Michael McFaul

Army Europe, I understand those bases, Sigonella, Naples, some of the ones in Italy, Spain, some even French are now saying, and some British bases have been under a little bit of consternation in terms of allowing landing rights and things like that.

That's something that the military and the Foreign Service of the State Department work on on a daily basis.

We build trust in drops, drop by drop.

Over the last four decades of my career, that's been one of the most important thing to do is to build trust with our allies.

What we've done with the trust that we've built in drops over 80 years since the NATO alliance was formed, we've thrown that away in buckets to insult our allies, to do things without bringing them into the room and sitting around the table with us and conducting conversations about what we might do

and military and diplomatic operations, which we've been doing for the entire administration, the current administration, is just vile.

And to have the Secretary of Defense throw the insult of the big, bad Royal Navy.

I mean, coming from a guy who served as a platoon leader in the U.S.

Army and then in the reserves, that's really a pretty bold and disgusting insult to one of our greatest allies.

The same thing with the president insulting the French, as he's done with so many of our other allies, as Ambassador Fall just said.

These are things you can't walk back.

This is going to take a long time after this administration is over to try and regain some of our balance and some of our standing in the world.

The problem is, too, is it's not just the Trump administration now.

I think many of our allies are looking at all American citizens and saying, what is wrong with you people?

What how can you allow this to continue?

That's the concern I have, because.

Again, for the four decades of my military career, I proudly represented the United States.

And during some of my recent travels, you can kind of see that the damage that this administration has done, not just in terms of the thoughts on what the administration is doing, but what the typical American is thinking about what his or her government is actually executing.

Yeah.

You know, Michael, it's interesting that I was thinking along the same lines as Ambassador McFaul in terms of what might occur tomorrow night.