Timothy Naftali

And the position was, it's foolish.

These are expensive investments.

And frankly, we don't want to be running these countries because then we have to be involved in the day-to-day business of their politics, which are confusing.

And anyway, they speak Spanish.

And so Haiti speaks French.

So what Stimson, who was Secretary of State under Herbert Hoover, says is, we're not doing this anymore.

The Monroe Doctrine is a doctrine of the United States versus Europe, not the United States versus Latin America.

This is not in our interests.

We are no longer gonna do this.

And so from 1931 until last weekend,

Our position in the Western Hemisphere was we have an interest in an American system of free states.

Different presidents had a different threshold for intervention, but the fact of the matter is ultimately what we want are all these states to govern themselves and for us to trade with them.

It was not we want to find the resources we need and acquire them.

That had been our policy before 1931.

It hasn't been since 1931, and now it has changed.

And I sure wish the team in power did a little bit of historical work and realized why we got out of that business back in the early 20th century.

Yes, and ask yourself, with the price of oil dropping in Europe, you're in the oil business, are you going to invest money into what could be a failed state?

So then the question is, okay, well, we don't want Venezuela.

So then we ask the question, oh, well, we don't want a failed state.

Oh, no, no, we don't want a Somalia.