Tommy Vietor

I think the question a lot of listeners are asking is like, how much credit do we think Trump deserves or doesn't?

I would argue like people may not like to hear this, but I think he deserves a lot of credit for getting this deal done because Trump clearly.

put real pressure on Netanyahu to say yes to the deal, while at the same time, the Egyptians, the Qataris, and the Turks pressured Hamas to say yes and make some real concessions that I think we can get into in a minute.

But the broader backstory, if listeners remember, Trump laid out this 20-point peace deal.

He let Netanyahu kind of massage and shape the deal before it was public.

to make it more advantageous to the Israeli side.

But ultimately, what Trump did that I think was really important in that moment was he forced Netanyahu to say yes.

And I think that happened in part because Trump has a lot of leverage because he's a popular Republican leader and Netanyahu needs him, but also because the Israelis had just fired a bunch of airstrikes into Doha, the capital of Qatar, which pissed off a lot of people and Netanyahu didn't want to piss them off again.

So Trump pockets this yes from Netanyahu.

Then a few days later, Hamas responds to the plan with kind of like a yes, but they're like, yes, we do a hostage release.

Yes, we would transfer governance to some technocrats, but we're going to ignore the rest of your whole proposal, especially the parts like we have to disarm and no longer exist, etc.

And this is the moment where I think Trump was really pretty smart.

He just took that yes from Hamas and he ran with it.

He didn't call Netanyahu.

He didn't coordinate a messaging.

He didn't let Netanyahu shape it in the public.

He just said, yeah, this is great.

This is historic.

This is world peace.

And if anyone asks, well, what about the other stuff that you put forward that Hamas has to do that they ignored?