Director of Policy and Government Affairs for American Principles Project and GOP Strategist Jon Schweppe joins us live

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
John Schweppe joins US now to talk about the prisoner exchange.
John's director of policy and government affairs for American Principles Project,
also a GOP strategist. John, Welcome back in thanks for
being here.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Hey, thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 1 (00:12):
So, yeah, we got some folks back. Do we still
have some Americans still over there? And in these types
of situations, lots of negotiations going on, you know, you've
got it. In this case, a number of countries also
involved in this, So there were some folks in other
countries that got some people back, But when you look
at the balance of the even trade, there's no such

(00:34):
thing asn't even trading this because you know what got
us to the point where all of a sudden, you know,
we're doing this. It's good to get them back. We've
done it before. But isn't it usually the US's position
and the FBI's position on kidnappings and hostages and prisoners
that you know, we don't negotiate with the kidnappers quote.

Speaker 2 (00:57):
Unquote, Yeah, well, we don't negotiate with is and unfortunately
that's the way Russia is acting. You know, we've had
so many examples of this, and we saw as you said,
have prisoners over there, but the famous you know, Britney
Griner swap where we had to give up an arms dealer.
And that's the thing, you know, the prisoners were giving
up are bad guys, right, objectively, bad guys are who

(01:19):
are violating all sorts of laws, off and inner national laws.
These are the worst you know people alive. And then
our people are just over in Russia and they you know,
get picked up. And so you know Avan Gersherwich who
we just got back. I mean, he's a journalist for
the Wall Street Journal. So I think we have to
recognize Joe Russia is a really bad actor here. And

(01:40):
you know, part of the thing is we need leadership
from the top under Trump. You know, people like Putin
didn't really want to mess with us because they understood
there would be consequences, and they understood that this is
somebody who wasn't messing around. But when you have somebody
like Joe Biden unfortunately, who's working you know, maybe four
hours a day, the rest of the world sees that
and they see it as week.

Speaker 1 (02:00):
Well, the guy we gave up as a former high
ranking you know, colonel there, and he was serving a
life sentence in Germany. This guy is a hitman basically,
and was convicted back in twenty nineteen of the murder
of one of a former Chechen fighter in Berlin. I mean,
this guy, you know, somebody that's bad that you see
in movies that kills people, and we get and they

(02:23):
give him up because they got somebody back in Germany.
So you know, they're going to debrief this guy. They're
going to find out, you know, all kinds of things,
how did you get caught? You know, what did you
learn through all of this? And then put him right
back in the training you know of future hitmen, hitman
and assassins for Vladimir Prutin's government. I mean, I'm not

(02:44):
sure this was a was a good trade. I'm not
you know, saying we shouldn't have done something to get
these prisoners back. And these hostages I call them, because
they're not guilty of anything. They're just being held as pawns.
So your thoughts on you know, the balance of what
we gave up.

Speaker 2 (03:03):
Yeah, well, I look, I think it's a situation where,
you know, I don't think this would have happened under Trump.
I think we would have had other ways to negotiate.
You know, part of the problem is that you have
State Department unnamed you know, faithless bureaucrats making these these
uh uh you know negotiations, and it's tough when you
don't have the commander in chiefs directly involved. So, you know,

(03:25):
I think it's hard to say, you know, without being
an expert on every single thing that's happening in the moment.
But certainly we shouldn't be in this business because now,
as you said, you know, Russia can basically act with impunity, right,
they can go doing all sorts of awful things around
the world and know that all they have to do
is is, you know, capture the next American family to

(03:46):
uh to vacation a mosca. Uh And that's a that's
a really bad present to say.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
Yeah, not only Russia, but all of our adversaries going, oh,
look at that, We'll just go ahead and start kidnapping
Americans wherever they travel in this globe. I mean, you
can end up going to an allied country like France
or you know, England, and all of a sudden, you
got a couple of bad actors from Russia or China
or wherever Iran, and all of a sudden, they pull

(04:12):
up a black van, grab you out of this nice
hotel in Paris, and you're often, you know, that's it.
Oh we got them. They were spying while they were
in Paris on our country. So yeah, we grabbed them.
We had intel. And next thing, you know, this opens
the door for more and more of this, don't you believe.

Speaker 2 (04:27):
Yeah, And look, you got to show strength. I mean,
you know, say what you want about Israel, but nobody's
taken hostages there and thinking they're getting away with it, right,
I mean, that's just the reality. And see, you know,
I think this is something that hopefully you know, Trump
or even kamalaf she gets in there. We got to
correct this. We got to address this right away because
it's a real problem for US. And as you said,

(04:49):
it's beyond Russia. You know, this could be happening in
you know, you go vacationing in South America and the
cartel gets it right, I mean, there's going to be
a lot of opportunity for to exploit American Uh, you know, our.

Speaker 1 (05:04):
Weakness absolutely well. I appreciate you, John, Thank you so much.
John schweppee h Principles Project and also GOP strategist,