Fareed Zakaria

We're actually going to try and build them and we're going to give them foreign aid.

That whole idea that the United States saw itself as different.

saw itself not as one more in the train of great imperial powers that, when it was their turn, had decided to act rapaciously, to extract tribute, to enforce a kind of brutal vision of dominance.

all that was in a sense thrown away.

And I realized it was just one tweet, but there was the culmination of something Trump has been doing for a long time.

And it just left me very sad to think that the United States, this country that has really been so distinctive in its world mission, and a country that I looked up to as a kid and came to as an immigrant,

that the leader of that country could literally threaten to annihilate an entire people.

And when you say something like that, it sounds very abstract, right?

Civilization.

What we're talking about is the life and aspirations and culture and dignity of a whole people.

I mean, you're talking 93 million people.

If you watch or listen to George W. Bush when he is essentially losing the war in Iraq,

What is striking is the difference.

Bush, for all his flaws, and he made many, many mistakes in Iraq, always looked at it as an essentially idealistic, aspirational mission.

We were trying to help the Iraqis.

He never demeaned Islam.

He always tried to sort of see this as part of America's great, uplifting mission.

And you almost miss that because even in our mistakes, even in our errors, there was always that sense that, you know, we were trying to help this country do better.

We were trying to help these people do better.

And what you're describing, I think, quite accurately is Trump approaches it not just from the point of view of the 19th century country.