Top Trump official rallies behind president amid backlash for 'dictator' attack on Zelenskyy

While speaking at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, on Friday, Grenell said: "I'm so thankful that we have a president who's concentrating on peace. And that's what Donald Trump has just said: 'You know, let's stop.'"

Grenell is a former U.S. ambassador to Germany and previously served as Trump's Acting National Intelligence Director.

"I think the American people are really frustrated with Zelenskyy. I think that there's a big frustration that he's not making great choices for peace," he added. "And again, when the American people are spending hundreds of billions of dollars, there is a frustration."

"What President Trump is saying very clearly: 'We have to stop this war,'" he explained. "He's somebody who is concentrating on saying to both sides: 'Let's talk to both sides and figure out how we stop this.'"

"But I want to say that's really important in this conversation is Donald Trump has done something different than Republican foreign policy leaders have done for 25 years," he emphasized. "We articulate very clearly under Donald Trump, we don't do 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 [but] how do we make America better, stronger and more prosperous for the people that live here." 

"Honestly, it's not in my plan unless Kamala Harris runs for governor," he said.

"I mean, here's the thing. We already know who she is. We've spent hundreds of millions of dollars to define who Kamala Harris is," he went on. "If she thinks that she's going to run for governor of California, but a Republican is going to win, and I may not be able to resist trying to run against her."

Despite the state's notoriously liberal and leftist policies, Grenell has said that California is a "magnificent state" and expressed: "We deserve better than the failed leadership and partisan politics of our elected officials."

Grenell also criticized California political leaders for botching the response to the recent Los Angeles wildfires.

"There are going to be conditions," he said. "As a Californian, I'm all for it because I don't have faith that if we went back and we just gave California hundreds of millions of dollars, they were going to go back to their same old ways of not giving us enough water [and] having dangerous situations on the ground when it comes to forestry. It's going to happen again."