It’s divisive times out there in Washington, and in the nation. Democrats and Republicans are at each others’ throats, and the president, according to recent polls, doesn’t have a great base of support.
But someone you wouldn’t expect has come to Donald Trump’s defense.
That’s right, everyone’s second favorite Republican (we can all agree Colin Powell has the number one spot, right?) Condoleezza Rice recently spoke out in support of old number 45 while on a press tour for her appearance at the 2017 KPMG Women’s Leadership Summit.
“I believe every president of the United States stands for our values,” Rice said on CNBC, not mentioning if she was including such luminaries as James Buchanan and Andrew Jackson in that lot.
She did, however, make it clear that Donald Trump is one of those presidents that “stands for our values,” saying, “You heard President Trump say, for instance, after the Syrian chemical attack, we can’t let that stand. What he was saying was the president of the United States can’t let that stand.”
Rice was referring to comments made by Trump that put the State Department into a tizzy; Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, as you may know, pulled one over on the international community after Obama’s chemical weapons redline was crossed.
After telling international actors he had no more chemical weapons, many more chemical weapons attacks were carried out — often against Syrian civilian populations — by what would seem to be the Syrian government.
Trump recently said publicly that he’s not playing that redline-international-inspectors thing, and that if Syria carries out just one more chemical weapons attack, it will pay a “heavy price.”
Now, Trump, being Trump, didn’t mention this new policy to anybody, and so old roughneck Tillerson, his State Department and the patriots at the Pentagon said they had no idea what Trump was talking about.
America’s sweetheart Sarah Huckabee Sanders, however, according to Newsweek, said that the State Department and Pentagon misspoke, and that Trump 100 percent told them that that was how things were going to be from now on.
But anyway, all that to say that Rice believes that Trump has a moral center, like every president does, even if he doesn’t speak the speech trippingly on the tongue.
“While the language may be different, and we might talk about needing to deal with policy, I think you’re going to see … that Americans’ interests in values are always linked,” Rice said, not mentioning if those values included a belief in casual sexual assault, “It’s early days in this administration. Let’s remember that.”
We don’t think anyone’s forgotten that, Secretary, but thanks for the reminder.
