Obama’s Defense Secretary: Biden Has ‘Gotten A Lot Wrong,’ ‘Trump Got It Right’ On China

Robert Gates, former President Barack Obama’s secretary of defense, slammed President Joe Biden during an interview that aired on Sunday, and praised former President Donald Trump when it came to foreign policy.

Gates made the remarks during an interview on CBS News’ “60 Minutes” with co-host Anderson Cooper, saying Biden has “gotten a lot wrong.”

“He opposed every one of Ronald Reagan’s military programs to contest the Soviet Union,” Gates said. “He opposed the first Gulf War. That list goes on. Now I will say that in the Obama administration, he and I obviously had significant differences over Afghanistan.”

Gates listed a couple of areas on which he and Biden saw eye to eye before saying that Biden made a mistake in Afghanistan.

When asked what would happen if China moved in on Taiwan, Gates said that the U.S. needed to focus on deterrence and strengthening Taiwan’s ability to defend itself.

“I think this is a place where President Trump got it right,” Gates said. “He basically awakened Americans, and I would say especially the business community, to a China that — the assumptions about which we had gotten wrong. And the assumption for 40 years was that a richer China would be a freer China, and that’s clearly not going to happen. But there’s another piece of this puzzle with China, and that is the economic side. Chinese now manage something like three dozen major ports around the world. They are the biggest trading partner of more than half of South America. They are everywhere. And what are we doing in these non-military arenas to compete with the Chinese?”

WATCH:

PARTIAL TRANSCRIPT PROVIDED VIA ’60 MINUTES’:

ANDERSON COOPER: You wrote, Joe Biden “is a man of integrity. Still, I think he’s been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”

ROBERT GATES: I think he’s gotten a lot wrong.

COOPER: You’re talking all through the years–

GATES: Yeah–

COOPER: –as vice president and as senator–

GATES: He opposed every one of Ronald Reagan’s military programs to contest the Soviet Union. He opposed the first Gulf War. That list goes on. Now I will say that in the Obama administration, he and I obviously had significant differences over Afghanistan. But he and I did agree in our opposition to the intervention in Libya, and frankly on issues relating to Russia and China.

COOPER: But you think he made a mistake in Afghanistan in the