ||
| One of the most successful Chrysler Darts Jeep and Ram dealership networks in the country. | ||
| He's been living in Florida, running his business for the last 46 years. | ||
| And again, he is a very generous man, close to the president. | ||
| His wife is here, Megan, Alicia, Amanda, and Angela. | ||
| Did I get that right? | ||
| Or his beautiful daughters with his son-in-law, Nathaniel. | ||
| His wife's family is connected to Portugal. | ||
| That's how he is chosen to serve there. | ||
| He has a very deep love for the country, spends a lot of time there, and he wants to deepen ties between us and Portugal, which is a NATO member and in a very strategic part of the world. | ||
| His brother and he are big supporters of Clemson Tigers, which goes a long way where I live. | ||
| And I've come to enjoy my time with John. | ||
| He's a very good golfer. | ||
| If you go to Portugal, if he gets confirmed, I'm sure he can set you up with a tea time. | ||
| But the main thing to me is the reason I wanted to do this. | ||
| I got to know him over many years now, quite frankly, playing golf with the president and talking about business in the world. | ||
| And he wants to serve. | ||
| A man that came to this country with 16 bucks in his pocket has done extraordinarily well. | ||
| He wants to give back, and I think this is a great way for the Arrigo family to give back to America. | ||
| So I recommend his nomination, and thank you, Mr. Chairman, for having me. | ||
| Senator Graham, as always, I noticed from the beginning of your speech, the end of your speech, Mr. Arrigo increased his pocket change from 6 to 16. | ||
| I don't know if he loves it. | ||
| That's good. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Thank you, Senator Graham. | ||
| I know you've got other things to do. | ||
| So we're going to turn to Senator Lee. | ||
| I understand you have an introduction. | ||
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unidentified
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Yes. | |
| Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| It is an honor and a pleasure to introduce my friend, the next ambassador from the United States to the United Nations, Mike Walsh. | ||
| Many of us here today are familiar with Mike Walsh's background, but his qualifications are such that I think they make him one of the most well-qualified U.S. Ambassador nominees to the United Nations ever. | ||
| And so this really bears repeating here. | ||
| Mr. Walsh is a retired Army Colonel. | ||
| He's a Green Beret, a combat veteran. | ||
| He's the recipient of four bronze stars across his military career, spanning three decades. | ||
| He was also a policy director for two Secretaries of Defense and a three-term congressman from Florida's 6th Congressional District, where he served on the committees on foreign affairs, intelligence, and armed services, chairing the subcommittee on readiness. | ||
| And it was in that capacity where I started getting to know him better a few years ago as he and I were working together on an effort to bring back a U.S. Navy officer who had been imprisoned in a foreign country. | ||
| We eventually got that done in part, in large measure, because of Mike Walsh's great work. | ||
| Beyond those committee assignments, Wallace served on the China Task Force that produced over 400 recommendations for managing that delicate relationship between the United States and China. | ||
| Wallace also helped to unleash the President's America First Peace Through Strength foreign policy agenda that included a truce in the Middle East and delicate negotiations pertaining to the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. | ||
| He's a seasoned policy mind and a skilled negotiator with a track record of diligently pursuing American interests, unapologetically and with the appropriate amount of caution and attention to detail that those things deserve. | ||
| That is exactly the type of policy leadership that's badly needed at the United Nations at this moment in history. | ||
| The U.S. right now, frankly, has some legitimate concerns about the U.N. | ||
| And to be perfectly frank, the UN is in many respects a disaster and a detriment to U.S. interests, where the U.S. is shouldering the financial burden of an international body only to be on the losing side of so many votes and so many policy decisions that are made at the UN. | ||
| And this cannot continue. | ||
| The President is absolutely correct in his decision to pause our contributions, to review U.S. participation within the bloated system, and to trust Mike Walsh with riding the ship from the inside. | ||
| With Walsh at the helm, the U.N. will have what I regard as what could and should be its last chance to demonstrate its actual value to the United States. | ||
| Instead of progressive political virtue signaling, the Security Council has the chance to prove its value in settling disputes and brokering deals. | ||
| We can overhaul bloated and unaccountable peacekeeping missions where we can work to counter Chinese influence in standard-setting bodies, and we can end UN sponsorship of terrorism and anti-Semitism, standing by our allies, including Israel. | ||
| Above all, the U.S. must ensure that every foreign aid dollar and every contribution to an international organization, particularly the UN, draws a straight and direct line to a compelling U.S. national interest, one that puts America first, not last. | ||
| I have every confidence that Mike Wallace is exactly the right person who will faithfully apply this standard to the UN Byzantine labyrinth and carefully scrutinize our position in the financing of UN bodies, particularly those that have proven averse to our interest. | ||
| Wallace has tested, he's capable, and he's ready, willing, and able to tackle this daunting challenge at the United Nations. | ||
| We need him at the UN. | ||
| We need him there now. | ||
| And I think he's the perfect man for this very position. | ||
| I look forward to his swift confirmation. | ||
| He has my unqualified and wholehearted support. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Thank you, Senator Lee, for those wise comments. | ||
| Senator Scott, for the good of the order. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| It's an honor to introduce my friend, President Trump's pick for U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz. | ||
| I want to recognize his family. | ||
| Thank you guys for being here. | ||
| You must be very proud of what Mike has accomplished, and I'm glad you're here to support him. | ||
| I've had the privilege of knowing and working with Mike for many years. | ||
| He was elected to the House, and I was elected to the Senate the same year. | ||
| And it was great to work alongside him with a lot of issues that Florida families dealt with. | ||
| He was always a tireless advocate for freedom and democracy, and he understands the dangers that come from appeasing dictators. | ||
| We work to ensure the likes of Nicholas Maduro and Putin could not benefit from hardworking Americans' taxpayer dollars. | ||
| I know that as Ambassador of the United Nations, he will bring that same commitment and love of liberty to represent the United States in advocating for the very American first principles the American people elected Donald Trump to champion. | ||
| He's a patriot. | ||
| From his time in uniform on the battlefield as a Green Beret to his time defending American ideals in Congress, he has proven his love, his dedication, and his willingness to sacrifice for our country. | ||
| He has shown a willingness to make hard decisions, support his colleagues, and do what is right. | ||
| He is a man of integrity, grit, and principle. | ||
| He will exceed expectations in this role. | ||
| As Senator Lee has said, we've got a lot of issues with the United Nations, and I know Mike Waltz would do the right thing. | ||
| So he has my support together with President Trump and Secretary Rubio. | ||
| I'm confident that he's going to do an outstanding job representing America's interests of the United Nations. | ||
| I urge my colleagues to advance his nomination quickly. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
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unidentified
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Good luck. | |
| Thank you very much, Senator. | ||
| I appreciate those remarks. | ||
| Now, Senator McCormick is going to introduce Christine Toretti. | ||
| However, he's traveling with the President in his home state and has asked me to read the introduction. | ||
| I'm honored to do that. | ||
| And so on behalf of Senator McCormick, quote, Committee colleagues, I'm sorry I cannot be with you in person for today as I welcome President Trump to Pittsburgh. | ||
| But I'm grateful to the Chairman for allowing a statement of appreciation and support from my friend, Christine Toretti, the nominee to be Ambassador of the United States to the Kingdom of Sweden. | ||
| A pioneer in many walks of life, I first met Christine when my father was the Chancellor of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, and she was a trustee, and she has been a dear friend ever since. | ||
| As a businesswoman, she's the former chairman and CEO of the S.W. Jack Drilling Company, the largest privately held land-based drilling company in the United States. | ||
| She serves as vice chairman of S ⁇ T Bancorp and is a former director of the Pittsburgh Federal Reserve Bank. | ||
| As a passionate philanthropist, Christine has served on many nonprofit boards, including the International Medical Corps, the Andy Warhol Museum, the Gettysburg Foundation, and has dedicated energy to training programs designed to educate, empower, and advance women. | ||
| Christine is also an extraordinary force in politics, supporting candidates and party organizations at the local, state, and national levels. | ||
| She serves as the National Committee Woman of Pennsylvania to the Republican National Committee and was previously the co-chair of the RNC Finance Committee. | ||
| She was one of the people I consulted first and relied on the most when I ran for the Senate. | ||
| Finally, and most importantly, she is the mother to three sons, Joe Max and Matthew, who are the prime motivators for her drive to serve and provide a better future for America. | ||
| Her astute business acumen, selflessness, and political leadership make her an ideal nominee to lead in this important post. | ||
| And I'm certain she will honorably represent President Trump and the United States as our next ambassador in Stockholm. | ||
| I encourage my colleagues to vote to confirm the extraordinary Pennsylvanian and American. | ||
| Very good remarks. | ||
| Christine, welcome. | ||
| Glad to have you here. | ||
| Well, we're going to proceed now. | ||
| And so that everyone knows where we're going here. | ||
| I'm going to give an opening statement. | ||
| I'm going to then yield to Senator Shaheen, who will do likewise. | ||
| And after that, we'll hear five-minute presentations. | ||
| Hopefully, you'll keep it to five minutes or thereabouts of our nominees. | ||
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Bipartisan Agreement on Global Leadership
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| If you want to go beyond five, we've got a lot of room in the record to publish your remarks, so feel free in that regard. | ||
| After that, we'll open it to a round of five-minute questions. | ||
| And with that, I'm going to proceed. | ||
| So, thank you again to our witnesses and your families for being here with us today and for your willingness and your family's willingness to help you serve this country at such a pivotal time. | ||
| Mr. Waltz, you come to us with a breadth of experience in Congress, our nation's military and the executive branch, which has been detailed already here this morning. | ||
| This experience will serve you well as you take the head, as you take the lead at one of our most critical diplomatic positions as ambassador to the United Nations. | ||
| The UN is always a challenge and desperately needs reform, which we've been unable to accomplish so far. | ||
| Your pragmatism and patriotism is sorely needed in New York because, as you know, there is a lot of anti-American sentiment at the UN. | ||
| Anti-Semitism and anti-American sentiments are on the rise, as is the influence of China and Russia. | ||
| You will be integral to U.S. efforts to stand up to the authoritarian and communist axes that seek to undermine the United States and our allies and to ensure that our partners at the UN take burden sharing seriously. | ||
| The United States has been the largest and most generous donor to the United Nations since it was created 80 years ago. | ||
| Today, the United States still pays 22% of the UN's regular budget and 25% of the peacekeeping budget, even though we're one of 200 countries on the planet. | ||
| America has been extremely generous, but taken for granted, obviously. | ||
| The U.S. cannot continue to accept the current inequitable financial arrangements where America pays a disproportionate amount while others benefit from contributing to their fair share to peacekeeping operation, humanitarian aid, and good governance, and many times denigrate us. | ||
| We must also eliminate the waste, fraud, and abuse that are endemic to the UN system, from inflated procurement contracts and duplicative programs to the misappropriation of humanitarian funds and employment of personnel-sanctioned regimes. | ||
| It's important that we get back to doing what the UN was chartered to do, and it has what everybody knows as mission creep, and it happens every year. | ||
| The time has come to demand radical transparency and genuine reform that ensures every American dollar serves its intended purpose of making America stronger, safer, and more prosperous, and to return to the UN to its core and founding mandate of maintaining international peace and security. | ||
| Mr. Waltz, I trust that you will work with President Trump to right the many wrongs that exist today at the United Nations. | ||
| Ms. Toretti, the U.S.-Swedish relationship has been built on years of strong diplomatic engagement and security cooperation. | ||
| Sweden's entry into NATO, something I worked hard on getting done, brought its highly capable armed forces and defense industrial base into the alliance and has made us stronger and safer. | ||
| Sweden has always recognized its responsibility for its own defense, and now it is deepening its commitment to our shared security by committing to NATO's new pledge to spend 5% of its GDP on defense. | ||
| It is important that we help further deepen that integration into our alliance alongside with our partners in Europe. | ||
| This is a critical time as China and Russia are making designs on the Arctic and contesting areas of shared U.S.-Swedish interest. | ||
| And as you know, Sweden is on the front line of dangerous developments in the Baltic Sea, from the sabotage of critical infrastructure to the reckless behavior of Russia's shadow oil fleet and increasingly provocative Russian military activity. | ||
| And they sail merrily along. | ||
| I look forward to hearing how you will help Sweden defend against these threats and advance all aspects of our relationship. | ||
| Mr. Arrigo, Portugal is an important ally of the United States, and there are many opportunities for us to deepen cooperation. | ||
| Portugal has made commitments to increase spending in support of NATO's defense, and the U.S. must remain committed to ensuring it reaches their goal. | ||
| The U.S. must also work with Portugal to address the critical risks it faces from heavy Chinese investment. | ||
| China is working with our adversaries to undermine America and our allies, most recently by its open commitment to support Russia's war against Ukraine. | ||
| European allies, like Portugal, must recognize the threats posed by China and address them accordingly. | ||
| I hope you carry that message with you when you go to Portugal. | ||
| With that, Senator Shaheen. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Welcome to each of our nominees this morning, to your families and friends who are supporting you in this effort. | ||
| Thank you for your willingness to serve, and in your case, Congressman Walls, to continue to serve the country. | ||
| Yesterday, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Minority released this report on China's growing influence at the expense of the United States. | ||
| This report makes clear that this competition is one of our central geostrategic challenges. | ||
| This is a competition that is deeply connected to our economy and to our lives here at home. | ||
| Whether combating unfair trade practices and IP theft, or stopping the flow of fentanyl into our communities, or protecting Americans from spying and cyber attacks, or helping U.S. companies stay ahead in developing batteries, electric vehicles, and AI, the stakes are very high. | ||
| The threat to our prosperity and security is real. | ||
| But unfortunately, instead of strength and focus, we've seen this administration pull back on a global scale. | ||
| As the administration fires thousands of highly specialized, nonpartisan experts and cuts America's diplomatic budget by 84 percent, China leads the world in diplomatic missions and is increasing its budget. | ||
| And the situation at the United Nations is especially alarming. | ||
| President Trump has said that the UN must return to its core mission of peace and security. | ||
| But the administration is also proposing to slash U.S. contributions to the UN and eliminate the entire UN peacekeeping budget, increasing the likelihood that American soldiers will be sent into combat zones and making China the largest UN peacekeeping and financial contributor. | ||
| The Chinese Communist Party must be very pleased at our efforts. | ||
| They continue making long-term investments at the United Nations and international organizations, not only through contributions, but by placing more Chinese nationals in key roles. | ||
| Mr. Walls, I urge you to take this threat seriously. | ||
| I know you do because you've served on the China Commission. | ||
| But if we walk away from international bodies like the UN, the result won't be reforms that advance American interests. | ||
| The result will be that international bodies become increasingly dependent on China. | ||
| Whether it involves technology and AI standards, or global health, or trade deals, or documenting human rights abuses in Ukraine, China will be writing the rules. | ||
| I don't think most Americans want to live in a world where the Chinese Communist Party is driving the agenda. | ||
| There remains broad bipartisan agreement that American leadership on the global stage is essential, particularly as China's expanding footprint threatens our safety and prosperity. | ||
| That's why Americans need a voice not only at the UN Security Council, but at the International Civil Aviation Organization, which ensures airspaces remain safe, at the World Food Program, which prevents famines and responds to crises, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which works to eliminate these dangerous weapons, and the International Atomic Energy Agency, which helps reduce the threat of nuclear war. | ||
| Put simply, we cannot shape these organizations or even push for the reforms that we want unless we're at the table. | ||
| Mr. Waltz, if confirmed, I hope you will work with this committee to preserve America's ability to lead, to compete, and to shape the future on America's own terms. | ||
| Mr. Arrigo and Ms. Toretti. | ||
| Because the UN Ambassador Post has traditionally held cabinet-level status, my remarks have focused on that role. | ||
| But I also look forward to hearing from each of you how you would advance America's interests in Europe through the posts in Portugal and Sweden. | ||
| Thank you all. | ||
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Nomination for U.S. Ambassador
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| Thank you, Senator Shaheen. | ||
| We'll now hear from the nominees, and we'll start with Mr. Ego. | ||
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unidentified
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Chairman Risch. | |
| Chairman Risch, Ranking Member Shaheen, and members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today as President Trump's nominee to be the United States Ambassador to the Portuguese Republic. | ||
| I'm enormously grateful and honored by the confidence President Trump and Secretary Rubio have placed in me. | ||
| I am blessed to have a wonderful and supportive family, my wife Megan, my daughters Alyssa, Angela, Amanda, my brother Jim, my sister Virginia, my nephew Freddie, and my good friend Pat, who just flew in this morning. | ||
| Thank you, Senator Graham, for your gracious introduction. | ||
| If confirmed, I pledge to serve my country honorably, to advance our core national interests, and to always put America first. | ||
| I've been a successful entrepreneur and business leader for over 30 years. | ||
| During this time, my experiences have given me deep expertise in managing teams, negotiating complex issues, and most of all, building relationships. | ||
| I'm confident that my professional experience and business acumen delivered over three decades will enable me to represent and advance U.S. interests effectively and carry out the mission President Trump has entrusted to me. | ||
| I am privileged to have this opportunity today, in large part due to my family and particularly my beloved parents, Joseph and Francis Arrigo. | ||
| My father was a visionary leader behind our family business, the Arrigo Automotive Group, which he established with my brother Jim, and that eventually became one of the top auto groups in the country. | ||
| As a family business, we build our brand focused on our employees, our customer relationships, and not just the transaction, which are traits I will carry forward into this next chapter. | ||
| My desire to serve as ambassador and advance our core national interests are born out of the recognition of how my family and I have been blessed by the privilege of being citizens of this great nation, and now I have the opportunity to give back to my country. | ||
| If confirmed, I will use all the expertise I have developed to cultivate our relationship with Portugal and to make our nation stronger, safer, and more prosperous. | ||
| Portugal is a founding member of NATO and the second country to recognize American independence. | ||
| Nearly 1.5 million Portuguese Americans live in the United States, helping to generate a strong and vocal pro-American sentiment in Portugal and fostering close bonds of friendship. | ||
| I've had the honor of visiting the Azore Islands for a wedding just a few years ago. | ||
| I was particularly struck by the breathtaking natural beauty, the rich and diverse culinary traditions, and the warm hospitality of the Portuguese people. | ||
| I was fascinated by the religious, cultural, and family values that resonate deep within my own Italian heritage. | ||
| The U.S. has turned to Portugal for political and material support in many peacekeeping and peacemaking efforts throughout the years, and they have always been an enthusiastic supporter of U.S. and NATO operations around the world. | ||
| Portugal's hosting of the U.S. Air Force 65th Air Base Group and Léger's Field in the Azores provide a key logistics hub in the Mid-Atlantic while providing critical support for aircraft, air crews, as well as communications services to U.S. and NATO allies. | ||
| If confirmed, I promise to enhance this close historic relationship in several key areas. | ||
| My first objective as ambassador will always be the safety and security of American citizens abroad. | ||
| Tens of thousands of Americans call Portugal home, and 2.6 million Americans visited Portugal just last year, making the United States the third largest source of tourism in Portugal. | ||
| Second, I will strengthen Portugal's contributions to NATO to ensure we can achieve peace in the region through strength. | ||
| Although a trusted ally, Portugal still lags behind most NATO countries by only 2% reaching this year. | ||
| As ambassador, I will work with Portugal to help increase defense spending with the Hague Defense Commitment of 5% and ensure Portugal does its fair share and contributes to more of Europe's security. | ||
| Finally, I will advocate for expanding our commercial ties with Portugal and addressing the national security challenges posed by rivals like China. | ||
| As the United States and Portugal's largest trading partner outside the EU, there is a significant potential to grow this economic relationship. | ||
| I will also work closely with Portugal to address concerns about China's investment and influence in critical sectors and to assure our protection of our mutual economic and national security interests. | ||
| If confirmed, I will also work to balance our trade relations with eliminating the trade deficit of over $3.5 billion with Portugal by seeking more expert export opportunities for American businesses, emphasizing the fact that America is open for business. | ||
| Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the committee, thank you for the opportunity to testify here today. | ||
| I look forward to answering your questions and, if confirmed, working closely with all of you to strengthen our relationship with Portugal and advance our core national interests. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you, Chairman Rish, Ranking Member Shaheen. | ||
| It's my honor to be here as President Trump's nominee for the United Nations. | ||
| First, I also want to thank my family, especially my wife Julia, herself a fellow combat veteran and accomplished diplomat. | ||
| And if confirmed, you will definitely get double the bang for the taxpayers' buck. | ||
| I have my mother, Brenda, here, who has always been my rock and who bootstrapped her way through life. | ||
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U.S. Leadership at the UN
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| My daughter Anderson, a rising senior at UC Boulder. | ||
| And I have spared the Capitol Police, our three-year-old son, Army, and his energy. | ||
| I think they may have a hard time keeping up with him. | ||
| But I also want to especially thank my fellow Green Beret, SEALs, veterans, and particularly the Gold Star families that are here today. | ||
| We have had each other's backs through wars, shaped by decisions made in this building. | ||
| I promise to keep them and to keep all of you in mind as we support President Trump's focus on peace through strength. | ||
| So our experiences obviously shape how we approach these positions. | ||
| And for this one, my experience as a Green Beret serving alongside NGOs, development agencies, the UN out in the field, in Africa and the Middle East, has certainly shaped my view. | ||
| I've seen many organizations that, frankly, mean well but execute poorly. | ||
| Lack of coordination, bloated bureaucracies, poor contracting. | ||
| I have literally seen over and over again hospitals that lack beds, schools that lack supplies, schools with supplies where they lack teachers. | ||
| And by the time the aid filters through layers of subcontractors, only pennies reach those in need. | ||
| As a former congressman, I bring the perspective of representing hardworking Americans, welders, nurses, teachers, small business owners. | ||
| And if we were at a town hall looking at them, could we answer their questions on whether their money was being well spent? | ||
| Many of them, frankly, in my former district, would ask, should we be in the UN at all? | ||
| Here's how I'd answer the question. | ||
| I'd answer, number one, with the UN's need for reform, but also its potential. | ||
| We should have one place in the world where everyone can talk, where China, Russia, Europe, the developing world can come together and resolve conflicts. | ||
| But after 80 years, it's drifted from its core mission of peacemaking. | ||
| We must return to the UN's charter and first principles. | ||
| Peacekeeping certainly has an important role, but also needs reform. | ||
| The U.S. funds 25% of these efforts, yet we have missions in Africa. | ||
| I've talked to a number of you about this during our visits. | ||
| They cost billions, tens of thousands of soldiers. | ||
| We've had two that have been around since the 1940s with no mandate renewal and no end in sight. | ||
| We must press the Security Council on length, cost, clear end states, and focusing on peacekeeping, not nationbuilding. | ||
| Countering China, absolutely, Senator Shaheen, is critical. | ||
| It's absurd that the world's second largest economy is treated as a developing nation in most UN agencies that gives China favorable status. | ||
| China pursues its personnel and/or pushes its personnel into roles at all levels, including bodies that set international standards, aviation, telecommunications, IP. | ||
| U.S. leadership is essential there. | ||
| America must have a strong voice, and if confirmed, I'll work with Secretary Rubio to challenge this influence. | ||
| We must also challenge pervasive anti-Semitism. | ||
| From 2015 to 2023, the General Assembly passed 154 resolutions against Israel versus 71 against all other nations combined. | ||
| UNRWA in Gaza, with its staff involved in the October 7th massacre, its schools teaching anti-Semitic hate must be dismantled. | ||
| The reappointment of Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese with her calls to boycott American companies doing business with Israel highlights this bias. | ||
| President Trump's executive order, Chairman Risch, your Stand With Israel Act require withholding funds from such bodies. | ||
| And I fully support Representative Elise Stefanik's proposal for an Abraham Accords caucus within the UN. | ||
| Regarding budget, the UN's revenue, overall revenue, has quadrupled in the last 20 years, yet I would argue we have not seen a quadrupling of world peace. | ||
| It has not been commensurate. | ||
| The U.S. pays more than 183 countries combined. | ||
| Meanwhile, 28 countries contribute just $37,000 and $5,000 to peacekeeping. | ||
| The UN has ballooned to over 80 agencies with overlapping missions that waste resources. | ||
| And if confirmed, I'll push for transparency, like what we're seeing in the Secretary General's UN 80 reform plan, calling for a 20% staff cut. | ||
| It's worth remembering that despite the cuts, the U.S. is by far the most generous nation in the world. | ||
| And finally, the UN's radical politization. | ||
| Such reports as, quote, stolen Native American land, reports and investigations, quote, called the George Floyd Mechanism, labeling American police in America systemically racist, with input from countries like Cuba and Venezuela. | ||
| It's unacceptable. | ||
| Mr. Chairman, Ronald Reagan once said the UN can, quote, solve problems or spread discord. | ||
| He said, the choice is ours. | ||
| In just six months, President Trump has brought dozens of hostages home, justice for our Abbeygate Gold Star families, secured the border, denied Iran a nuclear weapon, brought ceasefires to conflicts in Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. | ||
| Yet there is still tremendous work to be done. | ||
| I'm confident under this President's leadership, we can continue to spread peace and prosperity, and I'm confident we can make the UN great again. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Waltz. | ||
| Ms. Toretti. | ||
|
unidentified
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Chairman Rich, Ranking Member Shaheen, and distinguished members of the committee, it is an honor to be here before you today as the nominee post. | |
| Should I start again? | ||
| We heard you. | ||
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unidentified
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Go ahead. | |
| I'm pretty loud. | ||
| It's an honor to be here today as the nominee for Ambassador to the Kingdom of Sweden. | ||
| I'm deeply grateful to President Trump for the trust and honor he has placed to me with this nomination. | ||
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Pride and Joy
00:03:01
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unidentified
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I am committed to serving the United States with dedication and integrity, and I look forward to working closely with the esteemed committee to advance our nation's interest in Sweden. | |
| It is a humbling experience indeed to be nominated for a position such as this, yet I sit before you today prepared to share with you how my experiences in business, philanthropy, and public service have prepared me for this moment. | ||
| Before going further, however, perhaps my greatest accomplishments are what I consider to be my greatest gifts, my sons, Joe, Max, and Matthew. | ||
| I am proud of the men they have grown up to be. | ||
| The three of them are my pride and joy, and my concern for their future was the primary motivation which compelled me to political activism many years ago. | ||
| And I am so glad to have my son Matthew here with me today. | ||
| My journey to sitting before you today began arguably in 1990 when I assumed leadership of our family business, the SW Jack Drilling Company, following the sudden passing of my father. | ||
| Despite what many thought of me as a young woman finding my way in a field dominated by men, I succeeded and continued to forge a career deep in leadership experience, business acumen, and volunteer service. | ||
| Today I am the chairwoman of ST Bank Board, a board I have been proud to serve since 1987. | ||
| Less than 10% of publicly held companies are chaired by women, and my tenure as chair is going into its eighth year. | ||
| Throughout my adult life, I have sought to bring my experience in business to support a wide range of nonprofit organizations, from supporting the creative arts as chairman of the Andy Warhol Museum to director of the NCAA Leadership Advisory Board to the vice chairman of the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education. | ||
| For those of you who know me, you know I care deeply about creating opportunities for women in the workplace and in the community. | ||
| I am proud to have founded numerous programs that train and nurture women in the political arena. | ||
| I have lived my adult life seeking to provide women opportunities to succeed, a passion which has been a defining characteristic of my adult life. | ||
| As a native of rural Pennsylvania, serving my community has always remained at the forefront. | ||
| I have spearheaded many economic development projects, including the construction of an urban outfitters distribution center in my county and was the inspiration for the creation of an osteopathic school in the university located in my community. | ||
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Prioritizing American Safety and Prosperity
00:03:02
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unidentified
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If confirmed, my primary goals will be to make America safer, stronger, and more prosperous. | |
| Above all, I will prioritize the safety of American citizens traveling or living in Sweden, providing them with the support and protection they deserve. | ||
| I will strengthen our economic ties with Sweden and ensure that American business have the fair opportunities to thrive in the Swedish market. | ||
| I will cooperate with Sweden to tackle global challenges, drawing on our respective strengths to address multifaceted threats posed by China, Iran, and others. | ||
| Sweden's recent accession to the NATO alliance marked a significant milestone in European collective defense efforts. | ||
| Sweden brings a wealth of defense capabilities to the table, including a robust defense industrial base that is renowned for its innovation and technological advancements. | ||
| The expertise in advancing military technologies and experience operating in harsh environments will enhance our ability to respond to emerging threats. | ||
| If confirmed, I will work closely with our Swedish counterparts to ensure that our defense cooperation grows even stronger. | ||
| Economic priorities will also be at the forefront of my agenda. | ||
| And if confirmed, I will seek to close the trade deficit between our two nations and deliver President Trump's America-first foreign policy. | ||
| By promoting American exports and encouraging Swedish investment in the United States, I will encourage collaboration between America and Swedish businesses, researchers, and entrepreneurs, ensuring that both of our nations benefit from the advancements in cutting-edge fields. | ||
| I also want to recognize the role Sweden played in America's growth. | ||
| Today, over 3.3 million Americans trace their family roots to Sweden. | ||
| Swedish Americans have made significant contributions to our cultural, economic, and social fabric. | ||
| They have enriched our society and fostered a deep understanding and appreciation of Swedish culture. | ||
| These bonds, along with ties forged through trade, travel, and defense, contribute to a unique, vibrant, and growing relationship. | ||
| In conclusion, I am honored to have the opportunity to serve as the United States Ambassador to Sweden. | ||
| If confirmed, I am committed to advancing our nation's interests, strengthening our bilateral relationship, and serving the American people. | ||
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Lifting Sanctions for Regional Engagement
00:15:52
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unidentified
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Thank you for your time and consideration, and I welcome your questions. | |
| Thank you very much. | ||
| I appreciate that. | ||
| We'll now do a round of five-minute questions. | ||
| I'm going to start with myself. | ||
| Mr. Waltz, thank you for those remarks. | ||
| Really impressive. | ||
| Clearly, you have a good handle on what you're facing up at the UN, undoubtedly as a result of your service in the House and head of NSC. | ||
| But I think you laid this thing out absolutely black and white. | ||
| It's amazing to me that the American people get this a lot better than the members of Congress do, it seems like to me. | ||
| We've had some towns in Idaho that for many years had a sign outside that said, Kiwanis meets at such and such a time and this group meets at such and such a time. | ||
| UN free zone. | ||
| And they got it. | ||
| There isn't a lot going on right now that is helpful to us. | ||
| I met with Secretary Guterres, comes in all the time to check the box, I guess, and I go over with him and he gets pretty disgusted with me when I say, what are you doing? | ||
| And he kicks off, oh, we're passing out food here. | ||
| Yeah, that's our money. | ||
| What else are you doing? | ||
| Well, we're keeping peace. | ||
| Well, yeah, that's our money. | ||
| And you go along and say, look, let's go back to the founding document that talks about keeping countries from trying to overrun other countries. | ||
| What are you doing there? | ||
| You can't even pass a resolution condemning what Russia has done. | ||
| What good are you? | ||
| We're spending all this money. | ||
| What are we getting for it? | ||
| And then, of course, when you get things as atrocious as the fact that taxpayer money, there were people who went with Hamas, members of Hamas, that invaded Israel and murdered people and took hostages that were on the payroll of UNRWA, which is on the payroll of the UN, which is on the payroll of United States taxpayers. | ||
| I mean, it's just outrageous. | ||
| You got a heavy lift there, and of course, we all know what China's doing with their penetration. | ||
| Your thoughts. | ||
| Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| I appreciate that. | ||
| I share your concerns. | ||
| The President, Secretary Rubio, share your concerns, and these are the concerns of our constituents. | ||
| How are we going to be great stewards, the best stewards we possibly can be of their money, their hard-earned money? | ||
| There's a number of reviews underway and that have been underway to take a good look at that and how do we get the UN back to basics. | ||
| There is good and meaningful work to be done. | ||
| And I would be honored if confirmed to go represent the United States there. | ||
| We have the snapback sanctions with Iran that Germany just invoked as part of the JCPOA because of Iran's violations of its obligations under the Nuclear Proliferation Treaty. | ||
| Of course, we have the bold opening that the President announced in his trip to the Middle East and led in the opportunity in Syria that we have to watch very closely. | ||
| But we have a number of sanctions that we need to lift there in order to realize those opportunities that many in the region are looking forward to engaging on. | ||
| And I have to tell you, person after person, official after official, said, can we get some leadership up there to roll those sanctions back that the President has now done under his executive order so that we can prevent Syria from devolving back into chaos? | ||
| Of course, we have a number of peacekeeping missions that all too often these mandate renewals, which typically happen every year, I mentioned two that are just open-ended, that have never happened. | ||
| Those are opportunities to get better results, frankly, and to question those things that I laid out. | ||
| How long, how much? | ||
| What are we going to accomplish? | ||
| And then, of course, we have the General Assembly, the world leaders assembling this September. | ||
| So, if confirmed, there is a lot of work to be done. | ||
| I do think there's some goodness to be done, but it must come on the back of major reform. | ||
| And I've sat in many House hearings where we've talked about reform. | ||
| We don't see it implemented. | ||
| I think under this President's leadership and under the Secretary's leadership, it's time to get to work. | ||
| Good thoughts. | ||
| I have, well, Mr. Rigo, I'll take a quick run at you. | ||
| You know, people in America seem to have a pretty good view of Portugal. | ||
| We've had a good relationship with them. | ||
| They appear to be a good friend. | ||
| They've got a couple of soft spots, obviously. | ||
| Number one, China's got the deepest penetration of Portugal than any country in Europe. | ||
| And the second thing is they can't even get to the 2%, let alone the 5% that we're demanding now. | ||
| You're going to have to get them there and hopefully bring them to their senses and dealing with China. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Your thoughts? | |
| Thank you very much for that very important question. | ||
| And you are exactly right. | ||
| They have been over decades. | ||
| They've been down at the bottom, 25 out of 30 to that or lower in defense spending. | ||
| It would be my job to see if we could sit down and come to the table with the military modernization that they need so desperately. | ||
| Their F-16 fleet is quite aging, and I think the F-35 program would be one of my top priorities. | ||
| I believe if we could sit down and come to an agreement there, that would push them right to the top and then over on their way to the 5%. | ||
| When it comes to China's involvement, you're right. | ||
| I've noticed as a private citizen, I've done some reading where is it right to have some of the largest companies in China be owning some of the energy companies in Portugal? | ||
| Is it right to have construction companies owning some of the largest CCP companies owning some of the largest construction companies in Portugal? | ||
| That probably would need to be discussed. | ||
| So, if confirmed, I would like to sit and discuss all the threats that we have between the energy sector, the construction, and the defense spending with Portugal to get them to do their fair share. | ||
| Thank you, Senator Xi. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Excuse me. | ||
| Mr. Walsh, these last few months have illustrated how China is all too eager to take advantage of our disengagement at the UN and around the world. | ||
| And while we may not all like what some UN institutions do, if we aren't at the table, we can't influence the agenda. | ||
| So, do you agree that if confirmed, a central responsibility of your role at the UN will be to ensure that the United States is present, able, and willing to counter the PRC's growing influence at the UN? | ||
| Thank you, Senator Shaheen. | ||
| I appreciate the question. | ||
| I agree it's absolutely critical. | ||
| And if confirmed, yes, I agree. | ||
| I will take just a second to point out: under the first Trump administration, under the 2018 National Security Strategy, he really led the pivot, which I think pivoted the entire national security apparatus in Washington, D.C., away from the Middle East, away from counterterrorism, not as a zero-sum, but to focus on the near-peer threat that China absolutely is. | ||
| And then, just in this administration, Secretary Rubio's first trip was down to Panama to address what we've all heard, hearing after hearing, an encroachment on the Panama Canal, a strategic waterway. | ||
| Panama is now the first Latin American country in decades to back away from the Belt and Road Initiative. | ||
| The malicious behavior, but also the potential of the Chinese Communist Party, the malicious behavior, the potential of the relationship, I should say, will be top of mind for me. | ||
| I know it is for the Secretary and the President. | ||
| You know, I agree with you, Congressman. | ||
| That's why I find it so puzzling that there's been no coherent strategy for how to address China within this administration. | ||
| There's no consistent messaging. | ||
| If you look at where China is moving in, where the United States has moved out, within days of our shutting down of USAID and foreign assistance programs, China was already labeling the United States as an unreliable partner. | ||
| Within months, China has moved in to so many of those foreign assistance programs that have been shut down that had been operating for years to provide a role for the United States and so much of the world. | ||
| And we have packed up our bags and gone home, and China's there, they're on the ground. | ||
| And if you read the report, you will see instance after instance that questions why what we're doing makes us stronger against China and allows us to compete. | ||
| So let me ask another question about the UN, because this administration has outlined a host of cuts to UN and its sub-agencies. | ||
| It makes no secret of its disdain for multilateral institutions. | ||
| But I haven't seen a plan from the administration on how it intends to push back against the PRC's influence. | ||
| So can you describe how you think we should be doing that? | ||
| Thank you, Senator Shaheen. | ||
| Just a few points to address there. | ||
| Number one, I look forward to reading the report and to working with you, the committee, and the team on that. | ||
| I have to tell you, though, in my experience, even in the last six months, but even more broadly, I've seen partners in the Middle East that were heading into the PRC's orbit make it very clear that they want to work with the United States, particularly since the election of President Trump. | ||
| I think the peace agreement between the DRC and Rwanda that we just saw in the Oval Office, China has had all kinds of activities across Africa, but they've also heavily polluted, bring in their own labor, often engage in certain types of corruption. | ||
| As we have a race for national resources to power the economies of the future, I think that was an incredible moment. | ||
| And from the President's perspective, I feel confident in saying that he sees the power of our markets. | ||
| He sees the power of our economy. | ||
| He sees AI and energy and other things that we need to unleash in the future. | ||
| First and foremost, of course we have to have a strong and capable military. | ||
| But truly, where he's seeking to win this competition, and we will win it, is through those economic endeavors. | ||
| And I'll also say, to answer your question more directly with the UN, we've actually seen leadership of major agencies by the PRC go down. | ||
| This was an initiative started in the first Trump administration. | ||
| There's an office now in the State Department international organizations. | ||
| It's very focused on these races. | ||
| They've gone from four to one. | ||
| But I take your point. | ||
| They're also pushing their folks at the mid and lower levels. | ||
| And we need to compete in that space. | ||
| Well, thank you. | ||
| I appreciate that. | ||
| Can I just, I'm a little over time, but I'd like to hear your thoughts on what the UN's role in Syria should be as we're looking at. | ||
| I think the Trump administration has taken important steps to removing barriers around the sanctions that have been a problem for Syria moving forward. | ||
| So what should the UN's role be there? | ||
| Thank you, Senator. | ||
| It's something that Secretary Rubio in particular, but the entire administration has looked very closely at. | ||
| I mean, since we had the fall of the Assad regime during the transition, I actually think it was a bit of a good news bipartisan story on how everyone worked together to make what has been a bold step in the president lifting sanctions. | ||
| So to answer your question directly, first and foremost, if confirmed, is to work with our allies and partners. | ||
| We have literally years and layers of sanctions that were intended for the Assad regime, counter Iranian influence. | ||
| And as the Saudis, the Emratis, our Gulf Arab allies, the Turks in particular, under now the leadership of Ambassador Tom Barak, I think there's tremendous opportunity there. | ||
| But we have a moment. | ||
| It almost reminds me of kind of the post-Libya phase where we have a moment that we can seize or if Syria devolves into chaos, I think it could pull the region with us with it. | ||
| But right now it's a moment of opportunity. | ||
| And I hope to compliment both Special Envoy Witkoff, Secretary Rubio, Ambassador Barrick, and others with our efforts up in the UN. | ||
| Well, hopefully we'll do better in Syria than we did in Libya. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Amen to that. | ||
| Senator Sheen, thank you for that. | ||
| And Senator Wills, thank you for your focus on both Syria and Lebanon are really, I think most people, if not everybody on this committee, really views that this is a critical moment and an opportunity. | ||
| Obviously, there's problems. | ||
| There's a history there that bears watching. | ||
| But whenever we engage in these things, the people there got to want it more than we do. | ||
| And we see that in dealing with both the Lebanese and the Syrians. | ||
| We hope it can come to fruition. | ||
| It bears watching, but we'll appreciate your strong hand on the tilde there. | ||
| So with that, Senator Ricketts is yielding to Senator Hagerty for now. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Thank you, Senator Ricketts, for the time accommodation. | ||
| And to each of you, I want to congratulate you for your nomination to represent the greatest country in the world. | ||
| You're going to have a wonderful and exceptional experience, should you be confirmed. | ||
| No surprise, we live in a very challenging and dangerous world right now. | ||
| And it's only going to be through the talents and the sacrifices of you and your families that we're going to be able to ensure America's prosperity and America's security in the world. | ||
| So thank you for your willingness to serve. | ||
| I'm going to turn my attention, no surprise, to you, Mr. Waltz. | ||
| You're getting ready to take on a very critical role at a place that was founded on some very fundamental principles. | ||
| You think about the principles of the UN and its founding, freedom, peace, human rights. | ||
| Those are the founding documents. | ||
| That was in the Charter of the United Nations. | ||
| Today, what we see happening at the UN is far divorced from those founding principles. | ||
| Instead, what we find is an overly politicized organization, one that tends to criticize and work against the interest of the United States and its allies, and frankly, one that actually supports authoritarian regimes in many cases advancing their interest over those of the United States. | ||
| As our chairman mentioned, we're the largest donor. | ||
| The United States is the largest donor to the UN. | ||
| Yet, at the same time, we're not getting the type of results we see. | ||
|
UN Payroll Scandal
00:15:41
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| And I'm going to cite the example that you brought up, Chairman Risch. | ||
| What happened on October the 7th? | ||
| That was an absolute disgrace when we found out that people on the United Nations payroll were actually involved in the Hamas attack. | ||
| Yet what happens from senior leaders at the UN? | ||
| They use every opportunity they possibly can to criticize Israel, yet at the same time, they diminish the role of their own personnel in those attacks. | ||
| It's absolutely shocking to me. | ||
| And what I'd like to hear from you, Mr. Waltz, is what are a two-part question actually. | ||
| What are the most important challenges you see at the UN that we face as a nation, that the United States faces at the UN? | ||
| And then two, what is your intention to address those challenges? | ||
| Thank you, Senator. | ||
| And I certainly share those views. | ||
| I think first and foremost is we need to drive reform. | ||
| And as I've shared with a number of you during our office visits, I understand there is concern about the President's budget request, but I see it also as a moment of opportunity. | ||
| If you look at when reform has actually happened, not talked about, not the rhetoric, it is when the United States has said, you know what, we need to actually see things before the U.S. taxpayer continues to write checks. | ||
| We saw it in the late 1990s led by Senator Jesse Helms that turned into the Helms-Biden legislation. | ||
| We saw it in the early 90s. | ||
| And that resulted in at least something approximating an Inspector General, although I think we still need a heck of a lot more reform in that regard. | ||
| So we need those reforms to continue forward. | ||
| I do not think Secretary General Gutierrez would have his UN80 plan already on the table if he didn't take President Trump very seriously and Secretary Rubio very seriously. | ||
| And if we're looking at cutting 20 percent of their staff, Senator, there's over 20,000 staff just in the Secretariat. | ||
| And these are in pretty expensive places like Geneva, Vienna, Rome, New York. | ||
| They need to be closer to the field, and I think they need to be a lot more efficient. | ||
| And I mentioned the things that are pending in terms of Syria, Lebanon, Iran, and what have you, and certainly our counter-China efforts. | ||
| Those will all be top of mind. | ||
| Well, I appreciate your focus on what is obviously a bloated organization, one that's missing the mark at every turn and frankly has been misguided in so many directions. | ||
| I'd like to pick up on a particular point that the ranking member raised, and that has to do with China and its malign influence there at the United Nations. | ||
| What I've seen China do is essentially weaponize the UN in certain instances to be able to advance their own ambitions, to be able to do this, frankly, at the expense of the United States interests. | ||
| And again, I'd like to hear what your thoughts are in terms of what you might do to specifically address China's malign influence and make certain that the United States interests are held in priority. | ||
| Thank you, Senator. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| I think first and foremost, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, the favoritism that the second largest economy and our competitor receives by being treated as a developing country, one, it aligns with the G77, which is a collection of countries, many of whom actually are top recipients of U.S. aid, except their voting coincidence rate with us is at the bottom. | ||
| Two, for example, the World Bank classifies China as an upper-middle-come country for the past 15 years. | ||
| They continue to make concessionary loans to China funded by the U.S. taxpayer. | ||
| That's one of a number of examples. | ||
| They're pursuing an AI agenda. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I mean, we always have to keep our sovereignty in mind. | ||
| I think that's a place where we can engage, and we certainly need to block and tackle in these forums. | ||
| Well, we look forward to working with you, and I want to thank Senator Ricketts for allowing me to move forward in time. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Thank you, Senator Hagerty. | ||
| Senator Merkley. | ||
| Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. | ||
| It's a pleasure to have you all here. | ||
| And certainly, the United Nations is a chance to be surrounded by diplomats from other nations to enhance the conversation about challenging world circumstances, a critical part of our foreign policy efforts. | ||
| I wanted to mention a couple different issues. | ||
| One is that Secretary O'Rubio, as a senator, worked together with me on the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. | ||
| It has been effective unlike no other measure in the world because of the rebuttable presumption that goods made from certain parts of China are, in fact, made of slave labor. | ||
| So we've rejected many, many products. | ||
| The challenge of this is that they're simply re-exported to other nations, particularly to Canada, if they're coming in on the west coast of the United States. | ||
| Would you see the possibility of working with other nations to pursue a similar structure so that this effort to end the acceptability of products made with slave labor in China is thwarted on a much broader basis? | ||
| Thank you for the question, Senator, and I think it is an incredibly difficult, in many ways, heartbreaking issue. | ||
| There A few years ago was a report coming out of a think tank in Australia that highlighted 80 international brands, many of whom are common brands that we use and purchase today that were using slave labor from Western China. | ||
| In fact, in one of our efforts, I highlighted the world's largest solar panel factory in Western China that was actually being subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer, was being subsidized in the Flation Reduction Act. | ||
| But if you followed the power lines to the factory, it was actually being powered by Russian coal in 12 coal-fire power plants producing solar panels funded or staffed with slave labor. | ||
| So it's something I absolutely would look to work with you. | ||
|
unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| That's what I was looking for. | ||
| I have several questions. | ||
| So I wanted to, you are working towards a yes with great background. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Second of all, Taiwan is an area I've had a lot of concern and have been engaged in as the Democratic lead on the China Commission. | ||
| We've held a lot of hearings on it. | ||
| China has blocked their participation in many international organizations, including various agencies within the UN. | ||
| Do you see some opportunity to press for Taiwan to have greater representation and voice on some of those UN bodies? | ||
| Senator, I support the United States supports Taiwan's meaningful participation in international organizations. | ||
| As you know, we have long-standing one-China policy. | ||
| It's governed by the Taiwan Relations Act, the three communiques, and the six assurances. | ||
| And unless directed otherwise, that is the policy I will execute if confirmed as Ambassador to the UN. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And I do think, even apart from the UN, there's other international bodies that we could advocate for Taiwan to have a voice in. | ||
| And it would be a well-received indirect message of our support for Taiwan on the broader issues of security. | ||
| Turning to Iran, a week ago, the President said, I'll tell you that, in my view, I hope it's over. | ||
| I think Iran wants to meet. | ||
| I think they want to make peace, and I'm all for it. | ||
| It seems like there's a win-win opportunity here. | ||
| Iran has said it doesn't want to pursue a nuclear weapon, and our intelligence has confirmed that. | ||
| In the past, they've accepted very steep limits on enrichment, just at 3.67 percent, well below the 90 percent. | ||
| And there's a deep weariness over the very stagnant economy in Iran that really has not served the aspirations of the Iranian people. | ||
| So there is a framework and a possibility for an enduring peace in which Iran is nuclear weapon-free. | ||
| We guarantee that there is no plutonium path, uranium path, or surreptitious path, covert path, that they stop supporting militias through the ARC that extends clear to Syria and Lebanon, and that there's a more prosperous economy as the Iranian people return to being kind of full members of the international community. | ||
| You mentioned that Germany, but also the United Kingdom and France, have all said they're going to snap back on JCPOA. | ||
| Can you use, or will you work to utilize your role at the United Nations to find this win-win solution to the situation with Iran? | ||
| Thank you, Senator. | ||
| And just to clarify, when I mentioned Germany, my understanding is Germany is actually as part of the E3 has actually triggered the mechanism. | ||
| As you know, there is a multi-week cure period and then another 30-day period before the snapback provisions expire on October 18th. | ||
| So if confirmed, yes, I would fully engage in that process and have been working with our allies, as has Special Envoy Witkoff and Secretary Rubio. | ||
| To Iran, I mean, first and foremost, I think we need to recognize and thank our amazing B-2 pilots, everything and everyone that worked with them from maintainers, refuelers, to the intelligence community to make sure Iran can never have a nuclear weapon, which the President has been clear on his goal for quite some time. | ||
| In terms of negotiations, The President has made it very clear that he hopes for a better future for the Iranian people. | ||
| I think we all do. | ||
| And we engaged in diplomacy working with our partners in Oman, but we also made it very clear that they could not have a domestic enrichment capability. | ||
| If they want to have a 123 agreement like our allies in the UAE, if they want to buy material, if they want to have a civil program, I think that's, you know, again, until directed otherwise, that is absolutely on the table. | ||
| So this is a moment with Syria, with Lebanon, with the Abraham Accords, that I think we could see prosperity, but the regime has to make a decision to move away from its desire to have a nuclear weapon. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| My time is out. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you, Senator. | ||
| Thank you much, Mr. Wells. | ||
| You're correct. | ||
| The problem is not with the Iranian people. | ||
| The problem is with the Iranian regime. | ||
| We wish they could move away from that. | ||
| In any event, Senator Ricketts, you're up. | ||
|
unidentified
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Great. | |
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Thank you to all of our nominees, and congratulations on your nomination, and thank you for your willingness to serve our great nation. | ||
| Mr. Walt, I'm just going to go pick up with where Senator Merkley left off. | ||
| You mentioned that Germany has triggered the snapback sanctions. | ||
| We were actually, my team was just doing some quick research to try and find that. | ||
| We couldn't find any mention of that right offhand, but it is hugely important that the E3 get those snapback sanctions. | ||
| You know, the air campaign by Israel and the successful attack by, as you mentioned, our bombers to be able to hit those key nuclear facilities was really, really important in hampering Iran's ability to have a nuclear enrichment program. | ||
| But it's not the end of the story. | ||
| We've got a lot more work to do. | ||
| Iran is still out of compliance with their obligations under the JCPOA, and they are not allowing the IAEI inspector, or EA inspectors to be able to get into those facilities. | ||
| So they're in violation. | ||
| It's absolutely critical that the E3 do those snapback functions. | ||
| Will you commit to working with them to push them to get that snapback in place? | ||
| And as you mentioned, that deadline of October 18th, because of the cure period you were also mentioning, it's really more like September where they really have to get this done. | ||
| But as UN Ambassador, if you're confirmed, will you push them to get this done? | ||
| Thank you, Senator. | ||
| And if my mention of Germany was from open source reporting, so if that was an error, then that was true. | ||
| But we've also spoken to the United Kingdom and France as well. | ||
| And I have full confidence that they will work with us. | ||
| We've had these conversations literally through the transition and over the last six months. | ||
| The second executive order the President signed was to reinstitute maximum pressure on Iran, but you raise a fantastic point in that we need to get those inspectors back in there with the IAEA. | ||
| And it is obviously notable that the June report from the IEA was the first censure of Iran for its non-compliance in quite a long time. | ||
| And one of the things Iran always says is they want this program for peaceful means, yet there's no reason they need to have an enrichment program to have a civilian nuclear program. | ||
| 23 other nations are doing it without having enrichment facilities. | ||
| We need to continue to push that they the only way we can guarantee they cannot get a nuclear weapon is if they do not have an enrichment facilities. | ||
| Would you agree? | ||
| I would, as both the President and the Secretary have said, Senator, and I think the most amazing aspect of this episode was that the President truly sought diplomacy first. | ||
| He took bold and decisive action along with our ally Israel and then immediately returned the situation right back to a ceasefire to again engage in diplomacy. | ||
| So when President Trump says he puts diplomacy first, I've seen it firsthand and I would be honored if confirmed to continue to participate in it. | ||
| Well, let's talk about one of our best friends in the Middle East, certainly is Israel. | ||
| And you mentioned in your opening remarks the anti-Semitism that is just rampant in the United Nations. | ||
| And I think you gave the stat that there were more resolutions targeting Israel than all other nations combined by double. | ||
| And it's just stunning what the United Nations has done. | ||
| So as the UN ambassador, if you're confirmed, what specific actions can you take to shut down this anti-Semitism at the UN and the anti-Israeli basis? | ||
|
unidentified
|
What's going on? | |
| Thank you, Senator. | ||
| And it is pervasive. | ||
| I could probably spend the rest of this hearing, sadly, highlighting the anti-Semitic activities, one aspect of which is known as Article 7 in the Human Rights Council, that Israel is the only nation with a standing mandate to highlight its, quote, human rights abuses every single meeting, and it's been going on for decades. | ||
| I mentioned the number of resolutions just this year. | ||
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Hamas Must Surrender
00:01:33
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| We're on track for that same type of disparity in 2025. | ||
| I support the Secretary's call for sanctions on the Special Rapporteur, Francesca Albanese. | ||
| I think she is the poster child for anti-Semitism in the UN. | ||
| And I think we have to take a step back and address and work with both Israel and work with our allies on why this continues to happen. | ||
| I understand the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, but I will say over and over again, if Hamas would lay down their arms, if they would surrender, if they would stop sacrificing their own people, the fighting would stop today. | ||
| And I am confident in working with Israel in that regard. | ||
| Well, I think your last point is spot on, and I have seen nothing out of the UN calling on Hamas to surrender, because that is exactly how this conflict would end, and the people in Gaza would be able to start looking for a better way of life once that terrorist organization surrenders. | ||
| So push the countries of the UN to come down very clearly that they can best serve the people in Gaza by getting Hamas to surrender. | ||
|
Smart Power Matters
00:15:16
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| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Well said, Senator Ricketts. | ||
| Senator Murphy. | ||
| Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Thank you all for being here. | ||
| Mr. Waltz, the UN doesn't have a conventional army. | ||
| It's got peacekeepers, but there's no aircraft carriers. | ||
| There's no Air Force. | ||
| This is a place where smart power matters, right? | ||
| is a place where we invest in things like diplomacy and humanitarian aid and economic development to try to stabilize the world. | ||
| I think what worries me about your fit for this position is that while you were at the National Security Council, you oversaw the dismantling of many of our most important smart power tools in the U.S. foreign policy toolkit. | ||
| A lot of conversation has happened on this committee about what has happened to USAID, our ability to influence the world through economic development and humanitarian assistance, but not as much conversation has happened about the attempted destruction, I think led by an NSC process, of our information and media operations around the world. | ||
| This administration, while you were at the NSC, essentially shut down USAGM, which is the umbrella agency for our global media operations, fired 92% of the staff, announced plans to shut down Radio Free Europe and Voice of America. | ||
| They're only open today because of court orders. | ||
| The administration does not support the Global Engagement Center, which is also now shut down, which was the State Department's ability to try to work with partners around the world to counter Chinese propaganda and Russian propaganda. | ||
| I mean, listen, we were already having circles run around us by Russia and by China predominantly, even before the administration went forward with this essential destruction of our existing information and counterpropaganda capacity. | ||
| So maybe just share with me, you know, while you were National Security Advisor, why did you believe that it advanced U.S. national security interests to shut down our most important agencies that try to win the information war, which is a war that whether we like it or not, exists in this world, and we're not fighting it today while our adversaries are. | ||
| Thank you for the question. | ||
| And I think we're in violent agreement that we have to win the information war. | ||
| We may have a disagreement on the best way to do that. | ||
| What we did not see were the metrics or the actual results. | ||
| As you mentioned, we have circled, we're getting, you know, in many ways outpaced in the information space. | ||
| Yet for decades we've had these entities that have become expensive and have become quite bloated. | ||
| I think the best way to block and tackle our adversaries abroad is through our amazing private sector, through innovation, through what we're seeing and our leadership role in AI and in other spaces. | ||
| And so as the president, as the secretary looked across the interagency and those entities, they made those decisions. | ||
| But the private sector isn't going to fight Russian and Chinese propaganda around the world, right? | ||
| I mean, that has to be an essential function of U.S. national security policy, correct? | ||
| Well, what they are going to do is show the power of free markets, through the power of entrepreneurship, and show really the power of the U.S. in terms of a free society and our values. | ||
| We're going to rise. | ||
| Frankly, but I think we're actually more aligned than what you think. | ||
| What we were looking at is the actual effectiveness. | ||
| It's the tool that we questioned. | ||
| And then the President, the Secretary made a decision to reallocate resources. | ||
| Listen, I hope the administration does rethink this. | ||
| If they've got a better idea on how to try to project power in the information space, then I think we're all willing to hear it. | ||
| But right now, we're taking ourselves off the playing field. | ||
| You were very involved in the offensive operations in Yemen. | ||
| As you saw in this last week, the Houthis have restarted attacks on the shipping lanes, two very devastating attacks. | ||
| Throughout the last two months, they have been continuing to take offensive operations against Israel. | ||
| It doesn't look like we did much to really fundamentally change the battle space there. | ||
| They still have pretty robust offensive capabilities to target shipping lanes and to target our friends. | ||
| We spent looks like around a billion dollars depleted a lot of our ammunition stocks. | ||
| How do you look at that operation in retrospect, knowing that as we sit here today, the Houthis have once again begun attacks in the Red Sea? | ||
| Well, thank you, Senator, for the question. | ||
| I think we also have to look at it in the context of from the figures that I've seen, a 20 to 30 percent increase in shipping through the Red Sea, an increase in revenues through the Suez Canal. | ||
| And what we do not have are our warships being used as target practice by the Houthis, was what, frankly, we had in the last administration. | ||
| Now, do we need to work to make sure that's enduring? | ||
| Perhaps the Houthi leadership hasn't fully gotten the message, but I would defer to Secretary Rubio, Secretary Hegseth, and the President on the way forward there. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Thank you, Senator Murphy. | ||
| Senator Barraso. | ||
| Thanks so much, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Well, congratulations to all three of you. | ||
| Mr. Waltz, thanks so much for coming to my office yesterday. | ||
| And I enjoyed the discussion. | ||
| I know you're going to do a terrific job representing our nation's interests at the United Nations. | ||
| We are the largest financial contributor to the U.S. We've contributed, what, $13 billion to the United Nations the last fiscal year. | ||
| As the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., you're going to need to closely examine how American taxpayer funding is being used by so many of these international programs. | ||
| Could you talk about your commitment to reviewing every dollar going to the U.N. to ensure that our taxpayer dollars is being used wisely? | ||
| And if I recall, you had a list yesterday of just some amazing places that I think taxpayers would be really offended to see that their taxpayer dollars were going to through the United Nations. | ||
| Could you share some of that information with us? | ||
| Thank you, Senator, and I always appreciate our time together. | ||
| One of the kind of the main thrusts of the UN, particularly over the last, I'd say, couple of decades, has been on climate and focus on climate change and a number of initiatives. | ||
| And setting aside the debate on climate, if you just look at the organizations amongst the 80 various specialized agencies, core programs, and funds, you have the UN Environment Program, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, | ||
| the International Union for Conservation of Nature, the Secretariat of the Pacific Regional Environmental Program, the Global Environment Facility, the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, the Montreal Protocol, and then you have other agencies like the Global Fund for HIV, Tuberculosis, and Malaria. | ||
| Okay, but it has as its core mission one of its core missions, not necessarily those things, but climate change is the largest global health challenge in the 21st century. | ||
| And just to further, I have a page here, Mr. Chairman, or I have a list of pages, 455 of international organizations that we contribute some type of funding towards. | ||
| And just a few of them. | ||
| The Pacific Salmon Commission, the Pacific Islands Forum Fishery Agency, the Pan-African Postal Union, the Pan-American Health Organization, the Pan-American Institute on Geography and History, the International Lithosphere Program. | ||
| I mean, so these are the, again, this is quite a list. | ||
| And this is tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands to seven to eight figures, to millions that are going to these organizations. | ||
| And I think it is incumbent on this administration to say what's it doing? | ||
| Is it making us safer, stronger, and more prosperous? | ||
| And are we getting a bang for our buck? | ||
| A couple other questions, because the thing I hear about at home in Wyoming is American sovereignty and what the United Nations is trying to do. | ||
| It undermining us. | ||
| How are you going to work to preserve and to protect American sovereignty within the UN? | ||
| Thank you, Senator. | ||
| And I have to say America's sovereignty will always be first and foremost as we engage all of these international organizations. | ||
| I think we need to weigh the pros and cons of which organizations we engage, and I think that will be a robust discussion with this committee and with the administration. | ||
| But to the extent that we do, our sovereignty, our people, our bosses will be first and foremost and top of mind. | ||
| I think this came up in both the introduction, a good introduction by Senator Lee, as well as Senator Scott in your opening remarks. | ||
| The fact that the Palestinian Authority has repeatedly sought to use the United Nations as a platform to declare statehood and to downgrade the status of Israel. | ||
| Will you commit to using the American veto to block these one-sided anti-Israel resolutions at the U.N. Security Council? | ||
| Thank you, Senator. | ||
| Of course, I will work closely with the President and the Secretary on those votes, but yes, I'll make that commitment. | ||
| Do you have any specific measures that you believe should be taken to address the bias against Israel within the U.N., and how do we advocate for those changes? | ||
| Well, first and foremost has to be UNRWA. | ||
| It simply not only needs to be defunded, which the President has put in place with his executive order, but it should be dismantled and we can have a conversation on who and what can take up those humanitarian roles, but it certainly should not be UNRWA. | ||
| And then in terms of the selecting a new Secretary General after this term expires, is that something I imagine you'd be very much involved in and perhaps could use some of those same plans in terms of what we need to do there. | ||
| So the Secretary General's term will expire at the end of next year. | ||
| My understanding is kind of the race, so to speak, and the campaigning for that will start this fall. | ||
| And I will certainly commit to work with you and others to make sure that we have someone in line with our interests. | ||
| So, Mr. Chairman, I suggest that make sure we have somebody representing the United States at the UN with this nominee by that time, that all those activities begin. | ||
| Good suggestion. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Senator Koontz. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Thank you to all of the nominees, your families, your willingness to serve our nation. | ||
| And if I might, Mr. Waltz, or forgive me, Colonel, Congressman Waltz, my thanks to you and to your wife, Julia, who has also served our nation, as you mentioned in introduction in combat, and to your family. | ||
| I want to get to the larger questions of the UN and the UN mission, but in your role in the Army, in the House, as National Security Advisor, you have long handled classified and highly sensitive information. | ||
| We both know signal is not an appropriate, secure means of communicating highly sensitive information. | ||
| And yet, on March 24th, the Atlantic magazine published a series of signal messages, including sensitive information about a U.S. military operation against the Houthis in Yemen involving you and several other Trump officials. | ||
| Were you investigated for this disclosure of sensitive operational information on Signal? | ||
| Thank you, Senator. | ||
| And that engagement was driven by and recommended by the Cyber Security Infrastructure Security Agency, by the Biden administration. | ||
| The CISA guidance. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| And I have here information on Signal. | ||
| No, excuse me. | ||
| The use of Signal is not only as an encrypted app, is not only authorized, it was recommended in Biden's Biden-era CISA guidance. | ||
| And in fact, it says here, I'll read it to you, use only end-to-end encrypted communications, adopt a free messaging application to secure communications that guarantees end-to-end encryption, particularly if you are a highly targeted individual, such as Signal or similar apps. | ||
| CISA recommends end-to-end encryption messaging on both government and personal devices. | ||
| For sensitive military orders, of course, Senator, there was no classified information exchanged. | ||
| Sure, sensitive military operation. | ||
| You were sharing details about an upcoming airstrike and the time of launch and the potential targets. | ||
| I mean, this was demonstrably sensitive information. | ||
| And the question I asked was, were you investigated for this expansion of the signal group to include a journalist? | ||
| The White House conducted an investigation, and my understanding is the Department of Defense is still conducting an investigation. | ||
| Was any disciplinary action taken? | ||
| From the White House Investigation Center? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| No, the use of Signal was not only authorized, it's still authorized and highly recommended. | ||
| Would you recommend the use of Signal for classified information to be shared between folks who have access to again? | ||
| We followed the recommendation, almost the demand, to use end-to-end encryption, but there was no classified information shared. | ||
| Did you speak to Secretary Hegseth about his decision to share detailed information on the specifics of an imminent military strike? | ||
| What we spoke about, Senator, was a highly successful mission that did something that something that the Biden administration did not do was actually target the Houthi leadership. | ||
| We subsequently saw a ceasefire, an increase in shipping, and a drop in attacks on our ships. | ||
| Well, look, here's what I hear on this exchange, and I want to get to the UN point. | ||
| At the time, you took responsibility for having added a journalist inadvertently to a signal chat. | ||
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Commingled Funds Concerns
00:08:46
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| But it doesn't seem to me that the administration has taken any action to make sure this doesn't happen again. | ||
| There's been no consequences, and yet the President continues to denounce those who leak information. | ||
| We both know Signal is not a secure way to convey classified information. | ||
| And I was hoping to hear from you that you had some sense of regret over sharing what was very sensitive, timely information about a military strike on a commercially available app that's not, as we both know, the appropriate way to share such critical information. | ||
| Again, Senator, I think where we have a fundamental disagreement is there was no classified information on that chat. | ||
| I'm going to move on for a moment, but we've got plenty more to discuss on that point. | ||
| China in the UN system, there was plenty of agreement on this side of the dais, and I think with you, that we need to combat anti-Semitism and anti-Israel bias in the UN. | ||
| We need to ensure taxpayer dollars are well spent. | ||
| We need to engage in our world. | ||
| And from your service on the China Task Force, you know very well what a central challenge for us China is. | ||
| Yet across organizations, the ITU, the FAO, UNESCO, WIPO, I think the only way we successfully push back on China's influence is by being at the table, driving reform. | ||
| When President Trump withdrew from the World Health Organization, the Chinese sent their largest delegation ever to the next meeting. | ||
| They've contributed $500 million. | ||
| They're now the biggest contributor. | ||
| I can understand some of the frustrations or concerns that led to the withdrawal from UNESCO. | ||
| But in the last Congress, with Israeli support, I led our rejoining UNESCO. | ||
| We've talked about, you've mentioned earlier today, standard-setting bodies as being essential. | ||
| How do you balance a budget request that dramatically reduces our contributions to the UN with needing to be at the table to fight for the standards, whether it's telecommunications, civil aviation, intellectual property? | ||
| You just waived, here's this great big list of organizations. | ||
| Many of them do critical things. | ||
| How are you going to strike that balance appropriately, sir? | ||
| Thank you, Senator. | ||
| And it was good to discuss this with you. | ||
| I will point out in the President's budget request there is funding for IAEA, for the International Civil Aviation Organization, for the Organization for Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, for the ITU, for the IMO and Maritime. | ||
| And so I look forward to working with you and working with this committee on how we make those decisions of where we engage and then how we engage. | ||
| But I think we are in violent agreement that we have to block and tackle Chinese infrastructure. | ||
| Would you pledge to not support just unilateral withdrawal from these organizations? | ||
| I will certainly support and follow the Secretary and the President's guidance as we weigh that engagement through these reviews. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you, sir. | ||
| Senator Lee. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Mr. Walsh, I'd like to start with you. | ||
| And if it's all right, I'd like to start by going a little deeper into something related to what Senator Barrasso asked you a moment ago. | ||
| Membership of the UN's three-member Board of Auditors is currently shared by three countries, China, France, and Brazil. | ||
| Now, this is a body that's appointed by the UN General Assembly, of course, and it's tasked with generating accurate accounts of UN funds and UN programs, where the money is going and so forth. | ||
| But an audit is, of course, by definition, it's only as reliable as its auditor. | ||
| And the UN's current Board of Auditors not only gives China a seat at the table, but it actually names China as the lead auditor for organizations, including UNRWA, which had terrorists on its payroll at least through 2023, some would say longer than that. | ||
| The environmental program, despite the fact that the environmental program has been exploiting the developing country status to access environmental-related financial assistance for a number of countries, including some that arguably don't deserve that designation. | ||
| And the UN headquarters, which as we all know, is based in New York. | ||
| So my first question to you is, how can we comfortably fund these UN entities, knowing that at some point in the process, our dollars will become commingled into these international accounts, accounts that many of our strategic competitors And right now, our pacing threat may be in charge of auditing. | ||
| How do we deal with that? | ||
| Thank you, Senator Lee, and again, thank you for the kind introduction earlier. | ||
| I share the concern if, you know, again, as I take as a first principal sitting down with my firefighters, welders, and small business owners and saying, look them in the eye and saying, I know exactly where your dollar is going and it's being well spent, I don't think we could say that at this point. | ||
| And if it's, you know, it's one thing for it to come out of their hands into the federal government. | ||
| Then it goes from the federal government over to a multinational entity. | ||
| Then it goes down to an agency, 15 of whom have their own separate boards and separate agendas. | ||
| And then I know something that's important to the chairman and a number of you, then it gets in some cases commingled with other international, like the African Union. | ||
| Of course, we don't know exactly where it's going. | ||
| I pointed out earlier in the early 90s, actually in the Clinton administration, some folks in this body said enough is enough. | ||
| And we got the closest thing we have, the Office of Internal Oversight and Investigation. | ||
| It's the closest thing that there is to an IG, but it still reports to itself. | ||
| It's not truly independent. | ||
| And it's not necessarily just on the money side. | ||
| If you have whistleblowers that say there's fraud, waste, and abuse, it basically comes back to itself, or even things like sexual abuse out in the U.N.'s peacekeeping forces. | ||
| We need an actual independent entity that we all have confidence in to understand where this money and other nefarious activities are happening. | ||
| And then it becomes sort of like a self-licking ice cream cone. | ||
| The self-auditing rogue actor within the U.N. is not necessarily one to be trusted. | ||
| The U.N.'s budget has gone from $15 billion to $65 billion the last 20 years, and I don't think we're getting the commensurate return on our dollar. | ||
| Oftentimes, the U.S. has, or at times when the U.S. has considered UN reforms, the conversation is centered on problematic entities and U.S. contributions, which are necessary factors, but don't necessarily capture the full universe of options available to us that translate into leverage and influence at the UN. | ||
| Decades ago, at the direction of Congress, the State Department started producing an annual report on U.N. voting practices. | ||
| This has occurred since 1983, so about 42 years. | ||
| This has been going on. | ||
| The report demonstrates that, candidly, the U.S. is outvoted in the vast majority of cases at the U.N. That's just how it turns out. | ||
| Now, despite having this report at our disposal, successive administrations, administration after administration since we've had this report, they have yet to draw much of a correlation between voting coincidences at the UN and the provision of U.S. foreign aid, | ||
| with the U.S. consistently providing aid to countries who actively and routinely, almost as a matter of course, oppose U.S. positions at the U.N. | ||
| So as the current administration carries out this much needed, very much welcomed, long overdue review of U.S. foreign aid so as to recalibrate our aid to our interests, should voting patterns at the UN be used as something of a metric to take into account and to determine and qualify U.S. foreign aid recipients? | ||
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USAID And Its Challenges
00:15:55
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| Senator, I think it's a fantastic point. | ||
| It absolutely should be. | ||
| I'll commit to work with this committee, with the Secretary, to put mechanisms in place that it is. | ||
| But to your point, if you look at the aid by the figures I've seen, over $100 billion have gone through UN entities into Africa, and we're looking at between a 29 and 32 percent voting coincidence rate. | ||
| So we actually have the highest, the continent with the highest recipient of American workers' money siding with us by far the least. | ||
| It is completely inverted, and I commit to you to work very hard to use the leverage that only this president could use to reverse that trend. | ||
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| Senator Kane. | ||
| Thank you, Senator Ricketts, and congratulations to the nominees. | ||
| And I especially want to shout out a VMI grad, Congressman Walsh. | ||
| I want to follow up on Senator Koons' questions on the use of signal, just to make sure we're all on the same wavelength here. | ||
| Signal is useful because it's encrypted, and a whole lot of people use Signal, and there's nothing wrong for it. | ||
| But as far as I know, Signal has not been approved for use by U.S. government officials for the sharing of classified information. | ||
| Is that correct? | ||
| That is correct, Senator. | ||
| Thank you for the shout-out on VMI, Robert. | ||
|
unidentified
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Great bill. | |
| It's a great institution. | ||
| You indicated in your testimony that no classified information was shared. | ||
| And I see nothing in the reporting about your situation to suggest that you shared classified information. | ||
| I do see the question of, you know, why did your office add the Atlantic reporter? | ||
| That was an amateurish move. | ||
| And I'm sure you've learned something from that. | ||
| But on the question of whether classified information was shared, there are at least two DOD investigations. | ||
| One, the DODIG, and the second, Air Force, an investigation ongoing into whether Secretary Hegseth shared classified information. | ||
| My understanding is those are ongoing. | ||
| They haven't yet reached a conclusion, but they certainly haven't reached the conclusion that no classified information is shared. | ||
| Am I wrong about that? | ||
| Senator, thank you for the question. | ||
| I shouldn't and can't comment on ongoing investigations. | ||
| What I can do is echo Secretary Hegseth's testimony that no names, targets, locations, units, routes, sources, methods, no classified information from his perspective was shared. | ||
| I got it. | ||
| I'm sure Secretary Hegseth says he didn't share any classified information, but the fact of the matter is there are two investigations going on at the Pentagon precisely to determine in an objective and independent way whether classified information was shared. | ||
| At a minimum, sharing attack plans with sensitive military information that shouldn't have been shared. | ||
| There was an article that I just read that came out late yesterday that I would like to introduce in the record, Mr. Chair. | ||
| It's the Trump administration is about to incinerate 500 tons of emergency food. | ||
| It was published in the Atlantic yesterday. | ||
| I'd like to introduce it in the record. | ||
| Without objection? | ||
| This really is a little bit more of a setup for the hearing we're going to have tomorrow with Michael Regis, but I just wanted to put it on the record so that he could be prepared to answer this question. | ||
| The article suggests that 500 tons of food purchased by the United States to the tune of about $800,000 months ago that are nutritional biscuits designed to stop children from starving have been in a warehouse in Dubai for months and months and months. | ||
| Senator Rubio has testified about that both here and in the HASC, that he would make sure that food purchased to keep kids from starving would not be allowed to spoil. | ||
| The article suggests that this food is on the verge of spoliation and that the U.S. has not distributed it but is instead planning to incinerate it. | ||
| Now, I know Mr. Arrigo and Ms. Tretti have had nothing to do with this, and I assume, Representative Walsh, that this is not an issue that you've been involved in up to this point. | ||
| Senator, it hasn't. | ||
|
unidentified
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Okay. | |
| Then let me ask a question that just is a values question, a kind of level set. | ||
| And I'll start with Mr. Arrigo, and I would just like to go across. | ||
| I'm going to make a statement, and I want to ask if you agree with me or not. | ||
| If the United States has purchased specialty foods designed to help kids from starving, we should deliver that food to kids rather than allow it to spoil and incinerate it. | ||
| That's my view. | ||
| Do you agree with me or not, Mr. Arrigo? | ||
|
unidentified
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Well, thank you very much for the question. | |
| Senator, as a private citizen, this is something I've just heard of today, and I haven't been briefed on this situation. | ||
| I really don't know exactly the depth of what you're saying. | ||
| So I would actually have to probably refer back to Secretary Rubio, President Trump, and find out exactly where and what happened to this particular situation so I could answer you better. | ||
| I'd hate to say something about it. | ||
| Representative Waltz. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Senator, we should always be good stewards of the taxpayer dollars. | ||
| And if it's been purchased, then I don't disagree it should be delivered. | ||
| However, if you look at situations, and I think there's just more to dig into there, and I'm unaware it's the first time hearing of it. | ||
| Maybe, for example, I do. | ||
| Well, in Sudan, they have real distribution problems. | ||
| In Gaza, there's real distribution problems. | ||
| So there could be a lot of starving kids in Sudan. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for the question, Senator. | |
| I agree with you. | ||
| That does not mean that I'm judging what has happened. | ||
| I'm glad that you answered unequivocally. | ||
| This is such a simple question. | ||
| It's such a simple question. | ||
| If the U.S. has purchased food and it's to be used for the eradication of starvation among children, we should give it to children and not incinerate it. | ||
| I mean, it is such a simple question. | ||
| I just asked you to test your values, and I'll just go back to you, Representative Waltz, as I close. | ||
| In your testimony, you asked, is our money being well spent when you talked about the United Nations, the need to be great stewards. | ||
| Allowing this food to sit in a warehouse and then burn it rather than let kids eat it and survive. | ||
| I know what my constituents would think about that. | ||
| And I think I know what all of our constituents would think about that. | ||
| I yield back. | ||
| Senator Danes. | ||
| Mr. Walz, thank you for being here today. | ||
| And thank you for your very distinguished service to our great nation and special forces. | ||
| I very much enjoyed our conversation yesterday. | ||
| And thank you for accepting going through this process to play a very important role here at the United Nations. | ||
| Mr. Walz, as you know, the United Nations has become a hotbed of anti-Semitism, a hotbed of anti-Israeli sentiment. | ||
| UN employees participated in the October 7th attacks, and Israeli hostages were held at UN facilities for months. | ||
| The UN recently reappointed Francesca Albanese despite her repeatedly stated support for Palestinian resistance and regurgitation of anti-Israel blood libel. | ||
| My question, Mr. Walz, is you clearly have your work cut out for you at the UN. | ||
| Can you tell us more about how you plan to counter the anti-Semitic influence of UN officials like Ms. Albanese? | ||
| Well, thank you, Senator, and I always enjoy our engagement as well and your advocacy for the America First Agenda. | ||
| Just to add a couple points to your list and then to answer your question, it's notable that the military leader of Hamas, Mohamed Sinwar, had an UNRWA badge on him in the tunnels of Gaza. | ||
| indications that the World Health Organization and its hospitals, they knew that tunnels were being built underneath and knew that these hospitals were being used. | ||
| I, and I have some of our veterans with you, have literally been shot at by terrorists, hiding behind women and hiding behind children. | ||
| And for Hamas to literally line the walls of its hideouts with hostages to protect its leadership is atrocious and it should be called out at every turn. | ||
| Yet, we just had to veto a resolution in the Security Council that went after Israel in what is absolutely a horrific war and didn't even mention Hamas and certainly didn't mention the fact that its leaders deliberately sacrificed, as a matter of strategy and tactics, deliberately sacrifice their own people in order to turn world opinion against Israel. | ||
| So I think probably the easiest way to answer your question is sunlight is often the best disinfected and to continue to spotlight it and use not only the platform that is this position, but I think one of the best communicators in the world, which is President Trump, Secretary Rubio, and the leadership in this administration to continue to call it out. | ||
| Mr. Walls, thank you. | ||
| And I'm grateful that you have moral clarity on this important issue. | ||
| And certainly, as somebody who, like yourself, served, you have served in special operations. | ||
| These are not theoretical exercises for you. | ||
| You've seen the conflict between good and between evil. | ||
| We talked a bit about Central Asia yesterday, Mr. Walls. | ||
| It's a vitally important region, rich in natural resources. | ||
| As you mentioned, you've spent some time over there in your prior career. | ||
| Much of those resources are untapped. | ||
| And the region could be a valuable new partner for energy exports to Europe. | ||
| The UN, unfortunately, has pushed Central Asian countries to only adopt really a radical green agenda instead of more of a balanced approach of all the above energy. | ||
| And these radical green development goals could hinder the growth and success of developing countries like we see in Central Asia. | ||
| Mr. Walls, how can you, as UN Ambassador, ensure that Central Asia is encouraged to take advantage of its vast and considerable energy resources to foster a more sustainable and a prosperous future? | ||
| Thank you, and I appreciated the conversation and always learn a lot from them. | ||
| One of the things that I admire about how President Trump approaches diplomacy, we saw it in his first Middle East trip, is what I call commercial diplomacy. | ||
| You know, the thing that binds people together often is business. | ||
| It transcends dogma. | ||
| It transcends ancient ideologies. | ||
| You're seeing that in the Abraham Accords. | ||
| When people are talking about data centers and rail and roads, they're not talking about thousand-year-old hatreds. | ||
| In Central Asia in particular, I mean, going back to the old tappy pipeline, Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, one could only imagine if that had been in place. | ||
| And now everyone has a common economic interest rather than fighting each other. | ||
| I think we have real opportunities with Turkmenistan for the first time in a long time for their gas to head westward rather than eastward. | ||
| We talked about the C5 grouping. | ||
| We talked about Azerbaijan and their desire to not only come closer to the United States, but to perhaps put a real agreement in place with the Armenians, a real agreement in place with the Israelis, and the commercial opportunities that abound for not only for American business, but that will change the geopolitical landscape. | ||
| And I look forward to working with you and those groupings within the UN along those lines under the present Secretary's leadership. | ||
| Ms. Walsh, thank you. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Senator Van Holland. | ||
| Thank you, Senator, and congratulations to all of you and your nominations. | ||
| Congressman Walsh, I want to start with some questions related to your tenure at the National Security Council that will also relate to your responsibility to the United Nations, especially in the area of international humanitarian relief, | ||
| because you presided over a period where Elon Musk was given a blank check to take what he called the chainsaw to AID and as part of that undermined many ongoing humanitarian operations, including the one in Sudan, where the freezing of U.S. humanitarian assistance resulted in the closure of nearly 80% of emergency food kitchens. | ||
| Two million people were left without access to food. | ||
| Many of them died, and that's not theoretical either. | ||
| I want to turn to another humanitarian disaster, and that's in Gaza. | ||
| And of course, the horrendous situation in Gaza was brought about as a result of the horrific Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023. | ||
| It's also true that the government of Israel has a responsibility to conduct that war in accordance with international law and humanitarian principles. | ||
| For 78 days, the Netanyahu government imposed a total humanitarian blockade on Gaza, including blockade on food. | ||
| I didn't hear you or President Trump or Secretary Rubio ever call upon the Netanyahu government publicly to end that blockade. | ||
| The Netanyahu government then replaced the system of distribution of food through vetted international organizations, including, for example, the World Food Program that Cindy McCain heads. | ||
| They replaced it with a private entity, which is supported by mercenaries known as the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a real misnomer. | ||
| The organization's original executive director resigned, saying that it was not possible to implement their plan while adhering to humanitarian principles. | ||
| Cindy McCain said they don't have nearly enough access points and they don't have nearly enough food going in. | ||
| As you probably know, it's been called a death trap. | ||
| Hundreds of Palestinian civilians crowding to get food have been killed, either by the security contractors, mercenaries, or by the IDF. | ||
| So, my question to you is: why should American taxpayers be footing the bill, even part of the bill, in support of the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation? | ||
|
Voting on Force Authorization
00:15:49
|
||
| Thank you for the question, Senator. | ||
| And just to address your first question in terms of USAID and its current status, it is currently operating under the State Department. | ||
| Been merged, which you may disagree with, but I think is a perfectly valid approach. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| I'll just point out that both the United Kingdom and Australians have done the same thing. | ||
| I can't tell you how many times I've talked to a Foreign Service officer or an ambassador out in the field, highly frustrated that aid was on a different page than their objectives in the country. | ||
| And so I certainly support the Secretary's reorganization. | ||
| We have a strong disagreement. | ||
| If you could answer my question about American taxpayer dollars going to fund this private entity with I would certainly extend an appreciation of my heart out for a couple of veterans who were just attacked by Hamas with grenades as trying to distribute aid that I understand, according to reporting, works for this organization. | ||
| I don't think this should be a zero sum. | ||
| I do agree that is a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. | ||
| I hope you would agree that Hamas could stop it tomorrow by laying down their arms and releasing the host. | ||
| I support Special Envoy Witkoff and his efforts to again bring a ceasefire, which he was able to bring. | ||
| Look, you all said you were going to end the war in Gaza on day one. | ||
| It's a long way from the United States. | ||
| Well, I have one. | ||
| The president said all hell to pay the first time that we actually got a ceasefire. | ||
| I asked you a question on the West Bank. | ||
| You saw that an American citizen was killed the other day by violent settlers. | ||
| Do you see that report? | ||
| Actually, Senator, to be honest with you, I did not see that report. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Do you agree that it's the responsibility of the United States government to ensure the accountability and the deaths of American citizens overseas? | ||
| Senator, I would say it's a key function of any embassy or ambassador to ensure U.S. citizens are protected abroad. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Well, I hope we will pursue that. | ||
| You know, one of your first actions, along with the President, was to get rid of the Biden-era executive order that would impose sanctions on both violent settlers and violent Palestinian militants in the West Bank. | ||
| And we've now had five Americans actually killed since October 7th in the West Bank, and no accountability. | ||
| So I think when you withdrew that executive order, you sent a very bad signal. | ||
| I hope we can work together to make sure that we protect all American citizens overseas. | ||
| Senator Paul. | ||
| Mr. Waltz, do you believe President Trump has the constitutional power to determine troop assignments? | ||
| Thank you, Senator. | ||
| And his Article II authority, I do. | ||
| In the summer of 2020, there was much discussion and there had been statements about President Trump that he intended to draw down troops in Afghanistan. | ||
| You were serving on the Armed Services Committee at that time, and Liz Cheney and Jason Crow put forward an amendment. | ||
| And with that amendment, they attempted to circumscribe his power to assign troops. | ||
| They specifically added conditions, and you supported that amendment. | ||
| So I guess my question is: which is it? | ||
| Does President Trump have the power under the Constitution to determine troops, or do you think Congress should, as you attempted to do when you voted for Liz Cheney's amendment, do you think Congress has the right to limit his power to remove troops from a war situation? | ||
| I certainly thank you, Senator. | ||
| I certainly supported President Trump's effort to draw down our forces, to keep Bagram Air Base, to keep a lid on counterterrorism, and certainly keep powerful. | ||
| You voted for the Jason Crow amendment, the Liz Cheney amendment, to place restrictions on his ability to remove troops. | ||
| Specifically, the amendment said he couldn't draw them down under 8,500 troops. | ||
| Senator, I'll have to go back and look at the specific details of that amendment or whether that was a vote broader than that. | ||
| It's important because it goes to the heart of the Constitution. | ||
| And this is sort of the problem, and one of the things I fear. | ||
| The Liz Cheney wing of the party, the neoconservatives, they believe in virtually unlimited Article II authority when going to war to initiate war. | ||
| There seems to be no limits. | ||
| The idea that Congress should be involved with declaring war is sort of passe. | ||
| It's old-fashioned. | ||
| But when it comes to ending a war, you voted with Liz Cheney and the others to say that the president couldn't end the war, that he had to perform different reports. | ||
| Here's what one of the reports said that he had to do before he was allowed to remove troops. | ||
| This is the Cheney-Crow amendment. | ||
| It required a report from President Trump concerning the status of women's access to voting, education, justice, and economic opportunities. | ||
| You know, support for women's rights is great, but it's really not typically given as a reason to go to war or stay at war. | ||
| And basically, the amendment you voted for based the decision on whether or not he would have to explain himself as to how well it was going for women in Afghanistan before Congress would consent. | ||
| Specifically, the amendment says you wouldn't fund or allow him to move troops with DOD funds. | ||
| It was an incredible amendment. | ||
| I've never seen anything like this, where Congress actually voted to remove DOD funds to let the President remove troops from a war theater. | ||
| Look, I'm a big fan of the limitation of presidential power on initiating war, but once we're at war, I've never really quibbled with the president's power to execute the war, to be the commander-in-chief. | ||
| When you were deployed, I can't see Congress coming to Congress and saying, well, how are women's rights over there for Colonel Waltz? | ||
| Should he be able to go in there or leave because, well, let's have a congressional report on this. | ||
| I mean, I think that's insane. | ||
| And I just don't understand how you could have voted for this. | ||
| I mean, should Congress force President Trump to analyze such vague terms as justice before removing troops from a war zone? | ||
| I mean, I don't understand how you could have voted for this amendment. | ||
| Senator, I look forward to continuing our discussion that we had. | ||
| There's a lot of room in between where we have troops and necessarily if we're at war. | ||
| So, for example, we've had troops in Colombia for quite some time. | ||
| They're not actively engaged in combat. | ||
| They're engaged in a training mission to help that government buy within our presence on the ground. | ||
| Afghanistan was one of the rare times. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I think one of the things at the time was one of the rare times when Congress actually had authorized. | |
| We voted for an authorization of force. | ||
| It's one of the few times I can think of in recent history I would have actually supported that resolution. | ||
| Congress voted to send the troops to Afghanistan to get the people who attacked us on 9-11, and yet you were willing to, in a war zone where soldiers were at war, place restrictions on the president's ability to move troops around based on women's access to voting. | ||
| There's also another clause in there that said based on how well the Afghans were dealing with disabilities. | ||
| Look, I have a great deal for people with disabilities. | ||
| That's a big issue in our country. | ||
| But it really isn't an issue of war. | ||
| And to hamstring and tie President Trump's hands and say, oh, well, you can't remove troops until we discuss how well the Afghan government is dealing with disabilities. | ||
| Are they going to Be able to deal with disabilities when we go. | ||
| I guess it just worries me that you come more from the Liz Cheney wing of the party than the Donald Trump wing of the party. | ||
| Senator, I am squarely with the President, have been with him in every single election I participated in and him with me in terms of the limits on hard power. | ||
| I can tell you for certain that people who hate war the most are the people that have to go fight them and die from them. | ||
| I have many of them with me, and I never want to attend another funeral. | ||
| And I certainly support the President's Diplomacy First, as I know you do, approach, as we just saw in the Middle East, as commercial diplomacy that we're seeing around the world. | ||
| And we'll do everything I can, if confirmed as Ambassador of the United Nations, to keep us out of wars and to end conflicts. | ||
| Senator Booker. | ||
| Congressman Waltz, I've watched this hearing and I've been really disappointed. | ||
| And what's been troubling to me about your nomination from the beginning is your failure to just stand up and take accountability for mistakes that you made and that all Americans know that you've made. | ||
| Everyone in this room, every one of us has made mistakes. | ||
| But what America expects from leaders, especially leaders who are tasked with our national security or could be tasked with the position for which you're nominated for, is for people to stand up and just take responsibility, take accountability. | ||
| But I heard you just blame Biden. | ||
| I've seen you not only fail to stand up, but lie. | ||
| You said about this person when you were involved in the sharing of sensitive information about imminent military operations. | ||
| I've listened to you now for weeks and months. | ||
| You said this journalist intentionally infiltrated that signal chain. | ||
| You said that he was sucked in. | ||
| You denied, deflected, and then you did something that to me really lacks integrity: you sought out to demean and degrade that very journalist in crass and, frankly, cruel ways that made him a target. | ||
| That's not leadership. | ||
| When you blame people that tell the truth, that's not leadership when you can't say the words, I made a mistake. | ||
| I could have done better. | ||
| I learned valuable lessons from this experience. | ||
| Instead, at a moment where our national security was clearly compromised, you denied, you deflected, and then you demeaned and degraded those people who objectively told the truth and criticized your actions. | ||
| Smearing people, attacking folks, singling them out just furthers, compounds what I think is disqualifying about you for this position. | ||
| It also, to me, just shows profound cowardice. | ||
| You should step up right now. | ||
| I heard Senator Senator Coons, I heard you being asked by Senator Kaine again and again to simply say, I was wrong. | ||
| I made a mistake. | ||
| I take responsibility for my actions. | ||
| Unfortunately, what you're doing to me is perfectly in line with the way this administration as a whole has operated. | ||
| I've never seen an administration that has made no mistakes, can't learn constructively from things they did wrong, has no sense of self-interrogation or integrity. | ||
| And should they be criticized legitimately, they go on the attack. | ||
| We have too much of that rhetoric, that divisive, demeaning, degrading, cruelness that's being elevated and celebrated by this administration that you seem to fall in line with. | ||
| I just watched with great disappointment that even after weeks, if not months, of reflection, you couldn't sit before this committee and take some responsibility and talk constructively about what's learned. | ||
| Instead, you do what seems to be yet another creative tool that people are doing, which is, hey, let me just blame Biden. | ||
| I want to take another moment to discuss concerns I have with this administration's approach to the United Nations and its dealings with African countries. | ||
| Every country in the UN gets one vote in the General Assembly, no matter how large or small it is. | ||
| So diplomacy and staffing at our State Department and their embassies really matter, but this administration has fired over 1,350 staff at the State Department, including whole offices that spearheaded multilateral affairs. | ||
| Sub-Saharan Africa has alone, the member states have 49 votes. | ||
| I've watched how China has done everything they can to court support at the United Nations and how we wonder why are so many countries voting against us. | ||
| And I truly believe, and I've said this to the Secretary of State, that we need to start prioritizing African nations, start focusing on what I believe is urgently within our national interests, if not our national security interests. | ||
| It seems to me that we are ceding and surrendering Sub-Saharan Africa to China, who is stepping up more and more and filling in the void of our leadership. | ||
| So I have no questions for you, sir. | ||
| I have nothing but deep disappointment in what I consider a failure of leadership on your part. | ||
| God, America needs now more than ever, forget the partisanship, just people to step up and show heart and integrity and honor. | ||
| When you lie, defer, deflect, demean, and degrade journalists, to me, it's absolutely unacceptable. | ||
| I have no questions. | ||
| I cannot support your nomination. | ||
| I think you've shown a failure of leadership at a time that America especially needs people of honor to stand up and show what leadership actually is. | ||
| Senator Scott. | ||
| Sure. | ||
| First off, congratulations to each one of you for your nominations and for your individual success. | ||
| So if each of you could just take a couple minutes and say, assuming you get through this wonderful process and you get confirmed on the floor, which is difficult right now, what would be success at the end of your time in these roles? | ||
| Mike, you want to start? | ||
| Sure. | ||
| Thank you, Senator. | ||
| I appreciate your support. | ||
| I appreciate the men and women that I've had to lead in combat, and I think the last thing they would call me is a coward. | ||
| So I appreciate deeply our relationship both for the good of Florida and for the good of the country. | ||
| What does success look like in the UN? | ||
| It looks like, again, under the President and Secretary's leadership, one, getting it back to actually solving problems. | ||
| The things that we are seeing, the successes that we've seen under this president, a peace agreement in Africa, resolving what could have been a nuclear exchange between Pakistan and India, securing our border. | ||
| Heck, even a water treaty that Mexico wasn't honoring that we established in 1944 for South Texan farmers, the ongoing efforts going from at least here to here in terms of Ukraine and Russia and trying to end that horrific conflict, a ceasefire with Israel in Iran. | ||
| I could continue. | ||
| I mean, it's been an amazing six months and it's just beginning. | ||
| Those should be dealt with in the UN. | ||
| That should be the place where we're coming together. | ||
| We've talked about the anti-Semitism that has to go. | ||
| We've talked about the reforms in terms of these 80-plus agencies with often duplicative and wasteful mandates. | ||
| I want to give some time to my colleagues here, but if I get just those things done in support of Secretary Rubio and the President, I think we'll have made a tremendous step forward. | ||
| Mr. Hardy? | ||
| What would you like to accomplish? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you, Senator Scott, for that question. | |
| First of all, our mission is to make the United States safer, stronger, and more prosperous. | ||
|
Looking Forward to Defense
00:05:21
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|
unidentified
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I am thrilled to have the opportunity, if approved, to represent the United States in Sweden. | |
| I think Sweden is a magnificent country, a magnificent partner of ours. | ||
| I'm really anxious to look at our defense areas, whether it's stopping the shadow fleet in the Balkan or working on the Arctic Circle. | ||
| We forget that we're an Arctic nation and we need to make sure that we're active up there. | ||
| China is partnering with Russia to use that as a waterway, the new Silk Road, as it is. | ||
| And I want to make sure that we're focused up there and working through that with our Nordic neighbors. | ||
| On the economic areas, I want to make sure that we continue to partner with our industries in the United States as well as those in Sweden. | ||
| We have some great partnerships right now with Ericsson in the telecommunications area. | ||
| Saab Boeing partnership is exceptional, and I would like to build on that. | ||
| IKEA is continuing to invest in the United States. | ||
| And just recently, we signed a TSA where we will have commercial satellites being deployed from Sweden with a commercial company called Firefly. | ||
| So, those are a few of the things that I'm looking forward to. | ||
| Thank you for the question. | ||
| Mr. Rigo. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you very much, Senator. | |
| Thank you very much for taking the time to speak with me the other day. | ||
| I've been sitting on the bench for seven months. | ||
| I haven't done that in business and I haven't done it in sports my whole life. | ||
| And I am ecstatic, or maybe just overwhelmed with the fact that one day, if confirmed, I can get to Portugal and do the mission that President Trump and Secretary Rubio have entrusted in me. | ||
| And I let the people know at the amazing people at the embassy there in Lisbon that what they're going to get from, if confirmed, from this ambassador, is going to be a lot of empathy, passion, and a lot of common sense. | ||
| And I have just utmost respect for each and every one of them. | ||
| I've done some readings, some research. | ||
| I've talked to some of the people there. | ||
| And I just know that they're going to see that in me. | ||
| And we're going to have wins. | ||
| We have missions to accomplish. | ||
| We're going to have a lot of wins. | ||
| But I didn't come out of retirement to be miserable. | ||
| Not only are we going to have wins, but we're going to have fun doing it because I believe that's very, very important. | ||
| I think a lot of things get done. | ||
| And I'm not going to sit here right now and say I'm the best foreign relations scholar. | ||
| I tell you, I feel like I'm a scholar of some, but I'm a student of most. | ||
| And I will learn from those dedicated people at the embassy, and I will just be there to enhance and to continue the great work that they've been doing over the last several years. | ||
| And I look forward, if confirmed, to being their leader. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Congratulations on each of your nominations. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good luck. | |
| Thank you, Senator. | ||
| Mr. Reddy, I hope you'll communicate to the Swedish government how much we appreciate their joining NATO. | ||
| They were disinclined to join NATO for a long time, and we'd been urging them for a long time to join NATO. | ||
| They bring some real attributes to the organization. | ||
| And frankly, as I was fighting that battle, the two recalcitrants that we had, I told them I'd rather trade them for both Sweden and Finland than have them in, which they weren't too happy to hear. | ||
| But nonetheless, I hope you'll carry that appreciation that we have when you get there, please. | ||
| So, with that, Senator Rosen, you're up. | ||
| Time's up. | ||
| And again, thank you, Mr. Chairman. | ||
| I appreciate it. | ||
| But before I begin my questions, I just want to raise my deep concerns with the mass reductions in force that took place in the State Department on Friday. | ||
| I find it particularly troubling that many of those who were let go worked on issues related to women, to human rights, and counterterrorism. | ||
| And I do look forward to discussing this more in depth on this committee going forward. | ||
| So, Congressman, I'm going to start with you because this morning it was reported: despite being removed from your role as National Security Advisor in May, removed from your role, right? | ||
| Not working. | ||
| Surprisingly, you've been on the White House payroll for the last few months. | ||
| So, throughout this hearing, you've made assertions that if confirmed, you would root out waste and unnecessary overhead at the UN. | ||
| So, can you confirm for us whether you've been receiving a salary from the White House since being let go at the NSA? | ||
|
Renewed U.S. Role at UNESCO
00:03:46
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| Thank you, Senator. | ||
| I was not fired. | ||
| The President never said that, nor did the Vice President. | ||
| I was kept on as an advisor, transitioning a number of important activities and now hope to be confirmed with the Senate's consent. | ||
| You're not dismissed from your role, as was publicly reported, because it's also been publicly reported that you've been receiving almost $200,000 of the taxpayer money since you were dismissed from being the National Security Committee. | ||
| Well, the reporting, Senator, is fake news, which shouldn't surprise anyone. | ||
| The President was clear. | ||
| His announcement was: I will nominate Mr. Waltz, and then the Vice President was quite clear. | ||
| So, we're going to move on to UNESCO because we've got a lot to talk about there. | ||
| Undoubtedly, UNESCO has its flaws, including the history of anti-Israel bias. | ||
| But the U.S. has also played a key role in defending Israel at the UN agency. | ||
| So, the U.S. has called for votes against unbalanced resolutions and supported efforts that promote international Holocaust education, press freedom, literacy programs, scientific innovation, and protect and restore cultural heritage sites. | ||
| Since rejoining UNESCO in 2023, the U.S. has also successfully included references to Hamas's October 7th terrorist attack and the plight of the hostages in UNESCO documents. | ||
| However, during periods of U.S. withdrawal from UNESCO, China has stepped up its own engagement, becoming UNESCO's largest financial contributor and using this platform to push its own priorities. | ||
| We know they are contrary to ours. | ||
| So, Congressman, how might maintaining our presence at UNESCO support its work on U.S. priorities like Holocaust education, press freedom, all of the other things that I just mentioned, while ensuring that the PRC does not continue to expand its influence within the body? | ||
| And how can our membership in UNESCO continue to provide us that platform for countering any future anti-Israel actions and, I would say, terrorism overall? | ||
| Thank you, Congressman. | ||
| Excuse me. | ||
| Thank you, Senator. | ||
| And I certainly support, as I mentioned to the ranking member, any initiative to block and tackle Chinese Communist Party influence throughout any of these organizations. | ||
| However, I do think we have to review closely our membership in these organizations if we're getting return for the taxpayer dollars, if they're in line with our interests. | ||
| As you know, in the first term we withdrew from UNESCO under President Reagan, we renewed from UNESCO, and often it's been incredibly unhelpful to both Israel and the United States on the world stage. | ||
| Recommend to Secretary Rubio we withdraw from UNESCO. | ||
| If confirmed, I'll engage with Secretary Rubio and participate in that review. | ||
| But as you know, it's currently under review. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| Because order, yes. | ||
| So I'm sorry, withdrawing from UNESCO. | ||
| I want to go back to that because Order 14199 mandates a review of the United States participation in UNESCO and explicitly requires a U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. consult with the Secretary of State. | ||
| So we'll look forward to that report from you on that. | ||
|
Preserving Presidential Legacies
00:03:11
|
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| I do have some questions about women in Ukraine, but I know that Senator Barrasso is here, so that's fine. | ||
| You're kind enough to leave it open. | ||
| Appreciate that. | ||
| We've had a good hearing. | ||
| Thank you to our witnesses for being here. | ||
| And I'm going to keep the record open until close of business tomorrow for questions for the record, which if you get, I appreciate if you would answer them promptly. | ||
| Further, we have not. | ||
| Again, thank you to you and your families for your gracious willingness to serve your country. | ||
| And we have letters we've received in support of the witnesses, which I will order included in the record. | ||
| With that, hearing is adjourned. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good to see you again. | |
| Tonight, on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A, a discussion on preserving the legacies of U.S. presidents and the work their privately funded organizations do to achieve this, including through the Presidential Leadership Scholars Program, which launched in 2015. | ||
| The participants talk about the relationship between their foundations and the government-funded presidential library system, which is overseen by the National Archives. | ||
| The idea of opening the George W. Bush Center on SMU campus was first broached. | ||
| There was some resistance among faculty and students. | ||
| That has totally changed. | ||
| And these days now, President Bush on occasion may make surprise appearances in classrooms. | ||
| And I think that's a huge hit for a lot of the students, some of whom weren't born when he was first elected president. | ||
| The partnership is really what's important at all of our institutions. | ||
| And we all have a little bit of a different model. | ||
| At the Clinton Presidential Center, the foundation and the library, we work very closely together on our programs, but the library staff really, a lot of them focus on the core mission, which is to preserve and open the records of those eight years. | ||
| We do try to bring programming to either the Texas A ⁇ M campus utilizing our network so that students have the opportunity to be exposed to those that embody the principles, the values of the 41st president, so that the legacy is living on in that way. | ||
| The foundations put additional money into these institutions. | ||
| Actually, they build the libraries. | ||
| They build the edifices and turn them over to the American people through the National Archives, which maintain these institutions. | ||
| But we continue to be involved and put money into them to make them what they are. | ||
| Preserving the legacies of U.S. presidents tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's QA. | ||
| You can listen to QA and all our podcasts wherever you get your podcasts or on our free C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| C-SPAN, Democracy Unfiltered. | ||
| We're funded by these television companies and more, including WoW. | ||
| The world has changed. | ||
Chapters
- 00:00:05 Welcome To The Committee
- 00:02:51 Introducing John Arrigo
- 00:15:07 Bipartisan Agreement on Global Leadership
- 00:24:07 Nomination for U.S. Ambassador
- 00:30:14 U.S. Leadership at the UN
- 00:36:21 Pride and Joy
- 00:39:08 Prioritizing American Safety and Prosperity
- 00:41:56 Lifting Sanctions for Regional Engagement
- 00:57:33 UN Payroll Scandal
- 01:13:00 Hamas Must Surrender
- 01:14:18 Smart Power Matters
- 01:29:20 Commingled Funds Concerns
- 01:37:51 USAID And Its Challenges
- 01:53:32 Voting on Force Authorization
- 02:09:07 Looking Forward to Defense
- 02:14:14 Renewed U.S. Role at UNESCO
- 02:17:45 Preserving Presidential Legacies
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