Oliver North said on a Wednesday national broadcast that if anyone was happy that President Obama won a second term, it’s former President Jimmy Carter — and maybe Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“If you could have imagined that someone is happy that Obama is president, it has to be Jimmy Carter because he is no longer the worst president in our history,” Mr. North said, on Fox News’ Sean Hannity show, as reported by The Washington Free Beacon.
Mr. North also called Mr. Obama “Jimmy Carter on steroids” and said that the president has failed the international community in terms of leadership. Had it not been for Mr. Obama’s “failure of leadership,” the protests in the Ukraine may not have exploded so quickly, Mr. North said, The Washington Free Beacon reported.
Mr. Hannity first said: “I look at what is happening here [in the Ukraine] as Vladimir Putin literally taking Obama to the cleaners. And by that, I mean from Syria, Iran, Egypt, the Middle East, Ukraine, on every level … Putin is literally taking over in areas where Russia was — and the former Soviet Union were long gone.”
Mr. North’s answer, The Washington Free Beacon reported: “Proof that the old axiom ’into any vacuum a leader will eventually come,’ Putin has been handed this by what is essentially Jimmy Carter on steroids. … What Obama has done, Sean, is he has left us bereft of leadership in the part of the world where we desperately need to have it.”
Mr. North, who served under former President Ronald Reagan, said he doesn’t advocate sending U.S. troops to the civil wars in Kiev or Syria.
“But it would have been nice to have had the credibility of being at least respected by adversaries or admired by our allies,” Mr. North said on the broadcast.
• Cheryl K. Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com.
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