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

    And he's also ending these endless wars and figuring out how to bring our soldiers home and fighting the threats from overseas so that Americans can prosper here at home.

    AMBASSADOR O'BRIEN: And let me just weigh in for one second on your last question about the Atlantic article, which I thought was really a sad article for any magazine to have published.

    And while I wasn't in the meeting that's described there, I've worked for this President for two and a half years, first as a hostage envoy and for the last year as his national security advisor. In both those jobs, I've had to meet extensively with the President on military issues, whether it's a hostage rescue mission or how we're going to deploy our troops around the world.

    And, look, in my current job, I have the sad duty of having to call him, sometimes in the middle of the night, if we lose a soldier, sailor, airman, or Marine in combat, which hasn't - fortunately hasn't happened since February, or on a training accident; we've had some of those recently. And I can tell you how hard those calls are for me to make but also for the President to receive.

    I've spent a bunch of time with the President on numerous trips to Dover and seeing how he's been with the families of our fallen heroes for those dignified transfers. And I can tell you that's the toughest job any President has is to go up to Dover and bring our fallen heroes home, and mourn with their families and grieve with their families and comfort their families.

    And I think if you talk to any of them who had been there for the transfers when the President has been there, I've seen him send me to Dover. I've - you know, when he couldn't go because of scheduling issues or him being overseas, asking me to represent him there.

    I've been with him at Walter Reed, where we've seen our wounded heroes. And the interaction between the President and our wounded heroes at Walter Reed is something that's pretty incredible to see.

    I can tell you, when we discuss options - and sometimes we have to discuss military options for some of the foreign policy and national security issues that we face - the President will ask me, you know, "Is there a way that we can do this without sending U.S. soldiers or sailors or Marines or airmen into harm's way?" "If we have to send them into harm's way, and it's going to be a tough situation, like the Baghdadi raid, for example, how do we make sure we protect them to the maximum extent available?" And if that means putting three or four levels of air power over them, it means doing that.

    And the President is unstinting in what he's willing to provide to our troops. He's funded the military so that we can give them every tool necessary to accomplish our missions and come home safely.

    You know, so I think if you talk to any of us who work at the NSC, any of us who have worn the uniform before - whether it's Keith Kellogg or Matt Pottinger or myself, or Mark Milley over at the Pentagon, or those that spend a lot of time with the President, especially when military matters are discussed; when our current military personnel, our troops are discussed; our veterans are discussed - you're not going to find, you know, anybody who's more sympathetic to their situation than the President of the United States.


    So I don't believe a word of what was in The Atlantic article because I've had two and a half years of working side by side with the President, and I've never seen anything like that. And I thought it was - it was pretty disappointing that some magazine would write that.

    Q Ambassador O'Brien, on the topic of service members - first, thanks to all three of you for hosting this - is the U.S. going to respond to Russia's recent aggression toward U.S. forces in Syria?

    AMBASSADOR O'BRIEN: Yeah, so one of the things that we do constantly is we respond to forces. You know, operational security, op-sec, is critical to us anywhere our soldiers, sailors, airmen, or Marines operate - whether it's in a maritime environment, on land, in the air.

    And we do see aggressive behavior from the Russians. We've seen that with some of the intercepts that we've seen. We've seen it over the past couple years in how they've interacted with our naval vessels. We've seen it in this current - you know, in the current situation with the patrols coming across each other.

    But I can tell you that, you know, American forces have rules of engagement designed to protect them, to allow them to defend themselves. You know, there was an unfortunate incident when Russians - purportedly Russian mercenaries - attempted to overrun one of our forward operating bases in Syria a couple years ago. That didn't end too well for them. And - because, again, President Trump gave our soldiers, in that instance, the ability to defend themselves, you know, with airpower, with long-range fires, with their own resources.

    So, you know, we're going to make sure that everywhere we operate, whether it's operating in a place that's in close proximity to the Russians, to any other adversary, that the men and women in uniform will be able to defend themselves and protect themselves.

    Q Has that warning been communicated to the Russian government?

    AMBASSADOR O'BRIEN: It's been communicated to them very clearly.

    Q By you or by the President?

    AMBASSADOR O'BRIEN: It's been communicated at the appropriate level.

    Q And to whom was it in Russia specifically?

    AMBASSADOR O'BRIEN: I'm not going to get into those details because we want to have those channels open, but they received a very strong message.

    Q Thank you.

    Q Thanks, Ambassador O'Brien. I wanted to follow with a couple on China. I'm wondering what specifically you're seeing from China that makes you believe that they have a bigger or harder-working electoral interference operation than Russia or other countries.

    And then based on that, or, you know, the litany of other concerns that you've described about China, if you could kind of tell us the status of efforts by the administration to either go after Chinese firms or imports or diplomatic issues with China.

    AMBASSADOR O'BRIEN: Yeah, so let me talk about the China situation overall. So probably the biggest failure of American foreign policy over the past 40 years is how we've dealt with China.

    There was this mantra that somehow, as China became richer, as we turned a blind eye to Chinese malign activity - whether it's stealing our IP or engaging in unfair trade practices or bullying its neighbors - if we just turned - bullying its own people at Tiananmen Square - if we would turn the other cheek, turn a blind eye, that China would become richer as it became more - as it became richer and the middle class in China grew, they'd become more like us. And we always want to - you know, we want to believe that everyone wants to become like us, that they'll become more Western, more democratic.

    In fact, all the opposite occurred: China's human rights violations have gotten worse and worse over the years, whether it's the Uighurs or religious minorities, or their neighbors; the people who enjoyed democracy in Hong Kong until just recently; the bullying of Taiwan.

    So we've seen very malign Chinese activity. The theft of intellectual property has gotten so bad that Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, recently called it the "greatest wealth transfer in human history" - was a theft by the Chinese of our intellectual property.

    Now, that's not just an abstract concept. Okay? That's sweat equity; that's American innovators. That's people that are putting their - put their whole life into dreams; people who have invented things in their garages; people who built companies, who've done everything they can to create an idea and turn an idea into reality.

    And then what happens? That idea gets stolen by China. And it's not just that they've lost the economic value of their innovation or of their - of their method of doing business. The Chinese have taken it, sometimes using slave labor but using cheaper labor; often manufacture products that compete at a lower price, and then put the original person who invented the technology out of business. And then kill the industry for the United States, and whole industries go to China; whole manufacturing plants go to China.


    I mean, it's been really astounding. Chris Wray said that - also said that the FBI is opening a new espionage case against the Chinese every 10 hours. The scope of Chinese activity against the United States is relentless. It's - we've never seen anything like it. There was nothing like this in the Cold War with the Soviets.

    So this president, President Trump, stood up to the Chinese for the first time in 40 years. He put tariffs on the Chinese. We had a trade - a phase one trade deal that partially addressed some of the unfair trade practices and was a huge step in the right direction. But as soon as that was signed, we ended up with the - the President calls it the "China plague" or the COVID outbreak here, which made that, you know, somewhat irrelevant because of the tremendous losses we suffered, again, because the Chinese wouldn't share the virus samples with us early, wouldn't let CDC doctors come into China early to investigate, wouldn't let WHO doctors come into China to investigate, wouldn't restrict travel from China to overseas, especially to Europe, when they were restricting travel within China.

    So - so again, you know, it, you know -

    >Q
    AMBASSADOR O'BRIEN: You know - well, look, when it comes to the election, everything that they're doing across the board, whether it's political influence through the Confucius Institutes; whether it's them trying to influence business leaders by saying, "If you don't support us in the U.S., your companies won't have opportunities in China, and convey that to your governors and convey that to your political leaders"; that the massive - and I'm not going to go into all the intelligence, but the massive activities of the Chinese in the cyber realm, it's really an extraordinary thing that we're facing.

    And again, this is the first President that stood up to the Chinese. I hope he's not going to be the last President who stands up to the Chinese.

    And as difficult as the problem is, let me tell you, I'm confident in the United States of America. I believe, at the end of the day, we're going to prevail. We've got a "peace through strength" foreign policy, finally, that we've been missing for some time now. We're investing in our defense. We're taking strong action on the diplomatic front against the Chinese. We're taking strong action on the trade front. We're protecting our intellectual property.

    We're not going to - we've called out the Communist Chinese Party. We're taking strong action and have massive sanctions on the Chinese for the first time because of their treatment of the Uighurs or their treatment of democrats in Hong Kong.

    I think, at the end of the day, our allies are going to follow us, which you've seen happening with 5G and Huawei; and we're seeing many, many countries, including our closest allies, turning away from the Chinese, turning away from Huawei and going with trusted providers on 5G. So I think, at the end of the day, America is going to prevail. I think President Trump's vision of free markets and free women and free men is an attractive message, not just to our allies, but to even people within China.

    So, you know, I'm confident in the future, but I'll tell you, this is a challenge. It's a heck of a challenge. But I'm convinced that, under President Trump's leadership, the American people are up to the challenge.

    (Cross-talk.)

    I think we'll turn things over to - if there's a Kosovo-Servia question, raise your hand. And otherwise, I'm going to turn things over to Kayleigh.


    Q I do. Right here, Mr. Ambassador.

    AMBASSADOR O'BRIEN: Back there.

    Q Thank you. Actually, I appreciate you calling on me, but this question may be more appropriate for Ric or Jared, in the sense that they deal with both policy and politics.