Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg on Tuesday said it’s hard to figure out who’s in charge of making foreign policy decisions in the Trump administration, painting a picture of a president who seemingly “doesn’t care.”
Mr. Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, said Mr. Trump says he doesn’t want conflict with Iran, but that he’s now taking a number of steps that “add up to [a] kind of escalation.”
“And it raises the question for me, not just of is he really averse to having a conflict, but is he really in control,” Mr. Buttigieg said in an interview with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews.
The mayor said that “technically speaking,” Mr. Trump would have ordered an aircraft carrier group and bomber squadron to the Middle East recently.
“But it’s hard to tell what’s going on in there, right?” he said. “I mean, it’s the same as a few weeks ago with North Korea. He announced sanctions. Next day, he took it back. It’s really hard to figure out who’s in charge. And it’s really hard to figure out if he even believes the same thing from one day to the next.”
Mr. Trump has also downplayed North Korea’s recent short-range missile testing, even though National Security Adviser John R. Bolton said the tests violated United Nations Security Council resolutions.
Mr. Buttigieg said it’s “mystifying” Mr. Trump would elevate someone like Mr. Bolton if he says he’s against war.
“It makes me think that he just doesn’t care,” the mayor said. “And I think that’s the real problem we have here. It’s a problem if you’re in uniform, in a chain of command with this guy at the top. It’s a problem if you’re a citizen of this country, living with the decisions that are made there, is [that] the president of the United States does not care.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.