Secretary of State John Kerry said Sunday that the 2016 presidential race is an “embarrassment” to the United States.
“Everywhere I go, every leader I meet, they ask about what is happening in America,” he said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday morning. “They cannot believe it. I think it is fair to say that they’re shocked. They don’t know where it’s taking the United States of America.”
Kerry said foreign officials he has talked to find the rhetoric from the Republican candidates, be it on surveillance of Muslim communities or waterboarding during interrogations, to be “an embarrassment to our country.”
Kerry added: “It upsets people’s sense of equilibrium about our steadiness, about our reliability, and to some degree I must say to you, some of the questions the way they’re posed to me it’s clear to me that what’s happening is an embarrassment to our country.”
Kerry also defended President Obama’s decision to remain in Cuba and continue a Latin American trip after Tuesday’s terror attacks that left dozens dead.
“The president of the United States’ schedule is not set by terrorists,” he said. “The president of the United States has major diplomatic responsibilities. He has to engage with other countries. That was an important part of trying to build a relationship and achieve some of our goals with respect to human rights, with respect to transformation in Syria — in Cuba and elsewhere.”
