Here’s How World Leaders Have Slammed Clinton and Trump
Loose-lipped world leaders may have some explaining to do to the next U.S. president, whoever it may be.
Whoever wins Tuesday’s election will have to face a fair amount of trash talk tossed out against them during the campaign by some of the world’s most powerful leaders.
Whoever wins Tuesday’s election will have to face a fair amount of trash talk tossed out against them during the campaign by some of the world’s most powerful leaders.
It was somewhat expected that many heads of state would be wary — to say the least — of a Donald Trump White House, what with the Republican nominee’s more bombastic proclamations. But some leaders had frosty words for Democrat Hillary Clinton, too, perhaps unwilling to swallow whatever bitter taste her tenure as secretary of state left behind.
No doubt leaders and top diplomats now would rather forget their harsh words, considering they’ll have to work with Tuesday’s winner for the next four years. So we’ve helpfully compiled some of the slams here, just for posterity’s sake.
“That’s the way Mussolini arrived and the way Hitler arrived,” Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto said of Trump’s rhetoric in March.
“I consider Donald Trump a man who invests a lot in a policy of fear,” Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said in April.
“The mouth is Clinton’s but the voice is of George Soros,” Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said in May, referring to the Hungarian-born billionaire and Democratic Party funder.
Trump “changes opinions like the rest of us change underwear,” Danish Foreign Minister Kristian Jensen said in March.
Clinton “gave [Russian demonstrators] a signal” to take to the streets in 2011 to protest election fraud, Russian President Vladimir Putin said that year.
Trump’s “more closed, isolationist, and xenophobic” policies will derail U.S.-Latin American relations, Argentina’s foreign minister, Susana Malcorra, said Monday.
“Trump, like others, stokes hatred and conflations,” French Prime Minister Manuel Valls tweeted in December 2015.
But here’s some love for Clinton from an unlikely source: Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Clinton, he said in an interview with Al Jazeera, “would make a good president.” He also had kind words for Trump as a “good candidate.” Such diplomacy from the man who had much spicier words for Pope Francis.
Photo credit: YURI CORTEZ/AFP/Getty Images
Robbie Gramer is a diplomacy and national security reporter at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @RobbieGramer
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