Grenell, who also served as the United States Ambassador to Germany and the Special Presidential Envoy for Serbia and Kosovo Peace Negotiations, had traveled to North Mitrovica in Kosovo to help de-escalate the situation playing out there.
"I wouldn't give much credit to the Biden administration or the Europeans," Grenell said. "They're the ones who are supposedly in charge, and they wouldn't show up. Matter of fact, the EU official who was in charge was in Washington talking with Victoria Nuland, and they both were wagging their finger at the region when I was actually in the region.
"So I think I think diplomacy means you got to do the tough work. And I'll just say this: I worked at the State Department for 11 years. The State Department officials, they want to do the tough work, they don't want to be evacuated out. There's so many State Department officials who want to do diplomacy, but this is an administration that removes the diplomats and just marches towards war so fast. I find it to be sad and a real problem. We need tough diplomats, and we need the Democrats to stop making fun of tough diplomats, but putting in their own tough diplomats."
Posobiec said that images of Grenell walking through the streets were juxtaposed with protests and violence. "It spilled over into even people getting into fights with some of the NATO peacekeeping forces that are there. The idea that you went without security, I mean, that's something that I haven't seen anyone from the Biden administration that was willing to do. When you were in the region, did they try to contact you at all? Did the Kosovo Security Force try to contact you or anything like that, or was there complete radio silence on their end?"
Grenell said that he goes to the region "pretty often," and said that during one of his recent visits, "I did get a call from the NSC [National Security Council], just to say, you know, 'What are you hearing? Can you just help us out on, you know, what you're hearing on the ground?'"
He said that he ran into a Democrat US senator in a hotel lobby in the region, "a senator who did not vote for me, and who has been very critical of MAGA policies," who asked Grenell, "Were you dealing with all of this when you were the presidential envoy?"
"And I said, 'You know, to be honest, senator, we were talking about getting rid of NATO troops, because the conflict was largely dying down. And we were signing economic agreements and normalization agreements, but now you're adding NATO troops. And that's because the Biden policy is that the Europeans are in charge, and that the Americans are not going to take a lead role.' And I told this senator, 'That's a mistake. You've got to have American leadership, there is no replacement for American leadership.' And this US Democratic senator said to me, 'You'll be surprised, Rick, but I agree with you.'"
Grenell said that shortly after that he got a call from the White House asking for a readout, telling Posobiec, "So I don't know if that Democratic senator tipped them off or what, but I gave a readout to the Biden people, the Biden NSC, and then radio silence. I didn't hear anything. And so when I went to the region, I still didn't hear from them. But I will also tell you that after I got back from the region, I spoke to a very senior US State Department official and I said, 'Why isn't anyone from the US going to North Kosovo to speak to the people most impacted?' And his response to me was, 'Our diplomatic security review says it's too dangerous for an American to go.' I said, 'I had lunch with those people today. I mean, show up. This is what you're supposed to do. You're a diplomat. You're not supposed to be, you know, in Paris sipping wine and drinking brandy and having a nice meals. You're supposed to go to the region and do diplomacy. Diplomacy is tough. It's not for the weak.'"
Posobiec responded: "I mean, this is just an incredible story. And by the way, that should be the way things are done. The fact that they reached out to you, whether it's you know, Republican, Democrat, conservative, liberal, at home, abroad, we should be able to work together, because hopefully, we're all putting the best interests of the United States forward. And I would certainly hope that a peace agreement, whether it's Ukraine, whether it's Balkans, whether it's Korea, China, et cetera, is always going to be better and in the interest of the American people, as opposed to anything else."
