00:00 I think it's entirely possible he would say something and wouldn't care about the conventions
00:04 of not interfering. But, you know, I have to say we've just seen the example here of Senator Schumer
00:09 telling the Israelis they needed to have a new election to get rid of Bibi Netanyahu,
00:13 which President Biden then supported. So people interfere in US elections all the time by talking
00:20 about our politicians. We do the same. I don't think it's a good idea either way, but you have
00:25 to acknowledge I think it's fairly common. There are things that are simply not what I think normal
00:33 people do. And, you know, once on the way to Brussels for this 2018 summit, he then went on
00:41 to see Theresa May in London and then went on to the Helsinki summit with Putin. So he walked out
00:48 of the White House and on his way to the helicopter to Marine One, and he stopped, as he often did
00:54 with the press, talked about the trip. And he said, you know, I think the meeting with Vladimir
00:58 Putin might be the easiest meeting of all. He said, who would have thought of that? And the
01:02 answer is nobody except Donald Trump. I mean, just to go from the sublime to the ridiculous,
01:10 at one point we were supporting Juan Guaido as a legitimate president of Venezuela against Maduro
01:17 and the military junta that essentially surrounded him. You know, Maduro had threatened Guaido's
01:25 families and he had imprisoned his chief of staff. And so we arranged a visit for Guaido's wife and
01:34 the wife of the chief of staff who was being held in a particularly brutal Venezuelan prison. They
01:39 came into the Oval Office, we had the press in. Trump was very gracious with him. He listened,
01:44 they told the stories of how Mrs. Guaido's children had been intimidated by Maduro's thugs,
01:51 how the wife of the chief of staff had seen her husband dragged out of their home, put in prison.
01:56 Really, I think quite helpful to get across to the American people why we were with Guaido against
02:03 Maduro. And so the meeting ended, the press left, they were escorted out. I went out with them. I
02:10 went back into the Oval to see Trump. And I said, I think I wanted to say I thought that had been a
02:18 really very effective, very helpful thing in support of Guaido. But before I could get that,
02:24 he said to me, "Did you notice she didn't have a wedding ring on?" And I thought to myself,
02:29 "What?" You know, this is Trump in action. And I could go on at length. Well, I had met him before
02:39 the 2016 campaign. I'd met with him during the campaign, right before the foreign policy debate
02:44 with Hillary Clinton. I met with him several times after he became president, before I joined the
02:48 administration. I think I heard everything about him that anybody else in America could have heard.
02:56 I don't think I have any illusions. Very few people have ever called me naive. So I think,
03:01 at least I thought at the time, I knew what I was getting into. Because I also believe that like
03:08 every one of his 44 predecessors, Trump would be disciplined by the gravity of the responsibilities
03:16 that he had, at least in the national security space. And the implications, seriousness of the
03:22 consequences of his decision would provide a form of discipline. And you could have,
03:28 even with somebody like Trump, an orderly discussion of options and make decisions that way.
03:35 And it just turned out that I was wrong, that the weight of the responsibilities did not discipline
03:41 him. And that was true during the entire 17 months I was a national security advisor.
03:48 I was following George Conway, you may have seen him on TV, was Kellyanne Conway's husband,
03:54 very negative on Trump over the years. And so he told the story, he and Kellyanne,
03:59 then his wife, Steve Bannon, and Trump in a motorcade out to Long Island,
04:03 before the, after the election in 2016, but before the inauguration,
04:08 they said they're driving along and somehow my name came up. He said Trump went on for 15 minutes
04:13 about the mustache. I can laugh at it now, it doesn't make any difference. But this is the
04:21 man who was the leader of the free world for four years and could be again. Well, I think the main
04:28 concern should be what he would do in Ukraine, what he would do with respect to NATO. And
04:34 I think it's pretty clear to me, at least that the withdrawal from NATO is a very likely in a
04:42 second Trump term. And I think he said with respect to Ukraine, basically, he could solve
04:47 it in 24 hours, which is ridiculous. He'd get Zelensky and Putin into a room and resolve it,
04:52 which is probably also pretty silly. But if it failed, of course, it wouldn't be Trump's fault,
04:57 it would be somebody else's fault, by definition. And my fear is it would be Zelensky by default,
05:03 because certainly his good friend, Vladimir Putin wouldn't be at fault. So there are a lot
05:08 of ramifications, a lot of other issues on which Trump's performance, I think, would be troubling.
05:14 But in the immediate future, with respect to the UK, I think those are the most salient.
05:19 What Trump believes is he can make a deal out of anything. He can make a deal with Ukraine and
05:25 Russia, he can make a deal in the Middle East. He thinks he can make a deal with Kim Jong-un,
05:29 with Xi Jinping on trade. I mean, everything is a deal for him. What the terms are,
05:36 almost irrelevant, because he wants the credit for having made the deal. And I will say in
05:42 diplomatic circles, you know, when somebody says, "We have reached agreement on an international
05:48 issue," people say, "Oh, it's wonderful." And then they say, "By the way, what are the terms of the
05:51 deal?" So Trump is really like diplomats in certain respect, is the deal is more important
05:57 than the substance to him. That's a big mistake.
05:59 [END]
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