Al D'Amato: 'Work Together' With Russia in ISIS Fight to Help Thaw Relations

The United States should begin to thaw diplomatic relations with Russia with a collaboration on the fight against ISIS, former GOP New York Sen. Al D'Amato says.

In an interview with Newsmax TV's Steve Malzberg on Wednesday, the Park Strategies founder said the Obama administration "totally botched it up," arguing, "we should have been working with the Russians on certain things and maybe we could've gotten their cooperation."

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"I don't know if it has to be a face-to-face from the start, but I do think our diplomats and our new secretary of state, who has apparently dealt with Putin successfully in the past, that's a good way to start to see where we can work collaboratively and bring the tensions down," D'Amato said, referring to President-elect Donald Trump's nominee, Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson.

The "greatest enemies" we have are "the Islamic extremists that threaten both Russia and the United States. It's ISIS," he said.

"We should begin to work together there instead of looking for confrontations, which are needless and don't help either of our countries, so I think we can turn things around."

D'Amato also blasted Obama for going out on the campaign trail for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton.

"I've never seen that in modern politics," he said. "I didn't see Ronald Reagan stumping throughout the country for his successor. I didn't see George Bush out there stumping against Barack Obama when he ran. This was an unprecedented event. If he takes the loss personally, he should...."

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