Jeffrey Lord speaks with U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations for Management and Reform Jeff Bartos about sweeping efforts to overhaul the UN bureaucracy and restore accountability to international institutions. Bartos details historic budget cuts, workforce reductions, and why President Trump’s leadership has created a rare opportunity for meaningful reform. The discussion also covers Middle East peace efforts, Israel, global security challenges, and why the United States remains the indispensable nation despite persistent international opposition. A candid look at diplomacy, reform, and what real leadership looks like on the world stage. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
This is Jeffrey Lord of the American Spectator and Newsmax, sitting in for our friend Sean Hannity.
You can reach us in here at 800-941-7326 or 800-941-Sean.
And we have a great guest coming up right now is Jeff Bardos, who happens, this is a Pennsylvania kind of day, I guess, is also a Pennsylvanian, like myself.
He is an American real estate developer, a lawyer, and a diplomat.
And he's currently serving by the appointment of President Trump as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations for Management and Reform since this past year of 2025.
So, Jeff, good to talk to you, my friend.
Jeffrey, it's always great to speak with you.
And I think we have a nice tradition at the end of calendar years where we get on the phone, two Pennsylvanians at this point, though, two Pennsylvanians sitting in Manhattan.
I don't know, there's something wrong with that.
We got to do something about it.
But greetings from the East Side in Turtle Bay, and I hope you and your family are well, and all your listeners had a wonderful Christmas.
Exactly.
Well, thank you very much.
You know, I was really intrigued.
I didn't realize you were over there at the UN doing this and Jeff's background in business and politics and all of that sort of thing.
And now he is adding diplomacy to the resume.
And tell us a little bit about what your UN job entails.
I'm sort of intrigued.
Well, it's the honor of a lifetime to serve President Trump and the American people as the representative of the United States to the UN for management and reform.
And in my hearing before the United States Senate, Chairman Risch said, that's a little oxymoronic, management, reform, and the UN.
How are you going to tackle this?
Which is a great question.
So we, I lead a terrific team of very skilled experts who comb through the gigantic bureaucracy and budget that is the United Nations and with President Trump's leadership.
And the way I answered the question during my Senate hearing is that President Trump, his leadership provided a unique window of opportunity, maybe a once in a generation or a once in 50 year, 80 year opportunity to bring real, meaningful, durable, consequential reform to this gigantic bureaucracy that is the United Nations.
And since we hit the ground running, I mean, we have a great team, many of whom I think you know, Ambassador Mike Waltz, Ambassador Tammy Bruce, Ambassador Jennifer Losetta, Ambassador Dan DeGrea and myself.
We all have different portfolios.
Mike's our chief of mission.
Tammy's our deputy chief of mission.
Jennifer handles the Security Council.
Dan has the Economic and Social Council, and I have management and reform.
And we've been sent up here by the President, by the Secretary, and by our peers to come up here and make sure this place runs better.
And so I spend my day and my night and many nights with my team getting this place fit for purpose, get it back to basics.
Tomorrow, we will gavel in.
We've only been here 100 days.
We all got up here in mid-September.
Tomorrow we will gavel through the largest cut to the UN's regular budget in history, maybe in a time that nobody can remember a bigger cut to the budget.
And we also, so a 15% cut to the budget and a elimination of 2,600 UN bureaucratic posts, which is unprecedented and only happens because of President Trump's leadership, his vision.
When he spoke at the UN in September, he said the UN has great potential.
It's not living up to that potential.
And we are executing the President's vision.
And like I said, it's the honor of a lifetime to serve the President and the American people in this work.
Well, I think that is really, really great.
I'd be curious to know, I mean, as we speak, I'm seeing that President Trump is going to receive the Israel Prize for Peace, and things are just not doing so well over there.
How does that affect what you do and what the U.N. does, et cetera?
Well, the President's incredible leadership, his visionary leadership, also allowed that the Sharm el-Sheikh deal and the 20-point peace plan that immediately saw the release of the 20 living hostages.
And at this point, there is one hostage remains, the remains of one hostage that have not been released by Hamas and by Palestinian Islamic Jihad.
So we have to get one family still without their son, and that is unacceptable.
But the President's 20-point peace plan was put into a Security Council resolution, again, a first of its kind with the Board of Peace and with the International Stabilization Force.
And again, it's the President's leadership, his vision, that allowed all of this to come together.
There just wouldn't be peace.
He is the President of Peace.
We see it every day.
And it's so much, I have to say, it's fun to serve in this administration because every day we're achieving goals and objectives that really before the president was sworn in, just people said wasn't possible.
And as he said in his inaugural address, the impossible is what we do.
And because of that leadership, we're able to achieve a lot of things here at the UN that previously people thought were just unattainable.
Well, I really do think that the fact that he was not a career politician, if he spent any time in Washington, it was to see somebody and get out.
And so I do think that that gives him a particular perspective on dealing with government, in this case the United Nations, that other presidents wouldn't have because they are so used to being involved from the governmental and political aspect of things.
And in particular, I think the UN is an interesting place because you've got all these countries from all over the place.
And history is filled with all these episodes of American ambassadors to the UN getting into clashes with the Soviet Union or others.
And just sort of amazing thing.
And I think you really are there at a very interesting time.
And Jeff, I would also ask as someone who writes, I hope you're taking notes.
We're working really hard.
The everyday is a new challenge.
And as I mentioned, this is the unique window of opportunity in this time.
And there's a hunt, Jeffrey, there's 193 countries in the United Nations.
It's a staggering number.
And the way the budget works, if you can believe this, whether you contribute $37,000 or $12 billion, you get the same vote in the General Assembly.
And, of course, we have the Security Council.
So it's a governance structure that we set up back in 1945, 1946.
But it really is, it needs major reforms, and we're executing against that every day.
Like I said, we're going to gavel through the budget tomorrow, and then that sets up huge reform opportunities in 2026, which we're already starting to execute upon and starting to work with.
And everybody wants to see the United States, and everybody is listening to President Trump.
And it's, again, it's an honor to have the opportunity to serve him and the American people.
For us, looking ahead, the President said this in his remarks.
The U.N. has great potential, and it is, the world needs a place where everybody can talk.
And Ambassador Waltz talks about this all the time, that we'd much rather that place be in the United States than in Moscow or Beijing or some other place.
And so it has a real role.
It has gone like so many big organizations.
The UN has become bloated.
It tries to do everything.
And you know this from your business world.
If you try to do everything, it's impossible to do everything well.
And so you end up doing mediocre or worse in a lot of things.
And we are just guiding with our business experience and with the president's direction, we are bringing this place, we're bringing these reforms, which will hopefully get it fit to purpose, back to basics, promote international peace and security.
And right now the president is settling conflicts around the world, basically himself and the small team.
It'd be great if the UN could be right there helping and be a force for good.
So that's also something we're focused on.
Who do you work with in the course of a, I mean, what particular countries are there some that you are more obvious allies than others and others that you just you can't really get near in a sense?
Well, we're the largest contributor.
Americans have, since the founding of the UN, we're the largest contributor to the system and we're the most generous nation on earth.
And we tend to work with the other large donor countries.
But of course, in the scope of our work, we work with almost every country.
I mean, of the 193, I haven't met every country, but it's pretty close in 100 days.
And so we work with everybody.
But again, we have been laser focused on delivering this reform agenda since mid-September.
And so when we, we'll take a little breather here, maybe, maybe a couple days between now and New Year's, and then get right back at it on, I guess, a week from today.
First Trip to Cuba00:09:30
We'll get right back at it.
So, yeah, but we, I mean, Jeffrey, come visit anytime.
It's a fascinating place.
Yeah, yeah, I'd like to do that.
That might go on my bucket list.
Well, I spent some time, courtesy of my friends at Newsmax, in Israel this summer.
I think it was in August for a week.
And wow, truly an amazing place to see.
And, you know, you have, first of all, and I was saying to people, you know, as Americans, you talk about, say, the pilgrims in 1620 and think that's a long time ago.
Then you're walking around Jerusalem and they're telling you that something was 3,000 years old.
It's amazing.
And that streets were put in by the Romans and all of this kind of thing.
It really is an amazing thing.
But it also gives you the impression of how hypersensitive relations are.
And they pointed out to me in one part of our tour, there was a hillside that was just on the other side of the Israeli border.
And below it, on the Israeli side, was a soccer field where kids had been playing soccer.
And all of a sudden, gunfire comes from the hill in Lebanon and killed some kids.
You know, it just takes your breath away at the kind of brutality that can be found over there and how much work needs to be done, which, you know, President Trump was doing just today with all of this.
Was that your first trip?
That was my first trip.
Wow.
So when we're not on the radio, although you could certainly tell me about it now, but I would love to hear more about it.
We just marked the 50th anniversary of Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's remarkable explanation of vote when the United States cast its vote and then explained why against the outrageous and shameful Zionism as racism resolution from 1975.
And those remarks that the Ambassador Moynihan delivered back in 1975 ring true today.
The level of anti-West, anti-American, anti-Israel, right, that it's all kind of wrapped up into one, that still exists here, and it's something that we fight every day.
We're committed to stamping out this anti-West, anti-American, anti-Israel bias that courses through too many parts of the United Nations.
And this is not something that's going to happen overnight, but we are, again, focused and we have the resources and the support to get it done.
And it just has to happen.
But when we took our first trip to Israel back in 2013, my goal for our girls was to see that Israel was a tiny country in a tough neighborhood.
And in spite of, or maybe because of those dynamics, the Israeli people lived their lives with great joy and great focus and great purpose.
And so you have national service, which is a unique aspect, not singular, but very unique amongst countries.
And so it's a special place, and they're a very special, important ally of the United States.
So yeah, we work very, as you mentioned before, we work very closely with our allies, not only in the Middle East, but across Europe and really across the globe.
Right.
Well, that's good to know.
You know, I sometimes wonder if the United Nations did not exist and there was a move to set it up now, would this be anywhere near the same?
Would we be having worse problems now?
Would there even be a United Nations headquarters in New York?
Would there be too many people out there that say, no, no, no, not with the Americans, et cetera.
But it's very interesting because I think that our enemies, so-called, out there, it isn't just Israel.
It's the West.
It's America in particular.
I mean, I think we have a target on us all of the time.
And, you know, too bad in one sense, but boy, you have to be wary.
And I would imagine as you walk around the U.N., you're sensitive to anything that you can see that seems like it's sending a message that things are not very good here.
Yeah, if anything gets frustrating during the day, whether it's across the street or back here at the mission, and I've done this a number of times throughout the last hundred days, where I will go down into our lobby and I get to walk past the American flag and then portraits of the president, the vice president, Secretary Rubio, and Ambassador Waltz.
And then there's most weeks, not every week, but most weeks I have the genuine privilege and honor to sit behind the placard that says United States.
And Jeffrey, you and I have known each other a long time.
I can't really describe the feeling of what it feels like to sit behind the placard that says the United States, but it will never get old.
It is just a tremendous honor.
And as much as people may want to pick at us and do damage to us or try to hurt the United States, we are the indispensable nation.
We're the indispensable ally for many, many countries.
And we try to do it.
I mean, we're the most generous nation on earth.
Yeah, the president has said that.
The secretary has said that.
And we proudly do that.
I'll just give you a quick story of how zany the UN can get.
There was a week, this is a couple months ago, where the Cubans were running their resolution that they run every year condemning the United States for blockading.
And they call it a blockading in Cuba, which, of course, is fundamentally untrue.
We send something like $600 million of key important humanitarian goods, food, medicine, other things to Cuba every year.
So that's just fundamentally untrue, what they said.
But it was the same week.
And the same week we were fighting about this in the General Assembly and trying to get countries to vote with us because it's just offensive what the Cubans were doing.
And that same week is when Hurricane Melissa hit.
And without missing a beat, without missing a beat, hey, Jeff.
I hate to say this, but I'm getting the hard break sign here.
Okay.
We can hold you over if you'd like to do that or whatever.
I'll just finish the quick story when we come back.
Sure.
Okay, great.
Thank you.
All right.
This is Jeffrey Lord from the American Spectator and Newsmax subbing for our friend Sean Hannity.
And we have our friend Jeff Bardos on the line, who is the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations for Management and Reform.
And he's held that position since this year.
So he's got a lot of interesting times ahead of me, Jeff.
And you were telling a story there, and we interrupted you for a break.
Let me get back to that.
Yeah, I was making the point, and thank you again for having me on.
I was making the point that the United States for the whole of the post-World War II era, the entirety of the history of the United Nations, by far the largest contributor to the system and the most generous nation on earth, bar none.
There's not even a close second.
And that, I mean, there's many, many examples of what I just said, but I'll just give you one, which is the same week that we were on the floor of the General Assembly going back and forth with Cuba and some of their allies on this ridiculous resolution that they run every year accusing us of embargoing or blockading them, which is absurd.
We do almost 600 million, as I mentioned before, 600 million of food, medicine, and other humanitarian goods to the Cuban people every year.
At that same week, when we were fighting about the resolution, Hurricane Melissa hit the Caribbean and did terrible damage, not only to our friends in Jamaica and in other countries where we have dear friends, but also to Cuba.
And I'm very proud, right?
The State Department leapt into action and had a 24-hour a day, seven-day-a-week operation center to help our friends in the region, including the Cuban people, right?
We're not friends with the Cuban regime, but we look after our neighbors here in the Western Hemisphere, and the Cuban people needed our help, and we were there.
And the United States is the only nation in the world that would do that.
And we don't even really talk about it very much.
We just do it because that's who we are.
Yeah, I think that's, wow, that's a great story.
And it really is true.
The United States does so much around the world.
And yet, that is what the bad guys want to target here.
And I think that that's what makes this an exceptionally dangerous world out there, because you've got all kinds of people trying to undermine good, decent human relations between nations and all of this kind of thing.
So I think that setting a model at the United Nations.
And I'm old enough to remember some of these incredible moments.
I think it was the Cuban Missile Crisis where Ambassador Adlai Stevenson was in a tete-a-tete with the Soviet ambassador.
Remarkable Leadership Behind the Cameras00:03:43
Do you, Ambassador Zarin, deny that the Soviet Union has placed and is placing nuclear weapons in Cuba and all this kind of thing?
Don't wait for the translator, sir.
Give me your answer now.
I mean, lots of drama.
Who would think that when they created the UN that the American ambassador, whomever that might be, would be getting all kinds of attention from the world and world media and all of this kind of thing because they do play such an important role in front of the cameras and behind the cameras, I'm sure, as you can testify.
Yes, and of course, you know, Ambassador Waltz is our chief of mission and is a remarkable leader, a remarkable man.
I mean, you know, his books are extraordinary.
His life history is extraordinary.
You know, the first Green Beret elected to Congress, three terms picked by President Trump to go to serve in the administration.
I mean, his story is remarkable, and we all feed off of that.
Mentioned before, whenever I'm having a bad day, I walk downstairs and it's not that often, by the way but whenever I am go down, I walk by the flag, I walk by the portraits of our leaders and it's just like I said, it's it's the honor of a lifetime to serve the president and the American people.
Yeah yeah well, it certainly is.
I did it for President Reagan and, and it just was amazing, and you know what these people are like when the cameras are off.
You know it's, it's always.
It's always amazing that people have such negative impressions of them, whether it was President Reagan then or President Trump now.
And yet those who really know him and have spent time with him and I certainly have been privileged to do that with President Trump wow, you know what a what a great guy and a kind and considerate soul and all of this kind of thing.
When he found out that he wanted to know why I was living in in Pennsylvania when I'd had all this career in Washington, and I told him, you know, I was taking care of my, my mother, who was in her 90s at the time, and he said, well, that tells me everything I need to know about you.
Yeah, and you know, and periodically I would, he would call or I would get little handwritten notes.
You know, say hi to Mom, that kind of thing.
But you know the the public image out there with people is is a difficult thing and I would imagine it's it's difficult in dealing with the UN because I would imagine there are people inside the UN that have negative impressions of President Trump or America writ large and are not above causing problems.
Yeah, but you know we we're focused right.
We have a clear reform agenda.
The president's given us direction.
We're executing on that direction and I said I said this to my wife often I'm I feel like I'm the luckiest and we're here in New York so I can say I feel like I'm the luckiest man on the face of the earth because I get to serve President Trump.
We work for Secretary Rubio and Ambassador Waltz and the Vice President.
I'm very blessed to have this opportunity and we're not going to let anybody down.
We're we're going to execute the president's vision, we're going to execute the agenda and we're going to get it done for for the president and for the American people.
Well, that's right now is, is the president coming up there at any point in the near future or, oh gosh, I don't know.
I know that every September you've probably been in New York during high level week the president's crazy.
My first day at the office I was sworn in.
Familiar Faces in Pennsylvania00:04:51
The night before my very first day at the office was on the floor of the General Assembly with the president speaking to during high level week.
That was my day one.
That was quite a quite a first day and we have not slowed down since, but that was yeah.
So high level week is usually the week where all the world leaders come together and again, as I mentioned before, we we need one place where everybody in the world can speak to each other, and we have it here in the United States, right here in New York, with with all the bad sports teams that New York has, oh man.
Well, you know, I grew up in Massachusetts, so I'm a RED SOX fan in perpetuity here, and I proudly wear my Eagles gear.
I go to Eagles bars, I wear my Philly stuff.
So no, no flyers Sixers, There's no hesitancy.
We're Philly tough.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Well, that is great, Jeff.
It was good to talk to you.
And I think it was a great opportunity for people to learn not just what you're doing, but what the UN is about and all that.
Because, frankly, it doesn't get the kind of intense coverage that I think it might be better off with, except sometimes when there's a negative out there and people want to criticize it for this, that, or the other thing.
But it's a great place.
It's a fabulous place.
I think the creation of the United Nations was very, very amazing.
And when you think back in history of World War I and then that didn't end well in terms of permanent peace and then World War II and finally the message was received that you had to have some sort of an institution out there that could help keep the world a peaceful place to live.
And I think when they finally got the message with that, I mean, I remember as a kid, as I say, watching Henry Cabot Lodge, and it's interesting.
And of course, Daniel Patrick Moynihan in later years.
But boy, they really had some first-class U.S. ambassadors there.
And your team, I think, continues that tradition.
So that is a great thing.
Thank you.
Well, in the meantime, Jeff, there's stuff going on in a state known as Pennsylvania.
I don't know whether you're familiar with Pennsylvania.
I think on my Twitter it says husband, father, or father, husband, and Pennsylvanian.
So yes, very familiar with our beloved Commonwealth.
Well, they are having, we taught on this show earlier, we spoke with Stacey Garrity, who is going to be our nominee for governor.
And I think it's going to be a very, very interesting race here.
Josh Shapiro is, I think, going to be a tough guy to beat.
But I think he also, and this may be an Achilles' heel, I think he also has his eyes set on 2028.
So that getting through 2026 is really to get to 2028 with him.
I don't know if you have any thoughts on the politics of our Commonwealth and all of that sort of thing.
Well, having run twice, it is strange for me to answer this.
But we don't do electoral politics right now.
We're serving in the executive branch, and there are lots of rules around that.
So obviously, I think that's a good question.
And Jeff, what that really says is you're a diplomat.
Yes, I'm proudly still registered in Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania resident.
I have been my whole life and certainly follow things.
But do you remember we've had some senators in Pennsylvania over the years, not now, but in the past, who when Penn State would play Pitt or the Eagles would play the Steelers, the ones who were maybe less courageous in expressing their views would say, I'm just rooting for a good game or I'm rooting for Pennsylvania.
And I would always shake my head and say, come on, just take a side.
But when it comes to this stuff, I'm going to demur and just simply say that I love our Commonwealth.
And gosh, Pennsylvania's always been at the forefront.
So it's going to be an interesting, it'll be an interesting 2026.
But here, we're just working every day.
And you said something before about the UN being a special place.
And it is.
It needs massive reform.
Elections and Taxpayer Focus00:04:52
And we're executing on those reforms.
And I think that's the number one message I share with you and your listeners that the American taxpayers have not been regarded as much as they should have been over the years.
And we are squarely thinking about the taxpayers.
We're thinking about the farmers and the mechanics and the small business owners, teachers, firefighters, first responders all over Pennsylvania, all over the nation, who pay their hard-earned tax dollars.
So some of that can go to international organizations.
And they have the absolute right, and they should demand of us, and we think about it every day, that we're here to make sure every dollar that the American taxpayers send to the UN is fit for purpose, well spent, and no waste, fraud, and abuse.
So that's really, you know, you asked me before what we do.
That's what me and our team, that's what we spend a lot of our time on.
Well, I think that's great.
And hopefully, and having you here on Sean's show gives a little more attention to what you guys are involved with in working at the United Nations and dealing with all the problems.
I mean, this is not going to be a world without problems ever.
You finally get to the point where you realize that.
And so I'm glad you're there.
And as I say, I hope you're taking notes and that there's a book down the road when you're done because I do think that history needs to be told so that people down the road who are not involved with all of this or too young or what have you eventually begin to understand what it is that being at the UN means and how it is and how you had to deal with it and all of that kind of thing.
So thank you very much, Mr. Jeff Bardos.
It was great to talk to you.
Wishing you and your family and your listeners a very healthy and happy new year.
And just thankfully, thank you for having me on.
And please come over.
I'd love to show you around.
All right.
I'll put that on my bucket list.
Take care, Mr. Speaker.
Okay, thanks, Jeff.
Bye-bye.
We'll be right back.
Every day, every day.
That's what we do.
You're on the Sean Hannity Show.
All right.
Well, this is Jeffrey Lord sitting in for our friend Sean Hannity.
I want to thank Sean for the opportunity and our friend Linda, of course.
And on we go to 2026.
We are going to have, I think, a very interesting year.
It's an election year.
President Trump is not on the ballot, but in the peculiar way of American off-year elections, he will be on the ballot in the sense that he will be around the country campaigning for Republican candidates, which is something that he is very, very good at.
I'm sure some of you have been at Trump rallies.
I've been to my fair share.
They're quite an amazing experience to see.
So that will be very interesting.
These elections, just by a little history background, you know me as the history buff.
Two years after a president gets elected, these elections can tend to go south for the president, whomever that might be.
It's very bipartisan.
And President Reagan won a landslide in 1980 and two years later got clobbered in the congressional elections.
Then he won again big time, even bigger in 1984 and got smacked a bit in 1986, two years after.
So that kind of thing can, in fact, happen.
And one of the good things about President Trump is he is the team leader for Republicans and conservatives, and he will be out there making the case.
2026: A Great Time Ahead00:00:38
So buckle in for 2026.
As I say, I'm Jeffrey Lord from Newsmax and the American Spectator.
Have a great time, and we will see you in the new year.