Wall Street Journal: From Anguished Appeal to Presidential Tweet: The Doctor Who Changed U.S. Policy
“President Trump uses Twitter as a bully pulpit for everything from the economy to CNN’s ratings. But one tweet of his on Sept. 4 about Syria may have helped avert a massacre. So says Rim Albezem, a cardiologist from New Jersey, who was its unlikely catalyst. Dr. Albezem was sitting in a conference room with Mr. Trump at an Indiana fundraiser days earlier when she made a passionate appeal for action to stop a looming assault by the Syrian regime on the country’s last major rebel sanctuary. It worked. … Dr. Albezem’s intervention in Indiana … was the culmination of a determined campaign by a small group of Syrian-American doctors, businessmen, and activists who figured out how to spur Mr. Trump to action. Their success in influencing Mr. Trump’s foreign policy offers a roadmap for advocacy groups in the Trump era…” (Nissenbaum, 10/18).