Monday on CNN, network commentator Fareed Zakaria praised the speech on Islam President Trump delivered in Riyadh.
BROOKE BALDWIN, CNN: Jim Acosta, thank you in Jerusalem amid all those fireworks. Thank you.
Fareed Zakaria is with me now, host of "FAREED ZAKARIA GPS."
Always a pleasure to see you.
Even down to the fireworks, hearing Mr. Netanyahu saying today, "for the first time in my life, I see a real hope for change, "President Trump at the Western Wall, how do you think the trip is going so far?
FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN WORLD AFFAIRS ANALYST: Oh, it's going very well, in terms of both the symbolism and in one important respect the substance, which was the speech that President Trump gave on...
BALDWIN: In Riyadh.
ZAKARIA: In Riyadh on Islam -- was carefully done. It was nuanced. It was, frankly, the kind of speech President Obama could have given.
He never used the words radical Islamic terrorism, which he kept insisting that Obama use. In fact, he once said that -- he tweeted that Obama should resign because he was unwilling to use that phrase.
BALDWIN: That's right.
ZAKARIA: Well, Trump refused to use the phrase as well.
He pointed out that 95 percent of the victims of Islamic terrorism are Muslims. You know, so, it had the kind of nuance and empathy that people look for, because, ultimately, what you're trying to do is to convince these Muslim countries to in some way take on, battle, expel, as President Trump said, the scourge of Islamic terrorism.
BALDWIN: What about human rights, Fareed?
ZAKARIA: It's not actually true that Obama talked much about human rights when he would go to a place like Saudi Arabia, Egypt a little bit more.
In some sense, the shift is not as dramatic as people, even the Trump administration is making out. Obama in a sense was the real shift. President Bush was the guy who was saying, we're going to promote democracy all over the Middle East.
Then comes the Iraq War. Then comes the backlash from it. And Obama himself had a kind of realist foreign policy, talked about how he admired people like George H.W. Bush and Kissinger. Trump is in that way simply extending that foreign policy.
But there's no question people in the region, particularly the Arab dictators and the Arab monarchs, like what they hear from Trump, because he's more resolutely anti-Iranian. There's no effort to try to broker any kind of deal.
