Panelists on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” said Thursday that President Barack Obama’s decision to continue his trip through Latin America after terror attacks rocked Brussels, and dance the tango at a state dinner in Argentina, amounted to “a tremendous mistake.”
The panel began with Bloomberg Politics editor Mark Halperin, who said there was a “consensus” that Obama made “a mistake” in going to a baseball game in Cuba the same day as the attacks.
Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, argued Obama should not have canceled the trip. But Haass said the “photo ops and optics,” like the tango dance and attending the baseball game alongside Cuba President Raúl Castro, were “a tremendous mistake.”
Watch the video of Obama and a professional dancer at the dinner in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Wednesday night, via NBC’s “TODAY”:
“The advance person who let him do the tango, that person ought to be looking for work on somebody’s, in somebody’s campaign very, very far away. That was a tremendous mistake,” Haass said. “It’s fine to go to Argentina, you want to do the work, but you’ve got to be careful of these little photo ops and optics. Baseball games and tangos, that’s inconsistent with the seriousness of the day.”
Nicole Wallace, who worked as a communications director for former President George W. Bush, went a step further, saying Obama’s decision not to return home was “his policy choice.” She also criticized what she said was the President’s lack of reaction “to the threat of terrorism.”
“His policy choice was to proceed with everything on his schedule and not to react to the threat of terrorism, and that is his prerogative but it puts him vastly, let me just finish, vastly out of step with the entire American public, not just Republicans,” she said. “You heard Democrats yesterday increasingly uncomfortable with the choices he makes at a moment of crisis.”
Wallace suggested Obama should have taken more time out of his schedule to address the attacks or else return home.
“There were mothers laying dead while their, you know, family members were at the crime scene yesterday and to look like the priority is to go on a foreign trip instead of pausing for a minute and explaining that to America is a communications crime,” she said.
Watch the full panel below via MSNBC:
