Rand Paul appeared on Mark Levin’s radio show Tuesday evening to share his thoughts on the refugee crisis and the lack of vetting of Muslim refugees arriving in America. The conservative senator had some other things to say, especially about Marco Rubio.
Rubio has always supported an open-borders policy and was part of the Gang of 8, the group of senators that tried to pass amnesty for illegal aliens and would have opened the floodgates to Islamic refugees. Last week Senator Ted Cruz blasted Rubio, saying the Floridian had voted against every single amendment conservatives put forth to the Gang of 8 bill.
On Tuesday, Rand Paul repeated that claim, adding that Rubio’s past positions prove he’s not a conservative. First, Paul explained the thought behind his own proposed legislation, which builds on legislation he proposed two years ago:
You know, I became very concerned in a very personal way because we’ve admitted about 70,000 Iraqis into this country, and two of them showed up in my hometown Bowling Green, Kentucky, and decided they would buy stinger missiles. And we caught them, fortunately. But as we were investigating it we found out that one of them, his fingerprints were on a bomb fragment, and the vetting process didn’t work.
And so I became concerned that we were admitting people to a refugee status that might harm us, and I just didn’t think we were capable of knowing who is visiting the country.
Before long, however, Paul realized his plans to prevent extremists from entering the country under the guise of “refugee” would come to nothing. The reason? The Gang of 8, and specifically Marco Rubio:
So when the immigration bill came forward I said, “you know what, we’ve got to try to stop this.” So I put special language in my amendment, Trust But Verify, that said that students coming to visit us and refugees would have to go through some special scrutiny if they were coming from certain countries. There’s about thirty of them that have significant radical jihadist movements.
And I put it forward and I thought it would have a good chance. I talked to Marco Rubio about it and I thought, “good, he’s supposed to be a conservative, perhaps he’ll listen to me.” But what I didn’t realize is that Marco Rubio and Chuck Schumer had a secret deal. And their deal was: no amendments from conservatives.
Rand continued:
I did it in a conservative fashion. But the Gang of 8 voted in lockstep against any amendments proposed by conservatives. So I put this forward, I think it was a national security amendment. I was trying to protect our country from people who’d come in here without sufficient scrutiny and attack us. And this was a big deal because I’m having the same discussion with Marco now: how do we best protect our country?
But if you aren’t willing to have adequate screening for those who would come to our country, including refugees — you know, some significant, prominent examples of them trying to attack us and have attacked us — I just don’t think that’s a conservative notion.
And then came the kicker:
I still don’t understand why Marco’s allegiance was more to Chuck Schumer than it was to conservatives.
Ironically, Rubio had opened the attack on Texas Senator Ted Cruz by accusing him of playing fast and loose with national security because he opposed giving the NSA unlimited access to Americans’ phone calls. It’s a rather odd accusation, considering that none of the recent attacks and threats had anything to do with this program. There’s literally nobody inside any Western government who says the Paris attacks were caused by a lack of intelligence-gathering abilities of the NSA.
No, the problem is that it’s impossible for any agency to adequately screen refugees.
When Rand Paul tried to do something about that, Rubio opposed it. The question must therefore be asked: who’s truly playing fast and loose with national security? Ted Cruz and Rand Paul, who believe refugees have to be screened and — until such time as it’s possible to do so — demand a stop to mass immigration from Syria?
Or Marco Rubio, who’s one of the Senate’s most passionate supporters of unlimited immigration?
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