Brian Schweitzer, the former Democratic governor of Montana who may run for president in 2016, spoke Wednesday night to Progress Iowa, a liberal grassroots organization, in Altoona, Iowa. In his speech, Schweitzer criticized Democrats who voted for the Iraq war, a group that includes a potential rival for the Democratic nomination: Hillary Clinton.
Watch Schweitzer’s remarks below:
“So, when we were attacked at 9/11 by 17 Saudis and 2 Egyptians who called themselves al Qaeda, who weren’t welcome in Iraq, and George Bush got a bunch of Democrats to vote for that war, I was just shaking my head in Montana,” Schweitzer said.
During an appearance last month on MSNBC, Schweitzer more directly criticized Hillary:
“The question that we have is, will it be the Hillary that leads the progressives?” he said. “Or is it the Hillary that says, ‘I’m already going to win the Democratic nomination, and so I can shift hard right on Day 1.’ We can’t afford any more hard right. We had eight years of George Bush. Now we’ve had five years of Obama, [who], I would argue, in many cases has been a corporatist.”
In a recent interview with THE WEEKLY STANDARD, Schweitzer also questioned the foreign policy of the current president, Barack Obama. “Can you find somebody…who can explain to me why we’re still in Afghanistan?” he said.
