ABC reporter Jon Karl asked former vice president Dick Cheney whether his recent op-ed claiming Obama is “determined to leave office ensuring he has taken America down a notch” is tantamount to accusing the president of “treason.”
Karl spoke with Cheney Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” touchingly largely on the series of foreign policy crises rocking the Obama administration and the world.
Last week Cheney and his daughter Liz published a Wall Street Journal opinion piece savaging the president for not being aggressive enough in confronting America’s enemies.
But many thought the op-ed’s tone went too far in criticizing the president. “It almost seems like you’re accusing the president of treason here, saying he’s intentionally bringing America down a notch,” Karl noted.
Cheney didn’t affirm his intent to accuse President Obama of treason. But he didn’t deny it either, instead running down what he views as a series of White House missteps that left the Middle East rudderless and without U.S. leadership.
“The scope of the problem, in part, is based upon an unwillingness by the president to recognize we have a problem,” the former vice president declared. “They’re still living back in the day when they claimed, ‘We got bin Laden, terrorism solved. That was not true then, it is not true today. The problem is bigger than it’s ever been.”
“I don’t intend any disrespect for the president, but I fundamentally disagree with him,” Cheney asserted. “I think he’s dead wrong in terms of the course he’s taken this nation. And I think we’re in for big trouble in the years ahead because of his refusal to recognize reality and because of his continual emphasis on getting the U.S., basically, to withdraw from that part of the world.”