The White House's refusal to call the Taliban a terrorist organization is "incoherent" and ignores a dangerous reality, Rep. Peter King tells
Newsmax TV.
On Wednesday, deputy press secretary Eric Schultz told ABC News that while the U.S. considered the Islamic State (ISIS) a terrorist group, the Taliban is "an armed insurgency."
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"This makes absolutely no sense and he sounds more and more incoherent, even embarrassing as he goes through this … Taliban are terrorists," King said Friday on "The Steve Malzberg Show."
"Al-Qaida and the Taliban and all of them — they've not changed one bit. It's just unheard of in my reading of history to be somehow treating the enemy as if the war was winding down or the war is over or about to be over when, in fact, it's intensifying."
King — a member of the House Homeland Security Committee and chair of the House Subcommittee on Counterterrorism and Intelligence — said he believes President Barack Obama's staffers are "living in their own state of disbelief."
"This is the same week or two we had [the massacre in] Paris, we had [the arrests of jihadist recruiters in] Belgium, we had [the arrests of Islamic terror cell members in] Germany … you know, on and on, and yet he just ignores this reality," King said.
King said the president is ruling with a "very liberal left-wing ideology."
"[He] basically wants to close Guantanamo at all costs, wants to get out of Iraq and Afghanistan at all costs, wants to normalize relations to Cuba because this has been a liberal dream for years," King said.
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