Republican presidential
candidate Donald Trump criticized U.S. policy in Iraq again, but this time he
aired his grievances on an unusual platform: a Russian government-funded
television network.
Trump, who has often
praised Russian President Vladimir Putin, made the comments in an interview
with former CNN broadcaster Larry King, whose podcast was aired on Thursday
night on the RT network, a 24-hour news channel that broadcasts in both English
and Russian.
Critics of the network,
which mostly targets audiences outside of Russia and also includes programing
in Spanish, Hindi and Arabic, have described it as a propaganda arm of Putin's
government.
Traditionally, American
presidential candidates do not bash their country before a foreign audience,
even if they are fierce critics of the current administration while campaigning
in the United States. Trump has said far worse about President Barack Obama in
appearances on U.S. television networks.
The White House said it had
no comment on Trump's remarks.
Trump's praise of Putin,
which he repeated during a televised national security forum on Wednesday
night, has drawn sharp criticism from Democrats and some Republicans.
Trump told King he does not
think the Russians were intervening in U.S. elections, a concern expressed by
some U.S. officials and by Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
The New York businessman
also said he did not think Russia's government was behind the hack of
Democratic National Committee email servers. Experts inside and outside the
government have pointed to Russian-backed actors as the source of the hack,
which has been used to leak information in an attempt to embarrass Democrats.
Trump criticized U.S.
policy in Iraq from the time of Republican President George W. Bush, who
ordered the American-led invasion in 2003 in the aftermath of the Sept. 11,
2001, al Qaeda attacks on the United States. Trump then attacked Obama and
Clinton, the president's first secretary of state, for their roles in the U.S.
troop withdrawal from Iraq.
"It's a war we
shouldn't have been in, number one," Trump said in the interview.
"And it's a war that, when we got out, we got out the wrong way. That's
Obama."
Clinton's campaign has
seized on criticism of Trump for lauding Putin, frequently pointing to the
Republican's praise of the Russian president as disqualifying for the White
House.
Trump's interview surfaced
as he and Clinton continue to clash over foreign policy in the run-up to the
Nov. 8 election.
Trump sought on Friday to
blame Clinton after reports that North Korea had tested a nuclear weapon
[nL3N1BL174], arguing it was the fourth such test since the Democrat became
secretary of state in 2009 and that she should have ended the nation's nuclear
program before her tenure ended in early 2013.
"Hillary Clinton’s
North Korean policy is just one more calamitous diplomatic failure from a
failed Secretary of State," Trump spokesman Jason Miller said in a statement.
Clinton called the North
Korea test "outrageous and unacceptable," saying she supports
imposing additional U.S. and United Nations sanctions.
"This constitutes a
direct threat to the United States, and we cannot and will never accept
this," Clinton said. "We need a Commander-in-Chief committed to a
bipartisan foreign policy, who can bring together top experts with deep
experience to solve the toughest challenges."
Clinton was scheduled on
Friday to meet with former senior national security officials in New York.
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