Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-VT) assailed President Donald Trump as “a pathological liar” when discussing foreign policy at the second Democrat debate on Tuesday.
During the debate, Sanders was asked by CNN’s moderators if his foreign policy vision was similar to the one articulated by Trump. Sanders responded by lambasting the president as “a pathological liar,” before launching into a diatribe about military spending and foreign intervention.
“Trump is a pathological liar. I tell the truth,” he said. “We have been in a Afghanistan, I think, 18 years … in Iraq 16-or-17 years. We have spent $5 trillion on the War on Terror and there are probably more terrorists out there now than before it began.”
Sanders made the argument even though Trump has made similar indictments about America’s wars in the Middle East. The Vermont senator proceeded to say that as president he would not support a robust military budget, as the Trump administration has done.
“We’re going to spend, the Congress passed, I will not vote for, a $715 billion military budget – more than the ten next countries combined,” he said. “What we need is a foreign policy that focuses on diplomacy and ending conflicts by people sitting at a table, not by killing each other.”
Sanders further promised to work in tandem with the United Nations, instead of “denigrating” the organization, to solve complex international issues.