Ben Rhodes

And look, I think you and I argued on the other side of that White House debate at the time.

But look, that was interesting.

But I take a couple lessons from that, right?

It was wrong not to speak out forcefully on behalf of those protesters at that time, to be a source of solidarity to those protesters.

That said, I don't think Obama going out earlier and being forceful in his statements about the protests would have made the regime fall.

And that's part of what drives me nuts about these debates online is it's kind of like, if Obama had issued a statement, the regime would have fallen.

Um, and actually the people might then just swing it all the way in the other direction.

Obama told me privately, you know, when the Arab string happened, he didn't want to make the mistake again of not being supporting protests.

So we spoke out about the protest and guess what?

I don't think it was because of our statements, but a lot of those regimes did fall and like, it was a bit chaotic, right?

I mean, so you have to learn these lessons, right?

What people deserve were protesting is solidarity, right?

They need to know that the world supports them.

They need to know that the world's attention is on this.

They need to know that the regime can't sweep it under the rug.

Sometimes you can do certain things like help provide internet access into a country.

But ultimately, it's up to the people of the country itself to change the place.

And that's what most protesters will tell you they want to do themselves.

Israel bombing them is not necessarily going to help them deal with this situation.

Yeah, no, there's plenty of lessons from the last 25 years, and Trump is probably not trying to learn any of them.