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Save up to 40% your first year at lifelock.com slash podcast. Terms apply. We have seen most intelligence sharing with the UK. To give you one example, there's no restriction on the UK sharing that intelligence with Ukraine. So what I suspect is happening here, and I could be proven wrong, is that this is an escalate to deescalate tactic by the administration to bring these parties to the table and to come to a conclusion, a just conclusion, which means success and victory for Ukraine.
And I want to emphasize that. So that is a former FBI guy turned Pennsylvania Congressman Brian Fitzpatrick talking about the decision to no longer share intelligence and satellites with the Ukrainians, as well as pause weapons because of the fallout from two weeks ago in the Oval Office. And I understand you want to get them to the table and you don't think they were serious about it, whatever. But I don't teach you let innocent people die, and that's a little bit what's happening because the Russians say this is oh my goodness, let's blow up all their energy and let's start shooting at apartments. They won't be able to stop us and he can't use the F 16. I really question the tactic as talks get underway.
The US delegation left today to start tomorrow in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia with the Ukrainians to see where to go forward. Senator Tom Cotton joins us now the same Tom Cotton, who's the author of the number one bestseller seven things you can say about China and China is been good to you, Senator, because they stay in the news and they stay threatening almost in every and on every turn. Welcome back.
Right. It's good to be on the US. When I wrote this book, I figured that Communist China will continue to give us important news hooks to talk to the American people about seven things you can't say about China and the way they threaten our safety and our way of life, not just at some distant point in the future, but right now today. And and I want to get to that in a second.
But can we just bring you to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia? Do you think the president's strength in Ukraine's hand or weakened it with his decisions over the last few days? Well, the pause that you were talking about, the intelligence pause is part of the administration wide pause on intelligence. I can tell you that I've spoken with CIA director John Ratcliffe about it. He did tell me, as I believe you said publicly, that it would be temporary and brief. And the president, you probably saw last night, said that we're to the point of getting the intelligence support turned back on.
I do think that's important, Brian. That's the point you made is Ukraine hasn't had a lot of intelligence support in the last few days. It has a lot of weapons right now. Ukraine is still fighting, still fighting on the Eastern Front. It's still defending its civilian targets. But the intelligence support that the United States provides is really vital for it to use those weapons, for it to defend its people, to defend its troops. And the best way to get to a lasting and durable peace is for Russia to continue to face pressure on the battlefield. So I was pleased to hear the president's comments last night.
I haven't been able to check in this morning with the White House, with the CIA, but I hope we're on the verge of having that intelligence support turned back on. That's the best way to keep the pressure on Russia and to help get to the lasting peace that I know the president wants. So the way I understand it, the one area in Russia that Ukraine occupies is Kursk, and they're being pushed back because they can't get the long term weapons to push back and the intelligence to push back the Russians who are being led by the North Koreans. I mean, this sounds like a game of Stratego or something, but the North Koreans actually fighting in Russia, for Russia, and they're great because they run straight ahead into rocket fire, and then the Russians come up from behind. So this is really, the Ukrainians, you have to wonder if they feel as though they're abandoned. Don't you think it's important for them to hold on to that that piece of real estate for the negotiations? Yeah, Brian, that was the exact reason that Ukraine went into what's now known as the Kursk salient last year is Russia has seized so much Ukrainian land that Ukraine obviously wanted some Russian territory that could be used in negotiations to make concessions both sides to bring the war to an end.
You're right that that's where most of the North Korean troops, as far as we know, are fighting, not fighting very well, I would add. It's also, though, putting pressure on Ukraine or on Russia on the eastern front. Ukraine has been making some progress there over the last six months or so, but it's very, very slow.
There are indications that it's gotten even slower in the last few weeks. And obviously, without that kind of progress on the battlefield, Russia doesn't have much to look forward to either in any kind of significant battlefield success in the coming months. And if a war is not going to end on the battlefield, the only way it can end is through negotiations. And I think that's what President Trump's trying to do.
I think there's no doubt about it. So we'll see what happens. Everybody, I think, feels good about having Mike Waltz and Marco Rubio negotiating against or with Ukrainians who will sign this minerals deal and possibly talk about what they would love to see on confidence measures to let's say they give up attacks through the air or they stop missile attacks or they stop aiming for energy structures or of each other.
Something to start on the process. I guess we'll see what happens. The other area, which I'm very curious to get your response on, the president wrote Iran a note that basically said in that letter, we can negotiate, get rid of your nuclear weapons program so we don't have to use the other alternative. The Grand Ayatollah, in his only Grand Ayatollah way, said we'll not be threatened. We don't like that ultimatum and kind of just kicked it to the side.
What should our next step be? Well, you know, Brian, I agree entirely with the president. This is actually the first time the president I ever spoke to almost 10 years ago in the summer of 2015 as I was leading the fight against President Obama's nuclear deal, which was a terrible deal.
He called me and expressed his appreciation for that. So we've been aligned on this question for a decade. And he was very clear in his interview with your Fox News colleague, Maria Bartiromo, in an impromptu press conference last week. Iran can't be allowed to have a nuclear weapon. There's two ways to do that, bombs or a deal. Obviously, we all prefer to have a deal. We prefer Iran to do what, say, Libya did in 2003 when it was scared straight and threw open the doors and told the United States and the West to come in and take all of our nuclear weapons and for that matter, chemical and biological weapons as well and all the precursors for those weapons.
That's what a good deal would look like. Obviously, the Supreme Leader in Iran has a different approach. So unless they start singing a different tune and a deal is not going to happen along those lines. Well, I guess we all know what the alternative is, as President Trump said last week. That's why it's so important that he reimpose last month his maximum pressure campaign on Iran. We've seen time and time again with Joe Biden, with Barack Obama, the way to get a good deal is not through conciliation and appeasement, but through pressure and strength.
True. So having said that, they're also more vulnerable than ever before because of the damage the Israelis have done. We have a window for the first time, as General Jack Keane says in what, since 1979, to defang the biggest problem America and Israel has in the Middle East. And by the way, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Jordan, Egypt pretty much agree with us that Iran's the problem.
It's hard not to go through that window, isn't it? Yeah, I mean, that's exactly right, Brian. Israel's attacks last spring on Iran and then in October, both of which were in retaliation for Iran's attacks on Israel, has completely neutered Iran's defenses. You know, we constantly heard from Barack Obama and Joe Biden, well, Iran's homeland defenses are fearsome. They've got air defense and missile defenses from Russia. They have this ring of fire of terrorist proxies around Israel, Hezbollah and Hamas and others, and now it's all been totally neutered. Iran is completely defenseless in the skies over Iran, and Hamas is largely destroyed.
Hezbollah's rocket and missile forces, which is Iran's main deterrent, is severely degraded. Israel's made it clear that this is a window of opportunity in which they think that they can settle the Iran nuclear threat. They're happy to do it with a deal if it's a real and genuine deal that leads to Iran turning over all of the precursors of nuclear weapons. And the chances of that, Senator, are less than zero. If anyone's been paying it all attention from 11th grade on, they are not trustworthy. They don't want to give. They didn't even give in last time to on-site weapons inspectors, and they still had to have their coveted nuclear program.
So we know this is a lark, right? It seems very, very unlikely, Brian. Now, if anyone could do it, because again, Iran might be scared straight or they might be on the ropes financially, economically, politically, it could be Donald Trump, because Donald Trump takes his threat seriously. He's willing to put pressure on Iran. He's made it clear he's willing to use force if necessary. That's not his first choice. It's not my first choice, not your first choice.
But it's something that they didn't have to confront with Barack Obama and Joe Biden. So right now, you're on Armed Services Committee. You're trying to do two things. You're trying to get our military ready to take on China and on multiple threats.
Well, that has not been able to, with investment, even keep up with inflation over the last four years. At the same time, restructure the Pentagon in a way to make it more efficient, get rid of redundant antiquated programs. How big a task is that?
And is there a plan? Well, it's a monumental task, Brian. And I think, as I told Secretary Hegseth when he first came in after his nomination, that he's probably going to spot a few dozen problems in his early days in the Pentagon.
And he has to appreciate that if he can solve a dozen of them, that would probably be success. That's what Bob Gates talked about being the head of the Defense Department and running such a monumental organization. But there are some things that we just have to get right, like increasing our manufacturing capacity, not creating new stuff, but just being able to build the stuff that we need now, the kind of basic artillery shells or missiles or other munitions. Now, we do need to create new stuff as well, and that's another place that we really do have to get right, bringing in new startup innovative contractors who can build not just giant ships and bombers.
We certainly need those, but also the kinds of autonomous weapons and vehicles that we also need that the war in Ukraine has demonstrated the urgency of. So I think you can say for sure that when Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth leave their jobs in four years, that the Department of Defense is not going to be perfect, but I hope it'll be a lot better than it is now. And that's certainly something I'll work with them in Congress for the next four years on. I'm encouraged by the numbers I'm recruiting, too. People want to serve. I can't wait to see the ads, the image ads, to talk about how great it is to serve our country's military.
You served in the infantry after going to the Ivy Leagues, which is pretty very unique and amazing. So let's talk about China. It looks as though there's a report out from the South China Morning Post that Donald Trump may meet with President Xi as early as April.
Would you recommend that? That's fine, Brian. It's not so much the question of the meeting, it's what happens at the meeting. You know, Ronald Reagan met with Gorbachev four times in three years, ended up writing him, I think, more than 40 letters.
He even called him, you know, said that they had developed a friendship and a bond. So it's fine to have the meeting. What matters is what occurs at the meeting. And I think what occurs is President Trump will lay out in great detail the grievances, the crimes, the offenses that Communist China has committed against the United States and the free world and demand concessions on all of them.
And if he doesn't get it, then he'll do what he's already done, which is continue to increase tariffs, continue to rebuild our military in a way that deters the threat of Chinese aggression and rally our allies, countries like South Korea and Japan and the Philippines, Australia, to contain China's rising ambitions. If we don't, they will. Are you concerned about the pace of the what seems to be dress rehearsals in the overflights and harassment of Taiwan?
Yeah, very much so, Brian. This is true going back years. It's a very risky situation when you have all these military drills conducted around Taiwan and Japan, for that matter. It puts a lot of strain on Taiwan and Japan's military to scramble every time they have our communist Chinese aircraft or ships coming into their airspace or their territorial waters. That means that they're not training.
That means that those aircraft and ships are not getting the kind of maintenance resets that they need. It also is a kind of camouflage. Communist China keeps doing this. It can dull the census somewhat.
So if they do decide to go for the jugular one day, it might start out as something that looks like these drills. So, again, it's just one more example of the kinds of aggression that I write about. Some things you can't say about China that communist China has been pursuing against the United States and against our friends. Why do you think they view us as a problem? Why do you think they view us as an enemy? Well, there's still a communist regime, Brian. I mean, I know some people in the West have been tricked in years to think, oh, that's just a facade. Just something they say for their own people.
No, not at all. Look at Xi Jinping's public statements in Chinese. He is a Marxist-Leninist Maoist.
He probably one day hopes that future leaders of China are referred to Marxist-Leninist, because he probably hopes to replace Mao as the great leader of modern communist China. And like communist countries everywhere, whether it was communist Russia or communist Cuba now, they recognize that the United States is a fundamental threat to their way of life, a country that is built on the dignity of man, free rights and democratic self-governments. They can't help but be an affront to them because it shows them, it shows everyone else around the world what a legitimate model for self-government is. So when you look at their economy right now, from your indications, they got problems, don't they? I don't know how they're able to spend like they do, but they got huge economic problems. They have tons of economic problems and big demographic problems. China's population is starting to decline.
I wouldn't necessarily view that as a good thing, though, because unfortunately, you know, a cornered rat can sometimes lash out. And I think Xi sees this as a moment where China's power is maybe as great as it's going to be relative to the United States. And therefore, it may be time to settle all of China's grievances, most notably for them, their illegitimate desire to block a quarantine or even invade Taiwan and annex mainland China. So rather than being reassured by China's problems internally, I think we should view it as something that might cause China's leaders to be even more aggressive and more reckless than they otherwise might be. By the way, pick up his book.
It's number one in the country for a reason on The New York Times list, Seven Things You Can't Say About China. Everybody needs a competency in our number one adversary. Senator, thanks so much. Thank you, Brian.
Good to be honest with you. I'm Dana Perino. This week on Perino on Politics, I'm joined by former GOP strategist and host of The Rich Zeoli Show, Rich Zeoli, available now on FoxNewsPodcast.com or wherever you get your favorite podcasts. Must listen to podcasts from Fox News Audio. Listen to the show ad free on Fox News Podcast Plus on Apple Podcast, Amazon Music with your prime membership, or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.
