um other countries again see uh the
benefits of having a middle east and
uh that's that's united and if you look
at what president trump
did on his first foreign trip he went to
saudi arabia and he outlined
very clearly what his strategy was going
to be what he saw as the challenges and
again if you just go from that snapshot
to now three and a half years later
you have middle east where isis is
defeated iran has been significantly
rolled back
uh the proxies that they've been funding
that have been spreading terror and
instability throughout the region
uh are are much shorter on cash than
they were before
uh he's brought the different sides
together and you know one story that i
think doesn't get enough attention
is the fact that uh in the last election
a lot of what we were talking about was
the
uh the spread of of extremism through
the internet and then also the funding
of terror groups
and president trump on that first trip
set up two different organizations in
saudi arabia one was the
counter-terror finance organization that
unified
a lot of the middle eastern systems with
our treasury department and we got more
transparency than we've ever had
that's significantly reduced the amount
of funding that's gone to terror groups
over the last three and a half years
the next thing we set up was the counter
extremism center which has been fighting
the ideological battle
online and has been making really a
tremendous amount of progress
towards uh towards reducing uh the
misinformation that's been used to
pervert a lot of the youth so we're
seeing a lot of progress in the middle
east
and i think a lot of countries at this
point see it see it as an inevitability
that they're going to have normal
relations with israel and that in order
for people to live better lives it's not
dissimilar to
serbia and kosovo where you know their
leaders are coming together to realize
that while there are differences
uh you know human beings want to get
together they want to have better lives
and opportunity
and the more that the leaders in the
middle east you know put all differences
behind
they're creating a new opportunity for a
new middle east and a bright future
where people can live securely practice
whatever religion they they choose
respect each other and have economic
opportunity which is
critical towards people you know seeing
a pathway to a better life