Skip to playerSkip to main content
  • 21 minutes ago

Category

🗞
News
Transcript
00:00I spoke to him today. We had a 45-minute conversation.
00:03Look, I'm seeing a lot of things in the media that are not accurate, so let me clear those up.
00:07And as I did in my conversation with him, number one is the Department of War,
00:11everything they've been doing with Ukraine remains the same. That has not changed.
00:14Including Pearl?
00:16Everything. Nothing has changed. I mean, Pearl's a program in which when things are available for sale,
00:20they're sold to the Europeans who in turn transfer it to them.
00:23But I'll get to munitions in a moment.
00:25The second is intelligence sharing. The president made it very clear he's ordered no such changes.
00:30So none of that has changed. None of it.
00:32And I see reporting that it has, but it's just not accurate. It's not true.
00:36And so that was important to clarify.
00:39Now, you asked about sales. I know one of the things that President Zelenskyy has been talking about
00:44is that he's been trying to buy interceptors. And I understand. So does every other country in the world.
00:49I also talked to Saudi Arabia today. They'd like interceptors. Israel would like interceptors.
00:53We would like interceptors. Every country in the world would like interceptors.
00:56And many parts of the world are asking for that.
00:59It's probably the most in-demand product right now in the defense field.
01:02So when a country doesn't get interceptors from the United States, it's not because we're denying it.
01:07We have our own needs, too.
01:08We have minimum standards that we have to meet internally in our base presence all over the world.
01:13That includes in our bases in Europe, as an example.
01:16There's minimum standards that our defense department, our department of war requires to protect these facilities,
01:21and obviously in the Middle East.
01:23So all of this is being managed.
01:25I know if you view Ukraine or you view any issue through a straw and say, I'm only focused on
01:31this one issue.
01:32Well, you can't do that. It's not how foreign policy and defense policy is made.
01:35It has to all be balanced in conjunction with one another.
01:38We have a global defense footprint, and many of our installations around the world require defense, air defense.
01:45So there's nothing being deliberately denied to Ukraine.
01:50It's simply a balance between our obligations to other partners and, frankly, our own standards and requirements for our own
01:56facilities as well.
Comments

Recommended