Sunday on “Fox News Sunday,” GOP presidential hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) was asked by fill-in host Shannon Bream about the results of a CNN poll that suggested he was lacking in the area of foreign policy.
According to Bream, the poll showed Cruz lagging behind Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump and Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
Cruz dismissed the poll and charged that President Barack Obama and Secretary of State John Kerry, in addition to Clinton, left much to be desired in terms of foreign policy.
Partial transcript as follows:
BREAM: Earlier this month, CNN had a poll asking who’s best equipped to handle the issues of foreign policy, former Secretary Clinton was atop the list, you came in fourth, behind Trump and Sanders as well.
So, as a first-term senator, as the secretary suggested, are you in over your head on foreign policy?
CRUZ: Listen, I’ll tell who you is in over their head and it’s Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and John Kerry and the entire Obama administration. The Obama-Clinton foreign policy is a manifest disaster. Every single region on earth, Shannon, has gotten worse.
Our friend and allies, we’ve abandoned them. This has been the most anti-Israel administration we have ever seen. And we have shown weakness and appeasement to our enemies.
You know, it’s rich saying Obama attacking me when he just got back from going to a baseball game with the Castros, celebrating and toasting a communist dictator who tortures and murders his citizens, who oppresses them and who is rabidly anti-American and who spreads terrorism throughout Latin America.
As the president noted, yes, my father was in prison and tortured in Cuba. So was my aunt. She was imprisoned and tortured by Castro’s goons in Cuba.
And yet, what President Obama has done, what Hillary Clinton has done, what John Kerry has done is sent billions of dollars to the enemies of America, billions of dollars to the Castros, that they will use to increase repression, increase spreading terrorism throughout Latin America, and over $100 billion to the Ayatollah Khamenei in Iran. That money will be used to fund Islamic terrorists that are coming to murder Americans, murder Europeans, to murder Israelis. And it will be used to fund their nuclear program and their ICBM program, which is designed to murder millions of Americans.
This policy of weakness and appeasement doesn’t work. And I think the American people are tired of it. They’re tired of the moralizing and lecturing. You notice Obama and Hillary seemed more mad at me than they are at ISIS, than they are the terrorists who are murdering. We know of at least two Americans who were murdered Brussels. There may be many more. There are still people missing.
Our prayers are with them. But we need a president who will bring the full force and fury of the United States of America to defeating ISIS.
Shannon, I’ll tell you, if I’m president, we will utterly and completely destroy ISIS. We will carpet bomb them into oblivion, using overwhelming airpower. We will arm the Kurds on the ground. We will use our forces to defeat them and we won’t put our forces in combat with the rules of engagement that Obama is so fond of that tie their arms behind their back that make it impossible for them to fight and win. That is wrong and that is immoral.
If and when we use military force, we will use it to win, to defeat our enemies with overwhelming force and then we’ll get the heck out. We won’t engage in nation-building, but rather, we’ll keep America safe.
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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