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See what history looks like before the doors officially open. Melania arrives exclusively in theaters January 30th, 2026. We had a good meeting today with presidential, I think, a very good meeting. You know, what's happened here is there were times when Putin didn't want to make a deal, times when Zelensky didn't want to make a deal. And it was like Opposite times.
Now I think they both want to make a deal. It's really not opposite times. I know the president's trying to spin it positively, but Zelensky wants to make a deal. He liked the fighting to start. He didn't start it.
He's surviving through it.
Now 60% of the country is in the dark and freezing. And because they can't get anywhere on the ground, they've lost 35,000 people last month. Do you believe that? 35,000 Russian soldiers dead. And they've they've gained just kilometers.
And it's not much. We say now all goes to Abu Dhabi. All the focus is, again, on America to do this. It's us that go and shuttle diplomacy back and forth. It's us that has to bring some type of semblance of peace and stop the war with Israel and the Palestinians in Hamas and Gaza.
You know, everything basically comes back to us. And yet, you have people all bent out of shape, threatening to go to China because they don't like our stance with Greenland, even though that seems to be. That bullet seems to be dodging. They're working on and talking about the deal that they cut. Alex Gray joins us now, CEO of American Global Strategies, served as deputy assistant to the President and Chief of Staff of the White House National Security Council.
Alex, this almost one year in, just over one year in, how would you grade the President compared to his last year, his first year in his last year? Turn.
Well, I would give it it's night and day, Brian. I mean, it's actually so much better. I can't even give it a grade. I mean, I was there the first day of the first term. And, you know, the biggest challenge we had, we had people at the cabinet level who openly despised the president they worked for and were trying to undermine him left and right.
They didn't agree with the things he was elected to do. And now we have a cabinet of competent, loyal people who are implementing his agenda every day. It's night and day. Yeah, I mean, no doubt about it. And you had the whole Russia thing hovering over saying that he won illegitimately.
And that was turned out as it turned out.
So when you see some of the numbers about the president, right now he's got 40% approval rating. 32% say their life is better than it was. 51% said their economy was better before he got there. The numbers belie it, the opportunities, the deals cut, the trade deals and things to that nature. But if you're next to the president and you're looking at those numbers and you believe them.
Where do you go from there?
Well, look, as a foreign policy guy, it pings me to say this, but the American people don't vote on foreign policy, right? The American people vote on things that are going on at home. The purpose of the America First Foreign Policy Agenda is to give us the strength overseas to allow the president and the Republican Party to focus on the people's immediate needs at home. I think the president's got a lot of cleanup to do after the Biden years, and I think he's well on his way to finishing that cleanup. But he's got to pivot now to the main issues that are motivating people in their daily lives at the dinner table.
And that's where we need to be headed: back to a domestic-focused agenda once he's cleaned up the fires that the Biden folks left. That's true. It must be frustrating, though. If I told you I had back-to-back quarters at over 4% growth. with the unemployment basically holding Interest rates going down.
We're getting close to the point where people are probably going to start making some moves. If I gave you those numbers, and you'd probably tell me, Brian, I'll tell you what, the President's approval rating is going to be a lot higher than it is right now. What do you think the disconnect? Do you think a lot of it is we are just so polarized, either side will never give that other president credit? Look, there's some of that, but we also have something that I think is really interesting starting to happen where economic growth numbers are not necessarily being reflected in the average American's take-home pay and their sense of their own economic success.
And you're beginning to see this kind of dual-track economic recovery where people are disconnected from these numbers that the Bureau of Economic Statistics put out because they're still feeling price increases, their average wages are not rising fast enough to keep up with prices. I mean, so there's a disconnect in the economics here. And again, you know, not to put everything on the previous administration, but it's only been a year. There's a lot of climbing out of the most disastrous economic policies since the Carter years that still has to be done. Yeah, no doubt about it.
So let's see if that's going to happen. First off, I know you're a foreign policy guy, but a 10% cap on credit cards seems like a lot of people. like a good way to stop the gouging. But on the other hand, the CEO and banks say, well, that means a lot more people are not going to be eligible for credit cards if the interest rate is just going to be at 10%.
So as opposed to 26%. Do you think that might be detrimental to making people feel better about their situation? Look, I don't worry about it too much, Brian. I mean, I think that one of the things that, you know, when you think about what is the issue that's most negatively affecting people, and what are they saying in surveys? What are they saying to their friends and neighbors?
They're saying, you know, they get in the cycle of endemic debt. They get in this cycle of usurious interest rates that are just bleeding them dry. And, you know, I think the president has to think about this not necessarily from, you know, what is the ideal Milton Friedman approach to free market, you know, free market economic approach. I think in a perfect world, we'd love to do whatever our libertarian economics textbooks told us to do. I think he's got to look at this from the perspective of the average American who is dealing with these usurious interest rates.
And that's what he's doing. And I think it's going to have a positive overall economic benefit by giving people more disposable income to spend in the economy when they're not racking up these astronomical credit card debts. I love the fact that Blackstone is and companies. Companies like that are going to be prevented from buying any more single-family homes because what was going on was absolutely insane. Mr.
and Mrs. Johnson are bidding against these behemoth investment companies, and then we'll become a country of renters.
So the President put a stop to it. Hopefully, he can put together something legislatively that would implement that effectively.
So let's go to an area of expertise. Steve Witkoff, after meeting to Bloomberg TV, after meeting with Vladimir Putin, along with Jared Kushner, CUT 27. Do you think we are close to the final 10% of this deal? Do you think this will get done in the next few weeks? The final 10%, I don't know about the next few weeks, but I know we've made more progress in the last six or seven weeks since Geneva than we've made, according to the Ukrainians.
Now I'm going to use their, what they say. According to the Ukrainians, more progress than in the last three or four years.
So, he's trying to be optimistic, what do you think, Alex? Look, I think that the United States has a unique opportunity here because the way the Russians, you know, despite the daily news that the Russians are on the ascendancy, Russia is in terminal decline. This military adventure has shown them to be completely headed to the ash heap of history. And I think we have an opportunity to put pressure on them. Military intelligence and other pressure, economic pressure, continue what the president has been doing, seizing the sanctioned oil all over the world.
We can force Putin to the table with his tail between his legs if we keep putting more pressure on him, despite some of the media speculation. Notice, Brian, the president has never taken our intelligence sharing away from Ukraine. The president has never taken away some of the targeting that we do and the coordination we do behind the scenes with the Ukrainians. We can increase that. We can do more there.
I think Putin needs to come to the table completely convinced that he has no tactical path forward. And that's when we will get the deal that we need to have a lasting peace. This is Ainsley Earhart. Thank you for joining me for the 52-episode podcast series, The Life of Jesus. A listening experience that will provide hope, comfort, and understanding of the greatest story ever told.
Listen and follow now at FoxNewsPodcasts.com or wherever you listen to podcasts.
So you got to up the ante, up the flow, get them the Patriot missiles that they've been asking for and the support. And I would I would say the Tomahawks. I mean, that might force them from the table permanently, I'm not sure. But just to say, look, you can't just have one side be able to reach the other capital, the other's capital, especially when that side started this whole thing. Yeah, and look, the president has a blueprint for this.
This is what we did in the first term when President Trump was the only American president since the end of the Cold War on whose watch Putin didn't do any territorial aggression. And that was because we consistently made it clear publicly and privately that we would not allow, we would deter, we would prevent, we would use any means necessary to prevent Putin from expanding territorially or engaging in aggression against his neighbors. And that's the path here. Overwhelming American strength. Donald Trump has two things going for him.
He's got restored deterrence and he's got the strategic ambiguity that he cultivates where you never know what he's going to do. He likes to compare himself to Nixon and the madman theory. The fact that Putin doesn't know how far he's willing to escalate and the fact that he's restored the lost deterrence from the Biden era, that gives us the ability to put Putin on his heels and to drive a deal. Deal that is to our benefit and the benefit of a long-lasting peace. I hear you.
Now, let's go to Iran if I can. The President of the United States yesterday on Air Force One, Cut 28. We know we have A lot of Ships going that direction just in case we have a big Flotilla going in that direction. And we'll see what happens. We have a big force going toward Iran.
I'd rather not see anything happen, but we're watching them very closely. And they're just killing their people by the thousands. And the president says we have a flotilla there led by the USS Abraham Lincoln. The USS George H.W. Bush is also evidently heading that direction.
We did say we would support the protesters, many of which are dead.
So what do you think uh what is America what should America do? From here on in. Yeah, well, Brian, we should ask: what's our core interest here, right? And our core interest is making sure that the Ayatollahs do not have the ability to reconstitute their nuclear program and their missile program, threaten Israel, threaten our Gulf Arab allies, and they don't have the ability to reconstitute Hezbollah and Hamas and Islamic Jihad and all the other groups that they've been funding that have been spreading terror for 35 years. That's our core interest.
And now we have to stand in solidarity with the Iranian people. We can't have an Obama 2009 moment. But I think first and foremost, we have to make clear to the Ayatollah that this carrier strike group is in the region to make clear America has some red lines, right? America, unlike Obama, these are red lines that are going to be stick and we're going to keep to them. Again, to me, it's nuclear program, missile program, and restarting the proxies.
And if they go down the road of doing those again, the president reserves and should reserve every right to do another midnight hammer operation. Alex Gray, we also. Have the White House has now announced agreements between Caracas and Washington on the sale of $500 million worth of Venezuelan crude. They said that they already have $300 million from us, and it looks like Rodriguez, as checkered as our past is, is moving forward on providing security for any other companies that want to come in and begin to drill oil in their country. I'm not sure what it's like on the streets.
I don't get many reports. What are you hearing? And what about the progress since Maduro was taken?
Well, it's hard to deny that the progress in getting a compliant Venezuelan regime because they don't want to have, you know, Delsi Rodriguez and her brother don't want to look up and see Delta Force coming through the chimney, right? They don't want to deal with that. They don't want to have sonic weapons hitting their Cuban guards. I think it's very clear that, you know, look, there needs to be a transition, Brian, to a democratic process. That's going to take time.
And we have a precedent. Look at Spain after Franco. Look at Indonesia after their dictatorship. We don't always, when we have successful democratic transitions, they don't always happen overnight as much as we'd like that.
Sometimes we have to have a former member of the bad regime that stays in power for a little bit. I think that's what's happening here. And hopefully over the next year, two years, three years, we redo this institutional structure in Venezuela that has been destroyed over 25 years by the Chavistas. We have to rebuild it with them. and be in a position that we can actually have a free and fair democratic election and get someone like a machado in who's going to be a long-term partner.
Alex, do you think two years before an election? At least. Wow.
Okay. Lastly, the President evidently says I want a regime change in Cuba before the end of the year. It doesn't look they got one people you know who's re who's who's who's putting giving them a call a A lifesaver these days, Mexico. They're flowing oil into Cuba. We got to put a stop to that.
And then, who else is keeping that horrible regime in power? It's time for the Castros to go. Do you think the president's got the president need a plan for that, and what would it look like?
Well, I think the beginning of a plan is emerging, Brian. And it starts with, like you said, Mexico is part of the problem, but China has a surveillance station there right off the coast, right off the coast of Florida, 90 miles. The Russians have been still pumping as many resources as they can spare to help the Cubans stay in power, help the Castro regime stay in power. And the Venezuelan oil was a major, major part of keeping that regime afloat. Cut off the Venezuelan oil.
Make clear to Mexico that this is non-negotiable for us. This is a direct threat to the security of the United States. Make that clear to them that we will not tolerate that. And tell the Chinese, if you want to have a trade negotiation with us, you will remove your surveillance stations from the Cuban coast immediately as a prerequisite for any conversation with us on trade. Greenland, do you like the deal as it's taking shape now?
Expanding bases, having command center led by an American commander in the area, begin to patrol. The Arctic and possibly have a. I'm not sure about the details, but I know there's something to do with the rare earth that they have. What do you think about how this deal has taken shape? It's a great start.
It solves a number of immediate term problems. I think over the long term, Brian, my biggest concern, as I've written about and testified about, is that Greenland's going to go back on its path to independence. An independent Greenland eventually is going to be quickly gobbled up by the Chinese and the Russians. And we have to have a longer-term political solution that makes sure that we don't have a Chinese colony on our coast. That can look in a number of different ways.
This solves the immediate term, and the president deserves a huge amount of credit for it. But this is going to be a problem that's going to outlast whoever is in the Oval Office right now. I hear you.
Thanks so much. Alex Gray, always great, CEO of the American Global Strategies. Go get him, Alex. Thanks, Brian.
