Trump's Views on War and Diplomacy

didn't know the risks, and once again, I'm in an unusual position 'cause I talk

to

Trump

But you've quoted him as waving off the risk by saying, "It'll all be fine," which

could almost-

You wanna know what he said?

Go on.

I'll tell you exactly what he said.

Please, please.

And I haven't said this, but I'm just gonna tell you.

Sure.

And this is a fact,

and I could look at my calendar, but it was in... It was...

I had flown back from Tel Aviv, from Ben Gurion Airport after

seeing the ambassador, and two days later I

was in the Oval with Trump alone.

And he was annoyed that I had given Huckabee a hard time in

this whole conversation

about Huckabee, and I said, "You're, you're US am- a-

as the son of an ambassador,

I know what the job entails,

and your ambassador, your representative to this nation just

called for rearranging the Middle East and allowing Israel to take parts of

Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Syria. Like, this is a diplomatic incident." And so

we had this whole conversation about this.

But then I said, "This war

is not about Iran's nuclear program, which you told me and the world that you

eliminated back in last summer, in June."

Yeah.

"This war is being pushed by Israel with three

aims. One, its own regional hegemony, take

Iran off the map. You, you can't...

They don't have freedom of movement as long as Iran is a regional power.

Two,

diminishing the power of the GCC," the six Gulf states which are a rival to

Israel and are becoming this kind of Switzerland of the Middle East,

and that's bad

for Israeli interests. "And three, getting the US out of the Middle

East because we constrain their ambitions.

Getting our bases out, destroying our bases.

Israel wants our bases out of the Middle East." I said this to Trump, to his face,

in the Oval Office, days before the war began.

And he looked at me and said, "Yes, you're right.

But in the end, we all die anyway, so it doesn't matter."

That's exactly what he said. "In the end, we all die anyway." And

I said to him, shocked, "But what about our kids and

our grandkids and, like, our country?"

And he goes, "Ah."

That's, that's a ver-

What does that mean?

That's a ver- I don't know. He didn't res- That's a verbatim exchange.

A- and I said, and I'm,

I'm... You know, as God watches, I said that.

Okay.

And I think it was... I thought it was true then,

and I think it's been proven true

now. The goal was to get the US out, to diminish the

GCC, and obviously to take Iran off the map

and sink it into

permanent

internal strife, into civil war, sectarian strife.

Um, and he said, "It doesn't matter, because in the end,

we're all dead anyway."

And I was shocked by that, because it's nihilism,

and that's the last thing any

leader should display, or any person should display.

It does matter.

Who lives or dies does matter. The future does matter.