In this Sept. 25, 2015, photo, Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. speaks during the Values Voter Summit, held by the Family Research Council Action in Washington. After a summer largely spent raising money for his Republican campaign for president, Rubio says heâs about to start spending a whole lot more time in Iowa and other early voting states. Rubioâs campaign says he will be back in Iowa next week, then in New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina. All four states are voting in the initial wave of caucuses and primaries. ( AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana) (AP)
Sen. Marco Rubio believes the United States should not accept any more Syrian refugees in the wake of the Paris terror attacks.
Speaking on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos,” the Republican presidential candidate said the U.S. has an inability to conduct thorough background checks so “we won’t be able to take more refugees.”
“The problem is not the background checks. The problem is we can’t background check them. You can’t pick up the phone and call Syria,” Rubio said. “And that’s one of the reasons why I said we won’t be able to take more refugees. It’s not that we don’t want to, it’s that we can’t. Because there’s no way to background check someone that’s coming from Syria. Who do you call and do a background check on them?”
The Florida senator also argued that the extremist threat is not just coming from aboard, but “home-grown.”
“What we need to open up to and realize is that we have a threat here at home — home-grown violent extremists. Individuals who perhaps have not even traveled abroad, who had been radicalized online,” he said. “This has become a multi-faceted threat.”
During his appearance on the Sunday morning show, Rubio also sharply criticized Hillary Rodham Clinton for declining to say that the U.S. is “at war with radical Islam” following the Friday terror attacks in Paris. He invoked Nazi Germany to make his point.
“That would be like saying we weren’t at war with Nazis, because we were afraid to offend some Germans who may have been members of the Nazi Party but weren’t violent themselves,” Rubio said.
During the Democratic debate on Saturday night, Clinton said she was wary of “painting with too broad a brush” while describing Muslims and terror.
“I don’t think we’re at war with all Muslims,” she said. “I think we’re at war with jihadists. We are at war with violent extremism. We are at war with people who use their religion for purposes of power and oppression.”
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