SALT LAKE CITY — National security adviser Robert O’Brien says President Donald Trump has had more success on foreign policy and national security in four years than almost any president in eight years.
And he’s said it’s a “big concern” that the strides made in the Trump administration would be undone if the president isn’t reelected. The Obama administration, he said, left the country weaker.
“I hate to go backward because we’ve made a lot of tremendous progress,” O’Brien told reporters Tuesday in response to a question. “I’m not a good prognosticator on elections, but I think the American people understand what’s at stake in this election. You’d hate to see the successes that we’re working on and the successes that are still to come, you’d hate to see those lost.”
O’Brien was the keynote speaker at Utah Republican Rep. Chris Stewart’s annual security summit focusing on America’s role in the world.
In his prepared remarks, O’Brien focused on China but also talked about the Middle East, Russia, election interference and TikTok during a question-and-answer session.
O’Brien joked that he would not want to be Trump’s nurse or doctor as the president was treated for COVID-19.
“I don’t think he enjoys hospitals,” he said, adding Trump “was not in a very good mood” when he talked to the president last Friday after getting the news that he had tested positive for the virus.
China, he said, has not kept its promises on international trade. The U.S. turned a blind eye to China’s widespread theft of technology and downplayed its human rights abuses, banking on the idea that through cooperation China would change.
“The reality is we were wrong,” he said.
Trump, he said, has stood up to China and the Chinese Community Party, including imposing tariffs on its trade goods.
Stewart and Rep. John Curtis, R-Utah, served on the Republicans’ China Task Force, which released a report last week on the Chinese Communist Party’s malign activities and the threats it poses to the U.S. It contains more than 400 recommendations, about two-thirds of which they say are bipartisan and a third of which has already passed the House or Senate.
“Two years ago most Americans weren’t at all concerned about China. They just viewed them as someone who makes great iPhones and toys. That’s changed. People now recognize that there really is a threat there,” Stewart said.
While O’Brien sees China as the biggest long-term challenge facing the U.S., he said Iran could pose a more immediate threat because of the “maximum pressure” sanctions placed on the Middle East nation.
“As a result of our tough actions against the Iranians, they could make a miscalculation and engage in attack, which would require and which would result in a very swift response, a devastating response from the United States,” he said.
O’Brien called the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signing diplomatic agreements with Israel a “game changer” in the region. He said the Trump administration is trying to press on other Arab countries to reach peace deals with Israel, though he didn’t identify them.
Trump moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem gave him the political capital to spend on forging the peace agreement, he said.
“Most politicians don’t want to use their political capital. They like to and tend to nurture it and look at it and take care of it and protect it and save it. That’s not this president,” O’Brien said, adding the negotiations, of which he was a part, were tough.
Asked about TikTok, the Chinese video-sharing social networking service, O’Brien said people should delete the app from their phones because it puts Americans’ personal data in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party.
“They want to have a profile on every American,” he said.
The Chinese use the information to interfere in elections and democracy by targeting people “just like an ad company would but on steroids.”
O’Brien said the U.S. is seeing election influence from China, as well as Russia and Iran. Intelligence reports show Iranians trying to phish the email accounts of campaign and administration officials, Russians using influence on Facebook and Twitter, and “massive, massive” Chinese propaganda aimed at state and local elected officials, he said.
He said he told his Russian counterpart in a meeting in Geneva last week not to interfere with voting machines, websites and ballot counting in the upcoming election. The Russians, he said, told him they have no plans to do so.
“I hope they mean it,” he said.
The president’s message to all countries is “stay out of our elections,” O’Brien said.
O’Brien said he expects the election will be fair and that Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden will live with the result.