Ric Grenell tells Newsmax: UN making positive impact

The United Nations has taken heat for not condemning Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack and for not demanding the terrorist organization release the more than 100 hostages still being held in the Gaza Strip, but the international body is doing some good, says former U.S. Ambassador to Germany Ric Grenell.

“UNICEF, the World Food Program, UNHCR [U.N. Refugee Agency], some of these agencies are fantastic,” Grenell, who was part of the U.S. mission to the U.N. during the George W. Bush administration from 2001 to 2008, told “Eric Bolling The Balance.”

“They’re managed by Americans, they’re run as well as any organization and those organizations are imperative to have.”

Grenell, though, said it doesn’t mean reforms aren’t needed within the U.N.

“I would remind American taxpayers, I was somebody who was calling out the waste, fraud and abuse at the U.N.,” he said. “I don’t think we should have 13 peacekeeping operations going on right now. I think we’ve had multiple U.S. ambassadors to the U.N. that have failed to cut into the failed peacekeeping operations, gutting them.”

Grenell singled out Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.

“She arrived at the U.N. and left the U.N., and we were still spending just as much money, if not more,” he said. “There are a whole bunch of reforms that we can be doing at the U.N.”

Grenell said the main problem with the U.N. is with the 15 members of the Security Council. He said he was opposed to the compromise resolution passed Dec. 22 that called for humanitarian pauses in fighting between Israel and Hamas, increased aid to Gaza and the creation of conditions that would lead to a “sustainable” end to fighting.

The U.S. and Russia abstained from the vote, declining to use their vetoes as permanent members of the Security Council. U.S. Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield said in speech that day she supported the resolution but did not vote for it because she was “appalled” it did not include a condemnation of Hamas.

“I would caution the U.S. media to start calling out the members of the Security Council who are weakening the statement,” Grenell said. “That includes the United States of America under the Biden administration because we could have vetoed anything that we wanted. We could have taken the language as is and just vetoed it. I will tell you that the U.N. does not work unless there is U.S. leadership.”

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