Politico - Ted Cruz: Obama Misread "KGB Thug"

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By Natalie Villacorta

Like Speaker John Boehner, Sen. Ted Cruz thinks Russian President Vladimir Putin is a "KGB thug," who President Barack Obama has underestimated far too much.

Cruz said Obama has taken too seriously to heart Putin's assertion that encouraging American exceptionalism is dangerous.

Obama, Cruz said, has been "hiding behind diplomatic babble," encouraging such tyrants when he "obscures the truth" and hides from aggression. Putin, at least, is "candid."

He pointed to Obama's statement Wednesday that "President Putin seems to have a different set of lawyers making a different set of interpretations," calling it "so absurd the writers of "Saturday Night Live' could not have come up with it."

"No one thinks that Putin is consulting with lawyers," Cruz said, provoking laughter.

Cruz went on to discuss Venezuela, saying the protests mirror the situation in Ukraine. He also raised the nuclear threat of Iran, calling the nuclear deal reached last fall "a tragic, historic mistake." Iran cannot be trusted, he said, not to drop a nuclear bomb on Tel Aviv.

"Any responsible" president, Cruz said, would under no circumstances allow Iran nuclear weapon capability.

"Weakness and appeasement only invites military conflict," Cruz reiterated, and the Obama administration doesn't understand that.

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