Former Secretary of State John Kerry said Tuesday that if he could speak to President Donald Trump directly, he would tell him to “resign.”
Asked by CNBC’s Tania Bryer during a World Economic Forum panel in Davos, Switzerland, what he would convey to Trump, Kerry replied, “I can’t play that … because he doesn’t take any of this seriously. He doesn’t have an ability to have that kind of conversation.”
When pressed on what his message to the President would be, Kerry hemmed and hawed a bit.
Then he gave a one-word answer: “Resign.”
Kerry, the 2004 Democratic presidential nominee, also criticized Trump for “his insane decision” to pull out of the Paris climate accord in June 2017, for which “people will die.”
“I wish there was a lawsuit capacity that could hold people liable for such an insane decision as he has made, which is going to cost lives,” he said. “People will die because of the President’s decision, and billions of dollars of damage will be done to property.”
Kerry also accused Trump of lying about the consequences of pulling out of the accord. Trump claimed at the time that he was leaving to pursue “fair treatment” and so that foreign leaders would no longer “laugh at us.”
“I’m disappointed when a president of the United States lies, and that was a lie — there’s no burden,” said Kerry, who was secretary of state during President Barack Obama’s second term. “Paris did not place outside burdens levied by any other country on any other country.”
Trump was supposed to attend the World Economic Forum to deliver an address Tuesday, but he pulled out because of the partial government shutdown that is now the longest in US history. Davos is widely viewed as an annual retreat for champions of globalization. Trump’s “America First” message is viewed as at odds with calls in Davos for a more integrated world.
The White House did not respond immediately to a request for comment, but Trump had bashed the media for not understanding him and his approach to Davos.
“Last time I went to Davos, the Fake News said I should not go there. This year, because of the Shutdown, I decided not to go, and the Fake News said I should be there. The fact is that the people understand the media better than the media understands them!” Trump tweeted Tuesday shortly before Kerry’s call to resign.
Source: CNN and Washington Post
