John Bolton: Democrats Have No ‘National Security Wing’

Former United States ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton speaks during the Republ
Ethan Miller/Getty Images

ANAHEIM — Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton blasted the Democratic Party on Saturday evening, saying that it no longer had a “national security wing.”

“There is no national security wing anymore of the Democratic Party,” Bolton said. “There is no Scoop Jackson wing. There isn’t even a Joe Lieberman wing anymore. And if you needed any proof of that, look at this disgraceful vote in the Senate and House of Representatives over this wretched deal on Iran’s nuclear weapons program.”

Bolton said President Barack Obama is not an aberration in the Democratic Party. Rather, “his views are the Democratic Party’s views and whether they nominate Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders, the views they share on the critical threats facing the United States are essentially the same.”

Bolton stressed the critical need to reevaluate America’s positioning on the world stage, regardless of who the next president will be.

Bolton noted the dichotomy between the unity of the Republican Party against the Iran deal, , while very few in the Democratic Party were able to muster the courage or strength to “vote against the president” and oppose the it.

Bolton said the issue is not merely that Iran will acquire nuclear weapons, but that the deal will spark a nuclear arms race in the region with nations like Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey already embarking on their own “peaceful” nuclear programs.

“I believe that we cannot sustain, in this country, our way of life and our standard of living for ourselves and our children and their children without a strong American presence in the world,” he added

Obama’s priorities, he said, are to “fundamentally transform” America. “And this [national] security business distracts from that.”

As a result, Bolton said “all across the Middle East state structures are breaking down and new ones are being created not to our advantage.”

He also attacked Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton over Benghazi and other foreign policy issues. “Hillary was a radical in law school and she is a radical today. And it’s not just true on foreign and defense policy. It’s true on domestic issues as well,” he said.

He explained that if he, or any other Republican official at the State Department, had proposed doing 10% of what Clinton had done, “they’d have just given us one of those Monopoly cards that say ‘Go Directly to Jail.’ You can’t do what she, and many of her subordinates did, without gravely endangering the national security of the United States…and it’s not like she didn’t understand….It just defies the imagination that she might be able to get away with this.”

He asked the audience to choose wisely when selecting the nation’s next president, and asked that they make the first hurdle the nominee has to get over “the question of whether they are capable of protecting the country internationally…if they don’t pass the first test, they don’t deserve your support.”

Photo: file

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