Gareth Porter is back for a retrospective on Trump’s foreign policy. Despite campaigning on a relatively non-interventionist platform, and indeed despite explicitly denouncing the policies of the Bush and Clinton families along the way, Trump has not been especially effective in delivering on his promises to bring American troops home from the forever-wars. Porter lays the blame for this failure primarily on the fact that Trump surrounded himself with terrible people who worked to actively undermine his wishes. Moreover, he lacks the knowledge and personal conviction to see his policies through in the face of serious opposition. Judging by recent standards, says Porter, Trump’s foreign policy hasn’t been so bad, except on Israel and Palestine, where he has been quite possibly the worst president of all time. Sadly, when it comes to Israel, a Biden administration is likely to continue along similar lines.
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and journalist on the national security state. He is the author of Manufactured Crisis: The Untold Story of the Iran Nuclear Scare and, with John Kiriakou, The CIA Insider’s Guide to the Iran Crisis. Follow him on Twitter @GarethPorter and listen to Gareth’s previous appearances on the Scott Horton Show.
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Scott Horton is director of the Libertarian Institute, editorial director of Antiwar.com, host of Antiwar Radio on Pacifica, 90.7 FM KPFK in Los Angeles, California and podcasts the Scott Horton Show from this website. He’s the author of the 2017 book, Fool’s Errand: Time to End the War in Afghanistan. Visit https://scotthorton.org