Phil Stewart

One is the bombing of Iran's nuclear program.

People have talked about that for years and years and years.

And the risks...

of carrying out that operation and the blowback afterwards were, you know, enough to make a lot of people quite nervous.

And then an operation like this, as we discussed, you know, there are enormous risks.

I mean, let's say hypothetically only like, you know, one of the helicopters had gone down.

One of the helicopters was shot, was shot at and took fire.

And people aboard were injured, at least one person.

And, you know, had there been casualties, you know, would the media have seen it as a debacle?

Or hostages.

Or hostages, right?

Or have you had a Black Hawk down, you know, moment kind of like, you know, the U.S.

saw in Somalia?

What would that have been like?

And so I think we're trying to understand the risk appetite, what it was that got the president to decide that this was an operation worth pursuing.

But I would say the success of both those operations probably will lead the president to think this is a valid way of accomplishing foreign policy goals.

Today, you've seen the extraction of President Nicolas Maduro from Venezuela, but Maduro's government is still very much intact.

According to President Trump, it is very responsive to Washington and its interests and its plans, but

This is a government that has been fiercely anti-American for many years, fiercely concerned about the United States, and a lot of its supporters are very skeptical of the United States.

So it really remains to be seen how long the cooperation will last, if there will be a breaking point, if there will be a request that it just goes too far for them.