On Wednesday’s CBS Mornings and CBS Mornings Plus, there was a sense of anger, disbelief, and shock at President Trump’s bombshell declaration Tuesday that the U.S. would oversee the rebuilding of the Gaza Strip. Between interviews with White House National Security Adviser Michael Waltz and then former Obama and Biden official Samantha Vinograd, CBS suggested U.S. involvement was not only a selfish money grab, but would lead to terror attacks in the U.S.
Co-host Gayle King began the Waltz interview with a frank scoffing: “[W]hat right do we, the U.S., have to do this? When you have two million Palestinians that say, ‘listen, this is our home, we don’t want to leave, we want to rebuild? We love — we love where we live, and we want to stay here.’ What right does the U.S. have to do this?”
Waltz clapped back at King directly, saying “anyone asking that question, frankly, doesn’t have a realistic view of the plight of the Palestinian people in Gaza” thinking they can return to “a place that has thousands and thousands of unexploded ordinance and bombs,” “buildings that are collapsing and unsafe,” and “no sewage, no running water.”
“It has become completely unlivable with this war that Hamas started October 7 and I, as a veteran, can tell you it is despicable and sad that groups like Hamas, al-Qaeda, ISIS literally sacrifice the lives and livelihoods of their own people to achieve some type of ideological gain. But I think what the President is just acknowledging is...he’s not seeing any realistic solutions on how those miles and miles and miles of debris are going to be cleared,” he added.
King followed up by suggesting Trump sees Gazans as a “profit-based business” venture. Waltz calmly batted that down with the thesis being the “miles of rubble” are “completely unlivable” and “Hamas cannot stay there.”
Co-host Tony Dokoupil — who nearly lost his job for defending Israel’s right to exist — had the next two questions wondering if U.S. involvement would raise the specter of terrorism in the U.S. and if “the dream of Palestinian nationhood” was over (click “expand”):
DOKOUPIL: [T]he Israelis are certainly very happy. Benjamin Netanyahu is very happy to have the U.S. support. They’re looking from that. But how, from an American perspective, does this make Americans safer? The first concern people will have is there’s terrorism there, is there now going to be terrorism here because we’re so mixed up in this?
WALTZ: Well, it’s the same — well, I think the same strategy and thinking of why we still have forces going after ISIS all over the world. We still have allies and partners helping us with Al-Qaeda. The President just authorized on Saturday a strike to a major ISIS financier, recruiter, and leader in the caves in northern Somalia that, frankly, our military have been trying to take out for well over a year and couldn’t get the approvals from the previous White House. So, I think what you’re asking is why do we support our allies and partners in counterterrorism with a group that literally promising to conduct future October 7ths, which was the 9/11 for Israel of their time? So, absolutely we’re going to continue to help. And when we have terrorism defeated and degraded abroad, it helps the homeland here.
DOKOUPIL: I — I hear you there, Mr. Waltz, the broader war on terror — that makes sense. Circling back to what Gayle was talking about, you know, for generations now American policy has been in support of a two-state solution there — stability in the Middle East. There’ll be Israel and then there’ll be a future Palestinian state. Yesterday’s comments seems to be the end of that policy. I just want to clarify is it the end of the two-state policy? And are — is it a denial for the future by this government of the wish, the dream of Palestinian nationhood?
WALTZ: I don’t think — I certainly didn’t hear the President say it was the end of the two-state solution. You have the Palestinian Authority. You have the West Bank. And when he was asked directly who was going to live there in the future, he said the Palestinians and perhaps many others. I mean, those are the conversations that we’re having. The President has talked to President Sisi of Egypt. He’s talked to Mohamed bin Solomon, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. He’s spoken to the King Abdullah, who’s coming here next week. We have Netanyahu here now, so the President is engaging with our key allies in the region and asking for their input, asking for their ideas and is personally engaged on this issue.
Co-host and former NFL player Nate Burleson made his contributions as the end, wondering why what Palestinian people think doesn’t “matter to President Trump.”
Shifting to CBS Mornings Plus, Dokoupil vaguely introduced Vinograd as having “worked on Middle East policy for three different presidents” instead of mostly recently as a Homeland Security official for the Biden regime.
Vinograd came out swinging like a politician by declaring “Gaza is not for sale” and blamed Israel for Gaza Strip tensions because they “asserted control over” it following “the Arab-Israel War of 1968.”
She fear-mongered about terror attacks because of Trump’s proclamations: “[E]ven if President Trump’s words are more rhetoric than reality, as a counterterrorism professional, one takeaway is this moment could serve as a real recruitment opportunity for Hamas and other organizations to recruit operatives and inspire attacks against the United States and further attacks against Israel.”
Co-host Adriana Diaz went right along with this:
DIAZ: So, Sam, do you think this could make the U.S. more vulnerable? Could it be dangerous for us if, in fact, it happens?
VINOGRAD: President Trump’s pledge to take over Gaza and displace millions of Palestinians who don’t want to leave their homes will likely inspire terrorist organizations to direct more attacks against the United States because now they have soundbites of the President pledging to forcibly displace their Arab brethren in from their homes. So, I do worry that this could expose U.S. personnel, U.S. individuals living in the region to more threats from Hamas and other terrorist organizations even if President Trump does not plan to follow through on this plan.
Dokoupil closed with perhaps the most obvious point, which is “the idea that nothing else worked, the two-states, the old way hadn’t worked, there’s no other plan that works, that it makes me think he’s negotiating for a better option.”
Vinograd conceded that might be the case, but made sure she threw jabs as a bleeding-blue leftist:
This could certainly be a negotiating tactic. We’ve seen President Trump take this approach on tariffs, for example, by making maximalist pledges and then walking them back when he gets certain concessions. I do think that it is true that there has been decades of work to try to turn Gaza into something that does not pose a security threat to Israel and provides a hospitable home for the Palestinian people, but it’s not a zero-sum game between forcibly displacing Palestinians, forcing them on Arab neighbors like Egypt and Jordan who, by the way, already host millions of refugees and are dealing with their own economic issues. It’s not a zero-sum game between that option and leaving Gaza as it is and that is why the third phase of the ceasefire negotiation is supposed to focus on a viable plan for the reconstruction of Gaza that would undoubtably include the involvement of Arab states like Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and others.
To see the relevant CBS transcripts from February 5, click here (for CBS Mornings) and here (for CBS Mornings Plus).
