During a January 30 appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT) criticized President Trump’s immigration suspension and said he would rather see a move toward “no screening” and the passage of more gun control.
Murphy claimed that the U.S. has ISIS “on its heels,” and the suspension of immigration from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Libya, Yemen, and Somalia will “[hand ISIS] a path to rebirth.”
Random House executive editor Jon Meacham was also on the program and asked Murphy, “Do you see any merit in the President’s action? What do you believe should be the security screening? What should be the vetting for immigrants coming in?”
Murphy responded by saying, “The four countries that were of origin for the 9/11 attackers, none of them are on this list,” and then quickly shifted to push “a discussion about a pathway in which there is absolutely no screening” for immigrants. He cited U.S./Europe agreements on the VISA waiver program as an example of U.S. entrance “without almost any security vet.”
He expounded:
So, I would go towards a sort of European bent in looking at screening. And then maybe let’s just make sure that if folks get to this country, and we suspect them of having connections to terrorism, that they shouldn’t be able to get an assault weapon. That’s a huge liability in our law today.
