Trump vows more extreme vetting following NYC terror attack

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Trump vows more extreme vetting following NYC terror attack

President blames Sen. Schumer for diversity visa program which let terror suspect into country; Democrats claim the president is politicizing the tragedy.

This is a rush transcript from "The Five," November 1, 2017. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

DANA PERINO, CO-HOST: Hello, everyone. I'm Dana Perino along with Katie Pavlich, Juan Williams, Congressman Jason Chaffetz, and Greg Gutfeld. It's 5 o'clock in New York City and this is "The Five."

Nine victims remain hospitalized, four in critical condition, following a deadly terror attack in New York City since 9/11. Eight killed and a dozen injured by a jihadi who mowed them down with a truck and then shouted Allahu Akbar. We have more information today about the suspect, his motive and how he came to America. The immigrant from Uzbekistan was allowed into the country in 2010 on a diversity visa, President Trump now bowing to end the lottery program.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I am, today, starting the process of terminating the diversity lottery program. Diversity lottery. It sounds nice. It's not nice. It's not good. So we want to immediately work with congress on the diversity lottery program on terminating it, getting rid of it. We want a merit-based program where people come into our country based on merit.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PERINO: More now from Catherine Herridge, our chief intelligence correspondent in Washington. Catherine?

CATHERINE HERRIDGE, FOX NEWS: This afternoon, homeland security officials confirm to Fox News that the suspect was admitted under a valid visa for the program in March of 2010, and that the program does require an interview with the state department and additional screening. As he just mentioned, President Trump said he is in the process of terminating the program because he favors a merit-based approach, not a program like a lottery that traditionally tilt in favor of countries with historically low rates of emigration. We learned today the suspect was among the maximum 50,000 people allowed into the U.S. every year under the state department program, and about 24,000 people have entered the U.S. from the country of Uzbekistan since 2005, and that's where the suspect was born.

Also, today, two sources telling Fox News that the suspect had connection to individuals who already known to law enforcement. At that New York City briefing earlier today, the deputy commissioner for counter terrorism explained the suspect was running with a very suspicious crowd. Meantime, new photos obtain by Fox News give you a better sense of New Jersey's Omar Mosque and the focus of multiple lead after 9/11. The suspect's brick apartment building is virtually on its doorstep. You see it right there with the mosque, the white building in the distance. A former federal investigator with PENTTBOM, that's the code name for the 9/11 file, said the area is about four to five bucks from 9/11 hijackers and ring leader Mohamed Atta's apartment, as well as where the Mosul hijackers were located, and they finalized the 2001 plot. So this area remains very much a nest as it was described to us, or an enclave for radical teaching. Dana?

PERINO: All right, Catherine, thank you so much. The president had directed homeland security to ramp up extreme vetting of foreigners in the wake of the attack.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: We have to get much tougher. We have to get much smarter. And we have to get much less politically correct. We're so politically correct that we're afraid to do anything, and that's not only our country. That's other countries too that are having very similar problems. And we have to get tough, we have to get smart. We have to do what's right to protect our citizens.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PERINO: Greg, it's interesting that he bring that up today because Pew Research Poll had a poll out today that said 71 percent of Americans are concerned about how politically correct America has become.

GREG GUTFELD, CO-HOST: Well, we talk about political opportunism, but the real political opportunism after terrorism is the application of Islamophobia. If anybody expresses concern over radical Islam, you get in trouble. And there's this conflict now where you have -- today, you have the mayor and you have the governor saying they're 8 million people in New York City. There's a million pairs of eyes. If you see something, say something. But you can't say something in this current climate because you will lose your job. This guy was already on our radar. He was interviewed by the feds in 2015 because he had links online to certain kinds of bad groups. But why didn't they go after him? Maybe they were scared that they were going to lose their job. They're going to lose their jobs. And this is how everybody feels.

I'm tired of this hypocrisy where they say, if you see something, say something, because they really don't want you to do anything. Because the moment you do something, you are -- you're labeled Islamophobic, you're labeled a bigot. So you look at what Trump does, the media does this, the leaders do it about Islamophobia, he doesn't. He is the closest to the ground of any president I've ever seen talking about the actual sincere fears of the average citizen. You know, there's things that -- I know I'm not going to like his tax plan, I don't understand his 401(k) stuff, it's going to drive me crazy, but his response -- and this is the most important thing, his response to the presence of terror is so much more important to the reaction after terror.

When you see Cuomo, and you see Mayor de Blasio, and everybody else saying how strong New York is, and how we're going to have that parade, that's -- who cares? It's about your response before the attack. Your willingness to admit that there is the presence of terror before terror strikes. It's no good afterwards to get sympathy after it happened. It doesn't matter. What matters is having the guts to say, it's here, how do we get rid of it, and then you get targeted for Islamophobia. So it takes guts to say what he is saying, to talk about the diversity visa is important. Diversity untethered to merit is of no value.

PERINO: And remember just a few years ago that, I think it was the associated press went after the NYPD.

GUTFELD: Right.

PERINO: . for monitoring these mosques including that one that Catherine Herridge was just pointing out

GUTFELD: (INAUDIBLE) they knew about them. Nobody said anything at Fort Hood.

PERINO: President Trump also today, Juan, pointed out immediately earlier this morning that Chuck Schumer, the senator from New York, had supported diversity visas. He didn't point out that Chuck Schumer had also voted to change that program, even though that bill didn't get to the president desk under President Obama. Listen to some of the Democrats responding to Trump.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNINDENTIFIED MALE: Look, the last thing the president or anyone else should do is politicize this tragedy.

UNINDENTIFIED MALE: I don't think this is the time to get political. There's no doubt that we have to be smarter and have more intelligence, but there's also no doubt that this is not the time to play politics. This is not the time to foment hate.

UNINDENTIFIED MALE: All President Trump does is take advantage, horrible advantage of a tragedy and try to politicize and divide the American people long for leadership. Not divisiveness, not finger-pointing, not name- calling. This is a tragedy.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

PERINO: Your thoughts, Juan?

JUAN WILLIAMS, CO-HOST: Well, I don't think there's any question from Chuck Schumer point of view, this is a tragedy. This is his home state. This is New York City. I think where I would differ from Greg is, I think that when you say, let's go forward with the Halloween parade. Let's continue to live our lives. Or in the language of President Bush, you know, let's not let the terrorists win through intimidation. I think that's a very important message. Now when you're talking about something like prevention, I don't think there's any question that our country has taken logical steps to what we call hardened targets.

GUTFELD: Right.

WILLIAMS: Make it more difficult to go through the airport to get a visa. It's very -- President Trump is talking but extreme vetting. It takes two years if you're a Syrian refugee. We have extreme measures. I want to know what he's going to do to make it more extreme.

(CROSSTALK)

GUTFELD: I think there is -- telling citizens to say something and then you punish them.

WILLIAMS: I don't think so at all. In fact, I think the contrary is the case. I think you have people, including me, who said something.

GUTFELD: That is what Trump's saying.

WILLIAMS: But guess what? When you say something these days, I think there are a lot of people like Greg who would say, thank God, somebody stood up and said something.

(CROSSTALK)

WILLIAMS: And I think the police -- the police, by the way, are very appreciative of informants, and they have many informants in these very mosque that they have been surveilling. That's another example of the fact that -- it's not like we're a bunch of oaks.

(CROSSTALK)

WILLIAMS: . and they've never taken any steps to protect ourselves. We have people who are surveilling the mosque. And then the question becomes a much more difficult question for you as a libertarian about privacy and rights that, you know, private works.

PERINO: We have no problem there.

GUTFELD: I have no problem.

(CROSSTALK)

WILLIAMS: That's what I'm saying, for the American constitution here is a problem.

KATIE PAVLICH, CO-HOST: It is true that when people say something to authorities, they're automatically presumed to be Islamophobic. We're not even allowed to talk about what Catherine Herridge discussed as a nest of Jihadist because that would be going after a Muslim-American community of immigrants. And therefore, you're bigoted and don't want more people to come into the country. The left is making two different arguments here. The first is that you have to choose between proper vetting, more vetting of people, foreigners coming into the country, or nothing at all because you would be bigoted to do so and you're going after minorities as a result. The second thing that they're saying is, well, it's on the American people and the country to be more welcoming to -- particularly of Islamic immigrants to come to this country, because if you aren't then they're not going to assimilate, and therefore, they may go into terror and turn to terror as if that's a justification for something like this happening. We don't owe them anything. They owe America a lot.

PERINO: Jason, before I go to you, just a note that the U.S. attorney of New York is going to hold a press conference later this hour. They will be announcing terrorism charges against the suspects. So we'll bring that to you live. It will be later in this hour so don't miss that. Jason, your thoughts?

JASON CHAFFETZ, CO-HOST: I think Greg is absolutely right. What does it mean to actually be on a watch list? Because nobody is really actually watching them. If you think that they're actually watching them, what they're doing, where they're surfing the internet, they're not doing anything.

(CROSSTALK)

PERINO: Something like 14 NYPD or intelligence officials per one guy that they're watching, so we have a resource problem possibly.

CHAFFETZ: Well, but homeland security funding has actually gone up despite what.

(CROSSTALK)

PERINO: But that number was just cut in the budget that the Republicans just passed.

CHAFFETZ: Absolutely wrong, because what happened was the appropriations went up. They actually went from 47.8 billion to 49.3 billion, and the appropriation for 2018 is 51.1 billion.

PERINO: Is that enough?

CHAFFETZ: He word smith it. He tried to say, well, the proposed budget. But what was actually appropriated went up.

PERINO: So he won?

CHAFFETZ: No, he was getting his word out there. He didn't have much policy to stand on. The thing that bothers me is if you go back to the Boston bombing, and this is part of what Greg's point is, we didn't do anything. I introduced a bill that actually do some things with asylum- seekers who violate this and actually go back to their country of origin, back and forth. This country still today does not have an entry-exit program. I can go down and buy a sandwich at my -- place and get a turkey sandwich, and the tenth time I do it I get a free one. Because they know if I come and gone to their shop. If you go and leave this country and come back, we don't know. This person today, I promise you, nobody can definitively tell you if he actually left the country.

(CROSSTALK)

CHAFFETZ: And that's current law.

WILLIAMS: Here's the thing. This guy came here and he was vented as part of the program, and apparently no alarm bells went off, right?

PERINO: They did though. They did all over the place.

WILLIAMS: No, not at all. And so here's the thing, he was led to this horrible act by something that happened while he was in the United States. And this is what we really need to talk about.

(CROSSTALK)

PAVLICH: Where was he hanging out in the United States, Juan?

WILLIAMS: He was on the watch list because of association with those other folks.

PAVLICH: And where was he hanging out, in a mosque preaching radical ideology, that's where he was hanging out.

WILLIAMS: My point to you is, I think that this took place online. The conversion to radical Islam.

PAVLICH: That too.

WILLIAMS: . took place online. And unless we get away from what I think is a distraction and one that's, I think, politically advantageous to President Trump is, oh, we need to vet more, we need to stop, none of the people on his Muslim ban list, none of them, including in this event would haven't been stopped by his Muslim ban.

PAVLICH: You've said that there weren't any red flags at all.

(CROSSTALK)

PAVLICH: The mosque that he went to.

WILLIAMS: That's after he seemed into the country.

PAVLICH: You said -- you think that this all happened online, which.

(CROSSTALK)

WILLIAMS: This whole thing about trucks. Look at Nice, right? Look at what happened in Times Square five months ago. They're using vehicles as weapons of destruction.

PAVLICH: Right. You specifically said when he came here something happened while he was living in America to make him do this. So, if you look at everything around him, the people he was hanging out with, which, by the wat, he has friends, one of which the FBI believes is a terrorist who is missing now in the United States. He was going to a mosque that was under FBI surveillance.

WILLIAMS: Right.

PAVLICH: And this was happening online which they clearly did not catch.

(CROSSTALK)

PERINO: We do have additional information, the FBI now is saying that they are seeking information on a second person they believed was involved in this attack.

GUTFELD: OK. That flies in the face -- we keep talking about online recruitment which is true. But we also have to admit the fact that they have friends and that they have relatives, and we have had two examples, the Boston bombing were brothers, and in San Bernardino it was a husband and wife. So we have to understand that this is a family thing, it's a tribal thing. It's an ideology. So it infects a lot of different people. My last point is, it is a coincidence that this happened on Halloween, but there's a metaphor there that has been used before that when your kids come home with a bag of candy, the parents vetted. They go through it, they make sure nothing's bad in there because they took something outside and they brought it inside and the parents go through it, and they look through it, and that's not absurd. To do that is not absurd it's what a parent does. Applying that logic right now in a changing world when the outside is coming in with a pernicious ideology, the razor blade in the apple is radical Islam. You have every right to vet.

(CROSSTALK)

PERINO: I've got to get in one more thing because they keep telling me it's more information. So remember that within this hour, the U.S. attorney will have a press conference, they will announce charges against the suspect. The sources are saying that the suspect does not show remorse for the attack, that he is being cooperative. So that possibly could be the reason the FBI is seeking information about a second person. So we're going to have all of that for you in this hour. He may have acted alone, but all indications are the New York City terror suspect was inspired by ISIS. So how do we fight this new front in the war on terror? We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

WILLIAMS: This is a Fox News alert. New York governor has described the New York terrorist suspect as a likely lone wolf. But now the FBI is seeking information on a second person, this man also from Uzbekistan. More on that in a moment. Yesterday's Halloween attack bears the hallmark of ISIS. Many radical Islamic fanatics are following a playbook. Here's the house homeland security committee chair with more on this concerning trend.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNINDENTIFIED MALE: This is what the FBI and NYPD called flash to bang. These cases can happen so fast. One person radicalizing very quickly and then killing eight people. And it's probably the hardest thing to stop a larger scale operation like the 9/11 plot, we can probably very likely stop today. This is a case that worries us the most.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

WILLIAMS: You know, Dana, flash to bang. It makes you think, gosh, how are we going to stop this? I mean, you get somebody like this suddenly he's radicalized and commits an act that kills eight people.

PERINO: And in the commercial break we were able to get some additional information. So he's interviewed by the FBI -- inspired by ISIS videos that he watch on his cell phone for about a year, and it was about two months ago, apparently, that he decided to use the truck. He was inspired by videos by al-Baghdadi, he's the ISIS imam that everybody tries to follow and emulate. He said he choose Halloween because he thought they'll be more pedestrian. And then his goal was to continue down the west side highway to the Brooklyn Bridge to inflict even more damage and harm. So we have a lot more information and we'll have press conference in a bit.

WILLIAMS: Congressman, one of the things that I think a lot of people around the world are concerned about right now is that as the United States and our allies are defeating ISIS on the battlefield, you have people who are fighters there who are now returning home or going elsewhere, or seeking to radicalize people in other countries to mount attacks like the one we saw yesterday.

CHAFFETZ: Well, again, going back to my point, we still don't have in this country and entry-exit program, so if somebody did leave the United States, go over there and came back, we don't know that. The second part is I think Governor Cuomo is terribly misleading. He went out and said there was no evidence now that this was part of a larger conspiracy, a larger plot. Authorities knew almost immediately he left a note in the truck saying he's part of ISIS. This is a very big attack on the United States.

PERINO: That is the largest one.

CHAFFETZ: This is not a lone wolf. This whole idea -- anybody who's out there saying, oh, this is some lone wolf, I think the actual legitimate definition of a lone wolf is what happened in Las Vegas. But we figured out more about this person in the first hour or two than we have in what happened in Las Vegas, and it is part of a bigger, broader plot, and it's serious, and we've got to take the fight to them all across the world.

PAVLICH: The thing about lone wolves as they often travel in packs as we've learned over and over again. We talked about this on Dana's show a little bit earlier today, but we keep hearing as ISIS loses territory as we've just discussed, that these fighters are going to disperse and go elsewhere if they're not already dead. First of all, that means that we need to know who's coming out of the country as you've said, but also what does that mean for the war coming back home? The government keeps saying they're going to come back. We're going to see more of these attacks at home. Well, we have to see something, say something program after 9/11. We implemented a whole bunch of different ways that people could spot terrorism after 9/11. Things have changed. There tactics have changed. And so, I think that they need to make it clear to people what do you do when you see someone like this, acting like this, see someone watching these videos on their phone, and how do you react if you see someone running down the street with a truck? And are there ways that you could be vigilant in your everyday behavior that don't make you paranoid, but make you actually just more aware of what you're dealing during the day.

WILLIAMS: And there're steps that people can take. And by the way, at 5:30, the hero cop who stopped this attack is going to have a press conference, his first words on it and we will carry it live. Greg, I wanted to go to something Katie was talking about what steps that we could take logically. So people are talking about things like tighter controls on rental vehicles, right?

GUTFELD: Right.

WILLIAMS: Or electronic surveillance, better electronic surveillance, getting back to what Katie was talking about is watching or using, as Dana's saying, watching videos on his cell phone. And then, of course, you could say what about limiting the internet? Like stopping certain things on the internet, does that take us toward stopping it or doesn't it impinge on our civil rights, liberties in this country?

GUTFELD: Well, ISIS see some of the companies that are making billions and billions of dollars in this arena to actually have some personal responsibility about what is out there. But, you know, it does show you that this person followed instructions which means that the ideology actually leaps oceans -- a wall can't stop this. So I think one of the ways is to change the frame of mind is that you have to untethered this simply from a religious aspect because that's what hamstringing our media. Whenever you want to preplan against terror, you're Islamophobic. So if you are to see this as a brain contaminated disease, which is what it is. It's a brain -- it turns people into homicidal zombies.

If you look at it that way, the first thing to think about is quarantine, found out who these people are, quarantine them, and talked to their families and their relatives, and if this is what it is, they've got to go. That's how you do it. But if it's tethered to religion it's a bad thing. The other thing we have to talk about is that these truck attacks are common, but it's going to get worse. My worry is that there's going to be a worse method of attack that will marry technology and terror. What we're talking about is terror change. Every year there is a terror change, an increase in proficiency and killing. If the media cared as much about terror change as climate change we'll be a lot better off. People have to be looking at this in a different way, not as something that conflates with Islam, which is what the media does, not with the people who are fighting this thing. It's the media that conflates with Islam, which then paralyzes people from actually thinking about what to do.

WILLIAMS: All right. We have so much to talk about here with much more to come on The Five. We'll be back in just a moment.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

GUTFELD: This is a Fox News Alert. We are continuing our coverage of the aftermath of the deadly New York City terror attack. We're waiting two press conferences. Any minute now we will hear from the hero NYPD officer, Ryan Nash, he's credited with stopping the suspected terrorist opening fire, bringing down the dirt bag before he could do any more harm. The second press conference happening this hour from the U.S. attorney's office who will announce terrorism charges against the dirt bag here. So...

PERINO: Apparently, the dirt bag asked for ISIS flags in the hospital room.

GUTFELD: Yes, isn't that nice?

PAVLICH: What a jerk.

GUTFELD: That's got to make everybody waiting on him feel really good.

PAVLICH: Just take his morphine away for a few hours.

GUTFELD: Yes.

PAVLICH: Just for a couple of hours, take it away.

CHAFFETZ: I am worried that the U.S. attorney is going to come out and offer charges. I'm with Lindsey Graham on this. I really do think he should be taken to Guantanamo Bay.

PERINO: I don't.

CHAFFETZ: I think -- I think the suspect in the Benghazi attack should've also been taken to Guantanamo Bay. I've been down there a couple of times. And I'm telling you, they could do a lot more surveilling and watching that person without reading him his Miranda rights.

PERINO: I disagree, because well, one, I don't know if it will pass -- if it would pass muster. He's legal U.S. resident.

GUTFELD: We're breaking. We've got to go. We're going to the press conference.

PERINO: I have one...

GUTFELD: Quiet, Dana, please.

PERINO: I have really good points. Stick around.

GUTFELD: let's go to it.

OFFICER RYAN NASH, NYPD: Thank you for coming. My name is Officer Ryan Nash. I appreciate the public recognition of the actions of myself and my fellow officers yesterday. Although I feel that we were just doing our job, like thousands of officers do every day, I understand the importance of yesterday's events and the role we played, and I am grateful for the recognition we have received. I just want to thank my family and friends for their support and all of the responding officers who assisted me.

However, due to the nature of the pending criminal case, I cannot make any further public statements about the incident at this time. Thank you.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thank you, guys.

GUTFELD: That was Ryan Nash. You know, this morning, the New York City mayor, De Blasio, seemed so surprised by the officers' actions. You know, like, he was suddenly woke to the vital importance of gratitude to the police, especially, I guess, when his election is next week, Juan.

WILLIAMS: I don't get it, why you attack De Blasio so constantly.

GUTFELD: I can't help it. I can't stand him. I'm petty like that.

WILLIAMS: I must say, living -- living in New York City and Washington, D.C., I think we have so much in the way of conscientious, hardworking cops and security.

GUTFELD: Absolutely.

WILLIAMS: I don't get it.

GUTFELD: De Blasio wasn't that crazy about the cops. You remember that?

WILLIAMS: I'm just telling you, he's the mayor, and the cops -- we have more cops now in New York than ever.

PERINO: And they're having to do a lot more than ever because of all of his actions.

GUTFELD: They cut -- didn't they cut the number of cops? Pretty sure. Brain room, get on that.

WILLIAMS: Get it.

GUTFELD: But he was -- he also said that he was very proud that they still attended the parade. But the only way you could attend a parade is because the law enforcement is there to protect you.

PAVLICH: Go ahead.

CHAFFETZ: I think Ryan Nash, I -- maybe you should write in Ryan Nash for mayor.

PAVLICH: That would be amazing.

CHAFFETZ: Of New York City. You know, I love ordinary Americans who do extraordinary things. That guy goes to work. He doesn't know this is going to happen. That moment is there, and boom, he took him down so fast. I love this guy.

GUTFELD: You know what was good about it? He didn't kill him.

PERINO: And also, he was on his way to deal with an emotionally-disturbed individual. And so he -- that's what a lot of these officers...

GUTFELD: That wasn't me, by the way.

PAVLICH: It wasn't Greg.

GUTFELD: I mean, I do live in that neighborhood. But no.

But it's amazing. They're unassuming, Katie.

PAVLICH: They're humble. I mean, the guy's humility there after now, overnight, he's become a hero to so many. Imagine if this guy hadn't been stopped and he went around doing God knows what for how long? And he thanks his fellow first responders; says, "Look, I don't want to be in the public eye. There's an ongoing criminal investigation," like a professional and moves along.

But you're right about Bill de Blasio. This is the same guy who said that, you know, his son has to be afraid of police officers because inherently, they're all racist. Right? So...

WILLIAMS: He didn't say that.

PAVLICH: He absolutely did.

WILLIAMS: No. He said that he has the same conversation so many black parents have with their kids, which is when you deal with cops...

PAVLICH: He warned his son because he thinks...

WILLIAMS: ... be careful.

PAVLICH: He believes that all police officers...

WILLIAMS: That's not what he said.

PAVLICH: ... are inherently racist.

WILLIAMS: That's your assumption.

GUTFELD: They turned their backs on him. They turned their backs.

WILLIAMS: The cops did.

PAVLICH: And therefore, his biracial son has to be worried about walking around the street.

GUTFELD: Yes.

WILLIAMS: But I don't think that was fair. Let me tell you something. I've had that conversation with my sons about where you keep your hands and understanding...

PAVLICH: I've had that conversation, too.

WILLIAMS: OK, so then why are you blaming de Blasio?

PAVLICH: Because my parents didn't think that all caps were racist.

WILLIAMS: I don't think that either.

PAVLICH: Because you obey the law.

GUTFELD: Dana.

PERINO: Can I come back to make my good points?

GUTFELD: Sure.

PERINO: Because I know -- I respect Lindsey Graham's idea, and I understand what he was thinking. I just think that it is not a good one. First of all, because he's a U.S. legal resident, I think that the Supreme Court would have to hear it. And I think this court would actually grant him habeas.

But at the same time, New York City, and -- well, the United States and especially New York City has a near 100 percent conviction rate. And if he becomes an enemy combatant, anything that they have gotten from him in the last 48 hours, it's not admissible later on. So I would just let New York City deal with it.

CHAFFETZ: Well, we don't know whether he was read his Miranda rights, if he did read his Miranda rights. And there's a reason why we have Guantanamo Bay, and there's a reason why we're able to extract so much information in that setting. He's not a United States citizen, and this is specific to...

PERINO: But he does have legal -- but he is going to be granted habeas corpus rights under the Constitution, because he's a legal permanent resident.

PAVLICH: This is going to be...

PERINO: Even though he's not a citizen.

PAVLICH: This is going to be an interesting political conversation over the next three years, really, as President Trump deals with more of these things, God forbid. Because the -- the Obama administration was roundly criticized for treating situations like this in a criminal way, a law enforcement way, rather than a wartime way. And it's going to be interesting to watch and see what the Justice Department under the Trump administration does in that aspect.

GUTFELD: All right. Let's do a generic tease.

PERINO: OK.

GUTFELD: We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

CHAFFETZ: This is a FOX News alert. You're looking live at the U.S. attorney's office in Lower Manhattan, New York City. The U.S. attorney is about to announce federal terrorism charges against the suspect in yesterday's deadly attack, and we will bring that to you as it happens.

But in the meantime, a look now at the liberal media's coverage of the new radical Islamic -- Islamist attack on our homeland. This CNN reporter stunningly chose to keep the Muslim suspect's ethnicity and physical features secret from viewers yesterday.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

SHIMON PROKUPECZ, CNN CRIME AND JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Police know who he is. They have a description of him. I'm not going to share that at the moment.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHAFFETZ: Jake Tapper, also from CNN, felt the need to remind viewers how beautiful the phrase "Allah Akbar" can be.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: He chanted "Allah Akbar," "God is great," sometimes said under the most beautiful of circumstances, and too often, we hear of it being said in moments like this.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHAFFETZ: And over at MSNBC, this analyst wants you to know that sometimes Christians are responsible for terror, too.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MALCOLM NANCE, MSNBC ANALYST: What you're seeing is not Islam whatsoever. None of this is condoned, including the, you know, sacrificing and getting yourself killed at the end of a terrorist attack. None of that is Islamic. It's anti-Islamic.

Even Christians, we've seen Catholics in Canada who converted to, quote unquote, "Islam" and then carried out acts of terror.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

CHAFFETZ: I know these reporters are doing this spontaneously, at the moment, but this is not a bunch of Catholics gone crazy. These aren't Mormons out doing all this stuff. And it's not just Buddhists gone wild. There is a trend here.

And there are a lot of good quality people. I have Muslim friends. The overwhelming majority of Muslims don't do this. But there is this radical element that does do that. And we have to be honest about who they are and what they're doing. Juan, would you agree with that? Or do you buy into this notion that we need to be so politically correct and give balance to everything?

WILLIAMS: Gee, thanks for giving me a chance to answer that. Look, I'm not a politically correct guy, but I am against stereotypes and discrimination. As you said, I don't think that most Muslims are up to terrorism, but I think there is, if I'm an investigator, a concrete link if you look at a pattern. And I think that's what you do if you're an intelligent person. You try to discern a pattern, because what we want to do is prevent this from happening again.

The question is, are you being effective or are you just playing politics? If you look -- you know, Greg was saying earlier to me, he said, "Hey, a lot of people are P.C. They don't want to talk about Islam in this context." And why maybe what we should do is move away from Islam and just say it's a cult. And people act crazy in this cult, and let's go after them there.

But you know what? I look at President Trump, and I say, "Oh, Trump introduces a ban that everybody interprets, three courts now, as a ban on - - guess what? -- Muslims." And that then, of course, introduce -- and people say, "Well, you can't do that. That's not in keeping with our constitutional protections." But I don't think it was necessarily a bad idea, per se. If you're saying let's look at the pattern. But it's just that, as in the case of this diversity program, I think it's 50,000 visas, Katie. Fifty thousand, right? That's like -- in terms of green cards, that's nothing.

GUTFELD: You only need one.

PERINO: That's right.

GUTFELD: You know, every -- in all those clips, they are unconsciously paralyzed by Islamophobia phobia, the fear of being seen as Islamophobic. And the direct result of Islamophobia phobia, is that you actually think that the aftermath of a terror attack is worse than the terror attack.

It's like the first thought when the bodies hit the ground are "Oh, they're going to be mad at the Muslims." So that's kind of -- that's a strange place to go, because irrational anger over Muslims now takes priority over carnage. But the carnage has already happened. The irrational anger hasn't yet. That leads to more terror attacks, because you're denying the reality, the reality of these actual attacks. Prevents you from thinking about preventing these attacks, and this all goes back to the pernicious identity politics.

PAVLICH: Right.

GUTFELD: We are guilty. We are guilty. Americans are guilty for being bigots and racists.

PAVLICH: Right, exactly.

GUTFELD: And this is just our way, through Islamophobia, of expressing that again.

PAVLICH: I don't understand -- I don't understand how...

WILLIAMS: Well, after Vegas, would you have -- everybody in this room thought, "Is this Islamic terror?"

GUTFELD: Right.

WILLIAMS: Then it turns out not to be Islamic terror.

GUTFELD: Right.

WILLIAMS: Do you then lead, Greg, to a conclusion, "Oh, well, gee, we've got to watch out for white guys"?

GUTFELD: We've got -- I think we've got to watch out for people like that guy. There are people like that.

But what was interesting is that what we do -- I would say "we" as libertarians, conservatives, maybe -- I don't know -- normal people -- we focus on the actor, on the agent of mayhem.

PAVLICH: Right. Exactly.

GUTFELD: What happens after -- what happens after Vegas, they focused on the tool. Not the guy; they focused on the gun. We focus on the agent of mayhem, whether it's the guy in Vegas or the guy in New York. We know -- we go after the agent who committed it.

PAVLICH: And the individual responsible. Right? So I don't understand why bringing in the vast majority of Muslims is even relevant to the conversation. Why is that even something that is part of the talking right now?

And that doesn't allow us to actually get to the issue, and it's a distraction from getting at the issue of actually solving the problem. Right?

But who has appointed all these media people and these pundits as experts on what Islam is? I know an expert on Islam. His name is al-Baghdadi, and he's the ISIS leader. And he has a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies from the University of -- or the Islamic University in Baghdad. So if we're going to talk about experts, I think that when you look at this guy, who as we know now, was inspired by al-Baghdadi directly on his cell phone, if you want to look at what Islam is teaching, maybe you should look at who he was inspired by, who has a Ph.D. in Islamic Studies.

WILLIAMS: You don't think that's an extremist? That's like saying Jim Jones was representative of Christians.

PAVLICH: He is an extremist, but what I'm saying is all of these -- these media pundits are acting like regular everyday Americans who want to acknowledge that there is a problem are called Islamophobic. If they point out that this is the guy who is teaching these things over the Internet, inspiring people in the United States to carry out attacks against innocent Americans. He's the one teaching this, so where's the reform there? Why are we talking about the irrelevance of all these other people who have nothing to do with this?

WILLIAMS: No. I'm just saying to you that if you -- if you pick -- let's say I mentioned Jim Jones, who was the guy that had that Christian cult.

PAVLICH: Did Jim Jones have a caliphate...

WILLIAMS: Right.

PAVLICH: ... with thousands of fighters?

WILLIAMS: I don't know how many people he killed. Where did he kill all those people, Guyana? Right?

CHAFFETZ: Drinking Kool-Aid.

WILLIAMS: Yes, so I mean, you have.

PAVLICH: He wasn't attacking -- I don't want to get into that analogy, but he wasn't attacking innocent people and inspiring thousands of attacks around the world. It was a completely separate situation.

CHAFFETZ: You do -- you do have to understand the situation and who's there. Now, there are 23 people that are ever going to leave were brought in, in part because he was brought in. So Dana...

GUTFELD: Chain migration.

CHAFFETZ: Chain migration. I -- I want to see them all deported. I think that would actually hit their family and would catch the attention and actually serve a really good purpose.

PERINO: Then now you're -- that clip is now going to be played on the other networks saying how extreme that is. But I do think it's worth looking at chain migration. And all of this, I think that actually -- there is bipartisan agreement on wanting to relook at these visa programs.

GUTFELD: What Jason said it sounds controversial, not if you look at -- if you talk to people that have been in the military that work with Muslims in Afghanistan and whatnot. And they talk about how family driven they are. And -- and if the -- if they know that their family could be affected by this, the chain migration of 21 or 22 people going back, that might actually impact them. And it creates a ripple effect in the communities.

This family is affected, then this family's affected, then this family affected. It's not controversial to say, that you're going to screw your family over. It doesn't been hurting her family. It means that...

PERINO: They could lose everything.

GUTFELD: They could lose everything. They could go back to Afghanistan.

CHAFFETZ: You don't trust that family because guess what? If this suspect did what he did and he killed those eight people, and he was trying to cause chaos and terror, guess what? I don't trust his family. And they're all going to pay a price, and that will create a deterrent moving forward.

PERINO: Well, what I was going to say is that I think they call it a lottery for a reason. It's because it's a literal lottery, like it's a chance. But it's also like, if you get a chance to come to the United States of America, that you have absolutely won the lottery. We all did. We were born here. We benefit so much because we're here in this free country.

I do -- I think what Jake Tapper was saying -- I understand it. He was talking about these radicals are perverting the religion of Islam.

GUTFELD: Right.

PERINO: And it's hurting those innocent people.

GUTFELD: Jake is not a soft...

PERINO: No.

GUTFELD: I mean, he talks tough on this stuff.

PERINO: So I can understand that.

But I do think it's important that we don't talk about the suspect as deranged or mentally ill. He is evil. And this is about good versus evil. It's not about religion versus religion.

PAVLICH: Right, absolutely.

CHAFFETZ: He is evil, and we're going to have a press conference coming up. Stay tuned. And we'll bring that press conference to you.

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