Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin pushed back on 2020 presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg’s criticisms of the Democratic Party’s foreign policy platform.
Buttigieg said: “Since the election of the current president, the United States hardly has a foreign policy at all. Unless that seemed like a partisan jab, I should acknowledge that for the better part of my lifetime it’s been difficult to identify a consistent foreign policy in the Democratic Party, either.”
The Senate Democratic Minority Whip told CNN on Wednesday that Buttigieg was wrong.
“No, I think Mayor Pete is wrong in that observation, and I like him and agree with many of the things he said, but when it comes to the basic foreign policy of the Obama administration, I understood it,” Durbin said.
“We did our best to keep us out of war; he made it clear the United States was going to stand up and fight for human rights around the world; he treated dictators like the head of North Korea in a fashion that they had to prove good-faith efforts to end any threat to the United States. I would disagree with Mayor Pete on his conclusion,” he said.
When it comes to President Trump, 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden called him an “existential threat” to the U.S.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders brushed off Biden’s comments as “truly laughable,” saying Biden has “a lot of explaining to do” about the Obama administration’s policies toward Iran, North Korea, and China.
