Mr. O’Reilly: Putin’s a killer. President Trump: There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What do you think — our country’s so innocent. You think our country’s so innocent?…Well — take a look at what we’ve done too. We made a lot of mistakes. I’ve been against the war in Iraq from the beginning. Mr. O’Reilly: But mistakes are different than — President Trump: A lot of mistakes, but a lot of people were killed. A lot of killers around, believe me.
One of the worst mistakes that critics of America make is to treat our policies as the “moral equivalent” of actions and policies of totalitarian states.
President Trump’s reply to Mr. O’Reilly should have been something such as this: America isn’t perfect, and we have done some things that haven’t turned out well and taken some actions that I wish we hadn’t taken. But generally speaking we have taken them in order to promote freedom and advance liberty and democracy. The Soviet Union and other Communist countries have killed to keep their party in power. They have killed to crush their opponents. Any elections they may have are not free but are shams. They restrict the press, they do not have independent judiciaries, they do not give people the freedom to live their lives in peace.
We think that President Trump’s instincts are sound, and he knows which side is which. What other nation has risked so much in the cause of freedom or peace? What other nation has restored its defeated enemies? We know he remembers that from its very birth, America’s has been a just cause. We should not judge people by careless off-the-cuff remarks, but Presidents should watch their words carefully.