Peter King rants in favor of NSA surveillance, drones

New York Congressman Peter King went on the Sunday talk show, Meet the Press, speaking strongly in favor of the government’s National Security Agency’s (NSA) surveillance program, which had been exposed by whistleblower Edward Snowden earlier this year.

After it was released that the NSA has been listening to the phone conversations of some three dozen world leaders, including Germany’s Angela Merkel’s personal calls, King says that President Barack Obama is way too apologetic.

“I think the president should stop apologizing, stop being defensive,” King told Meet the Press host David Gregory. “The reality is the NSA has saved thousands of lives, not just in the United States but also in France and Germany and throughout Europe.”

“We’re not doing this for the fun of it”, exclaims King.

“I think the president — quite frankly, the NSA — has done so much for our country and so much to help this in his term,” said King. “He’s the commander-in-chief. He should stand with NSA.”

King later went on to take jabs at Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Justin Amash (R-MI) saying, “it bothers the hell out of me that people in my own party, such as Rand Paul, Justin Amash, people on the left also, somehow they try to exalt Snowden. This guy is causing tremendous damage to the country.”

The topic later shifted to the use of drones, where King again took a whack at Paul–“tell Rand Paul to stop doing overnight filibusters on people being killed with drones in Starbucks. We should be standing by our military. Standing by the intelligence agencies.”

“And as far as the use of drones, the fact is, every war there is collateral damage,” said King. “Unfortunately innocent people are killed. But the effort that the U.S. takes to protect innocent lives, I say, is unprecedented.”

King also continued his criticism of President Obama on his handling of Syria.