In a recent interview with NPR, President Obama responded to criticism he'd received for failing to adequately explain his strategy to defeat the Islamic State. Instead of offering a better explanation in the interview, he continued to underestimate the growing jihadist movement.
"This is not an organization that can destroy the United States," Obama told NPR.
Filling in for Glenn on radio Monday, Buck Sexton reacted to the president's comments.
"He doesn't seem to understand that our great concern is really about the global jihad and radical Islam," Buck said. "It's even broader in scope than just the Islamic State."
He continued.
"We're not saying that the only threat is ISIS, and we're not saying that ISIS alone could take us out," Buck said. "We're saying that this global jihad is a very real problem. One that the administration still seems absolutely set on downplaying at every turn."
Listen to the segment or read the transcript below.
Below is a rush transcript of this segment, it might contain errors.
BUCK: Obama is not done yet. He's still got a whole bunch of things that he's planning to accomplish/inflict on the American people depending on which side you find yourself on.
He has said repeatedly, he has indicated many times that he will go after guns at some capacity through executive orders in his last year. He's in Hawaii for now. I'm sure the carbon footprint of all the various and sundry jets and the helicopter and the everything that has to go out to Hawaii for him, it's very small. It's very small. He's keeping that carbon footprint small. Because the planet is going to melt unless we all start riding bicycles everywhere. But Obama still has things he wants to do and plans on doing. Including closing Gitmo, which we can get into in just a minute.
But in case you were wondering, he still is able to throw some help to Hillary in the process too.
But first he wants -- let's talk about what Obama has got going on himself before we talk about how he's helping Hillary. He gave an interview described by the media as a wide-ranging interview. I'm sure the tone was professorial. "We're going to do a lot of stuff. It's going to be great. We're going to have gun control. It's going to be amazing."
But he spoke on a whole range of things on an NPR interview. And for one, he hit all the topics you can imagine. For one of them, he went into his strategy, such as it is, for defeating the Islamic State. He conceded -- he conceded that he had received, quote, legitimate criticism for failing to adequately explain his strategy.
Oh, I get it. This is, by the way -- in the Obama playbook, this is one of the go-tos. I mean, this is a favorite -- this is a favorite play. This is sort of the handoff. Right up the middle, you know, you can expect this one. This is standard Obama 101. When people think he's doing a bad job at something, it's because they don't understand enough what he's doing.
Oh, okay. Well, I'm glad we've established that. It's not that he's failing. It's not that the plan to degrade and destroy ISIS is now clearly not what is happening.
It's that he hasn't explained to us enough of what he's doing. If we only knew more. If we were more knowledgeable, we would be more knowledgeable about how awesome Obama is. Don't you see?
That's what this is meant to tell us. That we have had in just recent weeks alone, a major at least ISIS inspired, if not ISIS directed terrorist attack in the US, in Paris, that these things happen and that the president then turns around and looks at us and says, "Don't worry. I got this whole thing under control."
He says ISIS is not an existential threat. He think that this is clever. This is in-depth analysis. He also said this in the interview. He doesn't seem to understand that our great concern is really about the global jihad and radical Islam. It's even broader in scope than just the Islamic State. The Islamic State, however, is the most direct and obvious manifestation of that ideological religious, political totalitarian movement.
We're not saying that the only threat is ISIS. And we're not saying that ISIS alone could take us out. We're saying that this global jihad is a very real problem. One that the administration still seems absolutely set on downplaying at every turn.
Featured Image: U.S. President Barack Obama speaks to the media during his year end news conference in the Brady Briefing Room at the White House December 18, 2015 in Washington, DC. Later today, Obama will travel to San Bernardino, California to meet with families of the 14 victims of the recent mass shooting, before departing to Hawaii for Christmas vacation, returning January 3, 2016. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)