President Obama’s response to Mitt Romney comments on the size of the U.S. Navy during Monday’s debate did not “play well” with American voters, former CIA Director Michael Hayden tells Newsmax.
Romney complained that the Navy is “smaller now than any time since 1917.”
Obama responded: “We also have fewer horses and bayonets, because the nature of our military has changed.”
He added sarcastically: “We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go under water, nuclear submarines.” The issue, he said, “is not a game of Battleship, where we are counting ships.”
In an exclusive interview with Newsmax TV on Tuesday, retired 4-star Air Force Gen. Hayden says: “There were quite a few of those [comments] last night.
Watch the exclusive interview here.
“You had two men on stage: One was president, and the other was presidential. I frankly do not think those kinds of comments play well to the general American voting public, when a president seems to be so much on the attack and personalizing the attack.”
Obama made the aircraft carriers and submarines remarks “as if he were talking to a child,” Hayden adds.
“I think the governor’s response was really quite solid. He did not get down into the weeds and into the mud and wrestle on those issues. He simply responded — it was the best line of the night — ‘attacking me is not an agenda.’
“I think most Americans will see that the governor was and appeared to be responsible, knowledgeable, and calm, and if you would have asked me what he would have needed to show going into that debate, that is what I would have answered.”
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