The Shell Game of Corrupted Government Exposed
Press Briefing by Ambassador O'Brien, Ambassador Grenell, Senior Advisor Kushner, and Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany | September 4, 2020
And if I may: As you know, in 1992, President George H.W. Bush ran for reelection largely on his foreign policy successes, and Americans largely rejected him for a second term. What makes you think, based upon the announcement that you made today, regarding Kosovo and Serbia, the announcement that came out just a few weeks ago regarding Israel and the UAE, that Americans are more focused on foreign policy; that they care about foreign policy; and that these announcements mean something to them?
MR. KUSHNER: Look, I think that these announcements are about President Trump keeping his promise to take on the hard fights, to end the endless wars, and to bring these troops home, and keep Americans safe. And I think that that's what it shows.
It also shows that President Trump has a track record of continuing to get things done. You know, he really has a great track record for success. Our economy was going great until the - until, obviously, the virus hit; we did a dip. People predicted we'd be down to 25 percent unemployment and that we wouldn't get to single digits unemployment until early next year. And, obviously, we had a great jobs report that came out today and we have more coming.
So the answer is, is people will vote for whoever they think will make their lives better. President Trump just happens to be doing a great job at foreign policy, delivering a lot of wins that had previously plagued the last administrations. And, quite frankly, the last administrations have had a lot of mistakes and a lot of adventurism that, you know, got us into these tough situations in these regions.
And today's agreement and all the success this week just shows again that President Trump is getting things done and keeping Americans safe and keeping his promise to the American people.
So - but he's not running on his foreign policy. He's running on his track record as the President who built the greatest economy in our country and somebody who's going to keep Americans safe and continue to get things done for them.
Q Another follow-up on Kosovo, please?
Q A question for Ambassador Grenell, please.
Q Ambassador Grenell, clearly you were effective here as the special envoy to these talks between Serbia and Kosovo. But I wanted to ask you about another initiative you led. Last year, you kicked off the Trump administration's push to decriminalize homosexuality -
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: Yeah, let me just talk about Kosovo and Serbia. I don't know if you can find it on a map. But this is atrocious. I have to tell you guys, you might be too young to understand what this issue is about. Maybe the older journalists should step up and say, "This is a big deal." This is a big issue. I'm astounded what happens in Washington, D.C., and especially in this room. I got to tell you, it's substantive. Maybe it's too complicated of an issue for you all.
Q Ric, respectfully, this is the first time we've had the opportunity to speak with these individuals. There are a lot of questions to address.
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: Okay, but today is about Kosovo and Serbia. Let's take a little time and talk about this 21-year issue, Peter. I mean, 21 years. We're getting the same questions that are all politics. I don't - you guys don't understand what's happening outside of Washington, D.C. People aren't listening to you anymore. It's really a crisis in journalism. And I think it's because people are too young to understand the issues like Kosovo and Serbia.
Q All right, can I ask you a question -
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: How about a substantive question?
Q - about the deal, please? I don't think any of us came here for a lecture about our questioning. But the -
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: Well, I didn't come here to not talk about anything about Kosovo and Serbia.
Q But the question I would like to ask you - the question I would like to ask you is: Is it accurate to say that it's "full economic normalization"? There was some ambiguity as to whether that is what the deal is about.
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: What - what do you mean by "full"?
Q Well, that's the question for you.
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: No, no, it's a question for you. What's your definition of "full"? This is economic normalization for whatever the two parties could bring together: a whole bunch on rail, a whole bunch on water, a whole bunch on a whole - different industries. So -
Q So is it more accurate to say, "Working towards economic normalization." Is that fair?
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: No, I think it's "incredible economic normalization" - air, rail, motor, opening borders, a whole bunch of industries. So, again, I don't know what's missing. And I defer to you to say what's - what's -
Q No, no. I wasn't the one who negotiated that.
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: - what's outside of "economic normalization" that's not included here. You tell me.
Q I'm genuinely asking so that we can write our stories accurately.
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: Yeah.
Q Do we say that they -
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: I am saying "economic normalization."
Q - have achieved an "economic normalization deal"? And then -
Q What changed from, you know, a few months ago when they pulled down the tariffs to today? What is the substantive difference?
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: Have you read the agreement?
Q You haven't put the agreement out.
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: It's out.
A whole bunch - a whole bunch has changed since the dropping of the tariffs. The tariffs were the political sticking point of why we couldn't have the parties come together. The Serb side was not going to even start negotiations when there's a 100 percent tariff from the Kosovars.
Q Sure. So what's the substantive thing that changed today? Like the actual -
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: There's -
Q - like what is -
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: There's a whole bunch of stuff that changed today in terms of economic development, in terms of identification for even some political problems that are going to be resolved.
AMBASSADOR O'BRIEN: Licenses and diplomas.
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: Yeah. I would really refer you to look at the entire agreement.
One sticking point that has been, for a long time, something that the two sides couldn't agree on was the recognition of diplomas. If you were trained as a nurse in Serbia and your degree was from a Serbian University, you couldn't get a job in Kosovo because you weren't qualified; you didn't have the proper certificate. That now, with this agreement, goes away. I think that's economic normalization for people who have certificates in dental hygiene, in pharmacies - pharmaceutical experts.
There are a whole bunch of people who could not work simply because they didn't have the proper career credentials, and this agreement completely will recognize all diplomas from universities, from either side.
I'll give you one more example: American companies were telling us they were pulling out, like rental car companies - because if you rented a car in Kosovo, you couldn't drive over the border. You couldn't leave. So people who were wanting to go for tourist purposes or to visit the region, or to try to do business deals, they couldn't actually leave with that rental car. And so we had American businesses beginning to pull back to say, "It just doesn't make sense." The Europeans were complaining just as much. There was a perceived conflict.
And I think what we have now, with this historic air agreement, rail agreement, motor agreement - all of the things that they've committed to implement will create normalized commerce. And that is something that has never been tried.
We have been stuck on literally verbs and symbolism in terms of negotiations on the politics. And we're going to try something new.
Q The president of Serbia said today to local reporters that - I can read the quote: "We have made a bilateral agreement with the U.S., not Kosovo." Can you clarify what that means?
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: Yeah, well, first of all, I don't - I would never try to clarify what President Vučić means when he's talking to the Serbian press. I can tell you what he said inside the Oval Office, which was that this was a historic agreement to normalize the region. He talked about the Mini Schengen Zone, which is now going to be an economic region.
So I think it might have been lost in translation a little bit, but make no mistake that the agreement that they signed is definitely an agreement to expand commerce in the region. And there's no question that when you look at diplomas, for instance, or the one-year freeze on the recognition and de-recognition, on even the rail agreement - there's a U.S. Department of Energy study that will take place on a lake that is largely in Kosovo; a portion is in Serbia. We're going to do a feasibility study to figure out what kind of jobs can be created in - around the water. There's no question that that's a shared agreement.
Q But did they sign an agreement with each other, or did they sign an agreement with the United States?
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: They signed an agreement to work with each other.
Q They didn't -
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: They did not sign with the United States. We're not a signature.
Q Well, President Trump signed something; we watched him.
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: Yeah. Correct.
Q What did he sign?
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: He signed a - how would you describe it? A - basically, a letter acknowledging that they are going to work together and do this agreement.
Q Okay, maybe it's easiest to ask this way: Can you just lay out very specifically what each gentleman signed today? What was that?
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: They both signed agreements to work together to normalize their economic and commerce relationship.
Q But the agreements are not the same, right? For both sides.
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: They are 99.9 percent the same, but of course, there's -
Q Then what is - what was different?
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: There's one - there's one point that's different at the very bottom, which is that Serbia is going to move its embassy by July of next year. That's on the Serbian agreement. And for the Kosovo, their last point - everything is identical until the last point. The last point for Kosovo is that they have a mutual recognition with Israel.
Q And the infamous "item 10" they were mentioning yesterday, that's taken out, right? I mean, that's what President Vučić was saying today.
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: Yeah. First of all, it's wrong to say that that was "item 10." None of these were numbered. So I don't know where that came from.
Q I don't know why - they just called it that.
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: When we were negotiating, there were a whole bunch of issues on the table. A whole - a lot of things were changed and edited, as you can imagine, in negotiations that this does.
For someone to leak a partial sentence and pretend like this was the entire agreement, I think is typical politics. But nothing was numbered, certainly wasn't number 10. And nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to. So something leaked out in terms of negotiation, but it was partial, and I think it was highlighted in a way that gave a false impression.
Go Back
MR. KUSHNER: Look, I think that these announcements are about President Trump keeping his promise to take on the hard fights, to end the endless wars, and to bring these troops home, and keep Americans safe. And I think that that's what it shows.
It also shows that President Trump has a track record of continuing to get things done. You know, he really has a great track record for success. Our economy was going great until the - until, obviously, the virus hit; we did a dip. People predicted we'd be down to 25 percent unemployment and that we wouldn't get to single digits unemployment until early next year. And, obviously, we had a great jobs report that came out today and we have more coming.
So the answer is, is people will vote for whoever they think will make their lives better. President Trump just happens to be doing a great job at foreign policy, delivering a lot of wins that had previously plagued the last administrations. And, quite frankly, the last administrations have had a lot of mistakes and a lot of adventurism that, you know, got us into these tough situations in these regions.
And today's agreement and all the success this week just shows again that President Trump is getting things done and keeping Americans safe and keeping his promise to the American people.
So - but he's not running on his foreign policy. He's running on his track record as the President who built the greatest economy in our country and somebody who's going to keep Americans safe and continue to get things done for them.
Q Another follow-up on Kosovo, please?
Q A question for Ambassador Grenell, please.
Q Ambassador Grenell, clearly you were effective here as the special envoy to these talks between Serbia and Kosovo. But I wanted to ask you about another initiative you led. Last year, you kicked off the Trump administration's push to decriminalize homosexuality -
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: Yeah, let me just talk about Kosovo and Serbia. I don't know if you can find it on a map. But this is atrocious. I have to tell you guys, you might be too young to understand what this issue is about. Maybe the older journalists should step up and say, "This is a big deal." This is a big issue. I'm astounded what happens in Washington, D.C., and especially in this room. I got to tell you, it's substantive. Maybe it's too complicated of an issue for you all.
Q Ric, respectfully, this is the first time we've had the opportunity to speak with these individuals. There are a lot of questions to address.
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: Okay, but today is about Kosovo and Serbia. Let's take a little time and talk about this 21-year issue, Peter. I mean, 21 years. We're getting the same questions that are all politics. I don't - you guys don't understand what's happening outside of Washington, D.C. People aren't listening to you anymore. It's really a crisis in journalism. And I think it's because people are too young to understand the issues like Kosovo and Serbia.
Q All right, can I ask you a question -
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: How about a substantive question?
Q - about the deal, please? I don't think any of us came here for a lecture about our questioning. But the -
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: Well, I didn't come here to not talk about anything about Kosovo and Serbia.
Q But the question I would like to ask you - the question I would like to ask you is: Is it accurate to say that it's "full economic normalization"? There was some ambiguity as to whether that is what the deal is about.
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: What - what do you mean by "full"?
Q Well, that's the question for you.
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: No, no, it's a question for you. What's your definition of "full"? This is economic normalization for whatever the two parties could bring together: a whole bunch on rail, a whole bunch on water, a whole bunch on a whole - different industries. So -
Q So is it more accurate to say, "Working towards economic normalization." Is that fair?
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: No, I think it's "incredible economic normalization" - air, rail, motor, opening borders, a whole bunch of industries. So, again, I don't know what's missing. And I defer to you to say what's - what's -
Q No, no. I wasn't the one who negotiated that.
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: - what's outside of "economic normalization" that's not included here. You tell me.
Q I'm genuinely asking so that we can write our stories accurately.
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: Yeah.
Q Do we say that they -
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: I am saying "economic normalization."
Q - have achieved an "economic normalization deal"? And then -
Q What changed from, you know, a few months ago when they pulled down the tariffs to today? What is the substantive difference?
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: Have you read the agreement?
Q You haven't put the agreement out.
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: It's out.
A whole bunch - a whole bunch has changed since the dropping of the tariffs. The tariffs were the political sticking point of why we couldn't have the parties come together. The Serb side was not going to even start negotiations when there's a 100 percent tariff from the Kosovars.
Q Sure. So what's the substantive thing that changed today? Like the actual -
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: There's -
Q - like what is -
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: There's a whole bunch of stuff that changed today in terms of economic development, in terms of identification for even some political problems that are going to be resolved.
AMBASSADOR O'BRIEN: Licenses and diplomas.
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: Yeah. I would really refer you to look at the entire agreement.
One sticking point that has been, for a long time, something that the two sides couldn't agree on was the recognition of diplomas. If you were trained as a nurse in Serbia and your degree was from a Serbian University, you couldn't get a job in Kosovo because you weren't qualified; you didn't have the proper certificate. That now, with this agreement, goes away. I think that's economic normalization for people who have certificates in dental hygiene, in pharmacies - pharmaceutical experts.
There are a whole bunch of people who could not work simply because they didn't have the proper career credentials, and this agreement completely will recognize all diplomas from universities, from either side.
I'll give you one more example: American companies were telling us they were pulling out, like rental car companies - because if you rented a car in Kosovo, you couldn't drive over the border. You couldn't leave. So people who were wanting to go for tourist purposes or to visit the region, or to try to do business deals, they couldn't actually leave with that rental car. And so we had American businesses beginning to pull back to say, "It just doesn't make sense." The Europeans were complaining just as much. There was a perceived conflict.
And I think what we have now, with this historic air agreement, rail agreement, motor agreement - all of the things that they've committed to implement will create normalized commerce. And that is something that has never been tried.
We have been stuck on literally verbs and symbolism in terms of negotiations on the politics. And we're going to try something new.
Q The president of Serbia said today to local reporters that - I can read the quote: "We have made a bilateral agreement with the U.S., not Kosovo." Can you clarify what that means?
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: Yeah, well, first of all, I don't - I would never try to clarify what President Vučić means when he's talking to the Serbian press. I can tell you what he said inside the Oval Office, which was that this was a historic agreement to normalize the region. He talked about the Mini Schengen Zone, which is now going to be an economic region.
So I think it might have been lost in translation a little bit, but make no mistake that the agreement that they signed is definitely an agreement to expand commerce in the region. And there's no question that when you look at diplomas, for instance, or the one-year freeze on the recognition and de-recognition, on even the rail agreement - there's a U.S. Department of Energy study that will take place on a lake that is largely in Kosovo; a portion is in Serbia. We're going to do a feasibility study to figure out what kind of jobs can be created in - around the water. There's no question that that's a shared agreement.
Q But did they sign an agreement with each other, or did they sign an agreement with the United States?
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: They signed an agreement to work with each other.
Q They didn't -
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: They did not sign with the United States. We're not a signature.
Q Well, President Trump signed something; we watched him.
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: Yeah. Correct.
Q What did he sign?
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: He signed a - how would you describe it? A - basically, a letter acknowledging that they are going to work together and do this agreement.
Q Okay, maybe it's easiest to ask this way: Can you just lay out very specifically what each gentleman signed today? What was that?
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: They both signed agreements to work together to normalize their economic and commerce relationship.
Q But the agreements are not the same, right? For both sides.
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: They are 99.9 percent the same, but of course, there's -
Q Then what is - what was different?
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: There's one - there's one point that's different at the very bottom, which is that Serbia is going to move its embassy by July of next year. That's on the Serbian agreement. And for the Kosovo, their last point - everything is identical until the last point. The last point for Kosovo is that they have a mutual recognition with Israel.
Q And the infamous "item 10" they were mentioning yesterday, that's taken out, right? I mean, that's what President Vučić was saying today.
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: Yeah. First of all, it's wrong to say that that was "item 10." None of these were numbered. So I don't know where that came from.
Q I don't know why - they just called it that.
AMBASSADOR GRENELL: When we were negotiating, there were a whole bunch of issues on the table. A whole - a lot of things were changed and edited, as you can imagine, in negotiations that this does.
For someone to leak a partial sentence and pretend like this was the entire agreement, I think is typical politics. But nothing was numbered, certainly wasn't number 10. And nothing is agreed to until everything is agreed to. So something leaked out in terms of negotiation, but it was partial, and I think it was highlighted in a way that gave a false impression.
Home
Contact
About
Service Rates
Privacy Policy
Follow on Facebook
Subscribe to Newsletters
Rss Feed
Keywords
Eastern NC Now & ENC NOW © Copyright 1998-2024 All Rights Reserved.
