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Speaker 1: I was very happy to see President Trump say we're

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Speaker 1: pulling out of UNESCO. I've made the argument before that

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Speaker 1: while the United Nations was a unique effort, maybe its

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Speaker 1: time has come. If all we're going to do is

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Speaker 1: support despots and the worst of the worst, doesn't seem

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Speaker 1: like a valuable proposition for the United States to be

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Speaker 1: involved in, especially considering the money that we spend. Tony Katz,

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Speaker 1: Tony Katz today, good to be with you. So I

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Speaker 1: was happy to see President Trump say we're pulling out

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Speaker 1: of UNESCO. But what is it, what does it mean,

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Speaker 1: and what does it mean for the future. Eugene Kntorovich

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Speaker 1: joins me right now, Senior Research fellow at the Margaret

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Speaker 1: Thatcher Center for Freedom at the Heritage Foundation Heritage dot org.

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Speaker 1: And you've written about this. You were actually in the

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Speaker 1: Wall Street Journal just a couple of months ago making

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Speaker 1: this argument, utilizing a lot of the same thoughts as

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Speaker 1: what you're seeing now from the President, especially after they

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Speaker 1: did this research into UNESCO and what they do. Let's

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Speaker 1: start with what UNESCO so does and how it has

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Speaker 1: morphed over the years.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, UNESCO was founded in nineteen forty six, when America

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Speaker 2: first drawing, and it was supposed to promote culture, science,

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Speaker 2: and education around the world, which is maybe an okay idea,

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Speaker 2: but it's not clear why you need the United Nation

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Speaker 2: States to do that. Since then, it has morphed into

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Speaker 2: basically general purpose incubator progressive ideas from the world coagender ideology,

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Speaker 2: climate change, DEI, investigations of structural racism. Basically, instead of

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Speaker 2: being a cultural and scientific organization, they are trying to

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Speaker 2: change culture.

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Speaker 1: So the folks at UNESCO start off with one idea

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Speaker 1: and then of course it morphs into something that is

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Speaker 1: purely not only an anti American concept, but really an

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Speaker 1: anti Western concept. And one of the things that the

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Speaker 1: Trump people said was that while they were looking at

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Speaker 1: a probe on anti Semitism or anti Israel sentiment, but

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Speaker 1: what they found was the issues regarding diversity, equity and

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Speaker 1: inclusion policies as well as it's propoused Indian and pro

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Speaker 1: China basis. Let's start with the DEI, because you wrote

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Speaker 1: about this in the Wall Street Journal. What kind of

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Speaker 1: things was UNESCO doing.

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Speaker 2: They were pushing anti racism training and an anti racism

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Speaker 2: tool kit that demands the governments and organizations undergo an

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Speaker 2: Audit of Racial Equalities, which requires them to admit structural racism. Basically,

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Speaker 2: it's the straight you bringing Kendy the and that's what

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Speaker 2: they were pushing sort of throughout their educational platforms. I

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Speaker 2: remember they also teach educational curriculums, so they were also

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Speaker 2: pushing gender ideology LGBT gender curriculums. They had a program

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Speaker 2: called Transforming Men Taalities Capital MBN about fighting marchiousness in

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Speaker 2: video games. Combat it their against norms of masculinity. They're

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Speaker 2: trying to red society using US tax payer money. And

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Speaker 2: of course they're anti Israel. Bias is fundamental. They have

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Speaker 2: determined Jerusalem, Jericho, Evon to be the Palestinian cities and

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Speaker 2: have been erasing Jewish and fish convinced to the Holy Land.

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Speaker 1: Well, the anti semitism of the United Nations. Just taking

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Speaker 1: a look at UNRU, the United Nations Reliefs Works Agency

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Speaker 1: for Palestinian Refugees actually aiding in a betting in terrorist

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Speaker 1: attacks a lah October seventh, talking to Eugene Contorovich, Senior

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Speaker 1: Research Fellow at the Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom, part

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Speaker 1: of the Heritage Foundation Heritage dot Org. I thought it

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Speaker 1: interesting that it discusses what I consider to be a

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Speaker 1: top line threat, not that I don't consider anti Semitism

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Speaker 1: to be a threat, regardless of whether or not I'm Jewish.

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Speaker 1: And that is the conversation about pro China. What was

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Speaker 1: JINESCO doing that was seen as pro China, which I

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Speaker 1: think was a way of saying anti Western civilization.

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Speaker 2: So the Chinese government, the Chinese Communist Party had succeeded

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Speaker 2: in exerting ever greater influence on NUNSCO both and having

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Speaker 2: a sort of remarkable number of places in China designated

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Speaker 2: World World Heritage Sites, and now there's second only to Italy.

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Speaker 2: And about the groups Italy getting Chinese bureaucrats in place

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Speaker 2: to promoting AI regulatory frameworks, they would be helpful to

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Speaker 2: the Chinese governments. And when a person from quits the

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Speaker 2: first time was in twenty seventeen, then President Biden rejoined

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Speaker 2: saying we need to be a part of this organization

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Speaker 2: to fight the Chinese influence. But America being part has

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Speaker 2: not helped fight the Chinese influence at all. What's small

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Speaker 2: because the US diplomatic color does not know how to

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Speaker 2: be as aggressively taking over international organizations as the Chinese

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Speaker 2: More importantly, the Chinese influence doesn't really matter if America

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Speaker 2: is not a member, because the organization is only worth

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Speaker 2: taking over when you have the world's you know, greatest

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Speaker 2: power as part of it. Without without America as a member,

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Speaker 2: you know what China sort of gets is a lot less.

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Speaker 1: So so much of this it gets into the larger

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Speaker 1: conversation of Hey, I'm happy to see that we're defunding UNESCO.

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Speaker 1: I'm happy to see that we're we're done giving money

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Speaker 1: as we should be to unrun. But the real question

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Speaker 1: here is why are we still a part of the

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Speaker 1: United Nations? And toto. Some ideas run their course. It

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Speaker 1: is my argument this one has run its course. Is

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Speaker 1: it your belief that the United States should be removing

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Speaker 1: itself from the United Nations as a whole?

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Speaker 2: I think nothing would be lost by quitting the United Nations,

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Speaker 2: But politically it is almost undoable because you know, like

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Speaker 2: the mafia which runs orphanages and Italian cultural festivals, the

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Speaker 2: UN also does some good things that create constituencies that

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Speaker 2: make it very hard to get out of. At the

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Speaker 2: same time, one can do a lot more work by

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Speaker 2: quitting particular UN agencies. The President has already quit the

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Speaker 2: World Both Organization and UNESCO. There's a lot more sort

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Speaker 2: of components of the UN that we could quit one

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Speaker 2: by one, such as the International Label Organization, the International

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Speaker 2: Migration Organizations. There's a whole list of those, and that's

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Speaker 2: a good way of sort of starting the process.

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Speaker 1: You have written, though, going back to May of twenty

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Speaker 1: twenty five, as you are writing about getting the US

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Speaker 1: out of UNESCO, we should defund the United Nations. Now

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Speaker 1: I said get out of the United Nations. You argue,

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Speaker 1: there's still some good things that are done, and maybe

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Speaker 1: you want to see it in the table if you're

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Speaker 1: going to defund them, aren't we making the same argument.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't say that the good things are worth

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Speaker 2: for membership politically. I'm just saying that politically absolute quitting

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Speaker 2: is extremely difficult, and we should definitely quit components that

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Speaker 2: we think with and other components that we can't quit

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Speaker 2: we should defund. And also I think is very important

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Speaker 2: to encourage other for our allies to quit them also

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Speaker 2: to have as part of our diplomacy. If we think

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Speaker 2: of UN organizations promoting harmful agendas, we need to not

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Speaker 2: just be quitting but telling our allies that we want them.

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Speaker 1: To quit before before I let you go, and I

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Speaker 1: know you're up against a timeline. We're going to hear

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Speaker 1: from the political left, how terrible this is, how awful

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Speaker 1: this is, Look at how many people are going to

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Speaker 1: be hurt by this defunding. How do you discuss with

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Speaker 1: people countering those progressive messages.

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Speaker 2: Well, I can prove that no one is really going

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Speaker 2: to notice the difference because the United States has actually

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Speaker 2: quit UNESCO before. It's quit under the some administration, and

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Speaker 2: it quit under Reagan and was out for twenty years

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Speaker 2: from the nineteen eighties until the two thousands. Was there

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Speaker 2: less education, society and culture during that period? Can anyone

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Speaker 2: actually point to like something that the world was backing? No,

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Speaker 2: you know, this is only of interest in narrow, bureaucrantic classes.

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Speaker 2: Once we're out, nobody's inning to remember that we were in.

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Speaker 2: And you know, we survived not being in UNESCO for decades,

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Speaker 2: and we can survive much more. The question is, you know,

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Speaker 2: if we have this organization that is promoting hostile agendas

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Speaker 2: and that is using its bureaucracy to essentially undermine American values,

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Speaker 2: one question we should ask is couldn't we push to

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Speaker 2: dismantle it further by encouraging Allied states to withdraw as well.

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Speaker 1: Eugene Kentarovich, Senior Research Fellow, Margaret Thatcher Center for Freedom

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Speaker 1: at the Heritage Foundation Heritage dot org. I appreciate you

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Speaker 1: taking the time, sir more to get to I'm Tony Katz.

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Speaker 1: This is Tony Katz today,