Republican Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley appeared on Fox News Tuesday to say that President Donald Trump “served it up straight” not only to Democrats but also to establishment Republicans and neoconservatives.
Trump slammed neocons and interventionists in a Riyadh speech, saying the Middle East’s progress came from within, not from foreign elites “flying in beautiful planes” to lecture others.
“He was talking to not just a lot of Democrats there, Laura. You and I both know he was talking to a lot of Republicans, a lot of establishment types, a lot of neocons, and he was right to serve it up straight,” Hawley said during an appearance on “The Ingraham Angle.”
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Trump’s speech, part of his ongoing tour across the Middle East, took aim at decades of U.S.-led nation-building campaigns, a strategy Hawley and other populist conservatives said has drained American resources and morale. Hawley said Trump’s message resonated precisely because he rejected the globalist posture embraced by past administrations, both Democratic and Republican.
“Here’s the other thing that really struck me from his whole visit. His speech, so far, is that he’s not apologizing for America. For the last four years under Obama, for eight years before that, we acted like we were a weak nation,” Hawley told host Laura Ingraham. “You remember when Obama on his first trip went abroad, went and bowed down, literally bowed to these foreign leaders, and then Joe Biden, of course, stumbled everywhere he went and was falling down?”
The Missouri senator credited Trump’s forceful tone and America-first approach with restoring international respect.
“Trump’s not falling down. He’s not bowing down. He’s saying America’s strong. We’re not going to apologize for the United States of America. We’re going to be who we are. And they respect him for it. America is back and respected because of Donald Trump,” Hawley said.
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Trump criticized U.S. nation-building efforts, saying they caused more harm than good by interfering in societies they didn’t understand. The president praised Middle Eastern nations like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) for building modern marvels on their own terms, without Western intervention.
“No, the gleaming marvels of Riyadh and Abu Dhabi were not created by the so-called ‘nation builders,’ neocons, or liberal nonprofits, like those who spent trillions and trillions of dollars failing to develop Baghdad and so many other cities,” Trump said. “Instead, the birth of a modern Middle East has been brought by the people of the region themselves — the people that are right here, the people [who] have lived here all their lives, developing your own sovereign countries, pursuing your own unique visions and charting your own destinies in your own way.”
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Trump’s weeklong Middle East tour to Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar aims to secure significant economic and business agreements and reinforce alliances with key Gulf states. The visit mirrors his 2017 trip, which led to major diplomatic achievements, notably the Abraham Accords in 2020 that normalized relations between Israel and multiple Arab countries.
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First published by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
