Obama: Republican candidates’ comments ‘ridiculous’
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — President Barack Obama on Monday lashed out at Republican presidential candidates for making what he called “ridiculous” claims about his policies and “outrageous attacks” that crossed the line of political decorum.
At a news conference while visiting this African country, Mr. Obama defended the international nuclear agreement he and other world leaders reached with Iran, and he bristled at the assertion by Arkansas former Gov. Mike Huckabee that the president’s policy would “take the Israelis and march them to the door of the oven.”
Mr. Obama said such comments demonstrated a lack of seriousness on the part of those seeking to succeed him and reflected an anything-goes political culture that rewards incendiary speech over sober deliberation. Asked specifically about Mr. Huckabee’s remarks, Mr. Obama linked them to those of other GOP presidential candidates, including Donald Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz.
“The particular comments of Mr. Huckabee are just part of a general pattern we’ve seen that would be considered ridiculous if it weren’t so sad,” Mr. Obama said. “We’ve had a sitting senator call John Kerry Pontius Pilate. We’ve had a sitting senator, who also happens to be running for president, suggest that I’m the leading state sponsor of terrorism. These are leaders in the Republican Party.”
Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., a leading critic of the Iran agreement, last week said Mr. Kerry, the secretary of state who negotiated it, “acted like Pontius Pilate” by letting the International Atomic Energy Agency negotiate separate inspection provisions with Iran to verify the agreement. “He washed
his hands” and “kicked it to the IAEA,” Mr. Cotton said.
Mr. Cruz objected to the agreement’s provision lifting sanctions in exchange for limits on Iran’s nuclear program because that would free up $100 billion or more of frozen Iranian assets. As a result, he said, “the Obama administration will become the leading financier of terrorism against America in the world.”
Mr. Huckabee’s remarks even drew criticism from Florida former Gov. Jeb Bush, a rival Republican candidate. “The use of that kind of language is just wrong,” he told reporters after a town hall-style meeting in Orlando, Fla. “This is not the way we’re going to win elections, and that’s not how we’re going to solve problems.”
Shortly after Mr. Obama made his criticism in Ethiopia, Mr. Huckabee fired back at the president. “What’s ‘ridiculous and sad’ is that President Obama does not take Iran’s repeated threats seriously,” he said in a written statement. “For decades, Iranian leaders have pledged to ‘destroy,’ ‘annihilate,’ and ‘wipe Israel off the map’ with a ‘big Holocaust.’ ‘Never again’ will be the policy of my administration, and I will stand with our ally Israel to prevent the terrorists in Tehran from achieving their own stated goal of another Holocaust.”
At his news conference, Mr. Obama went beyond Mr. Huckabee and the others to raise Mr. Trump, mentioning him several times by name without being asked, just a week after cutting off a reporter who tried to ask about the businessman at a White House news conference on Iran. “Maybe this is just an effort to push Mr. Trump out of the headlines,” the president said of the Republicans’ remarks.
Mr. Obama went on to note Mr. Trump’s assertion that Sen. John McCain, RAriz., a former prisoner of war in North Vietnam, was not a genuine war hero. Mr. Obama, who defeated Mr. McCain in the 2008 presidential campaign, said it was offensive to “challenge the heroism of Mr. McCain, somebody who endured torture and conducted himself with exemplary patriotism.”
But the president also made it a broader indictment of the Republican Party, many of whose leaders denounced Mr. Trump’s remarks as well. “The Republican Party is shocked, and yet that arises out of a culture where those kinds of outrageous attacks have become far too commonplace and get circulated nonstop through the Internet and talk radio and news outlets,” Mr. Obama said.
Mr. Obama said candidates should not “play fast and loose” with comments like that. “The American people deserve better,” he said. “Certainly presidential debates deserve better. In 18 months, I’m turning over the keys. I want to make sure I’m turning over the keys to somebody who’s serious about the serious problems the country faces and the world faces.”
Mr. Obama’s critique of Mr. Huckabee was echoed by the leading Democratic presidential contender, former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.
At a campaign stop in Iowa, she said his statement “steps over the line, and it should be repudiated by every person of good faith and concern about the necessity to keep our political dialogue on the facts and within suitable boundaries.”