President Barack Obama didn't need to cancel his trip to Argentina or end his trip to Cuba following the terror attacks in Brussels, but he should not have been photographed at a baseball game within hours of the attacks or been shown dancing the tango, said Richard Haass, the president of the Council on Foreign Relations, said Thursday.
"Argentina is actually one of the very rare good news stories in the world," Haass said during a panel discussion on
MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program, marking a second day for the show to
criticize Obama's actions following the attacks.
"They're doing the right things economically, they're doing the right things politically. It's a good story."
But whoever let Obama and First Lady Michelle be shown
dancing the tango with professional dancers on Wednesday in Argentina "ought to be looking for work on somebody's campaign very far, far away. That was a tremendous mistake," said Haass.
Nicole Wallace, who served as communications director for President George W. Bush, agreed that Obama's "policy choice" to continue with everything on his scheduled visits to Cuba and Argentina equaled a "communications" crime.
"His policy choice was to proceed with everything on his schedule and not to react to the threat of terrorism, and that is his prerogative," she said.
However, it put him "out of step with the entire American public, not just Republicans. You heard Democrats yesterday increasingly uncomfortable with the choices he makes at a moment of crisis.
"There were mothers laying dead while their family members were at the crime scene yesterday and to look like the priority is to go on a foreign trip instead of pausing for a minute and explaining that to America is a communications crime."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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