Politics

Top Democratic Diplomat: White House ‘Deluding Themselves’ On Foreign Policy

Alex Griswold Media Reporter
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Former Obama official and career Democratic diplomat Richard C. Holbrooke can be heard saying the White House was “deluding themselves” into supporting bad foreign policy in newly-uncovered audio tapes.

“That really is the way the White House thinks,” Holbrooke said, according to The New York Times. “They don’t have a deep understanding of the issues themselves, but increasingly, they’re deluding themselves into thinking they do.” (VIDEO: Former Obama Official On ISIS: ‘Mistakes Were Made. Presidents Make Mistakes.’)

Holbrooke died in 2010 while serving in the Obama administration and after serving in every Democratic White House since the 1960s. The tapes were made by Holbrooke as an audio diary during his time serving as Obama’s special representative for Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Another audio tape has Holbrooke dissing Obama’s deputy national security adviser Tom Donilon: “Went over to the White House to see Tom Donilon, who was extremely agitated and kept saying, ‘You’re going too slow, you don’t have a strategy, the president’s very dissatisfied.’ I said, ‘Tom, we have a strategy — you guys have never let us lay it out.’ That, of course, got him even more agitated.”

“Tom said things like, ‘I’ll write my strategy myself,’” Holbrooke recounts. “An odd thing to say, because he doesn’t have a strategic sense, so what he thinks is strategy is actually political.” (VIDEO: Josh Earnest Dodges Ten Consecutive Questions About Clinton Foundation)

[h/t New York Times]

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