Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Republican presidential candidate Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) said Republican front-runner Donald Trump is “painfully naive” for agreeing with President Barack Obama that it is not a problem that Russian President Vladimir Putin is conducting airstrikes in Syria.
Host George Stephanopoulos asked, “Let’s talk about Syria, Vladimir Putin going in aggressively this week, you heard Donald Trump say, maybe it’s okay. President Obama also this week, he believes Putin is making a mistake and it could fall into a quagmire. Are they right about that And if you were president what would you do?”
Christie replied, “Well Donald should be concerned he is agreeing with Barack Obama because just when you think it can’t get worse it does. And just when you think this foreign policy can’t cost more to the American people it does. We don’t need to be friends with Vladimir Putin. And we don’t need to be worried whether he’s in quagmire. After 40 years, we allowed Russia to be back in the Middle East. America has to re-established its presence in the area. We should be the ones leading the fight on ISIS. By the way, we know Putin is not fighting ISIS. Putin is there to prop up Assad. I tell you this, there’s now 300,000 nearly dead in Syria, because of Assad. Now Putin is going in, teaming with the Iranians, to prop up Assad. Only Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton could mess up this foreign policy that badly. And anybody who agrees with Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton is just painfully naive.”