Episode Transcript
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Fifty five KRC Deep Talk Station.
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Eight twenty eight fifty five kr C the talk station.
AM very happy Friday to you. Have you been looking
forward to this all morning? Please to welcome to a
fifty five karossee morning show. And I fin went through
his CV. We would spend the entire balance of the
fifty five Carssey Morning Shore going through. It's an impressive one.
It's Francis Rooney. Briefly though, he's a former US Member
of the House Representatives, US Ambassador to the Holy See,
(01:26):
so working there at the Vatican. Represented Florida's nineteenth Congressional
District in the House of Representative between twenty seventeen and
twenty twenty one. Between two thousand and five and two
thousand and eight, he served as US Ambassador to the
Holy Sea, appointed by George W.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
Bush.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
And he actually wrote a book about diplomacy at the
US Holy See relationship with the title The Global Vatican.
Been on a ton of private boards, advisory councils, He's
written gobs and gobs of articles. Again, I have to
spend a long time going through that also. Fellow lawyer
graduated from Georgetown University at Georgetown University College of Law.
Welcome to the fifty five Kosey Morning Show France.
Speaker 1 (02:00):
This Rooney. It's a pleasure to have you on today.
Thanks for having me on and take you four days
to read your resume. My friend.
Speaker 2 (02:07):
Anyway, I gotta ask you out of the gate I
don't know anything about being an ambassador before we get
to Donald Trump's foreign policy, which is what we're gonna
be talking about this morning, at least as a primary topic.
Ambassador to the Holy See, the Vatican the entity that
runs the Roman Catholic Church, but also enjoys basically diplomatic
(02:27):
status along the lines of any other country. So when
I think about the current Pope, and he's a rather
outspoken individual, maybe we can tie this into foreign policy
to some degree, But he keeps telling the United States
to welcome all of these illegal immigrants flowing into our country. Now,
if you're the ambassador to the Holy See, is that
something that you would have a conversation with him or
(02:51):
them about their policy position about what we are doing
and what they should or should not be saying about it.
Speaker 4 (02:58):
Oh?
Speaker 5 (02:58):
Yeah, for sure, I'd be taking it up with the
the Secretary of State of the Holy See.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
But I did the same.
Speaker 5 (03:05):
I did the same where I was over there about
Iraq and the the CIA renditions, you know, and that
we have a disagreement with you. That's what diplomat is
all about, is is fine, you know, airing disagreements in
a civilized manner and seeing where you can come to
some kind of consensus on the discussion.
Speaker 4 (03:23):
And the outcome.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Okay, Because you know, if I was in that role,
I would you know, I can be rather short with
my words and clear in my convictions. I'd be like, wait,
a second Vatican isn't wide open to all people in
all mankind flowing in and out of the general area.
You would you've got gates, you've got locked, you won't
let people in. How about sharing your space if you
(03:45):
think it's the right thing for America to do. You know,
that's the kind of retort that I would want to launch.
Speaker 4 (03:49):
This, this, this would be.
Speaker 5 (03:51):
I was very fortunate to be over there with Pope Benedict,
very clear eyed German, very pro United States, really loved
the First Amendment and what it had brought in terms
of freedom of expression and religion. And this guy is
he's your basic Latin American liberation theologist who will never
think the developed world is doing an effort for the
(04:14):
list developed world.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
Yeah, and I got to be honest with you and
go ahead the.
Speaker 4 (04:21):
Late to foreign policy.
Speaker 5 (04:22):
I mean I did write it out bed against the
Pope when he came out and said, well, you know,
in some ways, Putin is right that the expansion of
NATO made him feel insecure and in some ways justifies
what he did. I thought that was ridiculous thing I've
ever heard of.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
My wife, It's ridiculous. He's the Vatican is in a NATO.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
Country, right, and they're lucky to be there too.
Speaker 5 (04:45):
Believe me, most people in the Vatican are really glad
about that, just I know.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
Okay, Well, that allows me to pivot over to Donald
Trump's policy relatively Ukraine and Russia. Donald Trump has been
saying since he was on the campaign trail that once
he was get elected, he was going to solve the problem.
He was going to negoti she had some sort of
settlement Russia right now, at least is by by my understanding,
or at least the appearance, they have the upper hand.
Ukraine keeps losing soldiers, they can't replenish the lines, they
(05:13):
keep getting eliminated, and Russia keeps making more and more
advances into Ukraine. And with that in mind, how do
you see Donald Trump resolving or having some role in
resolving the war there.
Speaker 5 (05:23):
Well, I think you're absolutely right. It's a war of
attrition kind of the Civil War in the United states.
The country with the most resources ultimately will probably win.
And that's starting to play out. I mean, the Ukrainians
beat them for a year and a half and now
Russia's beating them for and hopefully Trump can deliver what
he talked about on the campaign trail is that he
is going to work with Putin and Europe to come
(05:48):
to some kind of solution whereby they'll probably keep. We're
not going to get them out of Croatia. I mean,
I have CRIMEA. You can forget that. So we try
to come up with a solution that's more like a
North and South Korea deal. Maybe even we get the
European countries to police the border for US.
Speaker 4 (06:03):
I don't think NATO should be doing it.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
That's fair enough, and I'll agree with you on that.
I guess I find it curious and maybe you can
solve us, you know, answer my question or my curiosity
on this, Francis Roney. We under Nixon administration, we open
up trade relations with the China. With the Chinese Chinese,
you know, obviously communist party then since the revolution they
were and then communists, and of course we had Mao's
(06:28):
Little Red Book that we can all read. The extent
you have any doubt about that. But we normalize trade
relations with China, and I think much to our regret now,
since China literally manufactures all these things that we rely on.
How it is it that after the fall of the
Berlin Wall and the fall of the Soviet Union we
didn't come to some more perhaps I can use the
(06:50):
word beneficial relationship with them, that we didn't seek to
become trading partners with the former Soviet Union and try
to shape and develop the direction that Russia has gone
since then.
Speaker 4 (07:03):
Well, I mean some of ways we did.
Speaker 5 (07:05):
I mean remember when Kendall, the don Kendall, the CEO PepsiCo,
went over and open PepsiCo and Russia and McDonald's went
over there in the early thaw period during.
Speaker 4 (07:15):
The Nixon administration.
Speaker 5 (07:16):
Yeah, we certainly didn't develop a trade link like when
we just turned over the keys of China and said, God,
make everything and take advantage of us.
Speaker 2 (07:25):
But I guess the demonization. I feel like we're in
a second Cold War now, the way the Democrats go
on about needing to fund Ukraine in order to fight
the evil Vladimir Putin and oh my god, it's gonna
He's going to invade all the NATO countries, et cetera,
et cetera, which seems I mean, if it's taken him
this long to deal with Ukraine, I really doubt they
have designs on any of the NATO countries. It will be,
you know, an insurmountable hurdle for them. But that this
(07:48):
this demonization of Putin and the Russians generally speaking, not
that I'm a b apologist, but just has so reminiscent
of the Cold War. I just wonder why they are
embracing that concept.
Speaker 5 (08:01):
Yeah, it's it's kind of brought it's kind of brought
out a very militant train among the liberals. Yes, and
it's it's it's without rational rationality because even though Putin's
written clearly that he wants to take back all the
former Iron Curtain countries, I agree with you, I don't
think he can do it. And if we can get
(08:23):
somehow a European force stationed in the Ukraine, that's going
to make it that much more difficult for him to
do it, because like it or not, he's got of
lived with Europe.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
Former Ambassador of the Holy See and member of House
of Representative for instance, running my guest today now pivoting
over to Trump's foreign policy, A lot of it has
to do with tariffs. He's been threatening tarriffs, promising tariffs,
and in fact, it looks like some of them are
going to go into effects soon. Do you think he
can accomplish his goals relative to any given country that
he hopes to tariff without harming the American public because
(08:52):
you know, pick an economists. Some of them are thinking
it's not going to be a problem, but many of
them say, well, you know, tariffs are going to make
everything more expensive here in the United States. How do
you see this playing out, Francis.
Speaker 5 (09:02):
Well, he's threatened a lot more tariffs in his first
term than he ever put on, and then once they
put on some, they made a lot of exceptions. So
it's I think a lot of it as a negotiating posture.
I mean, he definitely effectively used tariff threats to get
AMLO to do what we need to done in Mexico
concerning immigrants, and I think he's going to do the
same thing with Shinbaum and the rest of Latin America.
(09:25):
Those are positive developments. You know, he made Columbia take
the immigrants back because of the threat of tariffs. But
when you get to broad based tariffs on European and China,
it will make our costs go up and it could
be inflationary.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
It's a gamble for him.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
Yeah, I suppose that is correct. How can you deny it?
Speaker 2 (09:42):
And in so far as China is concerned, obviously, if
there is an existential threat to our company country coming
from some particular company, obviously our country would obviously be China,
as opposed to say an Iran or a North Korea.
But China obviously a very powerful and growing military force
and designs on literally everything in the South China see,
including that pesky situation with Taiwan. What are we going
(10:04):
to do about that? Do you anticipate China actually invading Taiwan?
How is Trump going to approach China so far as
dealing with that concern that that.
Speaker 1 (10:14):
Adversary.
Speaker 4 (10:16):
I think there are a lot of real negative threads here.
Speaker 5 (10:18):
I mean, I'm not sure that the American people would
defend Taiwan right after all the Bush Wars. I'm not
sure that our military can do that much anyway. We
have a lot of ships that are in such bad
repair they can't stay very long we haven't built any
ships in years AEI. The American Enterprises too, did a
study a few years ago that about twenty five percent
(10:41):
of the military budget does not pertain to military readiness.
I think we're more of an employment factory than we
are fighting force.
Speaker 4 (10:48):
And that's a.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
Problem, it really really is.
Speaker 2 (10:52):
And of course our as you point out, and it
just pains me to think about the readiness of our navy. Notably,
we haven't built new ships in such a long long time.
Do you think hag Zeth is going to have any
inroads in that and creating a more effective fighting force.
Speaker 5 (11:05):
I don't know, but yeah, we spend over half of
what the entire world spins on defense.
Speaker 4 (11:10):
We can't build a ship.
Speaker 5 (11:11):
China spins about a third of what we do. They
seem to be building ships.
Speaker 2 (11:14):
We're going to put an exclamation point on that statement.
Francis Rooney, A real pleasure having you on the fifty
five Cars Morning Show today. Maybe we can tap into
your resources down the road at some point. But appreciate
the insights and thoughtful comments this morning, and I hope
you have a wonderful weekend.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
Sir you too, thank you very much for having me on.
Speaker 2 (11:32):
My pleasure, my distinct pleasure, Francis Rooney, it's a thirty
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