President Barack Obama's embrace of world leaders with dubious human rights records at a U.S.-Africa summit is an outrage, GOP strategist and former Dick Cheney staffer Ron Christie believes.
"It's abhorrent that you would allow people who have been accused of genocide, who have been accused of war crimes, who have looted billions of dollars,'' Christie, now a columnist at The Daily Beast, said Thursday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on
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"You have millions of people who are suffering in that continent at the hands of these despots … [and they are] welcomed in the White House and greeted like, hey, we're all the same, we're all presidents!''
The Daily Mail reports that at a White House gala, Obama welcomed such leaders as Equatorial Guinea's Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo, Gambia’s Yahya Jammeh, and Cameroon's Paul Biya.
The Mail said Mbasogo "shot or jailed virtually all his political opponents, Jammeh "threatened to 'cut off the head' of any homosexuals in the country,'' and Biya made author David Wallechinsky's 2006 list of the world's 20 worst living dictators.
The newspaper noted that Obama "drew a diplomatic line'' by not inviting Zimbabwe’s notorious dictator Robert Mugabe.
"If I had actually had the chance, we should have arrested some of these people, let alone let them go through the gates at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue,'' Christie said.
"[Obama] doesn't care. The thought I don't think would come to his mind that as the symbol as the president of the United States, which he is, that you would say on behalf of the American people, we welcome you to the people's house.
"It's not the White House, it's the people's house. It's our house, your house, my house. It's an insult to us and it's an insult to those who elected him that he acts so shamelessly.''
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