In a recent interview at CNN, David Stockman, who is a Ron Paul Institute Advisory Board member and was director of the Office of Management and Budget during the Reagan administration, critiqued the Trump administration for pushing militarism and the drug war that fuel the problems they are supposedly fighting.
Stockman explains that “we’re bombing, droning, we’ve destroyed the whole Middle East,” resulting in blowback against Americans, increased terrorism, and the creation of refugees. He further criticizes the immediate Trump administration action to expand the militarism inherited from the Obama administration — instead of curtailing it — by “huffing and puffing” toward, and “drawing red lines” regarding, Iran. Stockman succinctly summarizes the problem: “We have too many wars.”
Turning to the war on drugs, Stockman refers to Trump’s reported comments about “bad hombres” in Mexico during a phone call with Mexico President Enrique Peña Nieto. Stockman says:
That’s the war on drugs. The problem is the policy. Get rid of the war on drugs. If you got rid of the war on drugs, you wouldn’t have half the problem, or most of the problem, you have on the border today.
Stockman also argues in the interview that the Trump administration should focus on taking action to fix the American economy, including by countering problems caused by the Federal Reserve, instead of being tied up with “digressions and diversions.”
Watch Stockman’s complete interview here:
