In 2019, Donald Trump spoke sharply about the role of the United States in the Middle East while responding to a journalist’s question about the position of Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who had argued for maintaining an American military presence in the region.
According to Trump, such a strategy amounts to the United States becoming indefinitely entangled in other nations’ wars.
Trump on U.S. involvement in conflicts in the Middle East. 2019.
“Lindsey Graham seems ready to keep American troops in the Middle East for the next thousand years—stationing thousands of soldiers there and drawing them into wars fought by others. I want the United States to leave the Middle East,” Trump said.