PALM BEACH, Fla. –

One is struck, upon arriving at Donald Trump’s personal office on the second floor of his Mar-a-Lago Club, by how modest it is.

Walking past a photo of Trump with Ronald Reagan by the doorway, I stepped into a small, sunlit room decorated with gifts from supporters, a shelf filled with the books he has published and “jumbos” — large, framed photos from his presidency that once lined the walls of the West Wing (and might one day again).

Trump greeted me before taking a seat behind a small oak desk. Behind him was a painting of nine Republican presidents in a bar, modeled on “Dogs Playing Poker.” To his right, blocking the window, is a large, recently installed panel of bulletproof glass — a reminder of the two assassination attempts he faced in nine weeks.

I asked Trump a question Kamala Harris was recently unable to answer: What would you do on Day 1?

“Not one thing, many things,” he said. “First thing: Close the border. People are going to come into the country, but they’re going to come in legally.” And he said he would unleash domestic energy production — promising to prod gains at multiple times the levels achieved during Biden’s term — which he argued would be a powerful antidote to the high inflation of the Biden-Harris years. “Energy is going to bring prices way down,” he said. “That’s going to bring interest rates way down.”

But energy is central to his thinking for another reason: his desire to restore deterrence, and thus peace, in the world. He argued that Biden’s approach to energy early in his term helped drive the price of oil "up to a hundred dollars a barrel. And Putin said, ‘Man, at a hundred dollars a barrel, I’m going to be the only one to make money on the war.’”

There is an increasingly vocal isolationist faction in the Republican Party.

But any fair examination of Trump’s first-term record shows that he is no isolationist. This is a president who destroyed the Islamic State’s caliphate, bombed Syria (twice) for using chemical weapons on its own people, killed Iranian terrorist mastermind Qasem Soleimani, launched a cyberattack on Russia, approved an attack that killed hundreds of Russian Wagner Group mercenaries, armed Ukraine with Javelin missiles, and warned he would unleash “fire and fury like the world has never seen” if North Korea continued to threaten the United States.

I pointed out he has said he believes that if he were in office, Russia would never have invaded Ukraine and Iran would never have attacked Israel.

“Correct,” he said.

So, I asked: Will China attack Taiwan while you’re president?

“Nope, not while I’m president,” Trump said. “But eventually they will.”

“Taiwan’s a tough situation,” Trump continued. He wants Taiwan’s leaders to use the next four years to dramatically increase their defense investments. I pointed out that Taiwan is now spending 2.6% of its GDP on defense, which is more than all but a handful of NATO allies. “They should spend 10,” Trump said.

Trump is the only president in the 21st century on whose watch Putin did not invade his neighbors.

“You have to look at history,” he said. “For four years, he wasn’t lined up at the border. He only started really thinking about it, to be honest with you, after Afghanistan” - referencing Biden’s disastrous handling of the U.S. withdrawal in 2021.

Many on the anti-Ukraine right believe Trump shares their hostility toward Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. But Trump told me he likes Zelensky. “I had a good relationship with Zelensky,” Trump said. “I like him. Because during the impeachment hoax … instead of grandstanding and saying, ‘Yes, I felt threatened,’ he said, ‘He did absolutely nothing wrong.’”

Just over a week ago, Zelensky sparked controversy when he visited a factory in the battleground state of Pennsylvania that manufactures ammunition for Ukraine with Gov. Josh Shapiro (D) and Sen. Bob Casey (D) present but no Republicans. But at a news conference before they sat down at Trump Tower last week, Trump heaped praise on Zelensky, calling him “a piece of steel” during his impeachment and declaring that, thanks to him, “the impeachment hoax died right there.” After their meeting, Trump said “we both want to see this [war] end, and we both want to see a fair deal made, and it’s going to be fair.”

How will he do that? I asked Trump about an interview with Fox News’s Maria Bartiromo in July of last year in which he said that, if Putin does not agree to a peace deal, he’ll give Ukraine more aid than they’ve ever gotten before. Did he stand by that? “I did say that, so I can say it to you. But I did say that and nobody picked it up. They don’t because it makes so much sense.”

Listening to Trump discuss how he deterred America’s adversaries, a theme emerges: Biden emboldens our enemies by signaling that he fears escalation; Trump makes our enemies fear escalation, which causes them to back down.

This is what the isolationist right does not grasp about Trump: His strategy to maintain peace is not to retreat from the world, but to make our enemies retreat. He employs escalation dominance, using both private and public channels to signal to our adversaries that he is ready to jump high up the escalation ladder in a single bound — daring them to do that same — while simultaneously offering them a way down the ladder through negotiation. One of the clearest examples from his presidency: Trump killed Soleimani and then warned Iran’s leaders that he had picked out 52 targets inside Iran in honor of the 52 hostages they took in 1979. He added that if Iran retaliated, he would hit them.

Iran stood down.

Few presidents in recent memory have flexed America’s military might more effectively to deter war.

In my next column, I’ll share my conversation with Trump about how he plans to expand legal immigration.