The chairwoman of the Tea Party Express, one of the largest and most successful Tea Party groups, said Tuesday that she doesn't "believe that [President Obama] loves America the way that we do" during a roundtable discussion on CNN.
Amy Kremer, a founding member of the Tea Party Patriots who later left to helm the Tea Party Express, was asked by CNN host Soledad O'Brien about a tweet she had posted late last month insinuating the president did not love America.
Kremer defended the tweet by pointing to Mitt Romney's history as a business executive for Bain Capital and as governor of Massachusetts, drawing contrast with President Obama's experience.
“President Obama, and I know I’m gonna to take a lot of heat from this, but, he’s never run anything. Mitt Romney — you asked me what is the case for Mitt Romney — Mitt Romney, time and time again, has taken companies that are failing and turned them around to make them successful.
"I mean, he tuned the Salt Lake City Olympics around. He ran the state of Massachusetts. Because what I’m saying is, we are failing, we are about to go off this fiscal cliff, and we need somebody that can turn it around. President Obama has not turned it around.”
“I just never understand what any of that has to do with loving the nation,” O’Brien pressed. “Honestly, I always feel like that’s a code word for something else.”
"I just don’t believe that he loves America the way that we do,” Kremer said.
Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, appearing on the panel, asked what Kremer based that statement on.
"He's more about one world, more about — I just explained it to you," Kremer said.
When Nutter continued to press Kremer to defend her comment, she said she didn't "know how else to explain it."
"We are not leading. We are waiting on others ... to tell us what to do," Kremer continued, saying that in the Syrian conflict, “the French told us we could go and do what we needed to do.”
When O'Brien again pressed the issue of coded language, Kremer continued to question the president's leadership.
“If you love this country and you want to restore our heritage and that sort of thing, you go out there and you lead,” said Kremer. “You don’t wait on others to tell you what to do. And you take those bold steps. I mean, I don’t think that that’s what the objective of this administration is.”
