On Tuesday night’s broadcast of “The O’Reilly Factor,” Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer said President Barack Obama will show “who he really is” in his second term.
According to Krauthammer, Obama is already making good on his March 2012 comments to then-Russian President Dmitry Medvedev that he would have “more flexibility” after Election Day.
“I think what’s happening here is that in his second term, Obama is going to show who he really is,” Krauthammer said. “Remember what he said to the Soviet president, ‘After the election, I will be more flexible,’ which means he can be more of who he wants to be. … [Former Nebraska Sen. and current defense secretary nominee Chuck Hagel] is prepared to do the dismantling that Obama wants to do, would never have admitted he wanted to do, but [that] will likely be carried out now in the second term.”
Host Bill O’Reilly then asked Krauthammer why Obama is apparently set on downsizing the defense budget.
“Because Obama [has] this ideological vision of America as a superpower too big for its britches,” Krauthammer replied. “He wants to cut it down to size.”
Krauthammer rejected the idea that advanced military technology can entirely make up for Obama’s proposed defense cuts.
“That’s the kind of argument you always hear, and it’s always false,” Krauthammer said. “Let’s take one example. The drone campaign. That’s a tremendous advance in technology. But that hasn’t done a thing to prevent the rise of al-Qaida in North Africa. … China is the rising power in the East. China is developing a huge and sophisticated navy which it never had. And it is quite clear what the objective is: to expel the United States from its coastal waters in the Western Pacific, where we have been the prevailing power for the last 50 years, since the fall of Japan. Now, we are going to have to build — you cannot counter the Chinese navy and aircraft carriers with drones. So the idea that somehow you can down size and preserve your power in the world is simply a false one.”