This grist for a future game of “Truth or Dare” comes to you by way of the Obama White House, from Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes in particular.
The sentiment was a response to the disapproval that President-elect Donald Trump expressed at the administration’s refusal to veto a U.N. resolution condemning Israel’s construction of settlements in so-called disputed territory. The U.S. instead abstained, marking a change in U.S. foreign policy so dramatic that even a number of Democrats in the Senate agreed with Trump, who also promised in a tweet:
As to the U.N., things will be different after Jan. 20th.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 23, 2016
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
The Washington Examiner’s Paul Bedard provides the complete text of Rhodes’s rebuff:
On the president-elect, the first thing I’d just say is that there’s one president at a time. President Obama is the president of the United States until Jan. 20, and we are taking this action, of course, as U.S. policy.
So can we all look forward to Obama honoring Rhodes’s “one president at a time” notion after he leaves office? Yeah, right. Last month he “made it clear that once out of office he will not remain silent if Mr. Trump goes too far in undoing his legacy.”
