NEW YORK CITY—United States Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and former U.S. Ambassador to Japan, today joined Kudlow on Fox Business live in studio to discuss the politically-motivated prosecution of President Donald Trump, as well as President Joe Biden’s appeasement strategy that has emboldened our adversaries.
Partial Transcript
Hagerty on the politically-motivated prosecution against Trump: “They haven’t proved anything that’s illegal, Larry. This is just another sham that they’re using to try to deflect the public’s attention. But what they’ve done in this case, they’re making President Trump even stronger in the polls every time they attack him. He gets stronger—you heard him just mention his poll results—but the American public is losing confidence in the system overall. They see a weaponized judiciary like this, and I think it completely destroys the average citizen’s confidence in the system. It’s a downright shame.”
Hagerty on Biden playing both sides of the Israel-Hamas war: “It’s just shocking, Larry, to see the both-sidesism coming out of the Biden Administration. You know, at the very outset, Joe Biden says the right things with respect to defending Israel. Then they start looking at their domestic polls. They see, I think, a disinformation campaign that’s taking great effect here. You’ve got these kids on college campuses; they don’t even know what river and sea they’re talking about. At the same time, the poll numbers are moving in the wrong direction in Michigan, and the Biden Administration is responding. They reward Hamas every time they do something like this, and to have our Secretary of State step into this fray and try to micromanage a situation he can’t possibly fully understand is really just a shock and a dismaying situation. For me—I think you know this—we would never be in this situation if President Trump were in office.”
Hagerty on the successful Trump policies that brought peace to the Middle East: “You’re referring to the ‘Maximum Pressure Campaign’ on Iran; let’s not call this anything other than what it is. What’s happening with Hamas right now is all funded by Iran. It’s Iran’s technology—it’s their knowhow—and this was not happening under the Trump Administration. He put in place the ‘Maximum Pressure Campaign’. You and I both worked on it. I had to go to Prime Minister Abe in Japan and get the Japanese to stop buying Iranian crude oil. That happened around the world, Larry. And what we did is we brought Iran’s foreign reserves down to below $8 billion. They were broke. Hamas and Hezbollah were widely reported as being out of business. As soon as Joe Biden comes in, he starts looking the other way, stops enforcing the sanctions, enriching Iran in the process. You know, he has a devastating domestic energy policy here in America, so he’s encouraging Iran to pump at record levels right now, same is true for Russia. Well, that enrichment of Iran is facilitating all of this.”
Hagerty on the need to impose sanctions against Iran: “China is indirectly financing all of this because of the lack of sanction enforcement that we are not enforcing on Iran. We absolutely should step back into the fray here, impose sanctions. The ‘Maximum Pressure Campaign’ was working—we should do it right away—and China needs to understand that we mean business. That means that there should be real consequences for them breaking the sanctions. This Administration will not do anything with respect to China. They’re walking all over us, just look at what’s happening in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, the Taiwan Strait. I mean, everything is moving Xi Jinping’s way.”
Hagerty on the far-left policies of the Biden Administration: “Whatever deal was cut in 2020 that resulted in Joe Biden becoming their nominee didn’t give the American public what they thought they’re getting. We didn’t get a moderate Joe Biden; we got [Senator] Bernie Sanders policies. And as you say, now it’s moving into the foreign relations zone. I think Bernie Sanders represents the far-left wing of the Democrat party. They are getting their way; Hamas is certainly getting its way. Hamas is winning at every turn here. And it’s as if America’s enemies are getting preferred treatment and our allies are taking the back seat.”
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