Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio criticized President Obama for “focusing on the petty” rather than “being presidential” when he attacked the GOP abroad.
In an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt, Rubio argued that the president is more interested in being the “comic in chief” or “mocker in chief,” adding that attacks from Obama during trips abroad aren’t “unusual.”
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“Well, it’s par for the course,” Rubio started. “This is a president that always focuses on the petty. Instead of being presidential, he decides he wants to be the attacker in chief, or the comic in chief, or the mocker in chief or whatever he decides to be.”
“It’s one of the problems that we have is he uses all of this silliness and pettiness to cover up for the fact that he has no real strategy when it comes to defeating [the Islamic State], and in the absence of American strategic leadership, the vacuum is left,” Rubio told Hewitt. “If you talk to our allies — whether it’s our European allies or our allies in the region, none of them are convinced that this president is significantly committed to degrading and defeating [the Islamic State], and the result is this chaos that’s ensued.”
“This is not unusual for this president,” Rubio said. “He always, especially when he’s traveling abroad, seems to use it as an opportunity to attack his political critics, even though some of the criticism is coming from his own party.”
The Florida senator, who is currently ranked behind Donald Trump and Ben Carson in recent polls, was reacting to comments from President Obama to reporters earlier Wednesday during his trip to the Philippines.
“Apparently they are scared of widows and orphans coming into the United States of America,” Obama said. “At first, they were worried about the press being too tough on them in the debates. Now they are worried about three-year-old orphans. That doesn’t seem so tough to me.”
