Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz said President Barack Obama has become so "out of touch" with reality that he is now equating the battle against climate change to the campaign against terrorism being waged by the Islamic State (ISIS) and other Islamic radicals.
Cruz was referring to a statement made by Obama on Tuesday during a press conference with French President Francois Hollande at the White House. Obama said next week's international climate summit in Paris will be "a powerful rebuke to the terrorists" showing that "the world stands as one and shows that we will not be deterred from building a better future for our children."
Cruz, speaking to Fox News' Megyn Kelly, said Obama is in effect telling Americans "that your SUV in the driveway is a greater threat to our security than is ISIS, than is a nuclear Iran, and it makes no sense whatsoever."
The Texas senator said it has "gotten to the point where I don't think 'Saturday Night Live' can even parody this president anymore," according to the Washington Examiner.
"You know what would be a real rebuke to ISIS? When we kill the terrorists before they carry out another terror attack here at home murdering innocent Americans," Cruz said.
Meanwhile, hundreds of Democrats from 32 states are opposing Obama's climate change agenda, the Clean Power Plan, which they say will cause unnecessary economic harm from increased reliance on renewable energy, a Washington Examiner report said.
"As Democrats committed to a prosperous America and a healthy environment, we believe the United States has a unique opportunity to lead the world in addressing the global climate challenge, and yet do so, as we must, without unduly burdening the American economy or the American people," the Democratic coalition called CoalBlue said in a letter sent Tuesday to Obama.
The group is joining hundreds of Democratic state, local and party officials in telling Obama that the Environmental Protection Agency's emission rules for power plants pose "serious and overriding concerns," which they said represent the wrong approach to the problem of climate change.
"If we are going to provide real leadership in the world community on climate, we cannot begin by implementing policies that have no hope of succeeding outside of the United States, or possibly even within the United States," said the group's chairman, former U.S. Rep. Zack Space of Ohio.
