Former Secretary of State John Kerry in a new interview said President Trump’s “pull-out, walk-away presidency” is not “enhancing” U.S. interests abroad.
“This president is not negotiating. He doesn’t negotiate. This is a man who claims to be the world’s greatest negotiator,” Kerry told David Axelrod on CNN’s “The Axe Files” Saturday night, the network reported.
“What is he negotiating?” Kerry asked.
{mosads}”President Trump has isolated America and taken us backwards in terms of institutions that were structured ever since World War II to bring the world together,” he added, according to CNN.
Kerry during the interview knocked current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who said earlier this month that “the age of self-inflicted American shame is over” during a Cairo speech criticizing Obama-era policies.
“Who’s kidding who? Are you kidding me?” Kerry, who served in the Obama administration, asked.
“The age of shame is over when a president of the United States capitulates to the president of Russia and adopts his point of view on Afghanistan?” he asked. “When he stands up and in a moment of ignominy just capitulates … [and] says ‘I believe Putin not my intelligence community.’”
Kerry also criticized Trump’s recent decision to pull out U.S. troops from Syria, noting former Defense Secretary James Mattis’s later resignation.
“That is a moment of shame. We gotta get our facts straight here.”
The former Democratic presidential nominee also told Axelrod he hasn’t “taken anything off the table” regarding a 2020 White House bid, but pointed to the number of Democrats who have already announced campaigns, CNN reported.
“I don’t think it’s important to be talking about who’s in and who’s out. What’s important to talk about is where do we need to go? Where do we need to go as a country? We are not doing the great things that America should be doing,” Kerry said, according to the network.
“I’m going to be in the middle of the debate no matter what, period.”