and I both uh during the eight years of the Obama presidency spent quite a bit of time with him listening to him talk about uh his doctrine quote unquote of don't do stupid stuff although it was a different word than stuff.

Um and and you know that's looking smarter and smarter right now.

The sort of don't rush in.

There's a downside to don't do stupid stuff is that when you're thinking about third and fourth order consequences of actions, you'll never do anything.

But here we have a case where maybe the Trump doctrine is don't think about even first order consequences.

The Trump doctrine in part is just do it.

It's like yeah, he's the Nike of just go for it.

And and he, you know, he does have this extraordinary belief in himself.

When you when you look back to to President Obama, I I remember as you do those those conversations, he he did plan carefully.

You look at the JCPOA that Iran nuclear agreement that he negotiated started with secret meetings, careful secret meetings in Oman.

Bill Burns, you know, a classic shadow diplomat.

Uh Jake Sullivan went with him, you know, laid it out with intermediaries.

long process, then a long negotiations about each detail.

The opposite of what of what you see with with Trump.

It's just a very thin team.

They don't have the background.

You know, in a sense, no wonder that they were able to pull this off.

They just didn't have the horsepower.

I suppose the question in my mind about Cuba is does it look like Venezuela, which is the just do it and it works, or is it somehow Iran and we haven't thought about all the things that can go wrong?

I mean, we don't have to think about things that can go wrong in Cuba.

We do remember the Bay of Pigs.

So, we we have very very I mean, we remember the Bay of Pigs.

We remember the Cuban missile crisis.

If the Russians decided that they wanted to get inter interpose themselves in the in the Cuba uh situation, it' be much much more dangerous.

I don't think that's going to going to happen, right?

Um you know, I think um Cuba's so close.

There's so much money that Cubanameans stand to make as as the island opens up.

I I my expectation is that this won't last all that long or be that difficult.

But I I've been certainly been wrong about Okay, let me ask you to wildly speculate now and say if Cuba works, that's a big supposition here.

Would he actually try to take Greenland in some way?

He talks about it.

He's preoccupied by it.

just because it sounds absurd doesn't mean it's not going to happen.

So, I think he's going to get something that he can call taking Greenland.

He'll get bases and sort of unusual language to guarantee the basis.

Um, I don't think Europe is going to let him uh go further with Cuba.

He's asserted a the Donroe doctrine, the kind of role in in Latin America.

Europe is different.

And I I think Europe has really um now uh sort of dropped any willingness to accommodate uh Trump's bullying on on Green.

I think that's over.

Europeans are just fed up with it and they're going to push back.

So Trump may come back and use the rhetoric, but but I don't see that going anywhere.

I I I want you to listen to Trump in a couple of different occasions recently.

They're wildly different Trumps.

Um there there are moments when he sounds like what we understand to be a president sounds like what what we think of as a president speaking about foreign policy.

Here's an example from his recent trip to China.

The American and Chinese people share much in common.

We value hard work.

We value courage and achievement.

We love our families and we love our countries.

Together, we have the chance to draw on these values to create a future of greater prosperity, cooperation, and happiness, and peace for our children.

There he is doing the thing that presidents do, which is finding common ground with an important adversary.

He's also incredibly important economic partner that's in the normal bandwidth of presidential behavior.

Then there are moments like this when he's talking about the straight of her moose.

Watch this.

Nobody's going to control it.

It's international waters and Oman will behave just like everybody else who will have to blow them up.

They understand that.

They'll be fine.

Oman will behave.

Oman will behave.

So, so, okay.

So, you're an American adversary or you're an American friend and you watch this president perform on the global stage.

watching him.

Do you think that the United States, the world's largest superpower, most important superpower, is a stable, dependable country?

No.

And I think that that's something that's really beginning to hurt President Trump and will affect the rest of his his presidency.

He has been um so erratic, so vacasillating uh announcing that he's won the war in Iran, you know, victory claims three times that he's going to uh exterminate the civilization, the recurring Greenland threats, threats to everybody, threat, you cited the threat to Oman.

He he does have his moments when he when he acts presidential as he did in in in China.

And that's exactly what you want a president to say.

Avoiding a war with not between the United States and China is the primary obligation of any good leader.

You do that but through deterrence but also through talking to people.

But he he just doesn't seem to be able to turn off.

I mean somebody really ought to take away his phone.

So he can't tweet because that that erratic tweeting I think has undermined his ability to communicate.

So the the biggest question of all right now may be this.

If you're in a place like Taipei, Seoul, Ria, Warsaw, Tokyo, will the US actually rescue us from the authoritarian bullies who surround us, who are our neighbors, or will we be on our own for the first time since the end of World War II?

I mean, if one of these leaders asked you today in any of those capitals, do you think the president will fulfill the American promise to our democratic country to defend us from Russia, China, and so on, North Korea?

What would you say?

So, I I've had those conversations with some foreign friends who are really struggling.

Um, it's hard to answer, but I think there is a growing fear in the world that America's promises that it will sacrifice its own cities to save those of its allies, you know, the basic article 5 promise that underlies NATO and underlies our our support for Japan and other allies.

People just don't believe it.

They they don't think that we do that.

And I think that's really dangerous because people are beginning to have to look for other forms of nuclear deterrence.

Saudi Arabia is turning to Pakistan which has nuclear weapons as a protector.

Europeans are turning to France which has nuclear weapons.

If we would ever imagine that Germany would turn to France and in effect discuss a joint nuclear strategy.

But that's a consequence I think of people beginning to lose faith in that American nuclear umbrella which is part of what's kept the world safe.

the danger comes from nuclear proliferation or the danger comes from Russia and China feeling oh now's a time to make a move.

So I think there is a window in which while while Trump is here and and the the world is so destabilized that Russia might well make a move to demonstrate that the NATO umbrella is gone that you're not protected today the the Russians attacked a city in Romania a NATO country.

What's the US going to do about that?

And and I think the answer probably is not much and the world will see that and you know I mean the the NATO umbrellas are getting pretty tattered.

And I I don't think Americans appreciate just how dangerous that is because other countries will go their own way.

In the last minute we have I want to ask you about a column you just wrote.

Um, you're arguing that China is not the inexurable juggernaut that some people think it is and that the US is actually stronger than these conversations might suggest.

What's the what's the 30 seconds standing on?

So I in this column I imagine that I was a Chinese intelligence analyst and I'd been given the he's only imagine careerending assignment of of evaluating after after the summit, you know, who's who's stronger the US or China.

And my analyst ends up saying that China is probably a little bit weaker than it seemed during the summit and the United States is probably a little bit stronger than it seemed during the summit.

And I think that's the truth.

The strength comes from the American economy.

So the American economy, the momentum I wrote in this piece, America has a way of falling uphill.

Every disaster we seem to survive and even be better off.

David, it's absolutely fascinating.

We are going to have to leave it there.

Uh, I want to thank you uh for for joining us and I want to thank you at home for for watching us.

I'm Jeffrey Goldberg.

Good night from Washington.