Ted Cruz, whom Obama implicitly slammed for his refugee comments, challenged the president to "come back and insult me to my face." | AP Photo Republicans scold Obama for response to Paris attacks Ted Cruz challenges the president: 'Come back and insult me to my face.'

President Barack Obama is facing a barrage of criticism for his response to last week’s deadly terrorist attacks in Paris, as skeptics question whether he is still underplaying the threat of Islamic State and is wrongly focusing on Republicans trying to halt the entry of Syrian refugees into the U.S.

Already on his back foot after telling ABC News that the terror group was “contained” just hours before Friday’s attacks, Obama offered up more meat for his critics with his Monday G-20 press conference in which he characterized the tragedy as a "setback" to the international fight against ISIL. In a defensive, if not irritated tone, Obama rejected questions about his approach, saying, "We have the right strategy, and we’re gonna see it through."


The damage has only increased from there.

Obama’s secretary of state John Kerry, talking on Tuesday about the difference between the January terrorist assault on Charlie Hebdo and Friday’s attacks, said, "There was a sort of particularized focus and perhaps even a legitimacy in terms of — not a legitimacy, but a rationale that you could attach yourself to somehow and say, OK, they’re really angry because of this and that."

Obama then opened himself up to more criticism as he engaged in some GOP scolding from Manila on Wednesday morning. He tore into Republicans seeking a stop to the resettlement of Syrian refugees in the U.S., saying he could not "think of a more potent recruitment tool for ISIL than some of the rhetoric that's been coming out of here during the course of this debate."

With Obama still in the middle of a long-planned six-day trip through Asia, it was left to his press secretary Josh Earnest to take the heat from home, as he appeared via satellite on the morning shows on Wednesday.

"Would you go back and ask for that language to be changed at this point, to reflect some sort of solidarity and intentional aggression against ISIS? I mean, to call this understandable as it relates to Charlie Hebdo and call this a 'setback' seems awful, at least to the American people," “Fox and Friends” co-host Elisabeth Hasselbeck challenged him.

Earnest fired back, telling Hasselbeck that the American people should look at a transcript of Obama's comments. "Elisabeth, if you would consider the president's remarks, you will note that he called the attacks 'sickening' and expressed profound sorrow of what precisely had occurred. But I would encourage you to spend time to focus on the president's actions," Earnest said, going through a tick-tock of Obama's response to the tragedy.

The State Department has also tried to do damage control. In defending Kerry’s statement later Tuesday, State spokesman John Kirby tweeted that the secretary “didn't justify Hebdo attacks, simply explained how terrorists tried to. As he said at time, it was a cowardly & despicable act.”

It’s done little to stop the piling on.

"He needs to get some sleep and shut up, is what he needs. That's disgraceful," New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said Wednesday on Fox News about Kerry. "For the secretary of state of the United States to stand up and say that there's some rationale for what happened in January? These are the kind of weak, mixed signals that this administration sends that helps to really, you know, make the American people think that there's no one watching the store. And there isn't."

The fact that FBI Director James Comey has said that it does not have the capacity to vet the refugees "should be the end of the conversation," he remarked, a day after sending a letter to the president expressing his concern for allowing in more refugees.

For Donald Trump, meanwhile, Kerry's response to the attacks was nothing unexpected.

"Well, look anybody that made the deal with Iran which is perhaps the worst transaction of any kind that I’ve ever seen," he said on "Fox and Friends” on Wednesday. "Anybody that made that deal can say anything because that person doesn’t make any difference what they say."

The GOP presidential candidates have also aggressively fired at Obama.

Ted Cruz, whom Obama implicitly slammed for his refugee comments, on Wednesday morning challenged the president to "come back and insult me to my face."

Obama has been critical of Cruz's proposal for handling the Syrian refugee crisis, which includes allowing in Christians, but not Muslims.

"Mr. President, if you want to insult me, you can do it overseas, you can do it in Turkey, you can do it in foreign countries, but I would encourage you, Mr. President, come back and insult me to my face," Cruz told reporters Wednesday morning, looking directly into the cameras. "Let's have a debate on Syrian refugees right now. We can do it anywhere you want. I'd prefer it in the United States and not overseas where you're making the insults. It's easy to toss a cheap insult when no one can respond, but let's have a debate."

Carly Fiorina on Wednesday morning called Obama's tirade against Republicans "outrageous."

"This is revealing of the fact that President Obama doesn’t understand the nature of the threat. I guess he’s like Hillary Clinton. He thinks Republicans are his enemies. He’s a politician, not a leader," she told Fox News from Concord, New Hampshire, adding that the president never has understood the nature of the threat posed by the terror group. "There’s nothing that we’re gonna say or do that causes ISIS to do what they do. They are at war with us. They are at war with this nation. They are at war with our way of life. They are at war with Europe, and President Obama is speaking in a way that is beneath his office."

And Marco Rubio laced into Obama on Hugh Hewitt's radio show on Wednesday, telling him that Obama is already one of the worst foreign policy presidents in history, a sentiment that Mitt Romney had shared with Hewitt just a day before.

"This is a president that always focuses on the petty, instead of being presidential about this issue. He decides he wants to be the, you know, the attacker-in-chief or the comic-in-chief or the mocker-in-chief or whatever he decides to be," the Florida senator said. "He uses all of this silliness and pettiness to cover up for the fact that he still has no real strategy when it comes to defeating ISIS."

Nolan D. McCaskill and Katie Glueck contributed to this report.