World leaders are concerned about who will be President Obama’s successor, a top State Department spokesman said Friday.
“There are scant few foreign leaders that [Secretary of State John Kerry] meets with where the issue doesn’t come up in terms of the rhetoric in the campaign. It’s not always centered on one or another candidate, to be honest with you,” State Department spokesman John Kirby said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
Last month, Kerry said in an interview that world leaders have expressed shock to him about the 2016 presidential race, calling it an “embarrassment to our country.”
U.S. officials are hearing “some real concern about the rhetoric, the isolationist sentiments that some are expressing, and almost xenophobic ideas out there.”
Both Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump and Ted Cruz have made controversial comments on foreign policy moves should either of them become president.
“This notion that our leadership is neither present nor appreciated around the world is simply false,” Kirby said. “People want U.S. leadership. Other leaders want to see us engaged. And the idea that we would somehow step back from that engagement really worries them.”
Kirby added that they can’t control what will happen in the future but can control what is happening in the remaining months of Obama’s presidency.
“We can’t control what’s going to happen in the election or who the next commander in chief’s going to be, but we sure can control what we’re doing right now on the ground and around the world, and our commitment to engagement in so many regions,” he said, citing Obama’s current trip to the Middle East.
