Trump offered himself as a “mediator, arbiter or facilitator” to help reach a peace agreement between Israel and Palestine, but said, “Any agreement cannot be imposed by the United States or any other nations.”Despite the decades of failed efforts to achieve a lasting peace in the region, Trump said his administration has a “very, very good chance” to get it done.
The American president added that he’s heard “that perhaps the toughest deal to make” is the one between Israelis and Palestinians, but Trump is confident. Indeed, he added, in reference to the peace process, “It’s something, frankly, maybe not as difficult as people have thought over the years.”This is consistent with how Trump sees so many issues: there have been intractable challenges facing leaders for generations, but those problems weren’t resolved because previous U.S. presidents, in his mind, were idiots.But as we recently discussed, this is poised to join Trump’s “it turns out” list.Circling back to our previous coverage, the “it turns out” list, of course, is the growing collection of issues and policy areas in which Trump took firm positions based solely on assumptions he made out of ignorance, only to change his mind after being introduced to information the rest of us already knew.Trump thought being president would be easy, but “it turns out” to be profoundly difficult. Trump thought the NATO alliance is obsolete, but “it turns out” to have value. Trump thought China had the power to pull North Korea’s strings, but “it turns out” to be a far more complex dynamic. Trump thought overhauling America’s health care system would be practically effortless, but “it turns out” to be “complicated.”Now Trump, for reasons he hasn’t explained, believes peace between Israelis and Palestinians may not “as difficult as people have thought.” We can almost hear the “it turns out” coming.
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Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."