GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee Tuesday railed against President Barack Obama and his widely panned speech concerning last Friday's Paris attacks, saying Obama is "all upset" because Americans want to put their country's interests first.
"Here we have a left-wing, socialist president of France closing his borders and saying we're going to go to war against these animals," the former Arkansas governor told
Fox News' "Happening Now" program, adding he believes the United States should be joining in with France and Russia to go after ISIS.
"Yesterday, President Obama was saying America doesn't want to get caught up in this winning stuff, " Huckabee said. "Well, I want to get caught up in winning. I want to win over this malignant cancer that is a threat to Western civilization."
And while Obama said Monday that his strategy on ISIS will take time to succeed, Huckabee complained that the president has never had a strategy.
"Nine hours before the slaughter in Paris, he was talking about how he had contained ISIS," said Huckabee.
"Clearly, he hadn't contained anything. Last week when this first happened, I was, I think, the first one to come out and say we need a moratorium on the idea of Syrian refugees. I was delighted to see, by the way, Speaker Paul Ryan step up this morning and say he thinks we ought to put a pause on it."
And if the president won't take the lead on the issue, Huckabee continued, then "let the Republicans take leadership, and that would fall upon Speaker Ryan, who has the purse strings with the House."
Huckabee said he does not believe Ryan took his stance because of him, but because "he recognized that somebody has to step into the vacuum of leadership, because the president's unwilling to or unable to.
"And maybe he was listening to the constituents, because overwhelmingly Americans realize that the number one goal of our government is not to protect the image of Islam, it's to protect American citizens."
Obama has been focused on "not wanting to offend anybody who's a Muslim," said Huckabee, and he said he does not want to offend Muslims who are not responsible for such attacks.
"But we have a situation where jihadists who are strapping bombs to their bellies and blowing innocent people up, [and] they just happen to all be Muslims," he said.
"Let's not pretend this is not about the religion of these fanatics. It doesn't mean all Muslims are jihadists, but all the jihadists certainly seem to be Muslim."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.