Dinesh D'Souza

Trump is trying to create a peaceful, prosperous framework for the Middle East.

Trump looks at the Middle East and he sees many Muslim countries that want to trade.

Israel is a very valuable ally to have in that neighborhood because the truth of it is Israel knows how to fight radical Islam 20 times better than the United States.

All right, Sean, thanks for having us.

Really appreciate the chance to have this conversation and participate in this debate.

I'm in a little bit of a funny position because I have a defense of Trump and a defense of what he's doing in Iran, but it happens not to be Trump's own defense.

In other words, I want to argue that it's very common on the left and the right among people who don't like Trump, but even people who like Trump,

to try to understand him in some kind of ideological framework.

Like Trump campaigned on being sort of an isolationist.

He said, we're not gonna get involved abroad.

And I wanna argue that Trump is not fundamentally an ideological guy at all.

He is a transactional guy.

If you wanna think of how Trump thinks, he thinks like the Chinese.

When the Chinese go to Africa, they don't say, we're gonna help you create democracy.

They say, hey, listen, we'll give you some money to build a port.

And we want to have some leverage over your economy.

And we want to have part ownership of that port.

And so the Chinese are building their leverage that way.

Let's remember that a lot of people who voted for Trump voted for a businessman.

They said, we don't want a politician.