So help me god, p.31
So Help Me God, page 31
When I had been in Congress, I had always made a point of attending Martin Luther King, Jr. Day events back in Indiana. For King’s holiday in 2018, Karen and I invited to the White House the leaders of the Indianapolis TenPoint Coalition, a nonprofit whose leaders directly engage with youths in some of the city’s most troubled neighborhoods. By walking the streets, often late at night, talking and praying with people, and working on conflict resolution, the coalition had been able to reduce violent crime in Indianapolis. We saw King’s holiday as a time to discuss his legacy and work on ways to end violence and stop poverty with people doing that work today. And we did it in the same office in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building where King had once met with Lyndon Johnson. Later in the day, Karen and I joined the president in placing a wreath on the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington. It was a small gesture, but I have always believed in maintaining civic ritual as a way of demonstrating the importance of memory and a reverence for inspiring historical figures. But nothing is ever that simple.
A few days before the MLK holiday, while the president was meeting with a group of bipartisan legislators on immigration reform, he allegedly referred to El Salvador, Haiti, and several African nations that were receiving preferential treatment in immigration policy, as “s—hole countries.” He denied having used those words but admitted to having used “tough talk” during the meeting. With the MLK holiday looming, the media predictably went into a frenzy. The UN Human Rights Office joined in, saying that the comments were “shocking and shameful” and “racist.”
On the Sunday of MLK weekend, we had made plans to attend a service at Metropolitan Baptist Church in Largo, Maryland, a predominantly black church just outside Washington. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue and his wife had been attending services there and encouraged us to attend as a way of honoring the memory of Dr. King and worshipping with fellow believers.
Things had reached a fever pitch as we arrived at the church, where we were greeted by Reverend Maurice Watson. After being warmly welcomed by the congregation, we took our seats in a pew. Reverend Watson took to the pulpit and, without mentioning the president by name, denounced the “visceral, disrespectful, dehumanizing adjective to characterize the nations of Africa,” adding “Whoever said it is wrong. And they ought to be held accountable.”
The traveling press corps reported that I was “red-faced.” But I wasn’t. Reverend Watson had graciously warned me that he was going to speak out. I had long since learned to take such moments in stride. But I was honestly moved as we left the sanctuary by the handshakes and warm looks that we received from many people present. I think they were genuinely grateful that we had come. I had the impression that whatever they thought of whatever Trump had said, they knew I wasn’t him. We had a common admiration for Dr. King. And I sensed that they appreciated our sincere efforts to strengthen ties on our shared foundation of faith.
Two weeks later we were back in the Middle East, my first trip as vice president to the area. The culmination of the planned trip was a visit to Jerusalem, where I was invited to speak in front of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, to make the formal announcement of the United States’ recognition of Jerusalem as the nation’s capital and the relocation of the US Embassy there. Before doing that, however, I made stops in Egypt and Jordan, where the leaders of those countries voiced their formal displeasure with the move. They were publicly against it but not outraged. When I met with Egyptian president Abdel Fattah el-Sisi at the presidential palace in Cairo, his staff refused to let the press, who had traveled so far, into the meetings. I objected. Sisi, a former general, explained that he didn’t give press access to presidential meetings.
“Well, we do,” I said. “These people traveled a long way. It would mean a great deal to me if you let them in.” He thought about it for a few seconds, then signaled to his staff to let the reporters in. Later at an ornate banquet in the presidential palace, Sisi, who was seated next to me, leaned in. In a quiet voice he asked me if I was a man of faith. “I am,” I replied. He expressed his respect. He said that I was a Christian, he was a Muslim, that we were both men of faith.
In Jordan I was reunited with King Abdullah, whom I had always gotten along with well. We had something in common as well: he is a former fighter pilot, and my son is a fighter pilot. Like Sisi, even if King Abdullah wasn’t enthused about the relocation of the US embassy, he was supportive of President Trump and had other issues he wanted to discuss during our meeting. Jordan was accommodating refugees coming across its border, fleeing from Syria’s civil war, and helping rebuild the Christian communities on the Nineveh Plain in northern Iraq, which had been destroyed by ISIS. When I thanked the king for supporting the minorities in the region, he told me of his desire to build a strong Christian community in the Middle East, explaining that it is part of the fabric of who they are.
I felt then that his words represented a genuine moment in the Abrahamic tradition—one that recognizes the contributions of Abraham to three religions. Egypt had long before recognized the right of Israel to exist, and I sensed that there was an opportunity for other countries to do so as well; that despite all the dire predictions of bloodshed following the relocation of the US Embassy, there was a chance for peace in the region among Abraham’s children.
Then it was on to Israel. Speaking at the Knesset and formally informing the Israeli government of the relocation of the US Embassy was one of the high honors of my career. During the trip Karen and I visited Yad Vashem, the country’s memorial not of the Holocaust but of the 6 million men and women murdered in it. Shortly after, in keeping with tradition, I slipped a prayer into a crack in the Western Wall, the remaining limestone fragment of the ancient wall on the Temple Mount. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu hosted us on that trip.
The first time I met the Israeli prime minister, in the same small conference room where I had visited with Ariel Sharon, Bibi, as he is known, showed me a 2,500-year-old coin that had been excavated on the Temple Mount. It bore the name of one of the ministers in the king of Israel’s court, Netanyahu. With a wry smile he told me his family has been at this for a long time.
In Congress I gave pro-Israel addresses so often I was asked if there was a big Jewish community out in rural Indiana. I had Jewish constituents, yes, but I was expressing my support for Israel as an American believer—not simply because Israel is the lone democracy in the Middle East but because its existence is proof that God’s promises are true. Its creation and survival so soon after the Holocaust are miracles.
I took to the podium in the historic Knesset chamber and said, “We stand with Israel because Israel’s cause is our cause, we stand with Israel because we stand with right over wrong, good over evil.” I explained that in the story of the Jewish people, we have always seen the story of America: a journey from persecution to freedom, a story that shows the power of faith and the promise of hope. I mentioned President Trump, to applause, but also presidents Washington and John Adams. Since our nation’s founding, Americans have cherished the Jewish people; we were the first nation on Earth to acknowledge the state of Israel, and now we were the first to acknowledge Jerusalem as its capital. By doing so we were simply acknowledging a historical fact, righting a seven-decades-long wrong. And I believed at the time that we were setting the stage for a real peace. The children of Abraham have a common forefather, I said, and they can live together. I was humbled by the ovation that followed my address and left Israel with a sense of optimism about the prospects for a new beginning for peace.
Previous administrations had sought to resolve the violence and political turmoil across the region by prioritizing a two-state solution between the Israelis and Palestinians and engaging in diplomatic and military efforts to improve the conditions in Middle Eastern nations. In 2005, in his second inaugural address, President George W. Bush laid out an idealistic strategy to “expand freedom” around the globe, predicting that the spread of American-style democracy into the Middle East would bring peace and stability and end terrorism. I was in the audience on that January day and found the strategy impractical. Despite the courageous efforts of our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan to support the fledgling governments in those nations, democracy never spread across the Middle East.
President Obama concentrated on improving relations with Iran, the largest sponsor of terrorism and violence in the region. His administration signed the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran in 2015, a compact that delayed but did not stop Tehran’s nuclear ambitions in return for financial rewards in the form of cash payouts and lifted sanctions. Obama hoped that the arrangement would normalize relations with Iran, which would then spend its rewards internally improving the lives of its citizens rather than financing terrorism across the Middle East. Not only did Iran regularly break the rules of the agreement, denying International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors access to sites and continuing to run its reactors, as a regional strategy, it didn’t work; when Trump took office, Iran’s proxies and allies were fomenting violence in Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon. And separately, ISIS, the terrorist group that Obama had labeled “JV,” emerged from the vacuum caused by the United States’ departure from Iraq and held large parts of that nation and Syria—more than twenty thousand square miles.
Trump, as he did in so many policy areas both domestic and foreign, changed course. Our administration unapologetically supported Israel, deemphasizing the two-state solution, and not only acknowledged Jerusalem as its capital but also recognized the Golan Heights, territory won from Syria during the Six-Day War in 1967, as part of the Jewish state. But our administration also strengthened relations with other Middle Eastern nations, such as Saudi Arabia—the very first country Trump visited as president in 2017—and Egypt and Jordan as well. Trump gave our commanders in the field greater control over military decisions, and they took the fight to ISIS—destroying the caliphate and liberating the ISIS capital, Raqqa, in our first year in office. In 2018, he pulled the United States away from Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran, calling it “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions” in US history. In doing so, he reimposed harsh sanctions on the country, causing negative economic growth and a 40 percent inflation rate, isolating Iran, and opening the door to an alliance among the United States, Israel, and other Arab nations.
The optimism I felt during that trip and the wisdom of our administration’s approach would be confirmed three years later, in September 2020, when President Trump completed the Abraham Accords, a historic peace agreement between Israel and two of its former enemies, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. It was the first Middle East peace agreement since 1994. It didn’t just establish diplomatic relations between the nations but also opened channels for trade and economic partnerships between them. The bulk of the credit belonged to Jared Kushner and Ambassador David Friedman. Trump had placed Kushner in charge of the peace process, and with the president’s encouragement, he had promptly dispensed with the conventional wisdom when it came to brokering peace in that region. Instead of tying peace to the recognition of a Palestinian state, the administration maintained that by standing with Israel and normalizing relations between Israel and its Arab neighbors, Middle East peace was more possible. I believe that history will record that it was one of the Trump administration’s most important accomplishments.
After I had delivered my address before the Knesset, I called the president from my hotel room. While we discussed how the speech had gone, Trump segued into a discussion of the US Embassy building itself. He had heard from the State Department that it would take up to a decade and cost a billion dollars to build one on the land owned by the United States and long designated for that purpose. He was disgusted. “Call David Friedman and get him to do it,” Trump said. “David will get it done.” And he did for pennies on the dollar. David Friedman, the US ambassador to Israel, was Trump’s former lawyer. He, too, knows a thing or two about real estate. In May 2018, a few months after the president gave the order, the embassy opened—but not on the site originally chosen. Friedman decided instead to convert a building already owned by the United States that had been used to process visa and passport applications. Two years later, during a trip to Israel, we headed for the new embassy. During the visit, I posed with Netanyahu for photos outside the building’s front door. While we were smiling for the cameras, I noticed the building’s tan cornerstone. There, between President Trump and Ambassador Friedman’s names, was my own. David Friedman had put it there.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO Maximum Pressure
Have no fellowship with the unfaithful works of darkness, but rather expose them.
—Ephesians 5:11
Karen and I returned to Washington just in time for another speech, the president’s first State of the Union address. Trump’s speaking style is improvisational and freewheeling. It is part of his appeal. But when the occasion required, working with his speechwriter Stephen Miller—no other writer better understood how Trump communicated—he soared. The president put a tremendous amount of effort into formal speeches, none more so than the State of the Union address. Though I didn’t often help with them, I would review a draft of each once-a-year address and sit in on his rehearsals in the Map Room of the White House. Trump would have half a dozen speechwriters and policy staffers seated around him as he stood at a podium and rehearsed the speech with a teleprompter. Invariably, he would edit almost every other line on the spot and have them retype it. “No, say it this way.”
The State of the Union address he delivered on January 31, 2018, like his previous address to Congress, was optimistic. And a year into the administration there was plenty to be optimistic about. US employers had created 2.4 million jobs since we had arrived in the White House, African American unemployment was at a forty-five-year low. A giant new tax cut was on the way. Billions of dollars had already been invested in the United States by companies like Apple since the tax bill had passed. AT&T had distributed bonuses to its employees around the country following the tax cut. Abroad, though, as the president noted, we still faced challenges. One tradition of the State of the Union address, dating back to the presidency of Ronald Reagan, is that the president invites American heroes—firefighters, policemen, and the widows of fallen soldiers—to the gallery of the House of Representatives, where the speech is delivered. During the course of the speech the president often tells their inspiring stories and asks them to stand, to a rousing ovation. In 2018, the president invited the parents of Otto Warmbier.
Otto was a twenty-one-year-old college student from Cincinnati, Ohio. He was curious and bubbly—a smart and funny kid. He never missed a day of school or had a grade below an A. No wonder: he studied seven hours a day. By the time of his junior year he had enough credits at the University of Virginia to earn a degree. More important, his parents loved him deeply, and they loved watching him grow into a man. Then in 2016, while studying in Hong Kong, he traveled to North Korea as part of a tour group. On his way out of the country, on January 2, 2016, he was arrested at Pyongyang International Airport and charged with treason for allegedly stealing a propaganda poster. He was subsequently given a sham trial and sentenced to fifteen years of labor for a crime against the state. His parents’ efforts to gain his release were frustrated by the Obama State Department, which encouraged them to keep quiet, not wanting Otto’s story to anger the North Korean government. To be fair, its approach was in keeping with the one deployed toward the Kim regime by every other administration: to kowtow to the North Korean government in the hope that it would abandon its nuclear program.
In June 2017, the State Department, led by Rex Tillerson, helped gain Otto’s release. He was flown back to the United States in a vegetative state and died in a Cincinnati hospital days later. His parents, Fred and Cindy, went through hell. They took it upon themselves to persuade the US government to designate North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism. It had been removed from that list by the Bush administration because Kim had supposedly met the requirements of a disarmament arrangement. When Trump put North Korea back on the list in November 2017, the Warmbiers had helped put it there. When Trump spoke of Otto during his State of the Union address, they stood with tears streaming down their faces and heard a rousing ovation. Next to them in the gallery was Ji Seong-ho, who had defected from North Korea, after having been tortured by the North Korean gestapo. He had defected by walking thousands of miles on crutches—the result of his legs having been run over by a train as a teenager. When Trump singled him out, Ji defiantly held his crutch high in the air. Republicans and Democrats alike stood in applause. The Warmbiers had spent the day of the speech in Washington, visiting with members of the administration. I spent time with them in my office and instantly developed a bond with the family. After the State of the Union address and a short stay in Washington, Karen and I were scheduled to return to South Korea, where the Winter Olympics were to kick off in the city of PyeongChang early in February. The United States sent a delegation to the Games, and I was asked by the State Department to lead it. As it turned out, Fred Warmbier also attended, making sure that the world did not forget about Otto. I asked him to join our delegation on the trip, and he agreed. We were not just going to the Olympics to root on America’s athletes.
After a year of aggressive overtures, missile tests, threats, and insults, Kim Jong-un’s tone shifted in the new year. At his request, North and South Korea agreed to have their athletes compete under one flag at the winter Games, the first time since 1994. The South Korean government, continually threatened by its northern neighbor, was eager to defuse tensions. In another diplomatic overture: Kim’s sister and right-hand woman, Kim Yo-jong, planned to attend the opening ceremonies, the first time a member of North Korea’s ruling family had set foot in South Korea since the end of the Korean War. The Games were supposed to unfold as a public relations coup for the Kim family, participating in the Olympics with the rest of the world and pretending to be part of the civilized order of nations—all while they continued to torture and starve the country’s citizens and develop its nuclear arsenal. It was clear, though, by his willingness to talk with South Korean president Moon Jae-in, that Kim was rattled by Trump. For years his family had played US and world leaders perfectly. Now there was an unpredictable US president, and the North Koreans were worried. By sending his sister to the Olympics and playing nice with the South Koreans, Kim was not only playing nice with the world community but also hoping to make a propaganda coup. I wasn’t going to the Olympics to play along.
