Sen. Marco Rubio, who's been rising recently in the polls for president, said President Obama's speech on ISIS was not just subpar in terms of assuaging Americans' fears, but also damaging.
"I think not only did the president not make things better tonight," Rubio said, in a 10-minute live response segment to Obama's Sunday speech, via Fox News. "I fear he may have made things worse in the minds of many Americans."
Rubio said "nothing that happened in the speech ... is going to assuage people's fears," Breitbart reported.
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He slammed Obama for using ISIS and the war on terrorism as a means of pressing his own gun-control agenda, and said the White House has done nothing to adjust policy or strategy in recent months in response to the expansion of the terror group. He also criticized the president for suggesting America was guilty of bias against Muslims.
"We are at war with a radical jihadist group more capable than any terrorist group this nation has ever confronted," Rubio said. "Where is there widespread evidence that we have a problem in America with discrimination against Muslims? ... This is nothing but an effort to use this issue of terrorism as another way to try to push their agenda that they've been dying to push for the longest amount of time, and that's gun control."