Cliff Sims

caused so much, been such a challenge for other administrations.

So there are a million examples of that that if I thought here for a second that I could come up with, but that's one that reshaped the global order in a lot of ways.

Well, that's the magnitude of, is this something of that magnitude?

Or are we going to stay in or get out of the Paris Climate Accords?

Are we going to renegotiate the trade deal with Mexico and Canada?

These kind of giant things, those are few and far between.

Only a handful of those, at least the conclusion of them, will happen in the course of an administration.

But you're confronted...

constantly throughout every single day with the little decisions on any number of those issues that are trying to take you down a certain path.

I didn't

I don't recall any, at the point that reelection was happening, I was at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and so I wasn't in the White House on some of these more political issues.

I was just dealing with the national security stuff more.

But I never heard anyone say,

hey, we could get a win for the country here, but let's just wait a second because it's going to cost us something politically.

Let's just wait till the second term to do it.

I never heard anyone do anything like that.

One of the things that I'll say about Trump that I think is rare among politicians is there are different kinds of courage.

There's the kinds of courage that you have shown on the battlefield, your brothers in arms have shown on the battlefield.

Physical courage manifests itself in different ways.

And then there's moral courage, which you've also shown in the things you've been able to tackle in this country and the things you're willing to talk about that a lot of others aren't willing to talk about.