Former Secretary of State John Kerry told MS NOW host Lawrence O’Donnell that President Donald Trump “has undone his own” presidency while failing in his attempt to undo former President Barack Obama’s accomplishments.

Trump’s Iran memorandum of understanding has been met with derision from across the political and ideological spectrum, as many have compared it unfavorably to the deal Obama struck with Iran, which Trump tore up.

On Wednesday night’s edition of MS NOW’s The Last Word, Kerry trashed Trump’s deal and claimed that while he was trying to “undo” Obama’s presidency, he actually undid his own:

O’DONNELL: There’s a line in the memo of understanding about the nuclear material that Iran has managed to develop since Donald Trump abandoned the nuclear agreement that you negotiated that prevented them from developing that.

And it — all it says is that Iran has agreed to resolve the disposition of stockpile enriched material, pursuant to a mechanism that will be mutually agreed upon.

That goes to your point about there’s nothing agreed upon here. It’s an agreement to continue to talk about the most difficult things, for example, the nuclear material.

KERRY: That’s correct. That’s absolutely correct.

And, needless to say, there are some serious questions about what the word obliteration means, because, allegedly, the entire stock was obliterated several months ago and wouldn’t have needed a re-bombing. But we re-bombed and got a new announcement about obliteration.

But the bottom line remains that all of this could have been negotiated and should have been at least tried to be negotiated. One of the obligations of the president of the United States is to make sure that, if you’re going to start losing the lives of young American servicepeople, you need to be able to look the parents in the eye or a surviving spouse in the eye and say, we did everything possible to avoid having to do this.

It is patently clear to everybody and anybody who looks at this closely the president never did that. There was a rush to war here, a rush to a war of choice, a war which has discombobulated economies around the world, a war which has put the United States in a place of serious doubt about our bona fides, about our adherence to international law.

And I think it’s going to have long-term implications. It’s not something we can’t get beyond in the future, but it is startling. I happen to be in London right now, where the climate challenges are being addressed.

But I can tell you that what I hear from leaders throughout Europe and elsewhere where I have met with them is a real chink in the armor of the United States, which has worked so hard for so many years to establish a set of values by which we will operate. And I — and that’s really sad and really unnecessary to have put ourselves in this predicament.

Moreover, the president went after this agreement from, I don’t know, the minute he got in a campaign. I mean, this was sort of a — it was an Obama accomplishment, something President Obama wanted to do. And, as we all know, that has motivated a lot of action by President Trump to sort of undo the Obama presidency, which he hasn’t done.

I think he’s undone his own, by virtue of the rush to military action here and by the credibility that he has lost on a global basis, and, frankly, the annoyance that many, many people feel for the choices he has made which have made life a lot tougher for a lot of people, not just in the United States but around the world.

Watch above via MS NOW’s The Last Word.

New: The Mediaite One-Sheet "Newsletter of Newsletters"
Your daily summary and analysis of what the many, many media newsletters are saying and reporting. Subscribe now!