Rubio: ‘We Are at War with Radical Jihadists’

HANNITY: “All right. Here with reaction, 2016 Republican presidential candidate, the great senator from the great state of Florida, Marco Rubio. Sir, how are you?”
RUBIO: “I’m good. How are you, Sean?”
HANNITY: “You know, it’s always peace and prosperity that drive elections. I would argue peace, prosperity, immigration, the refugee problem are going to be really big issues this year. The president continues to insist that we take in Syrian refugees, even though James Clapper and even though our FBI director and assistant FBI director and the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee in the House are all saying that is ISIS likely to infiltrate the population. Why is the president willing to gamble with the lives of the American people, especially in light of the fact that this just happened in Paris?”
RUBIO: “Well, first, you just ran clips from Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama that just boil my blood. No one — who is saying that we’re at war with Muslims? No one is saying that we’re at war with an entire religion. We’re helping the Kurds. They’re Muslims. We’re trying to empower Sunnis on the ground to defeat ISIS. They’re Muslims. We work very closely with Jordan and Egypt. They’re Muslims. We are at war with radical jihadists who are motivated by their interpretation of Islam. By the way, they consider Sunnis that don’t agree with them as heretics. They consider all Shia as heretics. They consider, obviously, Christians and Jews as heretics. We are in a civilizational struggle between these radical lunatics who are motivated by their interpretation of their faith and our values of liberty and freedom and the opportunity for all. And so —“
HANNITY: “So there is this conflict — there is this conflict of cultures. And I think you’re raising a good point. The DNC just came out with a new ad saying that equating Islam, all Muslims, with terrorists — and they actually quoted you in the ad and they quoted four of your fellow GOP candidates. Your quote was the same as theirs. We are at war with radical Islam. That is not saying all Muslims!”
RUBIO: “Right.”
HANNITY: “It contradicts their own ad, but that’s the false narrative, just like Republicans are racists, just like Republicans want to throw granny over the cliff.”
RUBIO: “Yes. So one of the arguments I’ve made consistently is that ISIS needs to be defeated by a ground force that’s made up primarily of Sunni Arabs because these are Sunni Arab territories that they’ve taken hold of. How is — we’re working with them to defeat them. You know, the Egyptian military is someone we need to be working more closely with. They’re a key part of the Camp David accord security arrangements. They’re Muslim. And they say that these guys are radical Islamists because that is what they are. And it is important to identify who they are and what they’re motivated by because if you don’t know what motivates — if you’re not going to acknowledge what motivates your adversary, then you can’t come up with a strategy to defeat them. They’re not motivated by wanting to govern Syria and Iraq, they want to dominate the world.”
HANNITY: “If the top security director in this country, our FBI director, assistant FBI director, Homeland Security chairman — if all these people are making the case that it’s likely that ISIS will infiltrate the refugee population, I go back to my original question. Why would this president gamble with American lives? Why would he possibly do that?”
RUBIO: “Well, I don’t understand. You’ll obviously have to ask him if you ever get a chance. I think, quite frankly, they’re very irresponsible and very incompetent on the work that they do. But on the Syrian point, on the refugee point, it’s not that America is saying, We don’t want any refugees. What we’re saying is you can’t come here as a refugee if we can’t vet you. And all I said is we are not going to be able to vet most of these people. Now, common sense still applies. If it’s a 6-year-old orphan, if it’s a 90-year-old senior citizen, if it’s a Chaldean priest from the Middle East, you can vet someone like that. That’s common sense. But if it’s someone we know nothing about there is no database — I don’t care how many databases they run these names against, there is no reliable database for to us to use to vet thousands of people coming from an unstable part of the world and where documents are often forged. And that’s the point we’ve made repeatedly, is we know that this — we know for a fact that ISIS is seeking to use the refugee crisis as a way to infiltrate fighters into foreign countries. How can we possibly ignore that?”
HANNITY: “All right, so if we look at the numbers — and we have 66 percent believe we are at war with radical Islamists, that’s a pretty significant number. Sixty-seven percent of Americans oppose the president’s refugee plan to bring Syrian refugees here. Sixty-five (sic) of Americans don’t think the president’s aggressive enough. There was a poll by the Center for Research and Policy Studies, 13 percent of Syrian refugees have at least a somewhat positive view of ISIS. Fifty percent of Democrats oppose the refugee crisis (sic) in the FOX poll. So my question is, how do Republicans stop this? I know he’s the commander-in-chief, but your — Congress has the power of the purse. Can it be stopped?”
RUBIO: “It can, and I think part of it is the funding mechanism that’s used. You’d hate to use that because it would impact all refugees if you did it that way. The other is, for example, the House has taken measures to make it stricter in terms of the vetting process. It would require the FBI director and other agency heads to personally attest —“ [crosstalk]
HANNITY: “What if they say, Based on what we know now? I don’t have a lot of faith in that language.”
RUBIO: “Yes, but you know what? They’re not even saying that. I mean, that’s one of the reasons why they oppose it. They’ve obviously said — the FBI director has said and others have said, Well, we can’t possibly do that. I mean, we can’t guarantee everybody. Well, that’s the problem. And my point that I’ve made is if you allow 10,000 people in and 9,999 of them are good people and one of them happens to be an ISIS killer, you have a problem. This is an issue in which you have to be 100 percent right because just to be wrong on one person would be enough to potentially trigger an attack within the United States.”