Ohio GOP U.S. Senate Candidate: Obama Wants To ‘Sip Tea’ With Iran And Treats England ‘Like Garbage’

Republican candidate for U.S. Senate in Ohio Josh Mandel sat down with the Findlay Publishing editorial staff this week to discuss the various issues in the campaign. When he eventually got to foreign policy and defense issues, Mandel picked up on a baseless theme the GOP presidential candidates have been hawking: Obama is friendlier to America’s enemies than its allies. Mandel chastised the president for allegedly trying to “sip tea” with Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad while treating countries such as Israel, England, Honduras and Columbia “like garbage”:

MANDEL: I also think when it comes to defense, we need a foreign policy of peace through strength, and a foreign policy of clarity. It sickens me to see the President of the United States literally and figuratively bow down to leaders of other countries. I also believe that he was incorrect to try and sip tea and sing Kumbaya with people like Ahmadinejad in Iran and Chavez in Venezuela at the same time that he’s treated some of our best allies throughout the world like garbage.

You look like at the way he treats Honduras and England and Colombia and Israel and some of our other best allies, it just makes no sense. You can’t have a commander-in-chief, President of the United States, that treats our friends like garbage, and our allies like – and uh – our enemies like friends.

Listen to the clip:

It seems fairly clear where Mandel’s attack on Obama regarding Israel comes from. The Republicans have been trying their best to get the Obama-hates-Israel meme to stick, but the facts repeatedly stand in the way of that. Even top Israeli officials regularly debunk these claims. The baseless GOP claims on Obama and Israel led the Associated Press to get involved. An AP “fact check” notes that Republican attacks on Obama that he’s not sufficiently pro-Israel “have strayed well beyond reality.”

But it’s completely unclear where Mandel got this idea that Obama has been treating England, Honduras, or Colombia “like garbage.” He seems to have just randomly picked these countries out of thin air. In fact, British Prime Minister David Cameron just visited Washington and as the Guardian put it, “Obama rolled out the red carpet, literally and politically.” (HT: American Bridge)