Susan Rice rips Donald Trump for ‘party over our country’ foreign policy

Former national security adviser Susan Rice says President Trump is guilty of having a foreign policy that boils down to four words: “party over our country.”

The Obama administration official who once claimed Benghazi’s Sept. 11, 2012, terrorist attacks were prompted by an obscure anti-Islam video, blasted Mr. Trump — and the Republican Party — in the New York Times over the weekend.

“Mr. Trump welcomes and encourages Russia, a hostile adversary, to interfere in our elections so long as the manipulations benefit him,” she wrote Sunday. “He discards decades of bipartisan policy on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to curry favor with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, and thus right-wing political support. The president follows a basic, if unorthodox, playbook: He and his party over our country.”

Mrs. Rice also excoriated the president for rolling back Obama-era policies toward Cuba, cutting aid to certain Latin American countries, and his rhetoric on Venezuela’s economic and social implosion under Nicolas Maduro’s socialist regime.

“Because Mr. Trump’s Cuba announcement will alienate the United States from the very coalition of allied countries that we need to stay united on Venezuela, his real goal appears to be something else: stoking his base,” she continued. “That’s why Mr. Trump trumpets the bogus threat of Venezuelan-style ’socialism’ invading America through the Democratic Party. Similarly, he periodically threatens military intervention in Venezuela, which is music to the ears of many exiles in South Florida. Despite what Mr. Trump says, there is no practical military option for deposing Mr. Maduro. Bombing Caracas would kill countless innocents and a ground invasion would meet determined resistance from the Venezuelan military.”

Mrs. Rice, who also served as an ambassador to the United Nations, then castigated the Republican Party.

“Until recently, we had two parties in Congress that mostly put country first,” she wrote. “No longer. The Republican Party has largely abdicated its responsibilities in favor of the whims of a president guided solely by personal and political interests, even in executing the most sacred and solemn duty of the office — to keep America safe.”