Obama no match for KGB’s Putin, says GOP’s Rep. Gohmert

President Obama’s background as a community organizer is hurting him and the country and has let Russian President Vladimir Putin gain the upper hand in the conflict involving Ukraine, Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) said Wednesday.

“What you’re seeing … is what you get when a community organizer takes on a KGB agent,” Gohmert said on “Fox & Friends.” “It doesn’t go well.”

{mosads}Putin was an officer in the KGB — Russia’s spy and security agency — for 16 years, and left as a lieutenant colonel.

Gohmert warned that Putin likely has designs to envelope all of Ukraine, not just the Crimean peninsula, which voted Sunday to join Russia. Putin has said he has no interest in taking over more of Ukraine’s territory, but Gohmert disagreed and said Putin would also like control of Ukraine and the Baltic states.

“Putin wants all of Ukraine,” Gohmert said. “Crimea was a place to start.”

Gohmert said the Obama administration should be taking tough steps now to protest Russia’s actions, including reinstating a ballistic missile defense system in Poland. He also recommended kicking Russia out of the International Monetary Fund, and bringing Ukraine into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

“Right now, we could immediately move to do that,” he said. “We ought to move to further embrace the Baltic states. We ought to stop taking rubles. You want to hit them.”

This week, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) asked House committees to think up ways to put more pressure on Russia, and is likely to consider some of these ideas.

Gohmert said the White House decision to freeze the assets of several Russian officials and bar them from entering the United States will prove to be ineffectual, which is why Russia scoffed at that punishment.

“Those guys are powerful enough,” Gohmert said of the targeted Russian officials. “They can have other identifies. It’s ridiculous.”