In one of the final scheduled speeches for Wednesday night’s Republican convention, former acting Director of National Intelligence Richard Grenell spoke about President Donald Trump’s foreign policy agenda, extolling his pivot away from globalization and toward nationalism, which he argued put “America first.” 

Grenell previously served as US ambassador to Germany, and earlier this year, the President brought Grenell in for a short stint as the acting Director of National Intelligence.

Grenell said during his speech that the press was shocked when Trump, running as a Republican presidential candidate in 2016, said “(t)hat American foreign policy was failing to make Americans safer.” 

“After the end of the Cold War, Democrats and Republicans in Washington bought into the illusion that the whole world would start to resemble America. And so they started to pursue unlimited globalization,” he added. 

Grenell appeared to embrace the “nationalist” term for Trump’s foreign policy agenda, saying, “The Washington elites want you to think this kind of foreign policy is immoral. And so they call it ‘nationalist.’ That tells you all you need to know. The DC crowd thinks when they call Donald Trump a nationalist, they’re insulting him.” 

"You’re in charge. Not lobbyists. Not special interests. Not warmongers, or China sympathizers, or globalization fanatic," Grenell later said. "With Donald Trump and Mike Pence in the White House, the boss is the American people. President Trump rightly calls his foreign policy 'America First.'"

The former ambassador also praised Trump’s negotiation tactics with foreign leaders, saying, “I’ve watched President Trump charm the Chancellor of Germany, while insisting that Germany pay its NATO obligations."

In his three months as DNI, Grenell oversaw controversial firings of top career officials, a re-structuring of several parts of ODNI, a deeply acrimonious relationship with oversees in Congress and the declassification of documents from the Obama administration that fueled the "Obamagate" conspiracy theory amplified by Trump and his allies.

Grenell used time at the lectern to also discuss his time as DNI and linking it to the Democratic Party, saying, “I saw the Democrats’ entire case for Russian collusion. And what I saw made me sick to my stomach.”