Marie Harf may have disagreed with the joint op-ed from Henry Kissinger and George Shultz on Iran, but she’s not getting the backup from the media she wished she was.
In an appearance on “The Hugh Hewitt Show” Wednesday night, New York Times columnist David Brooks blasted Harf’s response to Kissinger and Shultz’s piece, calling it “the lamest rebuttal” imaginable. Brooks also took shots at Harf for saying she heard “sort of big words and big thoughts” in the piece, asking “are we in nursery school?”
In their Wednesday piece in The Wall Street Journal, the two former secretaries of state said the Iran nuclear deal will only “reinforce” the problems going on in the Middle East for the rest of the world.
HUGH HEWITT: Let me play for you, by the way, since you bring up Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, this is State Department deputy spokeswoman Marie Harf earlier today responding to that very op-ed.
MARIE HARF: I didn’t hear a lot of alternatives. I heard a lot of sort of big words and big thoughts in that piece, and those are certainly, there’s a place for that. But I didn’t hear a lot of alternatives about what they would do differently.
HEWITT: David Brooks, this is the critique of the critics, is that we don’t have a lot of alternatives. In fact, every critic I’ve heard has alternatives, and I’m sure Kissinger and Shultz do. But a lot of big words? Really?
DAVID BROOKS: Are we in nursery school? We’re not, no polysyllabic words? That’s about the lamest rebuttal of a piece by two senior and very well-respected foreign policy people as I’ve heard. Somebody’s got to come up with better talking points, whatever you think. And of course, there are alternatives. It’s not to allow them to get richer, but to force them to get a little poorer so they can fund fewer terrorism armies.
LISTEN: