Republican presidential candidate Sen. [crscore]Ted Cruz[/crscore] on Sunday criticized President Obama for negotiating with terrorists and compared the recent U.S.-Iran prisoner swap to the deal the Obama administration made to free Bowe Bergdahl.
“This deal is a really problematic deal, and it reflects a pattern we’ve seen in the Obama administration over and over again of negotiating with terrorists, and making deals and trades that endanger U.S. safety and security,” Cruz said on “Fox News Sunday.” (RELATED: Who Are The Seven Iranians Released In Exchange For The U.S. Prisoners?)
“This deal has a lot of things in common with the Bowe Bergdahl deal,” the Texas senator told host Chris Wallace. “Where in exchange for Bowe Bergdahl — someone now facing court-martial — we released five senior Taliban terrorists. In this instance, this deal to bring back Americans who were wrongly imprisoned, we release seven terrorists who had helped Iran with their nuclear program and we agreed not to prosecute another 14 terrorists for doing the same thing.” (RELATED: Five Americans Released From Iran)
“That’s 21 terrorists helping Iran develop nuclear weapons that they intend to use to try to murder us,” Cruz said. “I think it’s a very dangerous precedent because the result of this, every bad actor on Earth has been told go capture an American. If you want terrorists out of the jail, capture an American and President Obama is in the let’s make a deal business. That’s a dangerous precedent.”
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