Republican presidential hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz chided President Barack Obama's Oval Office speech and call for religious tolerance of Muslims as sounding like a "condescending schoolmarm."
In an interview on the
"Mike Gallagher Show" Monday, the fiery Texas lawmaker blasted the president's televised speech Sunday night from the Oval Office, warning it proved he was "so out of touch and so unprepared and unwilling to defend this nation it makes the next year extraordinarily dangerous."
The comments being about the 7-minute mark.
"We saw the president lecture the American people like some condescending schoolmarm about the need to avoid Islamophobia," Cruz said.
In his
Sunday night speech, the president urged that "just as it is the responsibility of Muslims around the world to root out misguided ideas that lead to radicalization, it is the responsibility of all Americans, of every faith, to reject discrimination."
"It is our responsibility to reject religious tests on who we admit into this country," he added. "It's our responsibility to reject proposals that Muslim Americans should somehow be treated differently. Because when we travel down that road, we lose. That kind of divisiveness, that betrayal of our values plays into the hands of groups like ISIL," he said, using an alternate name for the Islamic State jihadists.
"Muslim Americans are our friends and our neighbors, our co-workers, our sports heroes -- and, yes, they are our men and women in uniform who are willing to die in defense of our country."
Cruz said the "right response" would have been to acknowledge radical Islamic terrorism – and to have a firm plan to defeat it.
"What we need is a commander-in-chief who stands up and, number one, doesn't engage in politically correct double speak, doesn't refuse to say the word radical Islamic terrorism, as Obama, and Hillary [Clinton], and all the Democrats do," Cruz said.
"But, number two, says we will defeat ISIS," he added. "We are gonna carpet bomb them into oblivion. We are gonna arm the Kurds. We are gonna go and find them, and hunt them down, and kill them."
"That is the right response."
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