Ted Cruz assailed President Obama and his Iranian nuclear deal, warning “every jihadist on the face of the earth… we are coming to kill you” during a speech at the New York State Republican Gala Thursday evening.
Cruz told the crowd that he attended this event three years ago. He went on to speak of Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visiting the United States:
If I’d a suggested at this dinner three years ago that the elected Prime Minister of Israel would come to the United States, would address a joint session of congress and he would be boycotted by the President of the United States, the Vice President of the United States and every member of the cabinet, that would have been laughed at. That could not possibly be true. Surely we were not living in that environment.
And yet as I sat on the floor of the House of Representatives listening to Prime Minister Netanyahu give a speech that was positively Churchillian, neither the President nor the Vice President, nor any member of the cabinet was willing to join us in the House.
Obama refused to meet with Netanyahu during the Prime Minister’s March, 2015 visit to the United States. White House national security spokesman Bernadette Meehan claimed in a January statement cited in Reuters:
As a matter of long-standing practice and principle, we do not see heads of state or candidates in close proximity to their elections, so as to avoid the appearance of influencing a democratic election in a foreign country. Accordingly, the president will not be meeting with Prime Minister Netanyahu because of the proximity to the Israeli election, which is just two weeks after his planned address to the U.S. Congress.
Five of Obama’s campaign operatives did show up in Israel ahead of the country’s March 2015 election and just days after the Obama White House decried the Netanyahu visit on the basis of influencing Israel’s election. Reports stated that Obama’s 2012 field director Jeremy Bird was leading the team to campaign against Netanyahu’s re-election.
We have a president who insults and ridicules the Prime Minister of Israel. We have a president who celebrates a nuclear deal with Iran that I believe poses the single gravest threat to our national security of anything in the world.
My opponents in this race, all four of them, pledged to maintain that Iranian nuclear deal. One of them says he’ll renegotiate it. Well let me be very clear, as President, on the very first day in office I will rip to shreds this catastrophic Iranian nuclear deal.
If you feel a sense of despair — can we keep America safe after seven years of receding from the world? — it is worth remembering that foreign policy, perhaps, can change the fastest. That in January, 1981, this same nation, the nation of Iran, released our hostages the day Ronald Reagan was sworn into office. That’s the difference a strong Commander-In-Chief can make and that is the difference I, as President, will make unequivocally clear to Iran — either they will shut down their nuclear program or we will shut it down for them.
New York City is hallowed ground. It is the site of the worst terrorist attack on United States soil and yet in the 15 years since 9-11, many in Washington have forgotten. Today, when we see an attack, whether in Paris, whether in Brussels, whether in San Bernardino, inevitably President Obama goes on national television, refuses to say the words radical Islamic terrorism and instead lectures the American people on Islamophobia. Well I want to be clear that come January, 2017 our military will no longer be governed by political correctness. And every jihadist, every jihadist on the face of the earth, should harken to these words. If you wage war against the United States of America, if you seek to murder innocent Americans, we are coming to get you, we are not coming to interrogate you, we are not coming to read you your rights, we are coming to kill you.
The time for weakness and appeasement is over.
Hitler has shown, history has shown, Munich in ’38 has shown that giving in to a homicidal maniac and allowing him to develop the weapons of mass murder has catastrophic results.
Donald Trump, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, and Cruz each took the stage at Thursday night’s New York State Republican Gala ahead of the state’s primary election on Tuesday.
Follow Michelle Moons on Twitter @MichelleDiana
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