President Biden’s new White House communications director mocked Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, during the 2012 presidential campaign for having a “Cold War mentality” when it came to Russia.
Former Obama spokesman Ben LaBolt, who was tapped earlier this month to replace White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield when she leaves the White House at the end of the month, appeared on Fox News’ “America’s Newsroom” on April 26, 2012, during which he criticized Romney, the former Massachusetts governor and presumptive Republican nominee, for “a lot of chest thumping, a lot of tough talk, but not a lot of specific plans” when it came to foreign policy.
“Well I think on several fronts, first of all Governor Romney certainly has a Cold War mentality, as you heard in that discussion over Russia,” LaBolt told Fox News anchor Martha MacCallum.
“He has been all over the map on withdrawing our troops from Afghanistan,” he continued. “He has certainly suggested that he would leave our troops there indefinitely when he hasn’t outlined a mission for them. He’s enlisted many of the same advisers that were the architects of the Iraq war. He has suggested that we should go it alone in the world — that the United States should act unilaterally rather than rally the world around important international missions that are critical to American security and to global security.”
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The Romney campaign pushed back during the same show, saying the Obama administration’s “naïve view of the world” had failed.
Romney predicted in 2012 that Russia was America’s “number one geopolitical foe,” a comment that drew criticism from then-President Obama.
“A few months ago when you were asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia, not al-Qaeda,” Obama said during the third presidential debate between him and Romney in October 2012. “And the 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.”
Former intelligence officer Rebekah Koffler, who served as a Russian Doctrine & Strategy specialist in the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA), told Fox News Digital that at the time of Obama’s infamous ‘80s comment to Romney, he had “full knowledge of what type of threat Russia presented.”
Koffler said the Democrats have long adopted a “wishful-thinking” policy toward Russia that it is backfiring, and that “schizophrenically throwing weaponry” to Ukraine while “sucking the American taxpayer dry” likely won’t stop Putin from advancing.
Last February, after Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, Romney laid the blame at the policies of the three most recent U.S. presidents, Barack Obama, Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
“Putin’s impunity predictably follows our tepid response to his previous horrors in Georgia and Crimea, our naive efforts at a one-sided ‘reset,’ and the shortsightedness of ‘America First,'” Romney said at the time. “The ’80s called, and we didn’t answer.”
The White House didn’t immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.