WASHINGTON -- President Barack Obama said Tuesday that Donald Trump isn't the only GOP presidential candidate whose extreme foreign policy proposals are causing trouble for the U.S. abroad. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) is doing some damage of his own.
"I am getting questions constantly from foreign leaders about some of the wackier suggestions that are being made," Obama told reporters at the White House. "It's not just Mr. Trump's proposals. You're also hearing concerns about Mr. Cruz's proposals, which in some ways are just as draconian, when it comes to immigration, for example."
Cruz has said that as president, he would deport all 11 million undocumented immigrants in the country. He's also backed Trump's proposal to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, and has said he would triple the number of U.S. Border Patrol agents.
Obama said Cruz's ideas are just as impractical and politically motivated as Trump's proposal to cut off billions of dollars in remittances sent home by Mexican immigrants living in the United States.
"The notion that we're doing to try to track every Western Union bit of money that's being sent to Mexico -- good luck with that," he said. "Then we've got the issue of the implications for the Mexican economy, which, in turn, if it's collapsing, actually sends more immigrants north because they can't find jobs back in Mexico."
The bottom line, said the president, is that neither Cruz nor Trump is taking a serious approach to global issues.
People expect their presidential candidates "to put forward policies that have been examined, analyzed, are effective, where unintended consequences are taken into account," Obama said. "They don't expect half-baked notions coming out of the White House. We can't afford that."
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