Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich told a group of students on Tuesday that it was their patriotic duty to defeat President Barack Obama because he refused to protect the nation from “radical Islamists.”

Speaking at Oral Roberts University, the former House Speaker declared that “Barack Obama is the most dangerous president in modern history.”

ADVERTISEMENT

“This is not smearing everybody, this is not Islamaphobia” he explained. “If we can’t have an honest conversation about radical Islamists, and if we can’t figure out — there’s a very specific group of people across the planet. … Across the planet today, the forces of religious repression are on the march and this administration has intellectually disarmed, it has morally disarmed, it is incapable of describing what threatens us.”

The Georgia Republican continued: “The president wants to unilaterally weaken the United States. He wants to cut the aid to Israel for its anti-ballistic missile defense. He wants refuses to take Iran seriously. We are in a world that is very dangerous. And I say this to those of you who represent the next generation because you’re going to bear the consequences. We are really at risk someday in your lifetime of losing an American city.”

“So, defeating Barack Obama becomes, in fact, a duty of national security because the fact is that he is incapable of defending the United States”

The following morning, CBS host Charlie Rose told Gingrich that people like Defense Secretary Bob Gates and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton would not be serving in the Obama administration if they believed defeating the president was a matter of national security.

“You obviously know what President Obama would say,” Rose noted. “This administration proudly claims that not only that it killed Osama bin Laden, but that it’s killed more al Qaeda people than any previous administration, and that their anti-terror campaign, their anti-al Qaeda campaign has been very effective. … You seem to be saying the president is not patriotic. You seem to be questioning the patriotism of the president of the United States.”

ADVERTISEMENT

“The president of the United States is patriotic in a world view that involves the writing of Saul Alinsky and involves a radical interpretation,” Gingrich replied. “Again and again, this is a president who only obeys those laws he personally deems fit.”

Watch this video from CNN, broadcast Feb. 20, 2012.

ADVERTISEMENT

(H/T: Yahoo News)