Republican leaders criticized President Barack Obama for remaining in Cuba on Tuesday after terrorist attacks killed at least 31 people and injured 181 others in Brussels.
GOP presidential candidates Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) both said that the President should cut his planned trip to Latin America short and return to the United States immediately.
“President Obama should be back in the United States keeping this country safe or President Obama should be planning on traveling to Brussels,” Cruz told ABC News.
In an interview with Fox’s “America’s Newsroom” ahead of Obama’s scheduled address to the Cuban people, Kasich urged the President to tell his audience that he was heading home.
“I hope he will say he’s leaving Cuba and heading back to the White House to organize meetings with leaders around the world and get himself in the position where we can send teams of people to Europe to see what we can do to address the vulnerabilities we have,” the Ohio governor said.
Rep. Pete King (R-NY) joined the GOP candidates’ call, telling Fox News that the president “has to come back.”
“Come back and assert leadership,” King said. “We are the leader of the free world in the fight against ISIS. It’s important for ISIS to know that. This is much more important than Cuba. You can’t come back in a panic but he has to come back.”
Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani took a particularly hard line against the president in an interview on Fox’s “Your World With Neil Cavuto,” saying Obama “should give the job to somebody else” if he failed to return home.
“He’s sitting with a dictator watching a baseball game while innocent people are being killed in a war,” Giuliani said.
Obama’s visit marks the first to the island nation by a sitting U.S. President in 90 years. His Tuesday schedule included a visit to a Major League Baseball exhibition game in Havana and an address at Havana’s Grand Theater. He is scheduled to continue on Tuesday afternoon to Argentina to begin the next leg of his Latin America tour.
During his Tuesday morning address, Obama pledged to “do whatever is necessary” to aid Belgium in the wake of the deadly explosions, for which the Islamic State has since claimed credit.
This wasn’t enough for some conservatives, who have heavily criticized Obama’s trip to the Communist country as his administration moves to ease U.S.-Cuban relations.
While Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump did not echo the calls for Obama to return to the U.S., he tweeted that the President looked “ridiculous” during his address.
President Obama looks and sounds so ridiculous making his speech in Cuba, especially in the shadows of Brussels. He is being treated badly!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 22, 2016
Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen accused Obama, who has met with both Cuban President Raúl Castro and political dissidents during his visit, of being on a “tourist trio in Havana” while the European capital was attacked.
Brussels under attack. Obama on a tourist trio in Havana with his family. Says it all.
— Marc Thiessen (@marcthiessen) March 22, 2016
Obama also drew criticism from the Independent Journal Review’s Benny Johnson, who blamed the President for devoting insufficient time to the terrorist attacks in his speech.
Obama spent less than 1 min condemning terrorist attacks in Belgium, before launching directly into thanking a terrorist regime in Havana.
— Benny (@bennyjohnson) March 22, 2016
This post has been updated.
