Kerry, Albright blast Trump
The two former U.S. secretaries of state speak at DU’s annual Korbel Dinner.
Two former U.S. secretaries of state who served under Democratic presidents took President Donald Trump to task Thursday night in Denver, criticizing his refusal to address climate change and his withdrawal from international agreements.
“What is America’s role in the world today? We are AWOL,” said Madeleine Albright, who served as chief diplomat under former President Bill Clinton. “And when we do speak, it’s that we’re victims — and America is not a victim.”
She joined John Kerry, who served during former President Barack Obama’s second term, at the Korbel Dinner at downtown’s Hyatt Regency Denver convention hotel. The annual event is put on by the University of Denver’s Josef Korbel School of International Studies, which was founded by Albright’s father. This year, the school gave Kerry its International Bridge Builder Award.
“Our democracy is troubled,” Kerry said while accepting the award. Without naming Trump, he decried “the unbelievable level of daily lying that’s taking place” in national politics and a lack of accountability for “aberrations to the nth degree from the values that most people are raised with in our country.”
Trump came up often during a discussion between Kerry, Albright and political analyst Floyd Ciruli. The diplomats touched on the Trump administration’s withdrawal last year from the Paris climate agreement, which Kerry helped negotiate, and Trump’s recent actions to stop a caravan of Central American migrants from entering the country. Albright said refugees from conflict-ridden countries around the world still should find a welcoming embrace from America. “I think we have lost our leadership role, and the Statute of Liberty is weeping,” she said, to claps from the crowd.
Kerry appealed to Americans to fight for their government to take steps to address climate change. The Paris accord has been the world’s central attempt to do so. In withdrawing, Trump said the agreement would undermine the U.S. economy and framed his decision as “a reassertion of America’s sovereignty.”
“If we make the right energy policy choices, we can avoid the worst consequences of climate change,” Kerry said. “But the scientists have told us we only have 12 years in which to do it. So America’s got to shake itself out of this stupor and stop allowing ideological ignorance to govern the dialogue of a great nation.”
He and Albright said the results of the recent midterm elections, in which Democrats retook the U.S. House majority, were reason for optimism.