Rick Grinnell
speaker
49 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Feb 2025
last heard Feb 2025
Rick Grinnell’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
These individuals were completely in the dark. So much so, Megan, that when I what you you were showing that video of me walking out on the tarmac, we were on the tarmac for about two and a half hours waiting. And I didn't know if they kind of were not going to give us the individuals. We waited and waited and everybody on the plane, the Americans were.
very nervous, I was nervous, what's gonna happen? When these cars pulled up and I was standing there for a little while, I saw the Sikhs were in individual cars. And I could see from across the tarmac that somebody got out of the car and they had a black hood over their head.
And I just stood there thinking, this is an American, I'm an American diplomat, I have the Air Force behind me on an Air Force plane, And we can't just stand here while an American has a hood on his head and is shackled. And so I walked over there and each individual was being unhooded and unshackled to get on the plane. And I would say to each individual, get on the plane, get on the plane.
I'm an American diplomat, go get on the plane right now. One individual, I think there's a picture of me hugging him. was standing in front of me with his black hood over his head. And as they took the hood off, he would later tell me, I had no idea where I was, what was happening, what was going to happen to me.
But when he took his hood off, I looked at him and I said, I'm an American diplomat sent here by Donald Trump. I'm here to take you home. Get on the plane. And he broke into tears and hugged me. And I have to say, you know me. Personally, I'm an emotional person, but professionally, I'm not emotional at all. That's right. It doesn't matter what you say.
In my life with my nephews and nieces, I can be the first softie. But professionally, I just don't have emotions. I go and I work. But in that moment, in my 25-year career, I felt emotion rush over me like never before. And I really had to hold back tears. And I just said, get on the plane. We're getting out of here. And he was the sixth. We got him on the plane.
And as soon as we got in the air, they all clapped. And as soon as we landed in American soil, They all were incredibly grateful. One of them told me, you know, these guys, they have nothing. They didn't have shoelaces anymore. No phones, no clothing. It was freezing cold when we got back to Washington, D.C. And this guy looked at me and he said, I don't have much.
But let me tell you, for the rest of my life, everything I have is yours. And I said, you don't owe me anything. You're an American. And we together do this. And we're bringing it home.
Thank you, Mr. President. Thank you.
Well, it's a really good question. And I think in diplomacy, what I've learned is you've got to show up, right? You've got to show up and talk. And so I was asked that question. President Maduro said to me, you know, OK, so we're going to give you these and now these are the things we want. And I said, no, we're giving you a huge gift.
And the huge gift is that I am here sitting with you and you've got all sorts of cameras around and you're going to use this for propaganda purposes because an American diplomat is sitting here with you. And I get that. It is my job to let you know that we want a different relationship. We're going to put America first. We want the Venezuelans who are in our country illegally out.
And there's a lot of them. And we want you to pay for them and bring them back home. And I want our hostages and we want to go down this road of getting back the Americans. And so the gift was a conversation, a hope of a different future and an American diplomat sitting there. And I am very clear eyed. that an American diplomat sitting with Maduro is a controversial thing.
But I have to say that I think that we have to be able to talk. Talking is a tactic. It is not weakness. It is in the face of looking at someone else, pushing for the American agenda and not backing down. And I think there was a individual from the Biden administration on Twitter attacking me saying, oh, come on, they must have paid or switched Venezuelan hostages for that.
And I say, no, actually. We're sending Venezuelans back to Venezuela, and we are absolutely giving no money, no hostage switch. It's called diplomacy, and it's what you do when you look at someone and you put America first and you make the arguments that this is what America wants.
President Trump also recognizes that exact point. And so what we wanted to make clear on Thursday night before I left, nobody knew I was going to Venezuela the next morning. But in the Oval Office, we took a picture with President Trump. I then went to J.D. Vance's office and took a picture. And both of those, the president and the vice president, both those pictures were
were released Thursday night and very early Friday morning to send a message that this is our guy without actually saying anything specific.
Well, I knew that there's a whole bunch of issues with Venezuela and we got to continue tackling those. We've got North Korea. We've now got the California federal government's reaction to the fire. So I like to tell people, Megan, that I'm dealing with Nicolas Maduro, Kim Jong-un and Gavin Newsom.
Yeah, we're not. I don't know exactly if all of them have contacted their families. They had complicated issues. So I'm just not going to say their names.
Yeah, first of all, there are two different issues and I wouldn't blur them together. First of all, with Somalia and actually I would say a concern until a few weeks ago in Syria as well. We've defeated, Donald Trump defeated ISIS and we watched over the last four years with concern that ISIS may be trying to reconstitute. We've been very clear that we will not let that happen.
ISIS is a horrible terrorist organization that has really gone after Christians. And so we've watched them very closely. And I think President Trump was very troubled by even them beginning to organize to come back. And so we have to be able to do this to keep ISIS at bay. This is the right thing to do. And we're watching where ISIS would begin to form in any possible way.
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