Rep. Brian Mast, R-Fla., told Newsmax on Wednesday that the world does not view President Joe Biden as a strong leader being peaceful, but rather as "harmless."
"The difference between being peaceful and being harmless is an important distinction," Mast told Wednesday's "Stinchfield." "Peaceful is something that you choose to be, even though you're capable of incredible violence. President [Donald] Trump was sometimes peaceful, he was sometimes violent, like with Iran, but he could be either one.
"Harmless is a condition that you're stuck in because you're incapable of deterrence, or violence, or defense, and that is the condition that Biden is putting America into."
Mast added Biden is canceling several upgrades Trump ordered during his administration to make the United States nuclear capabilities more on par with Russia and China, which is showing the leaders of those nations U.S. is not going to be a strong opponent.
"I think that is how the world sees him," Mast, a military veteran, told host Grant Stinchfield. "I don't even use the term 'weakness.' As I said, it is a form of weakness, it's a level of harmlessness. He is harmless. That's how any foreign intelligence agency assesses what he is doing right now, and they only have to go off of what he did in the last year, which is what happened with Afghanistan."
Mast criticized Biden for "putting up the white flag" during the withdrawal from Afghanistan in August that left billions in military hardware behind for the Taliban.
"Did he surrender our embassy in Afghanistan? Did he did he put up the white flag of surrender as he ran out of our air bases," Mast said. "[Did he] leave on the timeline that the Taliban said, 'hey, you get out America or else,' or did he push back against them?"
Mast said getting rid of our nuclear arsenal might sound good, but it does not take into account the capabilities that are needed to deter other nations from acting badly.
"[They are] not fully realizing what that means in terms of deterrence," he said. "The way that we go out there and stand up against others that have a nuclear triad, the ability to deliver a nuclear payload on the on the tip of a ground-based warhead, or out of the belly of an aircraft, or the wing of an aircraft, or off of a submarine, not fully realizing what these moves really mean."
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