Kari Lake sounded off about former President Barack Obama’s failure to eliminate terrorist threats during his eight years in office and said it’s ironic that he now wants to provide guidance on how to settle the war between Israel and Hamas.
Speaking on Newsmax, the Arizona U.S. Senate candidate said Obama “weakened” the United States’ standing around the world by apologizing to world leaders.
“He was behind ISIS. He didn’t do a darned thing to wipe ISIS off the planet. He ignored the threat of ISIS and you could say he was behind the creation of elevating ISIS. Thank God for President Trump to go in and wipe out ISIS and do so rather quickly,” Lake said.
“And Obama is responsible for terrorism around the globe with the funding of [Iran]… And so to watch him in such a weakened state, I look at this guy and I think how on earth were so many people tricked by him?” she asked. “This is a guy who should keep his mouth shut because he’s to blame for much of the problems, or he should apologize for what he’s done to embolden terrorists.”
Last week, speaking with his former aides on Pod Save America, Obama said both Israel and Palestinian terrorist organizations are to blame for the decades of conflict that have culminated into the present-day warfare.
“If you want to solve the problem, then you have to take in the whole truth,” Obama said. “And you then have to admit nobody’s hands are clean, that all of us are complicit to some degree.”
“If there is any chance of us being able to act, constructively to do so, it will require an admission of complexity,” the former president said of the political situation in the Palestinian territories. He then stated that solutions will require global citizens to hold ideas that “may seem contradictory,” noting that “what Hamas did was horrific.”
The former president then raised eyebrows by stating that “the occupation” led by the Israeli government is untenable, adding that “what’s happening to the Palestinians is unbearable.”
Republicans have stood firm in pushing back against Democrats’ increasingly vocal requests for a ceasefire by Israel, a move that White House national security advisors say would only allow Hamas time to regroup and reload for their next offensive. Lake, who launched her candidacy for U.S. Senate last month, is the latest firebrand conservative to add her voice to the mix and will certainly be mixing it up with Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-AZ) and Senator Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ), her opponents in the race.