DES MOINES —
In 37 years of political reporting U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse offered one of the more jarring and poignant responses I have heard in an interview. Listen to the audio, the force and pain in his voice, to get the full, enduring effect of the exchange on President Donald Trump (above).
Whitehouse’s father and grandfather built estimable careers as American diplomats in Asia and Central America and Africa. Whitehouse came of age in a family that modeled public service, a sense of duty and credentialing that stretch back to the 1800s, the time of his grandfather’s birth.
I asked the Rhode Island Democrat to offer his thoughts on President Trump’s conduct of foreign policy — notably Trump’s “whole civilization will die” threat to Iran — from the perspective of a senator, and a son and grandson of diplomats when Whitehouse was in Des Moines Thursday for a roundtable on insurance costs organized by Iowa U.S. Senate candidate Josh Turek.
The 48-second exchange, part of an 8-minute media gaggle, included other questions from The Iowa Mercury and The Des Moines Register and The Cedar Rapids Gazette.
Whitehouse’s father, Charles S. Whitehouse, and grandfather, Edwin Sheldon Whitehouse, were career members of the U.S. Foreign Service and ambassadors. For his part, Whitehouse, the Rhode Island senator, lived in Vietnam, Cambodia, South Africa, Congo, Guinea, Laos and Thailand.
“I admired and adored my father, and it is one of the harsh realities that I have to face that I am glad that he is dead so that he did not have to see the country he served so faithfully his entire life get smeared and tarred by the behavior of this president,” Whitehouse said in the interview in response to a question from The Iowa Mercury.
Here is the audio of the full interview and media gaggle:
About The Iowa Mercury
(Douglas Burns, founder of The Iowa Mercury and a fourth-generation Iowa journalist from Carroll, is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Read dozens of the most talented writers in Iowa in just one place. The Iowa Writers’ Collaborative spans the full state. It’s one of the biggest things going in Iowa journalism and writing now — and you don’t want to miss. This collaborative is — as the outstanding Quad Cities journalist Ed Tibbetts says — YOUR SUNDAY IOWA newspaper. )
