Good point.

The other thing is, uh, this disaster with Russia.

I mean, Trump has some, uh, affinity for strong men, and he always tends to side with Putin over Zelenskyy.

And now, because he's screwed up the price of oil and diesel with the Iran attack, he's desperate to try to get the price of diesel down, so he's making a horrible deal with Putin, which will enable Putin, put a lot of money back in Russia's coffers, to enable him to further beat up on the Ukraine.

Mm-hmm.

"I wanna be like Peter the Great." So there's no surprise here.

And, and as far as Iran, I think he ought to get out of there as fast as he can.

He can't put troops there.

I'm not sure if you share that view, but I just see him holding back for no reason since April.

Well, I think that this is a very complicated situation, and I think it was a mistake to pick this time and place to fight Iran right now with all the other problems that are going on in the world.

They need the A-team on deck if we're going to do anything harmful to them.

They're a very difficult civilization to deal with, as we've seen.

They pivot, they distract, they mislead, and they're... very difficult.

They've always been very difficult.

The other thing is the terrain is very difficult.

And it's not a tiny country geographically or from a population standpoint, it's 93 million people.

Where do you think things stand with China as Trump is going to meet him apparently today, Xi, and also have a state dinner for him later in the week? Where do we stand vis-a-vis China since they're intertwined in everything we're doing?

Well, I think that the tariffs have probably had a bit of an impact on China.

And, of course, they've retaliated by some other products.

They've stepped up their support of Iran, buying Iran's fuel and supporting them, which is not a healthy reflection on the United States.

And I think that the president will probably talk to China about that.

I don't know if it'll do any good.

I worry a little bit that he's going to be too obsequious to them.

And it's not a tiny country geographically or from a population standpoint, it's 93 million people.

Help us make sense of what we're seeing unfolding with this unfortunately fluid, I guess I should say, activity with policy regarding the war on Iran.

Well, I don't think very much of what's happened with Iran and the United States makes any sense at all.

I don't know why he picked that fight.

They didn't go into it having thought out all the options.

They prevaricated about the different reasons for their actions, and now they seem to have settled on the nuclear thing.

But they'll probably prevaricate on that again.

In your time as ambassador, did you become close to or know of the man who will become Pope Leo, and does what you see now come as any surprise to you of the person you knew then?

No surprise at all.

Why do you suppose that the president had such a friendly posture toward Vladimir Putin and these clearly expansionist impulses that he has?

I don't know.

There have been a lot of theories advanced about that.

There's been theories advanced that there's certain personality types that he respects.

There's been theories advanced about money.

But at the end of the day, I give the president the benefit of the doubt and say he's trying to figure out a way out of this, and that involves appealing to both sides.

I give him the benefit of the doubt.

I wonder if you can give me some thoughts on, again, the relationships between America and all of these other countries to which I've referred sort of that are implied here, and also the economic viability of what this administration is doing.

Ca- wh- what's your history with Pope Leo? What, what kind of a person did you find him to be?

Well, we became acquainted with, uh, what we used to call Father Bob when, uh, he w- was, uh, became head of the Midwest Augustinians in the late '90s.

And our children attended an Augustinian school in Tulsa, and I was on the board, and he came down to the monthly board meetings.

In fact, I went with a bunch of Augustinians from Tulsa to watch his investiture as the head of the Midwest Augustinians.

Then, lo and behold, President Bush sent us to Rome, my family and Father Bob was over there, because he'd become head of all the Augustinians.

So, we saw him couple times a week for several years when, when we were in Rome.

'Cause obviously, it, it, I'm fascinated by this conclave which was, as I said before, the majority of them picked by Francis, from the global south, not from Europe, not from the west, and yet they did pick somebody who was an American, though he'd spent all this time in, in Peru and, and to Whitney's point was really, is really international.

He is international.

Can you speak to all of this, Ambassador Rooney?

Well, sure.

I mean, I'm not sure what my party is anymore.

Where's Ronald Reagan? Where's 41 and 43? We're out in some dangerous territory here.

And a lot of historic norms are being uprooted.

A lot of very aggressive language is being used.

And I think people are scared.

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