Iran's president says America's election is 'bad over worse or worse over bad'

Iranian President Hassan Rouhani
(Image credit: Hoang Dinh Nam/Getty Images)

The United States and Iran aren't the friendliest pair on a national level, but Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who has taken a more conciliatory stance toward the West than others in his country's leadership, feels America's pain on having to pick between two historically unpopular presidential candidates.

"America claims it has more than 200 years of democracy, and they have had 50 presidential elections, but there is no morality in that country," Rouhani said in a speech Sunday. "You saw the presidential debates, how they talk ... how they accuse and mock [each other]."

He recounted a recent episode in which he was asked by a fellow head of state whether he preferred to see Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump in the White House. "I said should I prefer bad over worse or worse over bad?" Rouhani recalled, declining to specify who is "bad" and who is "worse."

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.