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Y Los Espanoles?

In the best of cases he would be demonstrating his ignorance concerning Zapatero. ~El Pais [translation mine-DL] This interview with McCain, translated into Spanish, has been picked up by the Spanish-language press and flagged by TPM, and in it McCain seems to have no clue who Prime Minister Zapatero of Spain is.  He keeps repeating formulaic statements about cooperating with friendly […]

In the best of cases he would be demonstrating his ignorance concerning Zapatero. ~El Pais [translation mine-DL]

This interview with McCain, translated into Spanish, has been picked up by the Spanish-language press and flagged by TPM, and in it McCain seems to have no clue who Prime Minister Zapatero of Spain is.  He keeps repeating formulaic statements about cooperating with friendly nations and confronting others, and several times he replies to questions about bringing Zapatero to the White House with non-responsive remarks about relations with Latin America.  You can’t even put this down to ideologically-driven disdain for a European antiwar socialist, since that would require McCain to know something about Zapatero.

My Spanish is pretty limited and rusty, but that is what I have managed to confirm from listening to the interview, reading the news accounts and checking against others’ interpretations.  No doubt we will be treated to a week of spin about how no one else knows who Zapatero is and how tricky the interviewer was trying to be by asking these questions. 

Update: Miami’s Caracol 1260 has another version of the interview, and McCain’s voice is slightly more audible.  I’m not positive, but I’m pretty sure that McCain also reiterates his false claim that Obama has not paid any attention to Latin America.

Second Update: Here is a summary in the Post.  If McCain did know who Zapatero was and would not agree that he would meet with him, that demonstrates an attitude toward relations with allies that is captive to the obsessions of the Bush administration.  Here is the original interview.  His references to “the Hemisphere” in response to one of the Zapatero questions suggest that he didn’t understand who Zapatero was, and this seems to be confirmed by his “what about me, what?” response to the follow-up when the interviewer tried to press him on relations with Spain.  Obviously, Scheunemann’s spin that McCain wants to keep his options open–unlike that crazy guy Obama–is not credible, since McCain said in April that he would be glad to have Zapatero visit in order to repair U.S.-Spanish relations.

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