>> we ll take you live to the annual conservative political action congress known as cpac her remas from florida congressman byron donald housing in the fair secretary scott turner and others. until then, here's a portion of the event from earlier with rick l the trump administration's presidential envoy for special missions. >> ladies and gentlemen this is

a conversation with u.s. envoy for special missions ambassador richard pennell and politico white house bureau chief sasha burns. >> hey everyone. it is his fault that a political journalist is on this base don't get mad at me. i have so much i want to talk to you about. the number one thing everyone has been asking me about you is a new hat you are wearing at the kennedy center.

we have to do the big production that sells masses in the people want to sleep we want to have a really good program so the first thing we are doing think the big change is for everybody to know you've got to be at the kennedy center in december because we are

doing a big huge celebration of the birth of christ at christmas. how crazy is it to think were gonna celebrate christ at christmas with a big traditional production to celebrate what we are all celebrating in the world during christmas time which is the birth of. >> i know there have been some strapping out of performing you worry about being able to bring in big artists to the center? >> we don't because we already have them and i think it's a real misnomer that there is one thing that got a lot of attention that this group dropped out it was all blamed on president trump and me and we tried to correct the record i think we have to do more direct job because it wasn't true the kennedy center they had before president trump was

the chairman of the kennedy center have made some decisions about this individual group to change them because ticket sales were atrocious. so they said we can't have this because we really don't have any money we can't be spending on things that aren't bringing in revenue. they made this change before we came and it was announced and suddenly the gay men course was dropping out because of trump. it was replaced with other things that happens all the time. >> you would welcome the gay men's choir to perform if they were interested? >> first of all, right now if you're gonna take public money have to prove you actually can bring in revenue we don't have any money. woman that was had my job for me was getting paid $1.3 million a year we had no money. >> how much are you getting paid? way way way last.

>> we were talking about this a little bit backstage, how did this happen because you going to venezuela munich and suddenly you're running the kennedy center. >> i think it was a frustration from the president that there was no money at the kennedy center. [multiple speakers] i don't know you have to ask him. i love the arts i'm somebody who goes already to lots of different art styles i appreciate of a bunch of different styles of art if i started naming all of these you'd be like wait a minute. >> your connoisseur we believe it. i want to talk about some of the major conflicts we are seeing around the world right now. i think this is been top of the list for everyone of the white

house in your conversations with president trump what he would hear from him about what's going on with the rush relationship with zielinski. the relationships have soured, what's going on?>> i'm so thankful we have a president who's concentrating on peace. that's what donald trump is doing let's just stop. we had a joe biden total peace in the middle east and total peace ããwe can never forget that. i do get a little bit frustrated with reporters when they try to say your decision now isn't perfect i'm like yeah we were put in a whole we were put in a terrible situation there are now no great solutions right now so you have to be patient that we are trying to dig the biden people out of this terrible hundreds

of billions of dollars hold they created that's the first thing. the second thing is i don't think it's fair to say that somehow president trump has met with president zelenskyy for five times the trump team has met with ukrainians and zelenskyy another four or five times. the one time the truck team reaches out to say how about we talk to the russians. >> you know better than anyone that it was russian aggression back in 2014 people forget goes over a decade back. is russia that invaded ukraine.

have a sense of why president trump is making these claims now? >> we have to stop ããyou somebody who's concentrating on saying to both sides let's talk to both sides and figure out how we stop this. we had terrible choices because of the biden's team there's not a lot of great choices is there frustration that things are not perfect in ukraine right now? yes but i'm a little bit annoyed that we were handed a file that was war when we handed them a file that was peace. i think we are frustrated. >> why make the false claims about who started the war why call zelenskyy a dictator? >> i think the american people are really frustrated withãã when the american people are

spending hundreds of billions of dollars there's a frustration let's go back you said 2014. let's go back to the beginning of this war where joe biden message for more than 30 days that he knew through intelligence on a war was absolutely coming, the europeans in the biden administration all did one thing which was prepare for more war they talk about more funding for they batten down the hatches they got hardware, no one was talking about peace i think it's pretty immoral at the president of the united states says we are having a war in 30 days and we know for sure and no one shows up in moscow and tf try to say let's do diplomacy let's stop a war now we are $100 billion later so there's a frustration. >> because zelenskyy is it making the choices for peace what he think the choices are he should make to bring an end

to this? >> first of all, hundreds of billions of dollars of american money, i will say that, and a whole bunch is missing. we immediately say mismanagement of funds what we want to see is talks with putin i don't think talking means you are weak i think talking is a tactic to get to a goal. president trump can show up with kim jong-un, i've done negotiations my whole life i did serbia coastal negotiations i can tell you that if you are in the middle of trying to bring peace, trying to make sure were not spending hundreds of billions of dollars on the war and saving lives need at least a person in the middle who can say i'm going to talk to these guys and i'm going to talk to these guys and i don't

care what kind of criticism i get, i've got to figure out a way for peace is not the purpose i will give you that but i go back to the fact that we had it perfect in terms of peace we were handed a war and now we are being criticized how do you dig us out of the war you're not going fast enough and fair enough so we are a little frustrated. >> so the social media stuff president trump called zelenskyy a dictator do you think is a dictator? >> i think when you reject having elections about moving toward that way people get angry about it. >> is putin a dictator? >> course. >> the stuff we are seeing on social media. >> i want to say one thing that's really important in this conversation, donald trump has done something different than republicans foreign-policy leaders have done for 25 years. >> is a paradigm shift. >> we articulate very clearly under donald trump regime

change we are going to deal with the countries that are in front of us and our criteria is not how do we make that country better how do we make america better stronger and more prosperous for the people who live here. i was on the phone with ããhe announced the plan for the riviere of the middle east. where is your sense of where president trump is headed with that idea. >> let's start from the fact that he's a great negotiator. you know he's negotiating all of the time. i think again, i sound like a keep repeating myself but we had peace agreements the media

and the intelligence agencies told president trump if he moved embassy there would be outright war we know the opposite happened, peace agreements broke out. you certainly know how to negotiate americans into a people situation my attitude is, let's watch and see how this plays out because i have full faith donald trump is a great negotiator and delivered peace before. >> regardless of what it looks like us getting involved in gaza president trump has talked about getting out of entanglement a promise he made on the campaign trail how does that jive ..

the other thing is. [applause] you're going to hear me talk about diplomacy but i will say chastisement to the public debate, when you talk about security assurances not assuming security assurances are just simply american votes were un votes, i can't think of a better security than private equity folks on the ground. american businesses on the ground trying to deals and

rebuild or bring economic development, if you got americans in ukraine doing economic development, i can't think of a better way to have security assurance. >> i do want to talk to you about the wildfires in los angeles, people have walked from anybody knows and l.a. they had tremendous loss, our recovery efforts going next with lima, democrats republicans in agreement, who are the bottlenecks and what are you doing? >> the reality is the federal response is mostly money so going to have strings on the money we get the california

chairman not enough water, a dangerous situation on the ground for street again. >> what are those strings you talk about? >> i don't want to commit to much but -- >> a little. >> i will say everyone involved knows the california commission is a disaster and it needs to be defunded.

a crazy quilt left and one person can stop progress and they make california less safe. >> will see richard in california. [cheering] [cheering] >> if kamala runs -- >> your jumping in? >> week already know who she is. we spent billions of dollars to define who kamala harris is. if she things is going to run

for governor of california, a republican is going to win and i may not be able to resist trying to run again. [applause] >> before i let you go, the kennedy center coming up in december, what is your ideal performance of the kennedy center? >> dolly parton. [applause] ♪♪ ♪♪