Best gift I've ever received has to be a bike when I was younger, a pedal bike.

It was a sort of slick little road bike and I remember it was all like, it was so, it was all wrapped up,

it was so obvious what it was obviously because nothing's shaped like a bike and I had a little ribbon on it and I was so

a guest. For that was a life changer and I'm still sort of big on cycling around my area now so, for that one change me a little.

Enjoy in every sip with red cups now back at Starbucks.

Guys before we get to today's episode I just want to remind you that don't burn this country comes out on April 12th.

You can pre-order your copy now at davroobin.com slash book.

I'm Dave Rubin and joining me today is the former US ambassador to Germany as well as the former acting director of national intelligence for these great, at least great for now, United States America and my friend and Californian.

We're going to have to get into that Rick Renell. Welcome back to the Rubin report. Thanks for having me always a pleasure.

Let's just do the California thing quick in one minute. What the high hell are you doing there still, man?

I love this place. I can't leave. I can't abandon it. It's bad. Look, today's the filing deadline for people running for governor Senate congressional races. All the races doesn't look like we're going to have any major candidate running against Newsym.

And I think that's just more of a commentary on the fact that the system here is broken. They do mail-in ballots. Democrats completely rule this place like a third world country.

And so therefore we really don't have a competition.

You know, Rick, I knew it was bad in Cali when I was calling people to say I was leaving and I thought you were going to be the one guy because you were trying to clean up the roles there and you're still trying to do a whole bunch of stuff and I know how much you love California.

I know you've been there forever, but I was calling people to say I'm leaving and everyone was like, oh, great. You know, you should go. It's time to go get out of Dodge. And you were the only person I thought was going to say stay and you go, I get it. And then I was like, all right, I'm out of here.

Every time I mentioned California on the show, I put money into this jar. And at the end of the year, I'm going to be handing a whole bunch of cash and I'm throwing in a couple thousand dollars in my money for somebody for somebody that's willing to leave California and migrate to Florida.

So I thought I thought you were going to say for somebody who needs to help pay taxes because they stayed there. So I'll gladly take the money.

No, I am not paying your taxes to King Newsom. Okay, but let's get on to the stuff that I really wanted to talk to you about this week because obviously there's this whole Russia Ukraine situation.

This is what you're an expert in as an ambassador and on the intelligence side and all of that. So I thought maybe we could start by just doing a little, a little 101 on what you think American foreign policy should be like.

Before we just jump in before we get into the specifics of what's happening in Russian Ukraine, just generally what you think America's role in the world should be.

And maybe how it was when you were working with that orange guy versus how it is now. Let's just start there and then we'll jump to the specifics.

Yeah, look, I think that the America first policy is a fantastic one and it doesn't mean America alone and it doesn't mean just simply that we bring troops home and we ignore.

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