November 17, 2024

With the electoral victory of President-elect #Trump, and this being his last term at the @WhiteHouse, I can now share some of the moments that shaped my decision to support him as President, as leader of the opposition, and now as the forthcoming President of The United States. I will retain the bulk of my observations and briefings with him, however, for my memoirs. But some scenes, exchanges, and early decisions should be released as fragments of history and as part of my contributions to #EducateAmerica.

This photo, one of the very few of its kind, is from my very first meeting with presidential candidate Donald Trump on December 15, 2015, almost ten years ago now, at his office in #TrumpTower in #Manhattan.  In that meeting, he shared his grand vision for his presidency and his actual goals, and in return I shared with him my findings regarding US policy in the Greater Middle East, accumulated over more than two decades of my national security and foreign policy analysis. That meeting turned into a “seminar” in geopolitics, and the president (to be) asked the most strategic questions and was interested in actual policy choices. 

Among the high points of our conversation was his great interest in the maps he saw and asked me to lay on his desk. He then asked me to fill the maps with information about the players, and scanning the maps, he was able to connect the dots and come to strategic conclusions, which he later adopted into his Presidency. Among them, the Arab Coalition, the Abraham Accords (under a different name then), and the #SafeZones. 

As I discovered that day, the capacity of #DonaldTrump to absorb and address geopolitical crises is enormous. That genesis session covered the foundations of major policies he selected and worked through for the following four years.  We stayed in touch, and I provided more briefings until he appointed me as one of his foreign policy advisors in February 2016. 

(To be continued)