U.S. Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL) was on the Kelly File on Fox News discussing the Iraqi takeover of Ramadi back from ISIS and President Barack Obama’s handling of the terrorist group with guest host Shannon Bream.
Partial transcript:
BREAM: Your reaction to the State Department’s assessment about “bringing peace to Syria,” and that may be suggesting it’s still in progress, not a done deal.
RUBIO: The State Department is a disaster, and Barack Obama is a disaster, especially when it comes to ISIS. He has no strategy. All they care about is spinning the American public with all these sorts of political talking points. Everything for them is about domestic politics. So rather than focusing on solving the problem, they’re more focused on what the narrative is going to be. That’s the kind of thing you hear in a political campaign, not a national security debate.
ISIS is made up of terrorists that want to kill us. They want to infiltrate people into America. They want to conduct more attacks like what they did in San Bernardino and Paris. They want to capture more territory in the Middle East. And this disastrous president we have is more focused on the narrative as if it is some sort of campaign commercial. This is not a laughing matter. This is a very serious issue, a life or death issue. Because either these terrorists win or we win. I know what the outcome I want and that’s one of the reasons I am running for president.
BREAM: There is new polling shows for the first time there’s an all-time high number of Americans that think the terrorists are winning. Is there something to be said about messaging and about the president’s push to make sure that Americans do know what’s happening? You know, we’re hearing about successes with Ramadi and other places with the Iraqi forces stepping up and being able to get some things done.
RUBIO: Well, the president wants to convince the American people that the terrorists aren’t winning, the first thing he needs to do is come before the American people, admit that up to now our strategy hasn’t worked well and then outline clearly what we’re going to do moving forward. And he hasn’t done that. Instead, he gave a speech two or three weeks ago on a Sunday night, which basically he said our strategy is great, we’re not going to change a thing. Before that he said ISIS was contained, the day before Paris he said that. Before that he called them the JV team and not a serious threat.
How can the American people have confidence that this president knows what he is doing on terrorism when he believes the greatest threat before the country and the world is global warming? These terrorists are killing people and he spends all his time talking about things like global warming and cutting our military. So if he wants to turn those poll numbers around, about people having confidence in our success against terror, start having success against terror and be serious about it.
