Susan Rice calls Trump a ‘surrender monkey’ for trying to appease Putin over Ukraine

Former US National Security Advisor Susan Rice on Thursday delivered scathing criticism of Donald Trump and his foreign policy agenda as he sought to appease Russian President Vladimir Putin amid the ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

“The basic tenets of national security – that America must be strong, that we must stand with our allies, that we must stand for our values, that we must mean what we say… were never seriously in question,” she told MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell.

“And here comes Donald Trump, who really looks like the Neville Chamberlain of the Republican Party,” Rice continued. ‘He is a conciliator. He’s a surrender monkey. And that is what we see in his approach to Ukraine.”

Chamberlain pursued a policy of “appeasement” during his term as British Prime Minister in the years leading up to World War II, in an unsuccessful attempt to prevent Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler from expanding German control over Europe and waging war against Great Britain. Britain.

“We have seen him give in to temptations from Xi Jinping and many others when it suited him and served his personal interests,” Rice told O’Donnell, referring to the many instances in which Trump has praised the Chinese president from the White House. House.

“So that’s why more than 700 Democrats, Republicans and Independents – very senior national security leaders – came together to oppose Donald Trump and support the administration. [Vice President] Kamala Harris,” she continued, referencing an open letter published last month.

The document was signed by current and former defense officials, including former Defense Secretaries Chuck Hagel and William Cohen — Republicans who served under former Democratic presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, respectively — and ex-CIA director Michael Hayden.

Trump spokesman Steven Cheung told The New York Times that these were “the same people who got our country into endless foreign wars and profited from them while the American people suffered.”

Rice argued that national security could be a bipartisan middle ground.

“Until recently, foreign policy and national security have been played between Democrats and Republicans,” she told O’Donnell. “There was a center that was a responsible, rational center.”

Rice concluded by emphasizing that Harris “has the temperament, intellect, vision and experience to be an effective and strong commander in chief on day one.”