From Friday night’s Fox News All-Stars.
On President Obama’s statement on Egypt:
The United States is saying to the president of Egypt if you try to tough it out, we’ll stay with you if you bring in secular reformers in the government, if you begin a transition, and ultimately if you leave, but it would be not immediately — in the middle of the riots, [with your departure being] a rout and a surrender — but in transition in the months [ahead] to a democratic regime. …
That history [of the Iranian Revolution] is exactly what is guiding the policy of the administration today and that speech that the president just gave. On the one hand, the Mubarak era is going to end eventually, rather soon. He’s 82. [The regime is] not going to have a future. It has to be succeeded.
[On] the other hand we remember in the late ’70s, when the Shah began to weaken, the United States kicked away the stool under him and abandoned him. And at that point, it was over, and as we know, the Islamists took over … the Islamic revolution from which we suffer even today. That’s why the president was not ready to abandon Mubarak, but he is insisting that the transition start. And that’s going to start with the new government.
Our objective here is to make sure the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the Sunni equivalent of the mullahs in Iran, Islamist, anti-American and would make the region — put the region aflame, has to not achieve power. That’s our ultimate objective. And arranging for a transition to a secular moderate regime is our number one priority.
Among the opposition in the streets is a very widespread, strong, democratic secular opposition. Our job is to make sure it isn’t crushed by the more organized disciplined Islamists as happened in Tehran in that revolution.