Wyoming Congressional candidate Darin Smith Response to The Gateway Pundit
05/28/2021 - For Immediate Release
On May 27th, 2021 Cassandra Fairbanks of The Gateway Pundit published an untrue, three sentence “hit piece” designed to drive a wedge between the “America First” foreign policy aims of both myself and President Donald Trump.
Our Campaign has become the clear frontrunner in the primary and as a result, this political operative was likely in cahoots with one of our opponents in an attempt to sensationalize a nothing-burger. Nonetheless, we will respond to these claims as the story has gotten some unmerited traction.
During a televised debate in 2016, I was asked about one of (then candidate) Donald Trump’s perceived isolationist stances regarding foreign policy, and I was quoted as saying:
“The world without America leading is like a city without policemen. America has got to lead. Donald Trump did miss this, I do like Donald on a lot of issues but that one is wrong,” Smith said in 2016. “We’ve got to protect our allies; we’ve got to stand with our allies. We are not standing with our allies right now with Israel and Britain, we have not been with them and we need to do that.”
As it has played out, President Trump’s foreign policy has been exactly what I advocated for in 2016. He stood with our allies (especially Israel) and destroyed ISIS in about six months. When you traveled abroad under President Donald Trump’s term it meant something be an American Again!
In May, as we retooled our website for the 2022 race. We took down the following foreign policy stance that was listed on our website in 2016 because it was no longer relevant:
ISIS, Radical Islam, and Israel
“When you take an 8th Century morality and give it a 21st Century democratic governing system, you end up with the power vacuum that has spawned ISIS. We must now fix what we broke, destroy ISIS, and oppose radical Islam and anti-Semitism wherever they rear their ugly heads, whether in the Middle East or in our nation’s universities. The United States also must support Israel, the only Democracy and defender of human rights in the Middle East.”
OBVIOUSLY, President Trump’s victories in the Middle East made this foreign policy issue from 2016 obsolete. We removed this because “President Donald Trump ACCOMPLISHED my stated 2016 foreign policy objectives.”
Unfortunately, the Biden Administration is now attempting to unravel the massive gains President Donald Trump brought on the world stage. Let’s unite behind President Trump’s “America First” foreign policy, which has been the best of any president in a lifetime.
- Darin Smith