On Monday morning, the day after armed attackers struck a mosque in stringently gun-controlled Quebec, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman told CNN’s Chris Cuomo that President Trump should forget the immigration suspension and pass gun control if he really wants to keep Americans safe.
Friedman’s comments came hours after the 23rd Screen Actors Guild awards turned into a hug- and tearfest where the Hollywood Reporter quoted actors such as Ashton Kutcher declaring himself a “citizen of the world” and SAG viewers saying that people from all nations are welcome in U.S.
In a similar tone, Friedman told CNN’s Cuomo that there are “65 million migrants and refugees on the road today.” He suggested they are fleeing collapsing countries and said one would expect a U.S President “to get his Commerce Department to weigh in on … the commercial implications.” He added that one would also expect “his secretary of state to weigh in on what are diplomatic implications [and] his secretary of defense to weigh in on the strategic implications” before putting any immigration suspension into place. Friedman then criticized Trump, saying he “trucked in fear on many fronts” and then “quickly” issued the immigration suspension as a way to “show his supporters that he was living up to his [campaign] promise.”
Friedman went on to give numerous reasons why he opposes a suspension intended to slow immigration from countries that are hotbeds for terrorism.
Alisyn Camerata said, “This is a very aggressive solution to a problem that doesn’t exist.”
Friedman concurred, then claimed that refugees from the seven countries targeted by Trump–Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia–have not committed acts of terror in the U.S. and that if Trump is really worried about security, he should look to more gun control instead.
He said:
You know what would actually make me feel more secure as an American is if someone who is on our own terror watch list in America–so much so that they cannot board an airplane in this country without being checked–couldn’t buy an “assault weapon.” … That would actually make me feel better.
Friedman suggested the pursuit of an immigration suspension, instead of gun control tied to terror watch lists, proves the whole push is “fraudulent.”
Friedman did not mention that the San Bernardino terror attackers who killed 14 innocents on December 2, 2015, were not on the terror watch list. The Orlando Pulse attacker who killed 49 innocents on June 12, 2016, was not on the terror watch list, either. However, CNN reports that Senator Ted Kennedy’s (D-Mass.) name was inadvertently added to a related list for a time, as was Representative John Lewis’ (D-GA) name. Such imprecision drove The Huffington Post to mock the idea of using the list as a gun control tool.
AWR Hawkins is the Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and host of “Bullets with AWR Hawkins,” a Breitbart News podcast. He is also the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him directly at awrhawkins@breitbart.com.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.