On Friday’s edition of Bloomberg’s “Balance of Power,” Rep. John Garamendi (D-CA) suggested that 2024 Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is engaging in some sort of deal like “what happened to Jimmy Carter when Reagan and his troops cut a deal with the Iran[ian] ayatollah and leaving Jimmy Carter to hang out there.”
Garamendi said, “If there’s going to be a cognitive test, let’s not have a kindergarten cognitive test, which is what Trump continually talks about. If there’s going to be a cognitive test, yes, both should. But I would like to see Donald Trump stand in front of the international press corps, as Biden did yesterday, and answer the questions, answer the detailed questions about international relationships, detailed questions about national security. And I’d like him also to explain to the international press why he spent four years as President, basically tearing apart NATO and handing the keys to Putin. And I remember the press conference in Helsinki. I remember what happened there. And all of us, now that we have Russia invading Ukraine, all of us should be aware of what’s going on.”
He continued, “And, oh, by the way, who did Trump meet with yesterday in Mar-a-Lago? He met with Orban. Who did Orban meet with a week ago? Putin. Isn’t it interesting, that Orban goes and meets with Putin and then meets with Trump? What are those two guys dealing with right now? What are they up to? What do we have to look forward to? I remember very well what happened to Jimmy Carter when Reagan and his troops cut a deal with the Iran[ian] ayatollah and leaving Jimmy Carter to hang out there. And what happened three months after he became — Reagan became President? Yeah, we had the Iran-Contra deal. That’s what we had. So, what is Trump up to? What is Orban up to? We need to — you need to ask those questions of those two characters.”
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