GOP candidates blast Obama's SOTU speech each other in latest debate
Date
1/15/2016 4:19:46 AM
(MENAFN- Kuwait News Agency (KUNA)) WASHINGTON Jan 15 (KUNA) -- The top seven GOP candidates convened in Charleston South Carolina Thursday night to discuss foreign and economic policy where they blasted President Barack Obama's State of the Union (SOTU) address and laid attacks against each while drawing jeers from the crowd throughout the evening.The debate began with a question to Texas Senator Ted Cruz on America's economy to which he choose to discuss the lack of a response in Obama's SOTU regarding the American sailors who went off course into Iranian waters."In that State of the Union President Obama didn't so much as mention the 10 sailors that had been captured by Iran. President Obama's preparing to send USD 100 billion or more to the Ayatollah Khamenei. And I'll tell you it was heartbreaking" said Cruz.New Jersey Governor Chris Christie followed suit in his question "Tuesday night I watched story-time with Barack Obama. And I've got to tell you it sounded like everything in the world was going amazing you know?" The governor continued "The fact is there's a number of things that the next president is going to have to do to clean up this mess. The first thing is we have to strengthen our alliances around the world." Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush stressed "The idea that somehow we're better off today than the day that Barack Obama was inaugurated president of the United States is totally an alternative universe. The simple fact is that the world has been torn asunder." "Our friends no longer think we have their back and our enemies no longer fear us and we're in a much difficult -- we're in a much different position than we should be" Bush added.Florida Senator Marco Rubio noted Obama "does not believe that America is a great global power. Barack Obama believes that America is a arrogant global power that needs to be cut down to size. And that's how you get a foreign policy where we cut deals with our enemies like Iran." He continued to then blast Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton former Secretary of State under Obama stating "She wouldn't just be a disaster Hillary Clinton is disqualified ... Someone who cannot handle intelligence information appropriately cannot be commander in chief and someone who lies to the families of those four victims in Benghazi can never be president." In the Obama's response against the so called Islamic State Neurosurgeon Ben Carson argued "He doesn't realize that we now live in the 21st century and that war is very different than it used to be before. Not armies massively marching on each other and air forces but now we have dirty bombs and we have cyber attacks and we have people who will be attacking our electrical grid." Real estate mogul Donald Trump continued the line of fire against Obama and noted that the Syrian refugee Obama pointed to during the SOTU was "not representative of what you have in that line of migration." "When I look at the migration (line)...I said where are the women? It looked like very few women. Very few children. Strong powerful men ... and people are looking at that and they're saying what's going on?" Trump stated.Trump said he isn't spreading fear and terror but "reality." The real estate mogul continued to stress that Muslims should be banned from entering the US which then elicited a response from Bush who said "Donald I hope you reconsider this because this policy makes it impossible to build the coalition necessary to take out ISIS. The Kurds are our strongest allies. They're Muslim. You're not going to even allow them to come to our country?" Ohio Governor John Kasich sided with Trump and said "I've been for pausing on admitting the Syrian refugees. And the reasons why I've done this is I don't believe we have a good process of being able to vet them." Christie Rubio and Cruz more or less echoed the same sentiments while Carson pushed to "get a group of experts together including people from other countries some of our friends from Israel who have had experience screening these people and come up with new guidelines for immigration and for visas for people who are coming into this country." The top two leading candidates Trump and Cruz were on the offense against each other throughout the two and a half hour debate. Perhaps because most recently Trump put Cruz under fire in the press stating that he is ineligible to be President since he was born in Canada. Cruz had responded that since his mother was an American citizen he is therefore a natural born citizen as required by law. At the debate Trump acknowledged that he made note of Cruz's ineligibility because of his rise in the polls."Now he's going a little bit better... No it's true. Hey look he never had a chance. Now he's doing better. He's got probably a four or five percent chance (of winning)" said Trump.Cruz alleged "Under that (Trump's) theory not only would I be disqualified ... interestingly enough Donald J. Trump would be disqualified ... because Donald's mother was born in Scotland. She was naturalized. On the issue of citizenship Donald I'm not going to use your mother's birth against you." Later Cruz attacked Trump for being from New York City a place where he described the values to be "socially liberal or pro-abortion or pro- gay-marriage focused around money and the media ... Not a lot of conservatives come out of Manhattan. I'm just saying." Trump cited that post September 11 "no place on Earth could have handled (the attack) more beautifully more humanely than New York." "I have to tell you that was a very insulting statement that Ted made" he said. (end) ak.gta
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