The U.S. is perceived as being weak under President Joe Biden and not having any firm foreign policy, says former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson.
“It kind of started with the Afghanistan thing and continued with Ukraine, with Iran, with almost everything we touch,” Carson said Saturday during an appearance on Newsmax’s “Saturday Report” when asked whether the U.S. had lost leverage power in negotiating a prisoner swap with Russia for WNBA star Brittney Griner.
“It’s problematic and it’s going to result in even more problems because the rest of the world is looking and they’re saying the United States is perhaps not as strong right now as they have been.
“There needs to be a bipartisan effort” to fix this, he added.
Griner was convicted of drug smuggling and sentenced to nine years in prison for carrying less than a gram of cannabis oil through the Moscow airport.
Russia’s foreign minister Sergey Lavrov on Friday told reporters that the Kremlin is “ready to discuss this topic, but within the framework of the channel that has been agreed by the presidents.”
Carson said the partisanship in the U.S. “is going to destroy this nation.
“A house divided against itself cannot stand. Somehow, we’ve got to get by it. We have to have leadership that encourages to work together to understand that we, the American people, are not each other’s enemies, but those who want to really destroy our country or to fundamentally change it have to make us into enemies.”
He also said Griner “might be a little bit more appreciative of the country that she lives in” when she gets back to the U.S.
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Solange Reyner ✉
Solange Reyner is a writer and editor for Newsmax. She has more than 15 years in the journalism industry reporting and covering news, sports and politics.
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