David Sanger

that the Abraham Lincoln carrier group that is in the Persian Gulf is vulnerable to those Iranian missiles.

And you could imagine what this would look like if it turned out that we lost an aircraft carrier or a destroyer or some other ship to an Iranian missile in the course of an exchange with them.

Well, first of all, if the military did have those concerns, they would go out of their way to avoid discussing it, even internally, because they have a pretty good idea it would leak.

I've spent a number of hours with President Trump in the past couple of months.

And, you know, I know I hear from a lot of people, oh, he, you know, I'm sure he can't, you know, operate the way he once did.

I know that he's impetuous and all that.

Well, Donald Trump is Donald Trump.

But I didn't see any evidence in the course of our encounters that he was substantially different from when I dealt with him in the first term.

And I think that in military operations, he's got to have in the back of his mind the recognition that if one of these goes bad in a big way, that that will be the defining characteristic of his second term.

It is interesting, Terry, that the countries that he picks fights with are countries that really can't fight back in a significant way.

Venezuela would be a good example of this.

The more modest military operations he's had in Syria, mostly against terror groups or in Nigeria or other places where he has just made a show of U.S.

air power.

He is very reluctant to put troops on the ground.

And that's because of the MAGA fear in his base that we're going to get into new forever wars.

And he got elected on the thought that we're not doing this anymore.

And so there's a lot of the base that is pretty concerned that he's spending too much time on foreign affairs, but also that he is risking getting the U.S.

into quagmires that he can't emerge from.

And I think that's one of the biggest limits on him.

But you may remember that during that interview in early January, when I went in with three of my colleagues and we asked him, what is the limit on your power?