In a recent “off-the-record” discussion with Vice President Mike Pence, former Vice President Dick Cheney compared President Donald Trump’s foreign policy to former President Barack Obama’s, according to a transcript obtained by The Washington Post.
At one point during what the Post described as a “vigorous back-and-forth,” which took place during a March 9 retreat in Sea Island, Georgia that was hosted by the neoconservative American Enterprise Institute, Pence remarked: “Well, who wrote these softball questions?” He said later, as the event ended: “Gee, look at the time.”
Among the topics on which Cheney reportedly pressed Pence was Trump’s stated plan of withdrawing American forces — or, at least, most of them — from Syria.
Referring to Trump’s talk with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that preceded that withdrawal announcement, Cheney “fretted,” in the Post’s words, that Trump made the decision in “the middle of a phone call.”
“We’re getting into a situation when our friends and allies around the world that we depend upon are going to lack confidence in us,” he said, adding: “I worry that the bottom line of that kind of an approach is we have an administration that looks a lot more like Barack Obama than Ronald Reagan.”
Politico also reported on the discussion. A spokesperson for Pence confirmed to the Post that the exchange took place.
Referring to a report that Trump wanted countries that host American forces to pay a premium for their presence, Cheney said: “I don’t know, that sounded like a New York State real estate deal to me.”
And regarding Trump’s anti-NATO sentiments, the former vice president said they “[feed] this notion on the part of our allies overseas, especially in NATO, that we’re not long for that continued relationship, that we’re looking eagerly to find ways where somebody else will pick up the tab.”
Pence responded to Cheney’s concerns at one point by saying that “when the American people elected this president, they elected a president who expressed concern about American deployments around the world, and they knew this was going to be a president that came and asked the fundamental questions about — you know, where are we deployed and do we really need to be asking men and women in uniform to be deployed in that part of the world?”
Read the Post’s full report here.
Clinically Evil Cheney v. Stupidly Evil Pence. War hawk Cheney, who led us into the Iraq quagmire, has the audacity to criticize Obama’s foreign policy??? Give me a f_ckin’ break!
Banality of evil, personified.
Two men with shitty judgment arguing over whose shitty judgment is even shittier than the other’s.
Let’s be honest, trump’s foreign policy is what darth cheaney accused Obama of, it is not that policy. Obama worked to secure america’s Place in the world with our allies, and to challenge malign actors. Trump has sold us out to those malign actors, while bowing down to them, all the while working to undermine our alliances.
“George W Bush lied America into a disastrous war in Iraq”, Donald Trump on national TV 2/13/2016.
From the statement above, it is impossible for anyone who supported the Iraq War and who really gives a darn about security and foreign policy to support Donald Trump. That is, and this is no exaggeration as over 1,000,000 people are dead because of the Bush/Cheney Iraq War, if they lied America into the Iraq War than Bush/Cheney are the biggest war criminals since Adolph Hitler and the Nazis. Or to put another way, for Dick Cheney to be supporting Donald Trump says that Cheney has other priorities than foreign policy and security. From what happened before, during and after the war we know Cheney’s priorities are oil and money.
But that is another discussion. In regard to Bush/Cheney, for now it is only necessary to say if there is anything good to be said for Donald Trump’s foreign policy to include national security, it is that 911 did not happen on Trump’s watch and so far Trump has not started a stupid and disastrous war. Or again to put another way, the best thing you can say for Donald Trump is that he is no Dick Cheney.