Read the full transcript of Presidential envoy for special missions Richard Grenell’s interview by Jan Jekielek at 2025 Conservative Political Action Conference on Feb 21, 2025 .
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Kash Patel’s Confirmation as FBI Director
JAN JEKIELEK: Rick Grinnell, it’s such a pleasure to have you back on American Thought Leaders.
RICHARD GRENELL: Thank you so much for having me. It’s a pleasure to be here.
JAN JEKIELEK: Well, just a few minutes before we’re doing this interview, our mutual friend, Kash Patel, someone who was, when you were acting DNI, he was your deputy, has become confirmed as the FBI director. What’s your reaction?
RICHARD GRENELL: I got a little emotional, I got to tell you. We’ve been living through this the last couple of months. I couldn’t be more proud. I think he is going to crush it. I think the American people are going to be safer because Kash Patel is the FBI director.
He’s going to get us back to the basics. He’s going to make sure that the FBI is looking at crimes, not doing all this tangential stuff, but really looking at crimes and trying to solve crimes. And getting an FBI force that is filled with common sense, focused on the right issues, not going to Catholic church meetings, not trying to go after parents, but really going after the fentanyl crisis, murderers, all of the really traditional crimes that are spiking that have been going up in the last four or five years, Kash is going to focus on that. And thank God he’s there.
JAN JEKIELEK: You know, I was very happy, all 81 episodes that we did on Kash’s Corner together were requested basically as part of the confirmation process. I’m sure Adam Schiff watched every one of them. And I was very happy they did, that they didn’t probably know that we fact-checked all of them. We don’t publish things that aren’t factually, of course, opinion is opinion, but so I was happy that that was in the record somewhere with someone.
RICHARD GRENELL: I remember hearing that and I thought, you know, if a whole bunch of Democratic staffers or Democratic senators were having to watch all of Kash’s Corners over the last, you know, five years, they’re really going to learn something because that was an amazing series with Kash. And I don’t think people understand just how passionate he was about really fighting the good fight, even when he wasn’t in government. He didn’t go out and make a ton of money. He really just concentrated on the fight at hand and trying to, you know, go after those who were trying to do cancel culture.
And he wrote an amazing book, Government Gangsters. And I just think that he’s got a lot of passion that the American people are now going to benefit from.
JAN JEKIELEK: You know, when people were asking me the most, I did a bunch of hits on this and he’s really kind of probably of all the people around, probably the most apolitical, I don’t, I mean, I don’t know you, you know, a lot of these people better than I do, but he, you know, he’s one of these people that, one of these people that actually wants to apply the law.
RICHARD GRENELL: For sure. I mean, look, he’s been a prosecutor and a public defender. Tell me who in government has been on both sides and traditionally, you know, public defenders are those people who are altruistic and they help people who are in trouble, maybe defend people who are guilty, but, but talk about what their rights are and get them to a place where they feel like they went through a good judicial process.
And then as a prosecutor, it’s the other side. It’s going after people who you think are guilty and they’re saying, no, I’m innocent. And so you’ve got to prove it. He has literally come from both sides. I can’t think of someone better for the FBI than that.
Partisan Politics in Confirmation Process
But I get that, you know, he doesn’t look like all the other FBI directors. And so it’s a little bit annoying to me when I look at all of the people before him and who they were and how they just overwhelmingly got confirmed. And then you, you come to Kash somebody who is, again, doesn’t look like the others, doesn’t have a background like the others. And somehow, you know, he squeaks through with 51.
I think that we need to get back to the point where Democrats look at Republicans and say, you know, you’re qualified. There was an election. I might not have selected you if, if our side won. But if you’re qualified, that’s what the Senate is supposed to do.
And we’ve gotten to the point now where Republicans are more times than not supporting the Democratic candidates who are qualified, even though we don’t like their policies for qualified. And so we have a lot of senators who go out and actually vote for Democrats who are qualified when they’re up for cabinet jobs. We don’t get that same courtesy. The Democrats are literally wholeheartedly altogether unified in lockstep step voting against every single Republican. And to me, that’s the problem of Washington.
We talk a lot about, you know, how do we get to the point where we don’t do political partisanship? Well, look at the Senate process. It’s actually very troubling to the people who live outside of Washington, who are normal, everyday hardworking Americans. We expect there to be people who are more thoughtful about this process.
JAN JEKIELEK: You know, it’s interesting. I’m curious what you think. I mean, there were a few exceptions. I think Brooke Rollins got a few Democratic votes, if I’m not mistaken. I mean, a couple people got a few.
RICHARD GRENELL: Right.
JAN JEKIELEK: And so forth.
But it’s actually interesting. We, as you started talk, answering this question, you know, I was earlier, I was kind of reminded of your, frankly, you know, skills and diplomacy, one of the things I really appreciate about you. You know, back in Trump 45, you went out and you did some amazing work in Serbia. Changed some, changed some minds. I don’t know.
RICHARD GRENELL: Serbia, Kosovo, yeah.
JAN JEKIELEK: Yeah. I would love to, someday we’ll get the whole story. But just most recently, you were, you went down to Venezuela. And, you know, I remember seeing the photo. I texted you. I was like, what’s the story behind this? Are you able to talk about that now?
Diplomatic Mission to Venezuela
RICHARD GRENELL: Sure. Yeah. Sure. Six, you, six hostages. Six Americans held in prison as hostages. We got six home. There’s about six or seven more that are still there. And so we’ve still got work to do. I spent the day going down to Caracas, met with Maduro, met with him one-on-one. Tried to have a conversation where we would have a different relationship with him.
Look, we’re very clear-eyed about the Venezuelan government and Maduro. But Donald Trump is somebody who doesn’t want to do regime change. And he is somebody who wants to do everything that we can to make the American people stronger, more prosperous. And so that’s what we’re focused on right now.
And so I went down for the day and tried to, through diplomatic means, get the Venezuelans to pay for planes that would come up to the United States to take their citizens who are in our country illegally, who crossed the southern border illegally. They didn’t wait in line. They didn’t do what proper immigration rules tell them to do. But they jumped over the border and they were here illegally.
So we found these individuals and said, look, you broke the law. You’ve got to go back to your home country. But we would like Venezuela to pay for it. And so I went down to ask them to start sending planes that were empty from Caracas, land in El Paso, Texas, where we have a lot of the individuals. And we would load those planes with illegal immigrants and send them back.
Now, a lot of those individuals, I think we’re up to about 250, were members of a gang called Tren de Aragua. And we in the State Department and the US government just abbreviated TDA. And so we had 250 individuals, roughly, that were classified as TDA gang members. And that was important to us, to have them go out first, to be able to board a Venezuelan plane that they’re paying for and go back to Caracas and live there. And the Venezuelan government can decide. Do they release them? Do they put them in prison? Whatever they decide, our goal was to get them out of the United States.
And at the same time, I looked at Mr. Maduro and I said, we’d like to have our hostages home. And I want to bring home six today. So we had long conversations. There was a solid hard no in the beginning. And he asked me if I would stay the night and we could talk about it tomorrow and have dinner with him that night. And I said, “Sir, I’m leaving in an hour and a half. I’m boarding my Air Force plane where Americans are there waiting for me. And I’m going to go back to the plane. And I hope that you can look this list over and deliver six.”
We waited. We were told, go back and wait. We waited about two and a half hours. I was sweating it out. There were some people on the plane that were like, I think we should go. I don’t think we’re going to get anybody. And I said, no. I was in a meeting. I’m confident we’re going to get somebody.
Rescuing American Hostages
And lo and behold, after about two and a half hours, all these cars pulled up. And there were Americans getting out of the cars. They won in the back of a car. And there was about 10 cars, but in six of them were individual Americans. And I saw from across the tarmac, I could see what was happening. And the lights were shining on me. It was getting dark. I couldn’t quite see everything. And so I started to walk closer so that I could see the commotion that was going on.
My team said, “No, no, no. Don’t go over there. These are dangerous people, and you shouldn’t go.” And I was like, we’re here. I got the Air Force plane behind me. I got a lot of Air Force personnel with me. I’m going to walk over. And when I got there, I could see that our men, our American brothers, were there shackled, their feet shackled, their hands chained. And they had black hoods over their heads. And it really made me angry to look and see Americans in that situation.
So I went all the way up, and I got a moment where I was standing in front of one of them. And they pulled the black hood off his head. And I could see it in his eyes that he was very afraid, didn’t know what was happening. He would later tell me that he didn’t know if he was going to get shot, if he didn’t know if he was going to another prison. He didn’t know what was happening. He didn’t even know he was at the airport.
And I got to look at him in that moment after the black hood came off. And I could see in his eyes, he was really distraught. And I said, “I’m an American diplomat. I’m here sent by Donald Trump. I’m here to take you home. Get on the plane.” And he was bursting into tears, hugged me. It was probably the greatest day of my 25-year career to be able to be there and see humanity in such a low place and to be so excited, have their situation changed in an instant from what they thought.
And we got on the plane. And I have to tell you, it was pretty emotional to hear them. And I’m not an emotional person in my career. I’m pretty tough. I’m somebody who doesn’t carry the emotions into my job. If you know me personally, I’m a softy. But in those moments, I tried to really be without emotion.
And I was on the plane. And these guys, they have nothing. Everything was taken from them. They’d been in prison in a foreign country. And one individual said something to me that I will never forget for as long as I live. He looked at me and he said, “You know, Mr. Ambassador, I have nothing. I’m a young guy. I hope to have something someday. But right now, I have nothing. And for the rest of my life, whatever I have is yours.” And I realized in that moment that he was so distraught. And he didn’t have any hope.
And they all, every single one of them, said Donald Trump was going to come get us. And I knew it. One guy said “I wrote on my cell in prison every day Donald Trump for president, Donald Trump for president.” We got on the plane. And I, of course, had to call the president. I got him on the phone. And I said, “Mr. President, we have six Americans coming home.” He was ecstatic. And every one of them said, “Mr. President, I want you to know, I knew if you won, you would come get us.”
Here is the transcript with added paragraphs, punctuation, headings, and formatting as requested:
Hope for American Hostages
RICHARD GRENELL: I knew it. And we were cheering for you from prison. And the night that you won, and the prison was talking about it, Donald Trump was elected president, I knew I was going to get out eventually. You think about that. That is hope around the world.
And I think that’s what Donald Trump, for the last four years, when we thought things were terrible, when the cancel culture was at us, and we thought our country was changed forever, Donald Trump never gave up. They tried to get him twice. They tried to take him out. But we’re here.
Republicans now are in charge of Washington. You see what’s happening with Kash. I couldn’t be more excited. I think we went through the valley, and we are now on the mountaintop. And now we have a responsibility to deliver for the American people. Now the tough work begins.
And so we got to keep up with the president. I am tired. I am exhausted already. But we got to keep up with the president.
JAN JEKIELEK: You’re the presidential envoy for special missions. I guess this was mission number one. What other missions are planned here?
RICHARD GRENELL: Well, I think we got a whole bunch of stuff on our plate. We’re not done with Venezuela. I think we’ve got more to do.
JAN JEKIELEK: And what do you think Mr. Maduro believes he got out of making that offer?
RICHARD GRENELL: Well, look, I’ll be honest with you. He had a long list of asks. And I said, look, we’re not here to give you anything. What I am here to do, though, is to tell you that I came here to Caracas. I’m now sitting in your palace. I’m sitting here asking you to do things. And you have cameras all around. You’re going to use this moment. You’re going to tell people that I’m here. That alone is a gift. That alone is me showing you that we need to talk about a different relationship. And so we didn’t give him anything.
And it’s funny that you ask that, because I’d forgotten on the plane another one of the hostages that was freed after we were in the air for about an hour. He said, “You know, I have a question for you. Did you trade anybody or any money for me?”
I said, “No, we didn’t do anything. We went. No American had been here at a high level in a very long time, we came down and we asked. And I said, Donald Trump wants you to do this. And Donald Trump’s credibility is what got you out.”
He was relieved. He said, “Thank God. I didn’t want to be traded for criminals. I didn’t want to be traded for money.” And these guys are innocent. They should have never been locked up.
JAN JEKIELEK: Yeah. I mean, it’s tough when you think about the whole situation with trying to get the last hostages out of, I guess, Gaza.
RICHARD GRENELL: Gaza. Right. Yeah. Look, these are difficult issues. We’ve got a great hostage negotiator in Adam Boehler. He’s amazing. And he’s going to be doing great, great things.
But as a diplomat, I have to say that when you’re at a table and you’re negotiating, the reason we’re successful, it’s not because we can talk through it better than other people. It’s not because we’re convincing in any way. There’s one reason why Donald Trump’s ambassadors are able to do these things. It’s because of Donald Trump. It’s because he has a credible threat.
It’s not just a threat of military action. It’s a threat of tariffs. It’s a threat of economic sanctions. It’s a credible threat. It’s why we say there needs to be a credible threat. We don’t just say there needs to be a threat. Joe Biden had kind of a loose threat that was no, wasn’t credible. And the people who were diplomats trying to negotiate for all of these hostages or peace agreements, the other side knew that it was an empty threat, that it wasn’t going to be credible. It wasn’t going to be powerful.
And so we’re lucky. I’m lucky to be able to be an ambassador doing peace agreements, doing diplomacy with someone like Donald Trump at the top. It’s a lot easier.
Kennedy Center and Cultural Challenges
JAN JEKIELEK: So you’re the new president of Kennedy Center. And it’s just very interesting. The day we’re interviewing today, two things. First of all, the Shen Yun show is back at Kennedy Center, opening night or opening day, on until the 2nd. And there was actually a bomb threat. So first of all, how is it that while you’re this envoy for special missions, you’re also now the president of Kennedy Center? And what do you make of this?
RICHARD GRENELL: Well, first of all, it doesn’t surprise anyone if you work for Donald Trump, you’re going to have multiple hats. And you’ve got to work hard. And so right now, I’m the interim president. I’m the president, but I won’t be there for a very long time. I came in to kind of clean up the problems. And the Kennedy Center has a lot of problems.
The woman who was the president before me was getting paid $1.3 million a year. She had zero cash on hand and zero in reserves. The employees, of which there’s roughly 300, the employees are being paid from the debt reserves that should not be touched because they got a balloon payment coming up in 2030.
So the financial situation is terrible. And if you look at the deferred maintenance and the status of the building, it’s in really dire shape. And we haven’t had the money to actually do the proper maintenance, and so the building is suffering. So you look at the financial situation, you look at the building, you look at the overpaid individuals, and we were literally on a crash course.
And so President Trump is a businessman. He knows how to fix things. And I love the fact that he cares so much about a place like the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, which should be the premier center in the nation’s capital for arts, right? It shouldn’t have any budget problems. But it’s got such budget problems, it’s asking for $45 million a year from Congress, from the American people.
And so President Trump’s position is, look, if you’re an arts institution and you’re asking for public dollars, then you’ve got to give the public what they want. You should do big blockbuster musicals. You should do traditional Nutcracker at Christmastime. You should do the big art things that appeal to the masses. By the way, that’s great for the bottom line as well.
JAN JEKIELEK: Well, yeah, and exactly how Shen Yun plays out. So it’s actually very fitting that the show that’s opening right now. But what do you make of this bomb threat?
RICHARD GRENELL: I mean, look, we live in this world now where people who don’t like something are resorting to chaos. We’ve lived through cancel culture, debanking, all sorts of stuff. Opinions became misinformation, disinformation. And that’s crazy. To have an opinion and then just to be canceled for it because it’s disinformation, I think, has always been the problem. So we’ve got to fix this.
I thought JD Vance’s speech at the Munich Security Conference was really a shot across the bow to our Western allies to say, don’t cancel people for speech. We’re the West. We are to defend speech. And we should be united on it. But anyone who’s traveled to Europe knows that they have really gone backwards when it comes to freedom, freedom of speech, and Western values.
They’re investing in China in dramatic ways. And I think President Trump has said, look, I warned you on Russia. You didn’t listen to me. You had the Nord Stream 2 pipeline. And you were engaging with Russia. Now you’re doing the same thing with China.
And so we clearly have to be able to say to our friends in Europe, of which we have many, you’ve got to do better.
JAN JEKIELEK: Of course, you were the ambassador to Germany. And so you have a lot of thoughts about how things work over there. You were stationed there. We had an election in Germany on Sunday.
RICHARD GRENELL: That’s right.
JAN JEKIELEK: And so this was at a very, I guess, a point in time that the vice president was speaking at the security forum. Many of the people listening didn’t think it was particularly diplomatic of him. I don’t know what your thoughts are.
RICHARD GRENELL: Of who?
JAN JEKIELEK: Of the vice president.
RICHARD GRENELL: Look, I was in the room. I think there’s two views of diplomacy. First of all, J.D. was incredibly nice. He wasn’t rude at all. But I believe that diplomacy should be blunt. And it should be transparent. And if you truly are trying to solve problems, you want that, too. And you appreciate that, too.
The seat warmers, the people who just love the accoutrements of being an ambassador, of big staff, and sitting in restaurants, and drinking wine. And it’s what Anthony Blinken called culinary diplomacy, which is crazy, the idea that he kept saying every negotiation starts with a good meal. And I was like, no, no, no. Every negotiation starts with a good idea, not a good meal. And we have to move away from that, I think, stale form of elitism. And that’s what it is. A lot of people enjoy being an ambassador because of all of the things that come with it.
And I think that when you’re an ambassador, what Donald Trump thinks is when you’re an American ambassador, you represent the American people. They pay for your salary. They pay for your embassy. They pay for your residence overseas. You have a responsibility to defend America. We have too many of our ambassadors who, if you’re the ambassador, say, to Poland, that you go over and you spend your two, three years talking about how great Poland is as the US ambassador. You take pictures around Poland. You say, you should come visit. This is an amazing place. You get all these accolades from people saying, you know, you’re amazing.
Look, the people who are going to talk about how amazing Poland is are the Polish ambassadors. The American ambassadors go over there, and they have a job to do, which is to make America stronger, the American people safer. And so you run an office over there for the American people, not for the Poles. And I was very clear on that in Germany. I was there not to make Germany better. I was there to make America better. And so I was going to fight for the American people. By the way, I had a lot of friends there. A lot of people want a straight-talking, transparent ambassador, as long as you’re not rude. You know me. I’m a blunt talker, but I’m never rude.
Foreign Policy and European Relations
JAN JEKIELEK: So I recently had on the show another friend, actually, a staff director of the CECC, Congressional Executive Commission on China. And I talked to him about the vice president’s speech. And what he saw in it immediately, even though this wasn’t mentioned a lot, and you suggested it, I think, a little bit earlier, was that the subtext of getting Europe to carry its own weight on the defense side, for example, is that there’s actually going to be a pivot to Asia, or there’s an active pivot to Asia, right? And I don’t know how you read that.
RICHARD GRENELL: Look, I think for me the subtitle was really, the elite can’t be trying to control things for the betterment of them. You’ve really got to have free speech for everyone. You’ve got to include everyone. You’ve got to come back to Western values. And you’ve got to be the West. And inherent in that is a warning, don’t go over and make the same mistakes that you did with Russia and with Iran in China.
And look, I could argue, if we had more time, I could argue that the Europeans’ policies on Nord Stream 2 and the weakness they had on Russia caused the war in Ukraine. And when they tried to get around our sanctions in Iran, and they tried to create a mechanism to go around what we believed was a threat from the Iranian regime, they helped create a pocket of money for the Iranian regime. They gave the Iranian regime aid and comfort. And the Biden administration came in and gave them hundreds of billions of dollars and caused the war in Gaza. So I think that bad, weak policies lead to wars. And that’s what we’re trying to avoid.
So peace through strength is what’s happening. I like the idea of peace through strength. But I think too many people think peace through strength is a celebration of the Pentagon. Peace through strength is a celebration of the State Department. I’ve worked at the State Department for 12 years. I love the place. But when you talk about peace through strength, it means that the diplomats won. It means we didn’t have to fire a shot because we had tough diplomacy.
You get that tough diplomacy when people are focused on representing the American ideals and have a president like Donald Trump.
JAN JEKIELEK: Well, Rick, this has been a great conversation. A final thought as we finish?
RICHARD GRENELL: Three cheers for Kash Patel.
JAN JEKIELEK: Well, Rick Grinnell, such a pleasure to have you on again.
