Obama Speech Heavily Criticized by People With No Better Ideas

By Andy Borowitz, The New Yorker

07 December 15

The article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column, "The Borowitz Report."

oments after its conclusion on Sunday night, President Obama’s speech about combating ISIS came under heavy criticism from people with zero better ideas.

The President’s proposals, ranging from coalition air strikes against ISIS to beefing up intelligence about potential terrorists, were blasted for being “nothing new,” with the harshest criticism coming from people with nothing new.

“I was incredibly frustrated hearing the President say he would destroy ISIS,” New Jersey Governor Chris Christie told CNN. “ISIS needs to be obliterated.”

Texas Sen. Ted Cruz shared Christie’s scathing assessment of Obama’s speech. “The President seems to think that ISIS will go away just by us bombing them,” Cruz said. “If I am President, I will bomb them so hard that will feel like they have been triple-bombed.”

Calling it “too little, too late,” Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul ripped the President’s proposal for keeping potential terrorists from obtaining visas. “We need to stop them before they even obtain the pens necessary to fill out visa forms,” he said.

Of all of the Republican Presidential candidates, the front-runner Donald Trump was perhaps the most withering in his criticism of the President’s speech. “I only heard the President use the word ‘tough’ once,” Trump said. “I gave a speech last night and used it fifteen times.”

Pressed for specifics about how he would combat ISIS, Trump acknowledged that he had “no new ideas,” but added, “My no new ideas will be much tougher than his no new ideas, you better believe it.”