Arab Americans are leaning toward former President Donald Trump because he promised “peace,” Ric Grenell, a former acting director of national intelligence and Trump ally, said during a television appearance. Breitbart News Saturday.
Host Matthew Boyle cited a poll showing 30 percent of Muslim voters would support Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris in this election.
“That's an increase of at least 7 percentage points since 2020, when Trump won about 23% of the Muslim vote. You've been following this entire undecided election. [movement]Boyle explained that this had morphed into “a movement to abandon Harris”.
“Well, one of the reasons I joined the Trump team in 2016 is because I served in the Bush administration for eight years. I spent eight years on the United Nations Security Council and saw us foment war and push for regime change,” Grenell said, explaining that he had seen these “neocon ideas” fail.
“They weren't working, and nobody was willing to say that. You know, Dick Cheney was a leader of the regime change movement, and a lot of Republicans, and even Democrats, joined him and talked about the benefits of regime change,” he said, adding that they weren't working, and the U.S. lost “a lot of money, a lot of property, [and] blood.”
“What happened in 2016 was that Donald Trump was the only one to point that out. It was unpopular at the time to go up against Bush, Romney, McCain and the whole pro-war, neo-con policy strategy. But Donald Trump had the guts to say, 'Guys, this isn't working. I'm running in the Republican primary and it's not working, so I'm going to do something different.' I remember at the time, every single establishment foreign policy person I knew called me and said, 'If you support this guy, you'll never work in foreign policy again. He's wrong. I did it anyway, and Donald Trump was proven right,'” he said. “Now, fast forward to now. He didn't start any wars.”
Grenell spoke specifically about Arab Americans who lean toward Trump, saying, “In Detroit and Phoenix, Arab Americans have a large and powerful base, and we've been leading a strategy to engage with them.”
“What I like about Donald Trump is that he has three, actually two, strong messages that persuade Arab Americans to support him, but those same two messages are very consistent with what he is communicating to evangelical Christians and Jews in the United States,” he said, praising Trump's consistent messaging.
“Donald Trump has not said anything different to these groups. Kamala Harris has said something different. She is secretly trying to say one thing to one group and another to another. But Donald Trump has two messages. One is, I have an Arab-Israeli peace agreement. This is difficult. It is easy to escalate a conflict into war. But Donald Trump did not do that. He made peace between Arab-Israelis and Israelis. There was no war. There was no killing,” he said.
“The second thing I say to Arab countries is, what do you expect when you have governments that are funding Iran? Under the Trump administration, they isolated Iran, they put sanctions on Iran. They didn't have the money to pursue nuclear weapons or wage proxy wars,” he said, explaining that Biden and Harris' actions mean these proxy wars are “well funded.”
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“They lifted the sanctions on Iran, the Trump administration's sanctions,” he said, noting that sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline had also been lifted.
“Some say the primary reason Putin invaded Ukraine and started a war in Europe was because he saw the weakness in lifting sanctions on the pipeline,” he said, adding that this was “a sign of a new administration that has been trying to halt the sanctions.” [that] This happened in the war in Israel.”
“Iran was given hundreds of billions of dollars in sanctions relief, cash and credit. With that money, Iran gave money to the Houthis, Hamas, Hezbollah and started wreaking havoc. And now we're seeing the impact of 17 US warships trying to control the situation in the region. We don't have one peace plan that we're promoting, but we have 17 warships,” Grenell said, adding that he was tired of seeing establishment media figures asking politicians whether they were for or against funding Ukraine.
“This is a question of do you want more war or do you not want more war? Nobody is promoting a peace plan. We don't have a hard-line State Department,” he continued, adding, “I spent 12 years at the State Department and I know hard-line people.”
“Diplomacy is hard. You can't just speak five languages and sit in a restaurant in Paris. You sign peace agreements in conflict zones. It's dangerous. It's frontline work,” he added.
Breitbart News Saturday airs from 10am-1pm ET on SiriusXM Patriot 125.
