Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said on “The O’Reilly Factor” Tuesday night that the thousands of refugees fleeing Syria were an “unbelievable humanitarian problem” and that the United States has to let them into the country.
“I wonder, you know, where all these people are coming from exactly, and what they’re representing. Do you have people from ISIS in that group?” Trump told Fox News host Bill O’Reilly. “There’s a lot of security risk with it. But something has to be done. It’s an unbelievable humanitarian problem.”
Trump launched his campaign earlier this year with a hardline stance on immigration, going as far as to describe Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug runners. But more recently, as TPM reported this week, he has softened his tone on the issue.
On Tuesday night, O’Reilly asked Trump if he objected to thousands of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa coming to the United States.
“I hate the concept of it, but on a humanitarian basis, with what’s happening you have to,” Trump said.
“This was started by President Obama when he didn’t go in and do the job he should have when he drew the line in the sand, which turned out to be a very artificial line,” Trump continued in the interview. “But you know, it’s living in hell in Syria. There’s no question about it. They’re living in hell, and something has to be done.”
Watch some of the interview:
Of course it’s Obama’s fault. Everything in the region was flowers and rainbow before that soft-on-terror Obama was elected to destroy all of our good Bush/Cheney work in the Middle East.
Edit: And Trump’s soft on Syrian refugees will make his foam at the mouth anti-immigrant supporters heads explode.
Oh, the region was a paradise after the British and French carved it up and brought the light of Western Civilization to those poor benighted sods living in the region [sarcasm mode off].
Nailed it. Doesn’t The Chump know that these people are kinda brownish? Not to mention mooslim?
I see we’ve reached the part of the episode where he begins to derail his primary campaign. He’s not actually completely aligned with the Teatroll base, just using them and their fear, rage and energy. He’ll eventually tell us what he thinks, not what they want to hear, one too many times. It’s really just a matter of whether he crosses their tolerance threshold…as low as we know it to be…or stays in their blind spots…as huge as we know them to be…by the time the primary vote rolls around.
Like all of those folks coming in from Central America weren’t in a living hell. See any parallels there Donald?