PURELY POLITICAL Q&A with KT (Part II)
KT McFarland's hour-and-a-half talk at the Reagan Center in Santa Barbara was a cornucopia of insight into the world-wide political scene
This is the second half of my conversation with former Deputy National Security Advisor under President Trump, KT McFarland, and if you missed the first part, I’ll reiterate that Ms. McFarland graduated from George Washington University, earned a master’s degree from Oxford University in England, and completed a PhD on nuclear weapons, China, and the Soviet Union. She was the featured dinner speaker at the Ronald Reagan Center in downtown Santa Barbara on Friday, October 13 as part of an ongoing lecture series sponsored by former Santa Barbara News-Press publisher Wendy McCaw. KT’s talk was co-sponsored by the Clare Boothe Luce Center for Conservative Women.
There will be a separate column about the Luce Center for Conservative Women in an upcoming Jim’s Journal on substack and that will hopefully also run in the CAGOP Wave.
Considering the ongoing Israeli operations in response to the Hamas massacre of October 7, I want to share a quote that led Judd Garrett’s recent column and appeared in Rip McIntosh’s newsletter; it’s from the late Golda Meir, who served as Israeli Prime Minister from 1969 to 1974.
“We can forgive them [Muslims] for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children.”
And on that note, we’ll wrap up last week’s conversation:
Q. You worked for four presidents, including President Nixon. Was he a good man?
A. I think he was a very good president. I think he was a brilliant foreign policy strategist. Obviously, Watergate caused him some real problems. But other than Watergate, if you took that away from the equation, I mean, my gosh, peace in the Middle East, right after the first Yom Kippur war, arms control with the Soviet Union, détente with the Soviet Union, repaired relations with Europe, opening to China, which at the time was a very good thing to do. I think you look at his foreign policy record, it was pretty stunningly successful.
How about President Ford?
I was in the west wing of the White House at the time. I mean, I was a really young kid and junior staffer working for Kissinger on the National Security Council. And it was pretty clear that once Nixon resigned, we were going to have a prolonged period of in-fighting. He was already out. So, we couldn't impeach him, but he was going to be taken to trial, et cetera, et cetera. Ford made the decision – which was very gutsy and very courageous – that he was going to pardon [Nixon]. When the country was braying for blood, it was a pretty clear political sacrifice. Ford knew that he probably could not win election then. That the forces would just be against him. And how could he have done that? We wanted Nixon's head. And so, to me, it was a profile in courage; there was Jerry Ford saying, “I'm going to sacrifice my career, my future, because I'm going to do the right thing.” I look around and I don't see a lot of political leaders today who would do that.
After Nixon ran against incumbent Governor Jerry Brown Sr. for governor of California and lost, he announced, somewhat petulantly, to a gaggle of journalists at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in California that, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because gentlemen, this is my last press conference.” Yet, just six short years later, he’s elected President of the United States. To what do you attribute that remarkable revival?
That was remarkable but think about what he did in those six years. And it's not unlike what Trump has been doing. Nixon became the preferred guy for every congressional candidate who wanted to be endorsed by somebody: everybody, even people running for dog catcher [wanted his endorsement]. Eight years after his loss to Kennedy in 1960, Nixon was looking pretty good. We were in the middle of a terrible war in Vietnam. And Nixon was in fact the peace candidate, which is what people don't think about.
After serving in the Reagan administration, you dropped out of government service to raise your five children. Having been out of government for many years, as the presidencies of George Bush Senior, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and then Barack Obama passed by, how did you get tapped by President Trump?
I did not join the campaign. I was still working at Fox News, but I briefed President – well, candidate – Trump; I briefed other candidates as well.
When President Trump won unexpectedly, I was considered for several positions. And the one that to me made a lot of sense was Deputy National Security Advisor, because there's a Secretary of State, who goes all around the world negotiating with other countries. The face of American foreign policy. Then there's the National Security Advisor who is at the president's elbow with every day-to-day crisis.
The Deputy National Security Advisor is the one who's the sort of brain trust who shares all the inter-agency meetings, who comes up with the plan of, ‘Oh, this is how we should deal with the Saudis, this is how we should deal with this.’ The president then makes a decision, and it goes back to the Deputy National Security Advisor to make sure all the parts of government are playing ball.
To me, that was the more exciting position. Plus, I had started my career as an 18-year-old college freshman working for Henry Kissinger in the typing pool. The idea that I could finish my career in the same office [appealed to me].
Okay, so as Deputy National Security Advisor, you must have some insight as to why official Washington continues to give President Trump such a hard time, to the point of not only impeaching him twice but also indicting him over four separate issues, even though he’s out of office.
I've increasingly come to the conclusion that the Washington bureaucracy – the permanent bureaucracy – doesn't like Republicans. And certainly hated Donald Trump because he wanted to drain the swamp…
And, if he is re-elected, I have a feeling there might be some movement on that issue. Let’s talk about that infamous open letter signed by 51 former intelligence officials, including three ex-CIA Directors. Was it really just to make sure that this guy was not reelected?
[Yes] I've now come reluctantly to that conclusion. Talk about election interference! If you look at the 2016 election and the attempts by the permanent bureaucracy to prevent Trump from being elected and then having their insurance policy if he was elected, which was going to be the Russia hoax. I think in that case, that was the Department of Justice and the FBI with election interference.
And then, in 2020, they had somebody in the CIA who was organizing, calling people up and saying, you want to sign the letter? You want to sign? You want to sign? And so, we've now got the Justice Department, the FBI, and the CIA.
I know, but why?
Because they don't want to drain the swamp. They don't want to like Donald Trump for a whole lot of reasons. And if you look at it, who was ever held accountable?
Nobody.
They never even lost their clearances. When you leave government and you keep your security clearances, it's a great economic advantage to you because then you can get jobs and consulting contracts; and defense industry companies hire you because you have your security clearance. So those people were making money on their clearances. Nobody's ever called them [on what they’d done].
•••
KT’s speech to attendees at the Reagan Center covered the above topics and many more; she touched on the fracking revolution and how that propelled the U.S. to become the top energy producer in the world, the Abraham Accords and why they were such a threat to Hamas, Hezbollah, PLO, and other such organizations, how Biden’s “war on fossil fuels” pulled the U.S. back from energy independence, how that “war” allowed Russia (“All Russia does is export oil and natural gas. I mean, nobody buys Russian computers, right?”) and Iran to prosper and threaten U.S. interests, how Biden gave up “the best military air base in Asia” (Bagram), how the military equipment left behind by the U.S. in Afghanistan is being used by Hamas, Hezbollah, Russia, Iran, and others.
KT suggests that the mullahs in Iran decided that if peace accords were signed between Saudi Arabia and Israel, the only way Iran could survive is to ramp up its “Death to Israel” rhetoric. “In two weeks’ time,” she says, “you’re going to have a public opinion in the world that flips and changes. And you’re going to start seeing the country saying, well, Israel, you’ve gone too far [in Gaza].”
KT spoke of China and its favorable trade agreements, the World Trade Organization, quantum engineering and computing, robotics, and its plans to control the technologies of the future. “[the Chinese] have something called ‘AI 2030’ and by 2030 they plan to have enough capability in quantum computing and artificial intelligence that they really could control the future… China’s plan is to push the United States out of the South China Sea, out of the Western Pacific and push us all the way back to Hawaii,” she proffers.
It was an invigorating and thoughtful hour and a half and if you ever get a chance to hear KT McFarland in person, I advise you to drive, take a cab, call a Uber, but get thee to her talk.
You won’t be disappointed.
Another great “Jim’s Journal”.
So sorry I missed her!
Dana