White House press secretary Josh Earnest mocked the performance of Republican presidential candidates in the second GOP debate Wednesday night, by likening the event to a “tough day at the airport.”
“You saw a dozen people in suits line up in front of an airplane,” he said. “They seemed angry and pessimistic and they were looking for people to threaten.”
“We didn’t see a lot of that sunny optimism that was typical of the president [whose] library they stood in,” he said, referring to President Reagan. “We did see an odd nostalgia for the George W. Bush era that was characterized by a rush to war” and a deep economic economic recession at the end of his second term.
Earnest has previously said President Obama had no plans to watch the GOP debate, and noted Thursday that he hadn’t spoken to him about his reaction to any news clips he may have viewed on it.
Clearly having some fun with the analogy, Earnest said the 11 Republicans on stage Wednesday night “looked like they had their flight canceled … and some big multi-national company was making them wait for three hours before they can get their situation resolved.”
While Earnest said he didn’t want to “turn the White House briefing into the post-debate spin room,” he sharply disagreed with several of the GOP candidates criticism of Obama’s foreign policy.
The president, he said, unlike his predecessor, has tried to act through engagement — both with U.S. allies and longtime enemies, such as Cuba.
“So the president has advocated a different strategy here,” he said.
Earnest said Obama has not taken a position on whether Democrats are having enough debates, considering the 23 million people who tuned into the GOP debates Wednesday night, a record for CNN. The Democratic National Committee has announced plans for six total debates with the first one scheduled for Oct. 13 while Republicans will hold as many as 11, including the first two that have already taken place.
Instead, he argued that the GOP debates are not serving Republicans well because of their “pessimistic” approach, while the Democrats’ debates will offer their side a chance to showcase the successes of the Obama administration.
Successes he cited include the 60-country coalition the president put together to fight the Islamic State, the Iran deal and the way the U.S. “economy has bounced back” to become the “envy of the world.”
