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Chris Christie: Obama's 'done some pretty stupid sh--'
12/04/2015   By Nick Gass | POLITICO
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Despite his preferred mantra of "don't do stupid sh--" when it comes to foreign policy doctrine, President Barack Obama has "done some pretty stupid sh--" in his seven years in the White House, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said in an interview published Friday with The Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg.

In discussing his view that Iran poses a more grave threat to the United States than the Islamic State because it has expressed nuclear ambitions, the Republican presidential candidate said that in principle, Obama "believes that American inaction trumps American action."

"Don’t do stupid sh--," Goldberg chimed in, mentioning the foreign policy doctrine that made the rounds in the D.C. press in the first part of 2014, which Christie agreed was an accurate depiction of the president's thinking.

Asked what was wrong with such an approach, Christie suggested that it reflected a piecemeal approach to foreign policy with little care into the consequences of "one-off" actions.

"You don’t know, as you’re doing it, whether it’s stupid or not. You try to get educated as best you can, but he’s done some pretty stupid sh-- under the philosophy of not doing stupid sh--," the governor remarked. "So my point to you— it is operational, because he’s never run anything before, nor have most of the people around him, the ones he listens to, and there’s no strategy. I will tell you that the people I listen to tell me all the time that there is no overarching strategy here. It’s a series of one-offs. He makes these one-off decisions that he doesn’t think have a domino type of effect, but they do. Everything you do has an effect."

On who he turns to for his foreign policy advice, Christie said he has met with Henry Kissinger about once a month or every six weeks for the last year and a half, as well as Brian Hook, Eric Edelman and Eliot Cohen.

"I mean, New Jersey doesn’t have a foreign policy, except that you have to like Ireland, Italy, and Israel," Goldberg said in his initial framing of the question to Christie.

Christie then quipped: "You have to deal with [New York City Mayor] Bill de Blasio everyday — that’s foreign policy."

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