LOS ANGELES, California — Chair of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs Rep. Ed Royce (R-CA), had some choice words for the Obama Administration in an exclusive interview with Breitbart News on Sunday evening. Royce was one of the featured panelists at the 30 Years After Civic Action Conference at the Skirball Cultural Center.  

When asked for his opinion on how the country has been handling foreign policy, and how foreign policy has been playing into Tuesday’s midterm elections, Royce said:

What foreign policy? Because I don’t see a [foreign] policy, even with respect to ISIS… The [Obama] Administration had no foreign policy… We don’t have the type of leadership in this country that we need in order to deter those who are committing aggression around the planet.

Royce then said that “when they [Obama Administration] were finally forced into any type of airstrikes, it was a de minimus action, which has very little effect.” He noted that requests from 190,000 Kurdish peshmerga, 30% of whom were female fighters, for arms from the U.S. Government went unanswered. “Over and over again, the Administration has turned a deaf ear to those requests.” 

Royce recalled the 1980 presidential election between then-President and Democratic incumbent Jimmy Carter who lost in a landslide election to Republican Ronald Reagan. “And I think that people, again, find themselves in that type of situation. Where they can see that there is a lack of leadership in foreign policy,” Royce said, noting that the situation is the same “on the economic front. They [America] would like to see a change.”

Reagan was boosted to a victory thanks in large part to his strong positioning in foreign policy and national security, coupled with Carter’s reluctance to move quickly enough on the famed Iran hostage crisis. From 1979 to 1980, 52 American diplomats and citizens were held against their will by the Iranian Government for 444 days. 

“But after that election, the situation instantaneously changed,” Royce said.

As for the type of leadership Royce believes is necessary for America in the days ahead, he said “I think it needs to be a president who is willing to articulate that, indeed, the United States needs to have a foreign policy.” He said President Reagan had been an exemplary leader in that arena and noted that he, unlike President Obama, had America’s interests at his core. 

“It’s the difference between a president who believed in American exceptionalism, and one who does not,” Royce said.