Stavridis: Macron Deals in Hope While Trump Deals in Fear

EXCERPT:

STAVRIDIS: "And I thought the most important comment that Macron made, in fact, was the word 'fear.' Essentially he was saying we cannot take counsel of our fears. And I thought his vision in my view is the correct one. And since he’s French, I’ll quote Napoleon. In fact, I like quoting Napoleon because I’m short and short people have to stick together. But Napoleon said a leader is a dealer in hope. A leader is a dealer in hope. I thought yesterday in our Congress we saw a leader who is dealing in hope and I think unfortunately our president tends to deal in fear. And I’ll give you a pragmatic point here as well that Macron I think sees, which is they look at this administration as a big, complicated, difficult machine. But I think Macron has taken a very French, in a sense a very pragmatic approach. He quoted Voltaire yesterday, I'll return a Voltaire quote, which is, 'Life is a shipwreck, save what you can.' I think the French are trying to save what they can. And I applaud it because I think the U.S. and France together, especially if we can pull NATO into this which is how you do get the Brits in, it's how you do square the circle with Germany, I think there is some trade space that we can work globally together.”