Ben Rhodes

I think privately, you get these leaders in a room and they did not want this to happen because they're aware of all the consequences.

I mean, the Europeans who, you know, I don't even know, you can read their statements over and over again and have no idea what the fuck their position is.

You know, the EU or Emmanuel Macron, like it's kind of word salads, you know, about how bad the Iranians are, but we need to have consultations and we're concerned.

But

They're the ones, by the way, who could end up getting refugees from this if it goes really south.

But to me, what stood out, Mark Carney, who we praised a lot and has gotten a lot of praise, he stood up at Davos and said that the international order was broken because it only worked for the powerful countries, and therefore the middle powers had to have their own views on things.

And I think what's really disappointing about his statement is, I guess he was only talking about trade.

I guess we don't care if the United States just goes around bombing countries with impunity and Israel goes around much more than the United States, even bombing countries with impunity.

So, look, why not stand up to Trump on this one?

What is the purpose of...

And he doesn't even have to be full-throated in opposition, but that statement tilted towards support, as did Albanese.

So I don't know.

I was a little disappointed in that because it's like everything else.

Like if Trump feels like he can do these things and the democratic world is going to kind of fall into line or at least kind of be pretty passive about it, it just lowers the bar on him doing it.

And that's the thing is he could be doing this again and again.

In Iran, he could kind of keep bombing again and again.

We could do this in Cuba.

Greenland could come back in the picture.

Panama, like all these other places.

And so you have to be thinking ahead to creating some guardrails around what Trump is doing.