Mark Halperin

Really, you go back to Bill Clinton.

This notion of we need to be building firehouses in Peoria, not in Baghdad.

We need to be spending America's money here at home.

The doge cuts to USIAID and other programs dealing with overseas, horrifying to many people.

But for a lot of Americans, it just doesn't make sense when there's so many challenges here at home that the United States is spending all this money around the world.

So politically, people say this is not wise.

And in fact, on the trip to Davos, Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff who was on the trip, she said to the traveling press pool, well, next week the president's going to Iowa to do an event related to energy and the economy that he'd be traveling literally, so they say, every week between now and the midterms domestically.

Can't get more symbolically domestic-focused than Iowa.

uh so clearly the white house is concerned about the optics of this and they don't want the american people to see him just focused overseas and every every week you've got analysts carl rove this week but you see you see this commentary every week saying look at the poll numbers look at the upcoming midterms look at the uh focus of the american people the president really

I can't afford politically to be seen not just neglecting American issues like housing.

and energy and inflation in general, health care.

But if he's not focused there and he is focused on this overseas stuff, that that's politically damaging to him and his party.

So why is he doing it, right?

Why is this president falling into what other smart political people say is a huge error, a huge trap?

I know why, because I've seen this movie before, and I've spent some time, probably now two and a half weeks, talking to people who've worked for other two-term presidents, and that means in the modern era, Reagan, Clinton, Bush, Obama, the second Bush, and asking them, is that what happened with you?

And of course, you know that from the history books.

You know from the history books that previous presidents have

their second term spent a lot of time on foreign policy okay um i'm gonna explain why uh and and uh it's it's comes from talking to these folks about what drove their bosses to do something uh counter to the conventional wisdom now more than ever uh with the end of the cold war

People in the United States are much more isolationist, much more inclined to say, do we really need all these commitments around the world?

We're not going to be the world's policemen.