'Third world reporters.' Ric Grenell says media complicit in Democrats' diplomatic failures

Ric Grenell, the former U.S. ambassador to Germany and acting intelligence chief under President Donald Trump, is deriding Secretary of State Antony Blinken as a "lightweight" and accusing the Washington news media of functioning like propaganda journalists in a banana republic.

"Look, I have been all over the world. And I've watched third world reporters who\ literally are stenographers for the ruling party,"  Grenell told Just the News during an interview Tuesday on the John Solomon Reports podcast. "I've seen the damage that they do, to not only the truth, but to journalism. And we have a crisis."

"We have way too many outlets who just parrot the ruling party," he added. "And I think conservatives have got to stop asking for this Washington crowd to reform or change itself. It's never going to. They love their city, they want the city to be big and well-funded."

Grenell. who famously led Trump's successful effort to European countries like Germany to contribute more to their NATO defense, took direct aim on Twitter and the podcast at President Joe Biden's chief diplomat.He retweeted a story by EURACTIV about the prime ministers of the Czech Republic, Poland, and Slovenia meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal in Kyiv.

"Where is @SecBlinken?!" Grenell asked, tagging  Blinken.

"I know a lot of world leaders and ambassadors around the globe, and, you know, they just think that he is a lightweight — he doesn't do diplomacy with muscle," he added during the podcast interview.

Grenell also discussed the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, noting that, contrary to what Senate Democrats claimed, Europe didn't want the pipeline, only then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel did.

"The European Parliament, when I was there in Berlin under the Trump administration, European Parliament told Merkel and the Germans, 'Don't build Nord Stream 2. We don't think it's good for Europe,'" he said.

"[T]he Senate Democrats never heard from the rest of the Europeans on that. They only heard Merkel and her team and they would just say, 'Oh, Europe, you know, wants this energy.' No, Europe didn’t, Germany did, and quit defining Europe by just what the Germans want."

Grenell explained that during her 16-year tenure as chancellor, Merkel "moved Europe, and specifically the Germans, away from a Western-facing transatlantic alliance, and just did this kind of, you know, Switzerland-style foreign policy, where you're friends with everybody, and you sell cars in Beijing and Moscow, and Riyadh and Tehran, and you paper over all the other problems."

He praised German Chancellor Olaf Scholz for reversing some of Merkel's policies.

"I never dreamed that the socialists would be better than the conservatives in Germany," Grenell said. "But they saw what was happening. They flipped. They did a 180 after Merkel left. They stopped the pipeline in its tracks, and they said, 'We got to pay our NATO bill immediately and bring back a spending level that we were obligated to do since 2014.' That's remarkable. The last people to notice were Senate Democrats, because they continue down this line of not putting sanctions on … the Russian pipeline."

He added that Democrats dropping the Nord Stream 2 pipeline sanctions is likely what caused Russian President Vladimir Putin to decide to invade Ukraine.

Grenell also commented on his tweet from yesterday that proclaimed "the 'Don't Say Gay' claim is Florida Democrats Jussie Smollett moment.

"Stop faking hate crimes."

Grenell said the media allows Democrats to follow their playbook, allowing the truth about Florida's new parental rights law to be distorted. "If you disagree with them, you're a racist, sexist, or a homophobe. And just get used to it because you're going to be one of those three," he said.

He said that he is eager to turn Democrats playbook around on them.

"[A]t this point, you know, I'm lucky that I'm gay. I'm so thankful because now I've got a built-in excuse: if you disagree with me, you're a homophobe. I don't make the rules … I just play by their rules."