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“We were able to work with the confines of an FDA that was an NIH that was basically working against President Trump, trying to slow him down.”

“I think over time it's inevitable. Again, I thought it would happen four years ago, but I'm pretty confident it will happen now that we'll have the Saudi Israel normalization, hopefully under president Trump. And I think that that will lead to a lot of the inn…”

“And you're seeing a lot of the Islamists that got kicked out of the Middle East. I mean, they've gone mostly to Africa. Some have gone to Europe and the US, which is crazy that we let these people in,”

“The thing that's been holding back the Palestinian people has not been Israel. It's been their bad leadership.”

“When President Trump left in 2021, ah, a deal with Saudi could have been done in three to six months, and that was basically what I passed over to the previous, ah, administration, ah, during the transition.”

“We need to get the Gaza issue resolved, and I know President Trump and Steve Wyckoff are working incredibly hard on that, and I do believe that they will be successful, and then big progress will be made soon thereafter.”

“The people that they're hiring now at like third and fourth levels into the government are better than the people who are willing to come work for us at the top levels in the first administration.”

“And then the Biden team was worried about the global oil prices. They stopped enforcing the sanctions. They've sold over a hundred fifty billion of oil, which has allowed them to refill their coffers.”

“I was in the most covered building in the world, yet most of what they wrote was not accurate about us”

“I think that with what could happen with President Trump, I think that the things that he's focused on, which is figuring out how to curtail the migration and curtail the power of the cartels, I see that only as a net positive for Mexico over time. So I think …”

“We actually like the fact that we're global in that regard because it allowed us over the last years where we were less certain about America given what I saw as like not always rational economic policies put in place by the Biden administration. There was exc…”

“We were faced at a situation where the government was just very unprepared for what was occurring, and there'd been a lot of mistakes done by the CDC with the testing”

“I get the sense this will be much more guerrilla style. I think it's gonna be fascinating what it's gonna uncover, and I think the benefits to our country in the long term Will be incredible.”

“I think that when people see the depth and the range on what he is able to talk about and the way he thinks about things, I think people will realize that he's truly gonna be one of the great leaders of the world, I think, for the next 3040, 50 years, God will…”

“And then the other criticism is that they were helping fund Hamas and they have the office there. But the reality is, is that that was always done at the request of the US government and the Israelis were working hand in hand with them in order to work that th…”

“They can't do a fake deal like they did with Obama and Kerry, which is probably one of the dumbest deals ever, because it was a temporary restriction on nuclear, and there was no inspection, so they could basically do nuclear anyway.”

“It's already a massive shift of not having all of the Islamic extremism that was as prevalent in 2017 based on the reforms that MBS worked on with president Trump on his first visit to Saudi Arabia.”

“I think the Biden administration put in place an EO that was really intended to stifle a lot of American innovation.”

“The reality is, is the best way to improve the lives of the people of Gaza is to eliminate Hamas and put in place a structure where people can finally have the opportunity to live more freely and make better lives for themselves.”

“When I got into my job in 2017, all the experts were saying to me, the big divide in the Middle East is between the Suis, the Sunnis and the Shias. And when I got there, I said, no, no, no, the divide is between leaders who want to give opportunity and betterm…”

“I think the Saudis and others at the time didn't want this issue to go away, but now the issue is really no longer useful for the Arabs. The only people it's useful to, quite frankly, is Iran.”

“Iran was on a glide path to a nuclear weapon, having just been given a hundred and fifty billion dollars in cash through the disastrous JCPOA deal that that Kerry and Obama negotiated.”

“So number one is I don't think there's any viability to a one state, and I don't think that that's something that will ever occur.”

“I actually think they're gonna become a very significant, not just investor, but also partner in creating AI tools and capabilities that can then go from there to the rest of the world.”

“The next phase of that is, is Phoenix, which is a monster company, is now looking at investments in Saudi Arabia, investments in UAE, and basically thinking, how can they start deploying their huge amounts of capital into infrastructure projects In the region …”

“I know Antonio Gracios has done amazing work helping figure out how to get, you know, make sure we're only paying social security. I think he saved over ten billion a year so far from that.”

“Iran had just done the deal with Obama where they now were flush with cash and on a glide path to a nuclear weapon.”

“It was because I came with no subject matter expertise in the Middle East.”

“And I think that the doctrine that I used in the Middle East, which I think was different than what was done previously, was that I was focused more on mutual future interests instead of relitigating old problems.”

“In some cases with President Trump, he would just eliminate the status quos and then force people to try different status quos.”

“People know that Trump two point O is going to be different than the first time. He has way more knowledge of all the problems. There's not going to be as much learning on the job as there was last time. He's surrounded by a phenomenal team of people throughou…”

“Number one, you absolutely need to secure your border, which is something that we were able to do in the first term at the end. And then the Biden administration just basically repealed all the different efforts we did. And it's been an absolute disaster what'…”

“You want to tie everything together with Saudi-Israel. That was pretty much ready when President Trump was leaving office.”

“It's a shame it didn't happen in the last years, but that's something that I believe President Trump could bring to fruition very quickly.”

“Poland and Ukraine had very similar plans. The reason why Poland's been one of the phenomenal successes and Ukraine has not been is because Ukraine's just been plagued by corruption.”

“I think it became a lot more controversial when the Biden administration took the vaccines and started creating mandates.”

“I think that what Ilan and Vivek will find at Doge is way more inefficiency than what he found at X, and I think the fact that they're building a lot of popular support for people to go in and find ways to make our government run more efficiently, I think ther…”

“And I think that this time he has a lot more confidence. He knows what he wants to do. I think he'll have an exceptional team. So I think it's going to be a really around the clock nonstop effort towards bringing transformational change.”

“My three biggest LPs are PIF from Saudi Arabia, Lunait from Abu Dhabi, and QIA from Qatar.”

“The reason I got into it was basically because my conversations with Saudi, they said that they couldn't normalize with Israel until the Issue with Qatar was resolved.”

“I always say that they were the ones who took all the risk in that deal, but they measured, measured, measured, and they really wanted to make a statement to show the world that we need to all be together, we need to work together, and we need to respect all f…”

“One of the lessons I learned from the Middle East is that if people aren't screaming at you, you're not on the right track, because everything I went in and said and did for the first three and a half years, everyone was screaming at me.”

“In the raid that Israel did in retaliation, they took out all of their air defenses and a lot of their Long range missile making capability, which means they don't have the ability necessarily to sustain a long conflict.”

“And with Trump coming in, there's a super high probability that their ability to sell oil in the future is going to go down.”

“So to give you a sense, when Obama left office, they were selling 2.6 million barrels of oil a day. When Trump left office, they were selling about a 100,000 barrels of oil a day. The Biden administration didn't enforce the sanctions, and now they're selling o…”

“We had our first exam from the SEC and we got a no action letter.”

“So we preemptively tried to avoid any conflicts so we don't have to raise capital for the next four years.”

“If you're going to go and criticize and say nasty things, they're not going to work with you and they don't have to.”