Former Secretary of State John Kerry may have leaked information about Israeli actions in Syria to Iran because he was so “in love” with the Iran nuclear deal that it clouded his judgment, Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said Tuesday.
“What happens with a lot of these guys is they fall in love with these deals,” Rubio said on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends.” “The deal becomes more important than the impact the deal’s going to have. Just having that deal, because they believe so much in it, that you’re willing to do things you wouldn’t do under normal circumstances.”
But when that happens in matters involving national security, “it could be very dangerous,” Rubio said.
“That happens all the time in life,” he said. “it happens all the time in politics, unfortunately, but when it happens in something like this that involves national security, it could be very dangerous.”
Several lawmakers are calling for Kerry, now President Joe Biden’s Cabinet-level “climate czar” to be under investigation or even to step down after Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javid Zarif claimed in a leaked audiotape that Kerry revealed more than 200 operations that Israel had conducted against Iranian targets while he was secretary of state.
“It’s not clear when exactly he told them about it,” Rubio said. “Was it after he was secretary of state, was it during the negotiations?”
Kerry has denied the claims being made by Zarif. Rubio acknowledged Tuesday that the accusations that have led many of his GOP counterparts to demand Kerry resign his position may not be the truth. However, if the allegations are true, then the disclosures “would be a major foreign policy catastrophe for the United States.
“I think this is something that needs to be looked at,” said the senator. “The most important thing as well is he’s now part of this administration. He’s got to stick to the climate stuff. We’ve got to be very careful that we don’t have this guy now sticking his nose into any other work happening with Iran, even though I’m not sure that the people working on Iran now would be much better. But you would hope, at a minimum, they wouldn’t be betraying allies.”
Rubio also discussed Biden’s upcoming address to a joint session of Congress, adding that he won’t be attending the speech because of the limited number of tickets seating available because of social distancing concerns.
He pointed out that such concerns didn’t seem to be an issue when senators came together for the trial in former President Donald Trump’s second impeachment.
“They put 100 senators in the same room sitting just inches apart for hours at a time over five or six days,” Rubio said. “Apparently COVID was not an issue then. But now, of course, for something like this we can’t have that many people in the room sitting next to each other. So it’s kind of silly season here.”
The senator spoke about the growing number of complaints about corporate America and its statements on social matters, and discussed what the Republican Party’s role should be when it comes to companies that go against what “woke” critics believe.
“Our job is to do what is good for the United States of America and the American people,” Rubio said. “To the extent that something is not good for America, we should not be rewarding it. So we should not have a tax code, for example, that rewards taking jobs out of this country and sending them to another place. We should not have tax policies that reward companies who turn over American industrial capacity and innovation to China or some other place.”
“[Corporations] have a right to make any decision they want. What I’m talking about is we should have a tax code that treats everyone fairly, but incentivizes actions by corporate America that are good for Americans.”
Source: Newmax
