Sen. Ted Cruz said Saturday his strategy for combating home-grown terrorism would involve “defining the enemy” something he said the current administration has declined to do.
“From the beginning, President Obama and Hillary Clinton have refused to acknowledge radical Islamic terrorism and that has, in turn, poisoned every one of their efforts,” Cruz said Saturday during an appearance on “Fox and Friends.” “You can’t target an enemy if you don’t define it.”
Cruz blasted Democrats for their focus on gun control in response to the attack.
“It’s an example of the partisan blindness from the left,” Cruz said. “In the face of an attack from radical Islamic terrorism, their response is to try to take away the right to keep and bear arms of law-abiding citizens.”
The New York Times ran a front-page editorial for the first time in 95 years Saturday criticizing the “gun epidemic” and calling for the confiscation of certain types of weapons.
Hillary Clinton, Sen. Bernie Sanders and other prominent progressives have stepped up calls to increase background checks and limit or ban assault weapons in the days since the San Bernardino shooting.
Cruz said the push to crack down on legal guns rather than radical Islamism in response to the attack is “completely backwards.”
The Texas Republican also noted one of the San Bernardino shooting suspects, Tashfeen Malik, entered the country legally after passing a vetting system that failed to detect a fake address.
That same system will be used to screen thousands of Syrian refugees under the president’s new push to bring them into the country, a policy Cruz opposes.
“It doesn’t make any sense at all,” Cruz said. “Instead, we need a clear and single-focused effort to defeat radical Islam.”
Cruz said the administration’s “political correctness” keeps it from pursuing terrorist threats inside the U.S.
