President Joe Biden's recent trip to Europe was "painful to watch," Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, told Newsmax, adding, it was "marred by massive gaffe after massive gaffe."
"Look, there are consequences when the American president is weak when his approach to every enemy of America is weakness and appeasement," Cruz said Tuesday on "Eric Bolling: The Balance."
"That's how Biden approached Afghanistan when he surrendered catastrophically to the Taliban. That's how he approaches the Communist Party in China. It's how he approaches Iran. It's how he approaches Venezuela," Cruz said. "And the reason that Putin invaded Ukraine is because every enemy of America looked to Washington, took a measure of the man in the Oval Office and sadly concluded that he is weak and feckless and ineffective."
Watching Biden continually stumble shows he doesn't realize what he's saying anymore, Cruz said, "and that's dangerous."
Biden's off-the-cuff remark that "Putin cannot remain in power" stood for 47 minutes before the White House clarified, saying that the United States had not changed its position, and that Biden was not calling for regime change in Russia. Still, Biden doubled down on the statement, and Cruz said that while Russia's Vladimir Putin is a "KGB thug" and a "tyrant," the only effective way for the United States and the West to deal with him is to take away the billions of dollars of cash that is funding his war machine.
"And the No. 1 way to do that is with American energy," he added, saying that Biden should stop listening to far-left Green New Deal Democrats, and sell Europe U.S.-produced oil and gas to take Putin out of the picture.
That led to discussion of whether Biden is even running the Oval Office. Captured by a wire photographer with note cards for answers to questions about Putin, Biden "basically just read that answer" from the card," Cruz said.
"I mean, it's like a seal performing in the circus — he just reads what's put in front of him," he said, adding that Biden "screws up when he goes off the teleprompter, when he goes off the note cards."
Cruz told Bolling "I have no idea" who's running things.
"So Biden's been president, what, 15 months? In that entire time I have not spoken with him once. And that's true of almost every Republican senator," he said. "I've got to say that's weird. When Obama was president, I spoke with him regularly. When Trump was president, I spoke with him typically every week, sometimes every day. It is strange to have a president that is not speaking to members of the Senate."
Cruz said he believes a combination of people, from senior aides to possibly former Obama staffers and even far left members of Congress that he wants to appease, are actually in charge of the administration.
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