Kristol: ‘Unnerving’ Trump Is ‘Popping Off,’ Not ‘Thinking as a President-Elect’

Monday on MSNBC’s “Andrea Mitchell Reports,” the founder and editor at large of The Weekly Standard and “Never Trump” movement figure Bill Kristol said President-elect Donald Trump has “not been thinking as a president-elect for the last two months,” warning Trump’s tweets are “just popping off.”

Kristol said, “What most startling to me is he’s president elect of the United States, he’s going to be sworn in, in four days. Is it wise? Is it prudent? And I’m not talking even about politics here or a kind of courtesy. He has serious obligations. Should he be denigrating our standing in the world? That’s what he’s doing in this tweet really. NATO, he said NATO is obsolete. He may think that. He said it as a candidate. When you’re president do you want to say the alliance of which you’re an integral part is obsolete? Don’t you say I’m going to working to change NATO, to improve it, meanwhile I’ll be standing by the treaty obligation. He’s so far away from behaving the way a president has, the way other presidents have acted.”

“They’ve inherited policies and inherited personnel and disagreed with,” he continued. “The is always pretty transitions rocky as the power gets handed off from one party to another but they’ve tried to be careful not to damage the country when they’re making their own political points. I think that’s true of President Obama when he was president-elect and President Bush when he was president-elect, goes all the way back. And Trump’s just, it’s not even, fine he may make a couple of errors but seems to have no appreciation he should be thinking this way. I guess that’s what I find the most unnerving, he’s not been thinking as a president-elect for the last two months. Hopefully on Friday he starts to think as a president.”

He added, “It’s not very hard, if you put yourself in the mind that I’m no longer speaking my mind wherever I want, I’m no longer rallying my base, I’m no longer shocking people, carefully selected surprises, that’s one thing but just popping off in this way I mean it really does become damaging, somewhat damaging when you’re president-elect, very damaging I think when you’re president.”

Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN

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