Marco Rubio took shots at President Obama’s foreign policy and leadership in an interview Monday night. “I feel sad for the country to have a president who is in complete denial about what’s happening in the Middle East,” the Republican presidential contender told Fox News, referring to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s moves in the Middle East. The comments follow Obama’s denial in a Sunday night CBS interview that Russia is the new leader in the region.
According to the Florida senator, Putin is taking advantage of Obama’s weak Middle East policies, taking over as the major outside power in the region by claiming Moscow is more reliable than Washington.
“He is directly challenging Barack Obama and, as a result, undermining America’s influence in the Middle East and in the broader world,” Rubio told Greta Van Susteren. “The rest of the world is watching this too.”
And when it comes to arming Syrian rebels fighting against Assad, the president moved too late, Rubio claimed.
“By the time he [Obama] came around to doing anything about Syria, there was not that many people left to work with on the ground. And even the effort to arm and equip them has been slow, unsteady, unreliable,” Rubio said, adding. “And when you had a president who didn’t believe in it to begin with, well that tells you one of the reasons why it didn’t work.”
A new coalition needs to be formed to deal with both the Islamic State and the refugees in need of a place to go when leaving Syria.
Rubio also said the Iran nuclear deal never should have been done, pointing to American hostages such as Washington Post correspondent Jason Rezaian, who has been imprisoned and convicted by Tehran.
In a RealClearPolitics average of polls, Rubio sits in third place with 9.9 percent behind businessman Donald Trump (23.7 percent) and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson (18.4 percent). He remains fourth in the Washington Examiner‘s power rankings.
