NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz said President Biden’s “fecklessness” is to blame for why Europe is on the “verge of war.”
“Tragically, Europe is on the verge of war because of the weakness, the fecklessness of Joe Biden,” Cruz told Fox News’ Bill Hemmer on “Fox News Sunday.“
Cruz said Biden’s “surrender and disastrous retreat from Afghanistan is the worst military catastrophe for the United States in decades” and set the stage for Russia to invade Ukraine.
“At the time [of the withdrawal from Afghanistan], I said as a result of this incredible weakness, all of our enemies across the globe are looking to Washington. They are taking the measure of the man in the Oval Office. And as a result, as I said back in August, the chances of Russia invading Ukraine have just risen tenfold. The chances of China invading Taiwan have just risen tenfold. We’re seeing the first of those two shoes dropping today because of Biden’s weakness,” he said.
Joe Biden at the UN climate conference and Vladimir Putin in Sochi, Russia, on Oct. 21, 2021. (Reuters | Mikhail Svetlov/Getty Images)
Cruz continued that in 2019, former President Donald Trump signed into law legislation Cruz authored to sanction Russia’s Nord Stream 2, a pipeline that will run from Russia to Germany without crossing through Ukraine.
“The reason he’s building the pipeline is that it skips Ukraine. It goes right around Ukraine. Why? Because the real insurance that Ukraine had against invasion is that Putin has to take his energy as natural gas in pipelines that go through Ukraine. Once he builds Nord Stream 2, he no longer has to worry about those pipelines,” Cruz said.
Sen. Ted Cruz speaks during a television interview on April 28, 2021. (Reuters/Erin Scott/File)
Russian President Vladimir Putin stopped constructing the pipeline after Trump signed the legislation, but construction picked back up four days after Biden was sworn into office, Cruz said.
CRUZ, SENATE REPUBLICANS THREATEN TO BLOCK ANY IRAN NUCLEAR AGREEMENT NOT SUBMITTED TO CONGRESS
“[Putin] knew what was going to happen … which was that Joe Biden formally waived sanctions on Russia, on Putin, and gave the green light to build Nord Stream 2. That is why we have over 100,000 troops and Russian tanks on the border of Ukraine preparing to invade. That’s why we’re on the brink of war in Europe.”
Pipes for the Nord Stream 2 Baltic Sea gas pipeline are stored at the port of Mukran near Sassnitz, Germany, on Dec. 4, 2020. (Stefan Sauer/dpa via AP, File)
During his interview, Cruz also took aim at the president and “racial discrimination” within the Democratic Party in response to Biden saying he is committed to specifically nominating a Black woman to the U.S. Supreme Court to replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
“I think our country has such a troubled history on race. We ought to move past discriminating based on race. The way Biden ought to do it, is to say I’m going to look for the best justice, interview a lot of people, and if you happen to nominate a justice who was an African American woman, great.”