More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
We can’t and we shouldn’t be the world’s nanny or policeman. But we should act abroad in ways that honor our values.
I look back on my time in the Trump administration, and I see that it was a time when America found her voice again in foreign policy. We regained a confidence and an assertiveness that we had lost.
For decades, countries bad-mouthed us at the United Nations and we did nothing. They ran down our allies and we did nothing. Even countries we consider our friends voted against us or failed to support us when we needed them. Then they turned around and stuck their hands out, expecting foreign aid and other favors from the United States.
we would “have the backs” of those who supported us, and “take the names” of those who didn’t.
I was speaking for the American people. My voice was their voice. I owed it to them to be principled, strong, and bold.
I wish everyone squabbling on Twitter could see what I have seen. I wish all the students on college campuses who won’t tolerate other viewpoints, and members of the media who ostracize public figures for political incorrectness—I wish they could see what I’ve seen.
Pain is real. Victimhood is a choice.
“Your job is not to show people how you are different. Your job is to show them how you are similar.”
My parents came legally. So it is no surprise that they are offended by those who try to come here illegally.
it makes no sense to allow people to break our laws and in return get education, health care, and housing, all at the expense of Americans who are here legally. Misguided policies like establishing sanctuary cities only make the problem worse by undermining respect for the law. A broken system in which children are placed at risk in order to serve as guaranteed admission tickets to the United States also contributes to the crisis.
The left has worked hard to erase the difference between legal and illegal immigration. Their message, which is echoed constantly by the mainstream media, is that if you are for borders you are cruel. If you are against borders, you have a heart.
Equating support for immigration with open borders only causes people to oppose immigration.
We are a special country. We believe in protecting human rights. We believe that every child of God has the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. But that doesn’t mean we have to open our borders to uncontrolled illegal immigration.
It’s possible to protect our borders and our sovereignty while at the same time remaining true to the principles and beliefs that make our nation exceptional.
“We don’t have any information on the Syrian refugees,” Director Comey told me. “We have no background information on them. We don’t know if they pose a threat or not.”
We had just learned that one of the terrorists who killed 130 people and injured over 400 more during an attack on a Paris theater had posed as a Syrian refugee to get into Europe. I decided that South Carolina would join in calling on the Obama administration to stop admitting refugees until we knew they were vetted. It was my absolute responsibility as governor. But the federal government and the courts overrode us.
the United States can’t let our openness and our generosity be used against us. We have to be vigilant about who comes to our country. It only takes one terrorist to slip through the process to cause a massive loss of life.
Donald Trump won because he reached a culture in America that has felt ignored and voiceless.
Winners do what losers don’t want to.
I discovered that when you go places that are uncomfortable for you, you grow stronger.
Don’t talk for the sake of talking. When you say something, make it matter. If you agree with something, offer ways to make it happen. If you disagree, say so. But always have a plan to find a solution.
The United States was not going to get pushed around anymore, at least not on my watch.
Less than forty-eight hours later, President Trump ordered two U.S. Navy destroyers in the eastern Mediterranean to launch fifty-nine cruise missiles at the Syrian air base from which the Khan Sheikhoun attack originated. The strikes hit Syrian aircraft and a refueling facility, destroying 20 percent of Assad’s working air force.2 But more important than the damage inflicted on the Syrian war machine was the message the strike sent, not just to Syria and Russia, but to North Korea and Iran as well.
I realized that behind all the America-bashing at the UN is a genuine desire, even a need, for the United States to lead. At the end of the day, when the world needs a moral compass to guide them, it’s not Russia countries look to. It’s not China. It’s us.
Going forward, soldiers would now be trained, have a mission that was doable, and have an exit strategy. We were going to focus peacekeeping missions on going in, doing their job to protect civilians, and then going home.
The thinking is that peace and security are the council’s business and human rights should be left to other UN agencies, like the Human Rights Council (HRC), an agency so corrupted by members who violate human rights that it is unworthy of its name.
Put yourself in your adversary’s shoes. Understand what he wants and use that to guide your negotiation. You don’t have to agree with him—most times you won’t. But you have to understand his motivations. You have to understand where he’s coming from.
Instead of alleviating dependency, UNRWA encourages multigenerational dependency on international aid. Palestinian refugees are funded forever through UNRWA, with no end in sight.
The other, more immediate problem with UNRWA is its role in fueling the resentment I felt in the Palestinian refugee camps. UNRWA promotes the so-called right of return, that is, the alleged right of the ever-growing number of Palestinian refugees to go back to the territory that is now Israel. This is a practical impossibility that is tantamount to the destruction of Israel as the world’s only Jewish state. The Arab community understands this very well, as does the Palestinian leadership. And yet, it persists in keeping alive this fantasy that only serves to undermine any chances for peaceful
...more
We came back from Israel with ideas for how UNRWA could better serve the Palestinian people. But we found that UNRWA didn’t want our advice, it just wanted our money. UNRWA is funded almost entirely by voluntary contributions. The United States voluntarily contributed 30 percent of its funding in 2016—that’s more than the next two largest donors combined.
President Trump, like him or not, won the election. Tillerson and Kelly didn’t.
No disagreement with the president, no matter how heartfelt, justifies undermining the Constitution.
It was the very definition of what our assistance should not do: encourage dependency and create entitlement instead of self-sufficiency.
Secretary Tillerson was fired in March of 2018. He was replaced as Secretary of State by Mike Pompeo, someone I had worked with on the NSC when he was the Director of Central Intelligence. It was a pleasure and a relief to work with a Secretary of State who actually supported the president’s agenda and didn’t seek to undermine him.
what we did succeed in doing was leading again. We took our foreign policy back from the bias and the fearmongering that had previously held it hostage.
We challenged the conventional wisdom that was getting us nowhere. By showing what American leadership looks like, we opened up new possibilities for progress.
The “echo chamber” was a group of loyal academics and think tank experts to whom the administration fed talking points. The “experts” then faithfully repeated these talking points to often-clueless reporters, who wrote them up for the American people.
Today, Iran is the single biggest cause of violence and instability in the Middle East.
Pick a terrorist group or a conflict, and Iran is behind it. The regime funds and supports Hezbollah, Hamas, the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the Taliban, al-Qaeda, Shia militias in Iraq, and Houthi militants in Yemen. It fuels the bloodshed of the Syrian dictator Assad with arms and men. It provides missiles that are fired into Saudi Arabia from Yemen and into Israel from Gaza. It’s hard to find a conflict or a suffering people in the Middle East that does not have Iran’s fingerprints on it.
The Iranian people live in poverty while their government spends billions each year propping up the dictatorship in Syria and supporting terrorist proxies.
The truth is that this was always a false choice. War is never inevitable. In fact, making terrible deals with the world’s most vicious regimes is more likely to lead to war. Demonstrating resolve and strength is more likely to avoid war.
determining Iranian compliance with the nuclear deal was like a jigsaw puzzle. Looking at just one piece didn’t give you the whole picture. You had to put all the pieces together.
The deal drew an artificial line between Iran’s nuclear development and the rest of its lawless behavior. In effect, it said, “We’ve made this deal on the nuclear side, so none of the regime’s other bad behavior can be allowed to threaten the agreement.”
The nuclear deal depended on us ignoring what was right in front of our eyes: the true nature of the Iranian regime.
American politicians and diplomats were too invested in its success. European countries were too eager for the business opportunities it provided them by lifting sanctions on Iran. In the eyes of m...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
“It is this unwillingness to challenge Iranian behavior, for fear of damaging our nuclear agreement, that gets to the heart of the threat the deal poses to our national security,”
the Iran deal was a financial windfall for the fundamentalist Islamic regime. It freed up, by some reports, $100 billion for the government and military, including literally a plane full of cash delivered to Tehran. And all these benefits for Iran were front-loaded: They came first. The regime’s supposed compliance with the deal came after.
The Iran deal had been a bet that the regime would change its ways once sanctions were lifted. Bu...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Put simply, the Iranian regime’s support for terrorism, its history of lying, its export of weapons to militants, its ballistic-missile program—all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle—had to be part of his consideration.
When President Trump declined to certify the Iran agreement, he said we were now going to focus on all the regime’s destabilizing behavior. This was a part of that new approach.
