Stengel: Threatening to Cut Off Aid Over UN Jerusalem Vote the ‘Tony Soprano Theory of Foreign Policy’

On Friday’s broadcast of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” MSNBC Political Analyst and former Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy during the Obama administration, criticized the Trump administration threatening to withhold aid to countries that voted to condemn the US moving its embassy to Jerusalem as the “Tony Soprano theory of foreign policy, that you extort your allies.”

Stengel said, “It’s sort of that Tony Soprano theory of foreign policy, that you extort your allies. I mean, the problem…is this complete misunderstanding of the post-Cold War order that we basically set up. We don’t support the UN to have people agree with our point of view. We support the UN because it will help keep peace. This is the structure that we created that has kept the peace for 50 or 60 years, and they’re looking at it as a way of getting their point of view. The thing that saddens me, and hearing, you know, the foreign minister for an autocrat like Erdogan, by the way, who in some ways puts Trump to shame, is this idea that somehow what made America special no longer does, and everybody’s pointing at us and goes, ‘You guys are just as venal and just as awful and just as vulgar as we are.'”

(h/t Grabien)

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