Former Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) blasted President Joe Biden this week for showing weakness on the world stage, warning that Americans won’t tolerate it.
Americans “should be horrified” by the White House response to Russia’s potential invasion of Ukraine, Collins told the John Solomon Reports podcast on Tuesday’s episode.
“[Y]ou have Joe Biden’s press secretary standing in the White House press room, saying, ‘Well, yeah, they’re getting ready to invade.’ We should be horrified by that,” Collins said.
“I think last year when people and independents and others saw the embarrassment on the world stage of Afghanistan, I think that was the nail [in the coffin].”
The former Georgia congressman noted that “President Trump actually gave Ukraine stuff to shoot and kill Russia,” unlike the Obama administration, which didn’t provide Ukraine with military aid when Russia invaded Crimea.
“[W]here is the mainstream media stories about Biden being Putin’s puppet?” Collins asked, referring to the allegations often leveled at former President Trump during his tenure in office.
Collins also advised Biden to “stand up” on the world stage.
“Mr. President, you have the microphone, you control the narrative,” he said. “Your own party for years has been talking about, ‘Donald Trump was too weak on Russia.’ And yet you’re going, frankly, the opposite way. Trump was strong on Russia, you’re being weak.”
Collins believes that Biden’s advisers are too focused on the COVID-19 pandemic and other domestic issues and not enough on America’s presence on the world stage.
The “American people can tolerate a lot of internal” domestic policy failures,” Collins said. “What they cannot tolerate” is weakness on the international stage, he said, invoking the failure of former president Jimmy Carter to free U.S. hostages from captivity in Iran.
Despite “inflation, high mortgage rates, everything else — we were surviving” the Carter years, he recalls. “Jimmy Carter almost won 1980 — everybody forgets that — until the last couple of weeks. In the last couple of weeks, Ronald Reagan was able to remind them of the debacle in Iran, our men getting killed in that rescue mission, and us not having a front on the world stage.
“I believe that resonates with Americans, that when they are embarrassed on the world stage, then that is it.
“So I’m gonna say, ‘Hey, go do it, Mr. President. You got the ability. You wanted the job, now do it.’”
