Trump blasts Obama on Russian TV

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, right, speaks during a small group roundtable held at the Cleveland Arts and Social Sciences Academy on Thursday. (AP)

WASHINGTON: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has often praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, criticized US policy in Iraq during an interview broadcast on a Kremlin-funded television network.
The New York businessman made the comments in an interview with former CNN broadcaster Larry King, whose podcast was aired on RT network, a 24-hour, Russian-language news channel.
Trump criticized US policy in Iraq from the days of Republican President George W. Bush, who ordered the American-led invasion in 2003 in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, Al-Qaeda attacks on the United States. Trump then attacked President Barack Obama and Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, Obama’s first secretary of state, for their roles in the US troop withdrawal from Iraq.
“It’s a war we shouldn’t have been in, number one,” Trump said in the interview. “And it’s a war that, when we got out, we got out the wrong way. That’s Obama.”
While Trump has leveled similar criticism in the past, doing so on Russian television could draw more criticism from those who have questioned his overtures to Putin, including a number of Republicans.
Trump’s interview surfaced as he and Clinton continue to clash over foreign policy in the runuup to the Nov. 8 presidential election. In an televised national security forum on Wednesday night, the two sought to portray themselves as most fit to be commander in chief, with Trump arguing that Putin is a better leader than Obama.
Clinton on Thursday said Trump’s comment was “not just unpatriotic and insulting to the people of our country, as well as to our commander in chief, it is scary.”
Trump and his running mate, Indiana Governor Mike Pence, defended the comment. Pence called it “inarguable” that Putin is a stronger leader than the US president.