Barack Obama is the most Jewish president we've ever had (except for Rutherford B. Hayes). No president, not even Bill Clinton, has traveled so widely in Jewish circles, been taught by so many Jewish law professors, and had so many Jewish mentors, colleagues, and friends, and advisers as Barack Obama.

The Arab leadership, after so many years of Obama, they're positively giddy about the arrival of Donald Trump. And when they are giddy, like any other leaders, they might over step. And the danger, of course, is initiating a confrontation with Iran that the U.S. really doesn't want to be involved with at any given moment. They have enough to worry about on the North Korea file.

There's practical political considerations obviously, but there's also these broader themes, which is like, I don't want to be the manager of the Middle East.

If you have to have 25 French paratroopers to guard a single synagogue, it means that life is not healthy in France for Jews

Barack Obama is the most Jewish president we've ever had (except for Rutherford B. Hayes). No president, not even Bill Clinton, has traveled so widely in Jewish circles, been taught by so many Jewish law professors, and had so many Jewish mentors, colleagues, and friends, and advisers as Barack Obama.

Pretty much the worst reason to bomb someone is to prove that you're willing to bomb someone.

There's nothing that the United States can do. Nothing that would change systems in the Middle East, nothing the United States can do that would make the Middle East a better place.