Thursday on “CNN Tonight,” while discussing the United Nations postponing a vote on an Egyptian-sponsored security resolution criticizing Jewish settlement construction in the West Bank after President-Elect Donald Trump had urged a U.S. veto on the resolution if passed and called the Egyptian president, there was a heated exchange between CNN’s Peter Beinart, Harvard Law’sAlan Dershowitz and radio host Dennis Prager.
It was when Dershowitz asserted “Donald Trump did exactly the right thing,” and President Obama was “acting undemocratically,” that the fireworks began.
Dershowitz said, “He can change policy, he can make speeches. What he should not do is change America’s policy 40 years at the United Nations. If the Security Council resolution goes through, it completely ties the hands of an incoming president. You can’t undo a Security Council resolution. You can’t take away a veto. And this security council resolution is an invitation to the international criminal court to go after Israel. It’s an invitation to the BDS movement to start sanctioning Israel. It’s a very, very bad resolution. And there is a big difference between an outgoing president making a speech and changing the policy, which can then be changed by the incoming president, and doing something permanent and irrevocable, and that’s why I think Donald Trump did exactly the right thing.”
“He said to the president, you do what you want in the last days of your administration, but don’t tie my hands,” he continued. “I actually wrote a piece about this before the election, urging the president not to tie who we then thought would be the new president, Hillary Clinton’s, hands. I’m confident, by the way, if Hillary Clinton had been elected, she would have called the president and said, do not tie my hands. This president is acting undemocratically. Eighty-eight senators were opposed to this. The vast majority of Congress, the vast majority of the American people. This is a parting shot by a frustrated president who thinks more of his own legacy…”
Beinart interjected, “Enough of that. Alan, Alan, Alan. you have no right — you have no right to slur the president ad hominem. You don’t know what his motivations are and that’s beyond the pale.”
The exchange went on for several more minutes.
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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