President Obama said Friday that Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump “doesn’t know much about foreign policy.”
Although he didn’t say Trump’s name, he was answering a question about Trump’s suggestion last week that Japan and South Korea become nuclear powers and undertake their defense or pay the U.S. for its military protection.
Such proposals “tell us that the person who made the statements doesn’t know much about foreign policy, or nuclear policy, or the Korean Peninsula, or the world generally,” Obama said at a Friday evening press conference.
Trump laid out his foreign policy views days before 50 world leaders assembled in Washington for their final Nuclear Security Summit.
Obama reiterated that such propositions, which would completely reverse decades of established U.S. policy if undertaken, alarm world leaders. Obama said his counterparts asked him about the nationalist, anti-immigrant rhetoric emanating from the GOP primary election cycle during their talks.
Even “countries that are used to a carnival atmosphere in their own politics, want sobriety and clarity when it comes to U.S. elections because they understand the president of the United States needs to know what’s going on around the world and has to put in place the kinds of policies that lead not only to our security and prosperity, but will have an impact on everybody else’s security and prosperity,” Obama said.
He noted that the U.S. alliances with Japan and South Korean have “prevented the possibilities of a nuclear escalation in conflict between countries that in the past and throughout history have been engaged in hugely destructive conflicts and controversies.”
“So, you don’t mess with that,” he said bluntly. “And we don’t want somebody in the Oval Office who doesn’t recognize how important that is.”
