In attacking Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz in his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama has only made them stronger as presidential candidates in the eyes of Republicans, conservative pundit Patrick J. Buchanan tells
Newsmax TV.
"My view would be that the president is genuinely upset with the kind of attacks that Trump and Cruz are making upon him," Buchanan said Wednesday to J.D. Hayworth and Miranda Khan, hosts of "Newsmax Prime."
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"But what he does not realize is that when he goes after Trump and Cruz, he simply enhances their credibility inside a Republican Party which wants a leader who will stand up and be effective and oppose what the president has done and what the president has tried to do.
"In other words, if you got the president of the United States, Barack Obama, attacking you and if you were running for something, you would be in good shape."
During his address on Tuesday, Obama pooh-poohed the idea of the United States fighting terrorists with a "carpet-bomb" strategy, a reference to Cruz advocating "carpet bombing" ISIS "into oblivion." And in a nod to Trump, the commander-in-chief criticized "politicians [who] insult Muslims."
Buchanan, a two-time Republican presidential candidate and adviser to Presidents Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan and Gerald Ford, said Obama's address to the nation shows how divisive to the nation his two terms have proven.
"The president of the United States in his seven years thus far has not only failed to unite the country behind his agenda because of the way he has managed the presidency and wage battles with his oppositions, he has deepened the divisions," Buchanan said.
"We are more divided now than we were in 2008 when he won the presidency and quite frankly after he won it he had a lot of high hopes and expectations even with the part of a lot of people that didn't support him …
"He's gotten to the point where he says I'm not going to withhold anything I want to say right now because I've got one more year and I'm going to get it off my chest. He also realizes any agenda he's got with the Congress now, if it's got any kind of controversy attached to it or divisiveness attached to it, isn't going anywhere."
Buchanan is the author of
"The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose from Defeat to Create the New Majority," published by Crown Forum.
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