President Barack Obama's last world tour that is under way was likened to "somebody talking to you but looking over your shoulder seeing if they recognize somebody else," former United Nations ambassador John Bolton said Saturday, as the world "knows the [U.S.] foreign policy is going to change."
Bolton also expressed concern Obama might try to make final moves that fly in the face of President-elect Donald Trump's upcoming foreign policy and leadership.
"I'm particularly worried what he might do in respect to Israel and the United Nations," Bolton told host John Catsimatidis of "The Cats Roundtable." "Lot of speculation over in Turtle Bay at U.N. headquarters about resolutions that recognize a Palestinian state or that try and set a boundary for Israel based on the 1967 ceasefire lines.
"I think that’d be very inadvisable for the president to do that."
Bolton, who served three different presidents in Washington, said Trump's transition team is on pace, if not ahead, of past presidential transitions.
"[Trump's] record in the first 10 days is excellent," Bolton told Catsimatidis, recalling Bill Clinton didn't show up at the State Department until after Thanksgiving in 1992.
Bolton, after acknowledging both the outgoing President Obama and President-elect Trump are approaching the transition appropriately in their meetings domestically and abroad, said there is some "anxiety [among world leaders] because they don't know the answers" to the policies of the upcoming regime.
"They'll get used to it," Bolton concluded.
Bolton, who is in the running to be Trump's secretary of state, hinted President Obama needs to be careful to not allow other countries to try to capitalize on the transition.
"We're at risk that our adversaries will . . . try and take advantage of getting the last concessions they can out of the Obama administration, and some may figure they better settle their scores now before having to deal with Trump," Bolton told Catsimatidis.
". . . It's not going to be the same as Barack Obama, especially in the war on terrorism, so our allies will take hope from that."
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