Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS) responded to Rep. Peter King’s (R-NY) comments earlier that the U.S. should profile Muslims to bolster national security, saying that “I live in a part of the country where white supremacists happen to be terrorists. If we’re going to look at bad people, let’s look at all bad people and not target a specific group of people.”
King, who is a member of the House Homeland Security Committee, appeared on MSNBC earlier today and defended racial profiling, saying that “the fact of the matter right now is that 100% of the Islamic terrorists who are coming against us are Muslims.”
Thompson, who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, gave an interview to MSNBC soon after, and responded to King’s remarks: “Aggressive profiling should not target any one particular group. I live in a part of the country where white supremacists happen to be terrorists.”
“If we’re going to look at bad people, let’s look at all bad people and not target a specific group of people,” he said.
Thompson was also asked about King’s specific comment that “we’re just living in a politically correct world to say we should be screening a Scandinavian grandmother the same as we do a middle-eastern male.”
He said:
This Swedish grandmother could just as well be a part of a terrorist plot as anyone else. I think we have to be very careful when we try to target people. Again, when I tell you that I’m from a part of the country where African Americans were targeted by its government, that’s a real issue for me, so I want us to do it the right way. If we’re going to target bad people, if we’re going to target terrorists, then let’s do all of them,. And not say well we’re only gonna do people who look like this. That’s not the professional way to do it.
This is the second time Thompson has responded directly to King’s remarks on Flight 253, yesterday saying that King was “a little bit over the edge” on his comment that President Obama has underestimated the threat of Islamic terrorists.
