Former U.S. Ambassador to NATO R. Nicholas Burns on Wednesday slammed Nikki Haley and Donald Trump for threatening to “take names” of countries who vote to criticize the president’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
The U.N. on Thursday will hold an emergency meeting to vote on a resolution criticizing the U.S. for the move. Tuesday, Haley pledged the U.S. “will be taking names” during that vote—a sentiment echoed Wednesday by Trump when he inferred the U.S. may withhold foreign aid pending the outcome of that vote.
“Let them vote against us, we'll save a lot, we don't care,” Trump said during a cabinet meeting. “But this isn't like it used to be, where they could vote against you and then you pay them hundreds of millions of dollars and nobody knows what they're doing.”
Burns argued the threat “is extremely ill advised by the Trump administration, by the president and Ambassador Haley.”
“I'm kind of surprised that Ambassador Haley is doing this,” Burns admitted. “I don't know if she's been ordered to do this, but it's not going to be effective. We're a great country, we’re the leading, strongest country in the world. And our best presidents, our most effective presidents, they led with self-confidence and led with supporting our allies.”
“There are thousands of votes in the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council,” Burns explained. “You win some, you lose some. You can't bully your best friends in the world—Germany, Britain, France—these are countries that have voted against us on the issue of Jerusalem. So I don't think it's going to work. I'm afraid that some countries will just double down in their vote against the United States because they have domestic politics too, they can't bow down publicly to threats from the President of the United States.”
Burns noted Trump is “isolated … internationally” on the issue of moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, arguing the president is “striking out.”
“I think it casts us in the light of a bully, of threatening our friends in the world,” Burns said.
“I think this is an embarrassing spectacle of American diplomacy going in the wrong direction,” he added.
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