Press Briefing by Ambassador O'Brien, Ambassador Grenell, Senior Advisor Kushner, and Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany | September 4, 2020 | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Q But Russia said that -

    AMBASSADOR O'BRIEN: I'm sorry, go ahead.

    Q Ambassador O'Brien, a question on Serbia and Kosovo, and then I just have a follow-up on that. In terms of the two parties agreeing to freeze the recognition and de-recognition campaigns, how long will that last? And how important is it to the administration that Serbia recognize Kosovo's independence?

    AMBASSADOR O'BRIEN: So I think it's a year freeze, so that - and that the idea of that freeze is to give the parties time to negotiate some of the political issues that are between them. And our European partners - there's a European special envoy Mr. Lajčák, who is involved in those talks. We're going to be supporting the Europeans in those political talks.

    There are a lot of issues involved there, whether it's EU membership or mutual recognition. So there are a number of issues that the Serbs and Kosovars will address. We'll support the Europeans as they address those issues.

    What we wanted to do in this agreement was create some breathing space for the parties to engage in those without the back-and-forth campaign of recognition and de-recognition.

    What's striking though is that as part of that deal, Kosovo was allowed - and I shouldn't say "allowed" - that Kosovo did make the decision as a Muslim-majority country to normalize its relations with Israel, to recognize Israel, and to establish an embassy in Jerusalem, in the capital of Israel. And we appreciate the fact that the Serbs have not taken a position on that.

    So although we have - we're going to have a suspension on the de-recognition campaign and the recognition campaigns - two sides of the same coin - for the next year, we were able to achieve, with the courage and bravery of the leaders - of President Vučić and Prime Minister Hoti and Prime Minister Netanyahu - we were able to achieve this, you know, very remarkable breakthrough. Again, the second time in now a month. It took, I think, 40 years to have two Muslim-majority countries recognize Israel. Now we've had two Muslim-majority countries recognize Israel in less than a month.


    So it's a remarkable achievement in the context of this this overall freeze that will give the parties space to negotiate a deal.

    Q Just to follow up on what Ben was asking you: Attorney General Barr said earlier this week that he feels China is being more aggressive in meddling in the election than Russia is. Do you agree with that assessment?

    AMBASSADOR O'BRIEN: Yeah. I agree with him 100 percent.

    Q And then I just want to follow up on that, and then I've also got a question about Israel. Can you just characterize, at this point, the extent and the level to which both China, Russia, and other foreign countries are, right now, trying to spread disinformation about the 2020 campaign?

    AMBASSADOR O'BRIEN: Look, it's hard to know, you know, what impact they can have or how they're spreading things. I think some of our tech companies are doing a good job in trying to police - whether it's Facebook or Twitter or others - they're trying to police things in a way that they didn't before.

    Our intelligence community is doing a good job in trying to track these things. DHS, Department of Homeland Security, with increased funding from this administration, is doing a good job in hardening our infrastructure to make sure that - whether it's cyber infrastructure or physical infrastructure, to make sure that we're not susceptible to having the choice that the American people make on Election Day changed by some foreign party.

    There's always going to be propaganda; there's always going to be efforts to influence us. And again, we know that the Chinese have taken the most active role, but the Russians and the Iranians and other countries are involved as well.

    So we're going to keep monitoring it, and we're going to do everything we can to protect the sanctity of our election. That's the foundation of our democracy; that's what makes us America. And we're just not going to tolerate, you know, these other countries trying to get involved in our elections.

    Q In the Oval Office today - an Israel question.

    AMBASSADOR O'BRIEN: Sure. Quick follow-up on Israel. I want to make sure everyone gets a chance.

    Q Yeah. The President had said in the Oval Office earlier that there are other Arab countries that are also interested in following in the UAE's footsteps. Can you talk about where we're at in that process, what countries are interested in -

    AMBASSADOR O'BRIEN: You know, I better send that over to Senior Advisor Kushner - to Jared, who just returned from the region, and maybe he'll give you some background there.

    MR. KUSHNER: Thank you. I'm not going to give as much background. But bottom line is this: When we did the Israel-United Arab Emirates deal, that caught a lot of people by surprise because of the diplomacy that we were able to do was to keep things private. Obviously, we had some great discussions in the region. And we are hopeful that more people will want to move forward.

    I think a lot of the countries are quite envious of the opportunities that will now be available to the United Arab Emirates in terms of mutual investments, mutual tourism, investing in technology, security partnerships.

    So we're seeing that peace agreement actually starting to really pick up a lot of momentum. And the delegations that traveled with Ambassador O'Brien and myself had very, very fruitful discussions. I think both sides were surprised to see the eagerness of the other side to move forward, and the level of getting agreements adjudicated and completed is happening much quicker than people thought.

    Other countries, again, see the benefits of having a Middle East and - that's united. And if you look at what President Trump did on his first foreign trip, he went to Saudi Arabia and he outlined, very clearly, what his strategy was going to be, what he saw as the challenges.


    And, again, if you just go from that snapshot to now three and a half years later, you have a Middle East where ISIS is defeated, Iran has been significantly rolled back. The proxies that they've been funding, that have been spreading terror and instability throughout the region, are much shorter on cash than they were before. He's brought the different sides together.

    And, you know, one story that I think doesn't get enough attention is the fact that, in the last election, a lot of what we were talking about was the spread of extremism through the Internet and then also the funding of terror groups.

    And President Trump, on that first trip, set up two different organizations in Saudi Arabia: one was the counterterror finance organization that unified a lot of the Middle Eastern systems with our Treasury Department, and we got more transparency than we've ever had. That significantly reduced the amount of funding that's gone to terror groups over the last three and a half years.

    The next thing we set up was the counter-extremism center, which has been fighting the ideological battle online and has been making really a tremendous amount of progress towards reducing the misinformation that's been used to pervert a lot of the youth.

    So we're seeing a lot of progress in the Middle East, and I think a lot of countries at this point see it as an inevitability that they're going to have normal relations with Israel and that - in order for people to live better lives.

    It's not dissimilar to Serbia and Kosovo where, you know, their leaders are coming together to realize that while there are differences, you know, human beings want to get together, they want to have better lives and opportunity; and the more that the leaders in the Middle East, you know, put old differences behind, they're creating a new opportunity for a new Middle East and a bright future where people can live securely, practice whatever religion they choose, respect each other, and have economic opportunity, which is critical towards people, you know, seeing a pathway to a better life.

    Q Thank you. This is actually for Jared. Two questions. I'll just combine them to make this easier. With the election coming up in two months, I'm curious as to how you feel about what you've accomplished so far, but whether or not you feel pressured to get more done before November.

    And secondly, because I know you would have been part of these conversations in time, I do want to ask them about that Atlantic report that we saw today and how, in a 2018 planning meeting for a military parade, the President reportedly said he didn't want amputees there; he said, "Nobody wants to see that." Have any of you, but particularly you, ever heard the President talk like that?

    MR. KUSHNER: The answer is no. Look, what I find in Washington is strange, is sometimes you'll have a couple unnamed sources and the media treats that as a panacea. And then you'll have, you know, 10 people on the record saying it didn't happen and you give no credence to that.

    That does not represent the way that I've seen the President conduct himself. He has tremendous respect for the military, for our veterans. He's - you know, again, the media tries to ascribe a different way, but you have to look at his actions, and I think his actions have been incredible towards supporting the military, strengthening the military, and strengthening our veterans.

    But with regards to your question on timing: Look, deals - deals happen when deals are ready. And I do think that, you know, you can't just come in, wave a magic wand, and make impossible deals happen, right?

    People, you know, describe peace in the Middle East as something that's so - it's less a deal and more of a saying for what is impossible. And it's taken a lot of building blocks that had to be moved, a lot of untraditional moves. When the President moved the embassy to Jerusalem, when he recognized the Golan Heights, when he got out of the Iran deal, when we did our economic conference in Bahrain - it's probably 50 decisions that the President has made that allowed him to create a different course.

    And each one along the way, you've had people, like the magazine you mentioned before, criticizing his foreign policy, saying it wasn't strategic, it didn't have a plan.

    But again, you know, he's not a traditional Washington person. And the traditional Washington people have a track record of creating those wars that we have sent our soldiers to that have, you know, led to a lot of them getting, you know, killed or hurt. And President Trump has been ending those wars and bringing his soldiers back home.

    And so I would say deals happen when deals are ready. And the deal that you saw last week had nothing to do with the election. It had everything to do with the fact that, you know, it's time for the President to start harvesting some of the accomplishments that he spent years building the foundation in order to achieve.

    And what I would say, too, is that if you look at, you know, the world, foreign policy is a big chess game, and you have a lot of pieces all over the board in different places. And the President has been masterful with the way that he's built different relationships, taken some pieces off the board, created different issues in other places. And I think that he's set the board up very, very well now to have continued successes in the years ahead.

    So, obviously, the voters will decide whether they give President Trump four more years. But if they do give him four more years, I think you'll see that Iran is in a much weaker position than they were four years ago; North Korea, we've had obviously a much better situation than they had four years ago; Venezuela is in a different situation.

    The Middle East went from a place that - you know, again, when President Trump got in, Libya was a mess, Syria was a mess, Yemen was a mess. All of our allies felt alienated. Iraq was a mess. And you see a much different Middle East today than we had three and a half years ago. And that's not an accident; that's because President Trump has had a good strategy and he's worked very hard to manifest that.

    So now we're starting to see some of the fruits from his labor. But I do believe that we'll see even more and more of that as time goes on.


    So we're set up for more successes hopefully in the weeks ahead, the months ahead, but definitely in the years ahead, to take President Trump's America First foreign policy, where he's making trade deals for the first time that are endorsed by our workers and our labor unions, that are bringing jobs back home. He's representing our farmers, he's representing our ranchers, he's representing our manufacturers.