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00:00:02
Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.
00:00:08
Speaker 2: Jensen Wong, who has admitted to an affair with someone who is alleged to be a Chinese spy, does not respond to a request for a closed-door briefing about the scandal. By end of day, he could face subpoenas in order for him to appear. This underscores, Joe, as much as President Trump still maintains that he believes Jensen Wong is an honorable suspect, man and seems to be standing by him. That is not necessarily the sentiment that seems to be percolating on Capitol Hill. This is bipartisan, Republicans and Democrats who have taken issue with what has come to light here and want to see it investigated further, just as, of course, the NVIDIA board is conducting its own independent investigation.
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Speaker 3: You make a great point. This is a Republican chair who won't have that role in a couple of months, even less, although you better believe Democrats are likely to follow up on this as well. Some of the revelations that we've heard about what took place inside the administration, who knew what And when this memo that Marco Rubio helped to draft was circulated throughout the leadership in the White House before the president made his trip to China, when he, of course, picked up famously now picked up Jensen Wong on the way in Alaska. So we have a lot of questions about this whole situation. And it's not where we thought we'd be starting with Nikki Haley today. We actually thought this would be and it will be a conversation in part in the future of the Republican Party. After last week's election, some of the lessons learned. But the former ambassador to the U.N., former governor of South Carolina, joins us now from our Chicago bureau. Nikki Haley, welcome back. Ambassador, it's good to see you on Bloomberg TV and radio. I know that there's going to be an extensive corporate investigation here and you're no stranger here. to sensitive issues like these, although this might be at a new level. I'm curious about what should happen and where there should be accountability inside the administration. If this relationship was known and Jensen Wong was not warned and was still brought on this trip to China, who should be fired if not Howard Lutnick?
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Speaker 4: There are a lot of questions here and a lot of questions that need to be answered. You know, the first thing I'll say is if you go back They knew in 2024 that there was.
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Speaker 1: A red flag.
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Speaker 4: And then by mid 2025, so over a year ago, you had some concern. My questions would be, what did Commerce do about it? What did the Secretary of State do about it? Was there a National Security Council meeting on it? What did the president do about it? And why didn't they tell Jensen Wong? And look at the activity. AI has been a big part of not economic security, but that is also national security. So when we talk about this race trying to beat China, and we see that.
00:02:42
Speaker 1: Last year that the U.S.
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Speaker 4: Allowed H200 chips to be sold and almost allowed Blackwell chips to be sold, it calls into question, is this why China's open AI has progressed so much? And what could have been stopped? It just doesn't answer any questions.
00:03:03
Speaker 1: We have to find out what went wrong.
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Speaker 4: I think we should assume everybody meant well. But something terrible in the process happened, and this really needs, this is not partisan. This is something that we need to look at from a national security perspective that affects our economy, but also affects where we go with this AI race.
00:03:24
Speaker 2: Well, and when you talk about some of those restricted chips that had export controls around them eased, like the H-200, if Jensen Wang was pivotal in convincing the administration to pull back on that, and it does turn out that he was influenced in some way by this individual. What should happen to him? Is this someone who can still be trusted to lead one of the largest, most national security and technologically intensive businesses in the world?
00:03:48
Speaker 4: It's a tough situation because, you know, right now he has no successor. This is a very important company, which is all the more reason why attention should have been put on this. You know, one, my first thought is that Trump shouldn't meet with President Xi next week to make a real point of how serious we're taking this. If he still thinks it's important to meet with him, he should absolutely bring it up. But it's hard to imagine that Jensen Wang was not influenced when you look at the actions that took place. And why was this not part of the consideration? You know, the Chinese working at the United Nations The UN is the spy capital of the world.
00:04:26
Speaker 1: We knew that.
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Speaker 4: We had to be very careful about every single person we interacted with, who we were talking to, whether it was in a gym class or at a restaurant, because they are everywhere. And these tech CEOs need to understand everybody wants what we have. And they need to be briefed. They need to be told of the security concerns. And every CEO needs to be aware of how much China wants what we have. They are stealing it any way that they can. Let's not hand it to them. We don't need to make this any easier than it looks like we just did.
00:05:04
Speaker 3: It's pretty remarkable, Ambassador, to see the photographs of the state dinner here at the White House. Jensen Wong right across the table from President Xi. And apparently everyone at the table... The president from the United States and the president of China all knew about this while this was taking place. If it is learned that Jensen Wong knowingly took part in this relationship and helped the Chinese acquire this technology, is that treason?
00:05:34
Speaker 4: Well, I don't think we should assume he knowingly did this. I mean, let's be clear, the Chinese are that good at it. They
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have police stations in China, Chinese police stations all over this country just for this, to be able to maneuver spies to get what we need.
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Speaker 1: I think it's more of, how did we let this happen?
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Speaker 4: And why wasn't anything done to stop it? That should be the question. And Jensen Wong wasn't just one of the big tech CEOs. Yes, he's that.
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Speaker 1: He was a top advisor to Trump. Trump will openly admit that.
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Speaker 4: And so I think what's more important, rather than pointing fingers right now, we need to look at where was the break in the process. We need to do that, one, from an administration standpoint, because every tech CEO needs to be talked to about this. All of our key CEOs need to be briefed on this. But two, where do we go now with NVIDIA? Where do we go with the fact that Megaspeed was allowed to be a partner with NVIDIA, knowing that they were already being watched by commerce, there's just more questions than answers. What I would say is don't rush to judgment and don't look at whose fault it is. Let's look at where did the process go wrong. It's the most important thing we can do to make sure it doesn't happen again.
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Speaker 2: Well, and of course, we'll all be waiting to see if our many questions about this get answered through the course of these investigations. Ambassador, China is one adversary. I want to ask you about another, Iran. As last you spoke with us here on Bloomberg, you talked about the need for the U.S. to finish the job. What does finishing the job look like now after such a break in the hostilities? Is a return to kinetic action even viable? Can the job be finished if Iran has been rearming itself over this period of time?
00:07:20
Speaker 4: The U.S. and Israel partnering together to really bring Iran to its knees was hugely impactful at reducing the threat to the U.S., at reducing the threat to the Middle East and our allies. So that was the right thing to do. This should not have taken this long. We knew that we had to make sure they didn't have nuclear production. We knew that they couldn't get control of the Strait. They found leverage in the Strait. The problem in the process, and the reason this has cost Americans so much for so long is because key decisions weren't made. A strategy wasn't followed. This should not take this long. If you look at the amount of time of strikes, it's actually very short. The amount of stalling, attempting to get a negotiation is what's taken so.
00:08:06
Speaker 1: Long that's driven up the prices of gas.
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Speaker 4: You cannot negotiate with the Iranian regime.
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Speaker 1: It will never work. In five decades, it's never worked. You have to know.
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Speaker 2: So you would encourage the administration not to pursue? a negotiation here to make a different decision to your point.
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Speaker 1: There is no negotiation that will ever work. We know that. It has never worked.
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Speaker 4:
You can't negotiate with a terrorist regime that says death to America. What they have done right is to, and they didn't do it soon enough, was to restrict all of the economic pathways for them to get more money to be able to fuel their ballistic missiles, to be able to fuel their nuclear production, and to be able to do more harm in the Strait of Hormuz. And so now that they've done that, they need to hold the line and they need to look at what else do you need to do to totally take away any power that they have. This is not about regime change, but this isn't dragging it out and just waiting. It's not okay that the U.S. is just sitting in the Strait holding it. We have to make sure.
00:09:08
Speaker 1: That the regime has no power.
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Speaker 4: And the longer we wait, the more you're allowing the regime to to rearm, resupply, re-prepare for the next fight that they're going to have. This should have been done back in June of 2025 when we had the opportunity.
00:09:26
Speaker 1: We should have gone in. We should have taken care of it. We should have gotten out.
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Speaker 4: This waiting and negotiating is a waste of time, and it's only going to prolong the situation further.
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Speaker 3: Well, this economic D-Day, as the administration called it, has no timeline, Ambassador. This could go on for months or years if that's the point. So how would you finish it? If we can put a finer point on that, what should have been done in June? Should we have been carpet bombing? How would you finish it now?
00:09:54
Speaker 4: Well, do the economic sanctions at that time, close off the shadow banking that was going through the UAE at that time, and make sure we go and disable any ability for them to have nuclear production. We know where it is. We know how they get it. We know what their fuel sources are. to be able to go in and surgically strike those so that they can't go back, that is what needed to happen. Instead of all of this back and forth when they don't even have a government, when you're dealing with people in the regime where the IRGC is really the ones calling the shot, it is a waste of time.
00:10:31
Speaker 1: And even now to sit there and say we can get a deal, we can't.
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Speaker 3: So we should have bombed Pickaxe Mountain.
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Speaker 4: We should have gone pickaxe mountain. We should have made sure that we finished the job. We had the ability to do it. And by doing that, they wouldn't have been able to get leverage at the Strait of Hormuz. They wouldn't have been able to gather this kind of leverage now economically that they have. And the American people wouldn't have suffered. Now, there is a way to fix this. There is a way forward. But it is to go back to a strategy that does those things and get out. And then the second thing I'll say is, Our Middle Eastern partners, where are they? This is not the sole job of the United States. Every single one of them are benefiting from the fact that the U.S. is controlling the state right now, straight right now. Every single one of them is benefiting from the fact that if the Iranian regime can't strike them, they are better off. Well, they should be stepping up to help in this fight. And the fact that they're not, all they do is pick up the phone and call the president.
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Speaker 1: That's all they do. and all they do is.
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Speaker 4: Say, please don't do it, please don't do it, what are they gonna do? We need to ask that question. The idea that the Qataris and the Pakistanis are negotiating this deal is the biggest joke ever. The Qataris have always been Iranian sympathizers. Let's remember, they're the ones that funded all of the Palestinian protests that happened on our college campuses.
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Speaker 1: And Pakistan has always been a partner with Iran.
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Speaker 4: So you're dealing with negotiators that are going to always look out for Iran's interests, not ours. You're dealing with a region that we haven't asked to step up to help in this. And there's been a lack of decision making and strategic work to get the job done so that we can all finish this and let those military troops come home.
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Speaker 2: And what if the Israelis, Ambassador, if Gadi Eizenkot is successful in forming a new government in Israel and takes over after so many years of Netanyahu at the helm, what changes?
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Speaker 4: You know, I think it's up to the Israelis and I think it's up to the government. One thing I've always said is we should not weigh in on who another country chooses to run their government any more than I want them weighing in on who runs our government. What I will tell you is a strong Israel makes a strong U.S. A protected Israel protects the U.S. We have the same enemies. We have the same allies. We always need to work together to make sure we're moving in the right direction.
00:12:57
Speaker 2: And yet, Ambassador, in his essay in the aftermath of the midterm losses of last week, the vice president of the United States, J.D. Vance, suggested it wasn't only about the war with Iran, but one of the other things Republicans needed to do to repair the relationship with their base is to reexamine the relationship with Israel. What do you think he means by that? What does it say to you?
00:13:20
Speaker 4: I think he's completely misguided to say that Israel is the problem. I mean, the problem and the reason that we saw a Democrat wave was the fact that we had inflation and that consumers couldn't afford groceries, gas, utilities, interest rates were going up.
00:13:36
Speaker 1: The reason that we lost.
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Speaker 4: Was because of the fact that they had ICE overreach. The Republicans in the administration did an amazing job securing the border, but going too far upset a lot of Americans. The reason that we saw a blue wave is because they're seeing too much corruption in D.C. They're seeing everybody benefit from working in D.C., and no one's benefiting when
they're working hard at home.
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Speaker 1: Those are the reasons that we lost.
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Speaker 4: Israel has been the one partner we've had for decades.
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Speaker 1: That has helped keep the U.S. safe.
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Speaker 4: Because the Iranian regime doesn't just say death to Israel. They say death to America and death to Israel. And Israel has been a good partner. Don't shoot your partners.
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Speaker 1: You need to make sure you look in the mirror and reflect.
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Speaker 4: What was done, Republicans have an opportunity to self-correct. And we win when we go back to our conservative values, when we lean forward and say, what does the new vision look like? The new vision looks like a Republican party that leads with fiscal responsibility, that deals with our debt, that lowers our spending, that acknowledges social security will go bankrupt in five years and 75 million Americans will be affected by that. Republicans win when they acknowledge freedoms, making sure that Americans have the quality of life and can lift up themselves and their families and have the wages that they know that can keep up. We do that when we keep crime lessened, which the Trump administration has done well. We've seen the crime numbers go down. And we do that with a strong national security that's decisive and allows us to have the safety and the quality of life we need. Republicans have an opportunity. The self-correction is up to them.
00:15:18
Speaker 1: All right.
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Speaker 3: So we got to where we wanted to get to here with you when we start talking about the future of the Republican Party ambassador. You just said that J.D. Vance was completely misguided on such a critical issue. Surely you do not think that he is the person to lead the Republican Party moving forward, do you?
00:15:40
Speaker 4: I think it's too soon to tell who's going to lead the Republican Party going forward. You know, if you look back in 2022, everyone said that Ron DeSantis was going to be president, and he never made it out of Iowa. So I think that it's too soon. I think that there will be multiple people. But it's not what you say. It's also what Republicans do in these next two years. We need to show the American people that we feel their pain. We need to show the American people that we hear them. And we need to act accordingly. This was a massive power move by the American people saying, listen to us. You don't get to tell us how we feel. Let us tell you how we feel. We need to now act accordingly. No more peacocking on TV. Make sure that we can show them real results that they can feel in their homes that make them feel like they're more confident and strong going forward.
00:16:30
Speaker 2: Well, let's talk about how this is reflected in the South in particular, because in your state of South Carolina, we saw the incumbent, though for a short time she's been serving as a senator, Darlene Graham. go down in the race against Annie Andrews. We saw not only Democrats hold on to a Senate seat in Georgia, but flip the gubernatorial.
00:16:47
Speaker 1: Seat as well.
00:16:48
Speaker 2: You have Mississippi, which looks like it is very possible will turn over to a Democrat for the Senate seat. Do you see something as fundamentally changing in the South that Republicans need to worry about, or is this a one-off election?
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Speaker 4: I don't think Democrats won. I think Republicans lost. This was a massive point that the American people were trying to tell the Republicans to tell them they're misguided and they're not representing them, and they showed it.
00:17:15
Speaker 1: At the ballot box. This is where we're going to need to see some changes.
00:17:19
Speaker 4: We need to see real fiscal responsibility and conservative policies going forward, coming out of state houses, coming out of governors' offices, coming out of Congress, coming out of the administrations. And that's the opportunity we have to make this right. What they did was say, what you're doing is not working. We want something different. What we know is the Democrats just elected Iranian sympathizers that are leaning towards socialism. That's not what the American people want either. So both parties are going to have to do a self-correction here. Democrats are now going to have to show what it looks like when they govern. Are they going to take us back to open borders? Are they going to go and increase spending in the debt? Are they going to go back to all these stimulus packages that don't make our lives better?
00:18:04
Speaker 1: Are they going to heavily.
00:18:05
Speaker 4: Reduce businesses and regulate to the point that they're running businesses down? That's not what the American people want. And so both parties are going to have to really look at where we go from here and the message we're sending to the American people.
00:18:20
Speaker 3: Well, it's interesting, Ambassador, as you say that Democrats didn't win, Republicans lost. And we've heard that type of analysis. We even heard it going into the election that that could, in fact, be the case. Is it the Republican Party, though, that people were repudiating or one man, Donald Trump? He said, pretend I'm on the ballot. And this turned into a national referendum, according to many, on Donald Trump specifically. And it wasn't just about policy. with regard to, for instance, ICE enforcement or some of the other things that people took issue with, affordability. It was about the rhetoric. It was about what some people refer to as the meanness of this administration. I know we're getting a little abstract here, but if you're talking about rebranding the Republican Party, does that need to be part of it?
00:19:05
Speaker 4: I think his advisors, I think the advisors to President Trump did not advise him well. You don't have a president with a 34% approval rating saying, tell the American people, act like I'm on the ballot. That certainly didn't help. But the
Republican Party, too. What has Congress done for us lately? You had a Republican House, a Republican Senate and a Republican president. And aside from the illegal immigration border handling, which was very good, For the most part, the American.
00:19:33
Speaker 1: People didn't feel it.
00:19:35
Speaker 4: And I think, you know, on top of that, you look at all of these tariffs that raise the prices of lots of goods. You look at the war in Iran that raised the price of gas. You look at the corruption in D.C., where they saw everybody in D.C.
00:19:49
Speaker 1: Making money. and nobody at home was making money. All of these.
00:19:52
Speaker 4: Things could have been prevented and more could have been done and it wasn't. And so now we need to take our medicine, get a good night's sleep and say, OK, how are we going to do things differently? And Republicans need to do that. I don't think this is the blame of one person. I think this is a real opportunity for the Republican Party to say, what do we want to be when we grow up? And remember that our conservative policies work.
00:20:20
Speaker 2: Well, when we think about coming from the top, and you mentioned how you think the president maybe was ill-advised to talk about being on the ballot when his approval was so low. When we think about the people surrounding the president, he has elevated Stephen Miller now to be his White House chief of staff. Does that help the Republican rebrand address some of the issues that you have been talking about, Ambassador? Or does that only potentially detract from the message and the effort that you say needs to be undertaken?
00:20:49
Speaker 4: A president is allowed the right to choose the chief of staff that he or she thinks will take the country in a direction that is positive. And so, you know, what I would like to think is now President Trump and Stephen Miller need to come together. They need to decide what the agenda is for the next year. They need to get Republicans to come on board with it. And it needs to be what the American people want. And so I think that's the key is, are they going to move in the direction that the American people want?
00:21:17
Speaker 1: That's what we'll all have to wait and see.
00:21:21
Speaker 3: Well, there's a lot that we're going to need to wait and see here as our new Congress takes hold in the new year, Ambassador. When you look forward to what comes next, how likely is it that Democrats overreach in the spirit of oversight? Or is that needed now? You mentioned corruption more than once. Is that what Washington needs first?
00:21:43
Speaker 4: No, Washington doesn't need corruption. And look, Democrats overreach.
00:21:46
Speaker 3: Oversight for corruption.
00:21:48
Speaker 1: Mm-hmm. Well, right. Oversight for corruption. We absolutely need to have oversight and transparency. I think that's important.
00:21:56
Speaker 4: But we don't need to see endless investigations and cases and impeachments that are just going to stall progress for the American people. I think we always need to have accountability. I think that's important. But what we don't need to see is Democrats cave to the socialist voices that now want to move the Democrat Party to the left. We don't want to see endless investigations that are just trying to harm the administration for the sake of just needling them. I think the Democrats saw last time that didn't work. All it did was elevate Trump even more. We need to see action. I mean, that's the thing. And so I'm all for accountability, transparency, oversight. Those things are good. But understand that can't be all you do. You actually have to make sure you're doing things right by the businesses and the American people so that we can get a strong economy again and make sure that we're moving in the right direction.
00:22:48
Speaker 2: Why not try to drive that action yourself, Ambassador? You clearly, as you've shared with us over this course of the interview, have strong feelings about what Republicans need to do to win back the goodwill of the electorate. Why not take a swing at doing it yourself with another run for president?
00:23:05
Speaker 4: I think that Republicans need to show whether they are willing to fight. You know, you have to have a Republican Party willing to fight for it to know if you're going to lead it. And I think that that's really important to me is it's not about one person. It's about one team. And I am hoping that the Republican Party comes out of this better and stronger than they were before. But they have to go and make those moves.
00:23:31
Speaker 1: And I'm, you know, I'm hopeful that that happens.
00:23:35
Speaker 4: But I am not going to run in 2028 because I think the storybook is still yet to be determined. All right.
00:23:42
Speaker 2: We will leave it there. Ambassador, thank you so much for joining us. The former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, of course, also former governor of South Carolina and former presidential candidate. We appreciate you joining us here on Bloomberg TV and radio.