Rep. Louie Gohmert, R-Texas, said yesterday that Congress should move to impeach President Obama if he uses executive authority to close the prison in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, saying that such a move could risk “the destruction of the American public and our way of life.” He also accused Obama and European leaders of playing Tiddlywinks — which he called “Twiddlywinks” — with radical Islamists.

“He’s wanting to put the wellbeing and the safety and lives of the American public at risk just so he can try to play politics and give Guantanamo back,” Gohmert told Virginia talk radio host John Fredericks. “But I’m telling you, that will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back. If he ends up trying to give away Guantanamo, he cannot do that legally, it would be illegally [sic] for him to do that, and if he pulls that, we’ve got to get a new president before the end of the year.”

When Fredericks asked Gohmert if this means he’d “start impeachment hearings” against the president, Gohmert said it did, adding that Guantanamo is “one of the better prisons I’ve ever seen.”

“I don’t know what else we can do,” he said. “He is putting the lives and safety of the American public at risk, at dramatic risk, by trying to shut down a facility where there’s never been a single waterboarding incident, there has never been any type of torture whatsoever — I’ve toured a lot of prisons, it’s one of the better prisons I’ve ever seen — and I don’t know what else we can do if he’s that willing to put the destruction of the American public and our way of life at that kind of risk. What else do you do, John? I don’t know.”

Early in the interview, Gohmert claimed that Obama’s Middle East strategy was to “punish” Egypt and the Kurds and “refuse to recognize that the Muslim Brotherhood is our enemy” and instead “get advice from the Muslim Brotherhood on how to fight radical Islam.”

“Some of us understand what we’re up against,” he said, “but, unfortunately, the leadership in this administration and the leadership in places like Germany and France still want to play Twiddlywinks [sic] with radical Islam and do wink and a nod and say, ‘We’re so much smarter than everybody else, we understand that if we just are really sweet to people that want to kill us and take our countries away, then everything will work out fine.”