Tipsheet

Flashback: Kerry Hilariously Wrong About Trump Moving US Embassy to Jerusalem

In light of the history-making peace deals signed at the White House this week -- just the third and fourth Arab-Israeli accords ever signed, since the modern state of Israel was established in 1948 -- it seems like a good opportunity to revisit some predictions that were made about President Trump's foreign policy. This clip, in particular, has ripened on the vine. Without further ado, here's former Secretary of State John Kerry, last heard from lying about the Iran nuclear deal at the DNC, warning Americans about the coming horrors at the hands of then-president-elect Donald Trump:


Maybe he meant we'd see an "absolute explosion" of peace deals? Moving the embassy, which presidents of both parties had pledged to do for many years (and Congress had explicitly voted for it) was supposed to set the region on fire. It did not. And the killing of one of the world's most ruthless terrorists, with gallons of American blood on his hands, was supposed to ignite World War III. In spite of intelligence about retributive plots, war has not arrived. But some peace accords have. Perhaps some of the "experts," especially those aligned with the Obama administration were just profoundly, disastrously wrong? Brit Hume has been flagging flashback predictions and assertions that have not aged well, which are worth revisiting. Be sure to peruse this thread, as well:


No one should be arguing that the Middle East is fixed and peace is finally upon us. Nothing is permanent anywhere, especially in that region. But much of the apoplectic breathlessness of critics has been disproven by actual reality, and the Trump administration deserves credit. Rich Lowry writes:

The story of the diplomatic breakthrough is, at bottom, one of Trump making bold moves in the region, which set the conditions for new thinking to work, even as elite opinion was starkly — and, of course, unapologetically — wrong every step of the way. Rather than ending any possibility of peace in the region, moving the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem forged a tight relationship of trust with Israel that made everything else possible. Rather than alienating our allies, pulling out of the Iran deal drew our allies in the region closer to us. Rather than causing a war, as even some of Trump’s ideological allies feared, the killing of Soleimani sent an unmistakable message of resolve. “I think that the Soleimani killing was a huge boon,” says the senior administration official, “because it showed that the president was bold and was serious, and I think that shifted the Middle East massively.” Of course, all of this ran exactly counter to Barack Obama’s strategy in the region.

Pursuing the opposite of the Obama foreign policy strategy seems like a pretty good call, come to think of it:


Another friend points out that perhaps Obama's best decision in this category was green-lighting the raid that killed Osama Bin Laden. Unfortunately for Joe Biden, he was against it. There's a reason Bob Gates said what he said. I'll leave you with a juxtaposition of how some hacks on the American left are trying to minimize this week's seismic shift with how it's playing in key Middle Eastern quarters:


UPDATE - Hoo boy, this one is even better. The arrogant, impressively wrong smugness is off the charts: