Daniel P. Driscoll

Don't come visit.

That's okay.

You can choose a European nation to spend your summer and not come spend your tourist dollar here.

I don't mind, but I think this idea that we should contort ourselves as a nation to a softer version of ourself just so that we don't offend others with our words or our actions seems both incredibly silly and incredibly short-sighted and not the mandate that the president was given in November.

He talked about doing all of these things

Americans showed up, and all seven of the battleground states went to President Trump because of exactly this kind of true belief in what America can be and should be.

I guess the honest answer is maybe.

My instinctive answer was going to be no.

And the reason I was going to—I'm going to hedge with the intellectual honesty of these are really complex issues.

It could be happening.

The reason I don't believe it's true is—

I think that that kind of friendship or that kind of alignment is so fragile that the odds that a future conflict where it would really matter to us, it would hold, I think is unlikely.

I think all of their leaders are smart enough to know that.

And so I think most of it is performative.

I think when you look at what like North Korea as an example sent to the front line, it seemed more performative.

Like it didn't, I don't think the Russians thought

These 10,000 North Koreans that seemed to get slaughtered within the first couple of weeks made a meaningful difference.

And I think if you actually look at the outputs of those nations, they are not relying on each other to build up their security.

They're not relying on each other at scale for their economic growth.

I think they are cautiously willing to be seen in a photo frame together, but it is not much more than that.