Krauthammer’s Take: After POTUS’s Obamacare Lies, ‘Trust Me’ Is Not a Sufficient Argument for TPP

https://youtube.com/watch?v=CjlU1aVnnaI

President Obama says you can trust him when it comes to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. But “trust is not an argument,” says Charles Krauthammer.

“It would help if when the president says [Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren] is dead wrong, he would actually make a case to explain why, rather than say, ‘I would never sign a deal that’s not good for working Americans. Trust me.’ That’s what he does with Iran, that’s what he does with everything,” Krauthammer said on Tuesday’s Special Report. But “trusting him is a little hard after what he’s done with Obamacare — ‘If you like your plan, you can keep it” — [or] what he said about Iran: “This is going to prevent a nuclear weapon”; it’s going to do the opposite. So trust is not an argument.”

“But what I think it does,” Krauthammer explained, “is it sort of interrupts the favorite media meme that Republicans are in the midst of a civil war. Well, they’re going to have to suspend that when they look at the open civil war among Democrats. What’s happened is that the party has moved radically left. On most stuff Obama likes that. He likes it on social issues, on drug laws, all that kind of stuff, immigration. But on this, acting in the national interest as president, he knows that in the end free trade is a good idea. And this agreement, in particular, is extremely important geopolitically as a way to hold our Pacific Rim allies, who will be cut loose and will enter into China’s orbit if we don’t.

“But the thing is, it’s not just that he doesn’t schmooze with Democrats. He never states or puts out there any political capital,” Krauthammer added. “Has he made one national address on television about the importance of this, if it’s his number one priority? Where has he been? He never does that. He expects that if he says, ‘I like this, trust me,’ people ought to follow. Well, the answer is, they won’t, and particularly Democrats won’t.”