Fox News "Hannity" - Transcript: Proposed Muslim ban violates the Constitution
Interview
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HANNITY: Joining us with reaction, 2016 Republican presidential candidate Florida senator Marco Rubio. You continue to rise in the polls, Senator. A big congratulations to you.
We have General John Allen. We have James Comey, our FBI director, our assistant FBI director, the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, Mike McCaul, who will join us later, director of national intelligence James Clapper, many, many others saying that we cannot possibly vet and have assurance that those Syrian refugees in this particular case can be fully vetted.
Why would we gamble with the lives of the American people and allow them in?
SEN. MARCO RUBIO, R-FLA., PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Well, what I've said repeatedly is not that we don't want to allow refugees, it's that you can't allow someone you can't fully vet. And as you heard in one of the statements -- I couldn't see who it was, but they it's not a lack of process. It's a lack of information.
You can vet them a million times and nothing's going to turn up because we don't have reliable databases from people coming from -- especially Syria.
And then we face another distinct challenge, and that is American citizens, people that have lived in this country their entire life, as we saw this week in San Bernardino, who become radicalized on line, through overseas travel, whatever it may be, and then they conduct an atrocious act of terror
HANNITY: But the woman in that case
RUBIO: ... and war against our country.
HANNITY: She grew up in Saudi Arabia and she had a Pakistani passport.
RUBIO: Right.
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RUBIO: Well, but her husband was a U.S. citizen in this country.
HANNITY: You're right.
RUBIO: My point being is that we have a homegrown violent extremist problem, as well. They are two distinct but serious problems. One is people coming from abroad, and the other is increasingly ISIS propaganda that is radicalizing people here at home. And we have to deal with both of them.
HANNITY: We talked to Mr. Trump, saying that he has a habit of making offensive and outrageous comments. It sounds like, unless we can properly vet, in the case of Syrian refugees, you kind of agree with him. In other words, if we can't have a
RUBIO: No, well
HANNITY: If we don't have assurances from our intelligence officials, would you be comfortable letting them in?
RUBIO: Well, it depends on who they are, But it wouldn't be a religious test. Look, the king of Saudi Arabia, a strong ally of the United States -- his son attends Georgetown University. So he's not going to be allowed in? And what is that going to do to our relations with an important ally in the region?
My point is that -- it's not constitutional, to begin with. I mean, that sort of blanket denial of entry into the country -- and he even implied U.S. citizens who traveled abroad who are Muslim would not be allowed to come back in
HANNITY: No, no.
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HANNITY: I didn't hear him say anything about American citizens. I would agree with you, constitutionally, there's a great distinction. If you're an American, you should be allowed back in. But there's no constitutional right for a foreigner to get into this country. We make those laws.
RUBIO: There isn't. There isn't. But we've never had a religious test. And I would just say to you to have a religious test would violate the Constitution. But to move further on this issue, it's not that we're banning people because of their faith, but we need to work with Muslims in the Middle East, Sunnis. Sunnis need to defeat this radical Sunni group.
The issue is, can we properly vet people coming into this country? If you cannot properly vet someone, whether they're Muslim or not, they shouldn't be allowed into the United States, irrespective of what their faith background might be. You have to be able to properly vet everyone
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RUBIO: ... we're facing a threat
HANNITY: And if we can't vet them, would it be a good idea to put in place a pause until we can vet them and not gamble with the lives of the American people?
RUBIO: Well -- but I think that's functionally what we have, hopefully, going to happen. And that is not a pause because of a religious test but a pause because we can't vet people. Even if we tried to, we don't have enough information from that region to vet anyone. It's not because of their religion, it's because we don't have information about the region.
HANNITY: If you don't have information, you're not willing to let them in and gamble with the lives of the American people. And I agree with you on that.
RUBIO: Right. And so this is a -- what people have to accept is that this is a threat unlike anything we've ever faced before, and it requires us to do things such as this, at least until we understand and improve our databases, which, quite frankly, may not happen any time in the foreseeable future because ISIS has grown increasingly capable at eluding the kind of things that detect potential terrorists.
HANNITY: Let me ask you a tougher question. And I worry about the following. If you grow up in a country -- and I'll put up on a screen in the minute, you know, the sharia law in Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates and Sudan. I'll put it up in a second.
But their values are the antithesis of our constitutional republic. So for example, if somebody grows up in Saudi Arabia -- we'll start with them -- where women can't drive and they need a male guardian's permission to travel or work or where marital rape is not even recognized and women are expected to cover themselves and men tell them how to dress -- those values, if you grow up in that society, or if you grow up in Bahrain, where a woman's testimony is worth half that of her man's, or in Lebanon, marital rape is not punished, there's no laws against sexual harassment in the workplace -- if you grow up in that culture, how do we know, if you want to come to America, that you want to assimilate, adopt American values, or if you want to bring those values that you grew up under with you?
How do we -- should we be able to ascertain that?
RUBIO: Yes, and that's a more fundamental question and it's an important question. And that is, are people coming to live in America or are they coming to become Americans? And there are people that live in those countries that are coming here to get away from that. They reject that ideology.
HANNITY: I agree.
RUBIO: They reject that lifestyle, and
HANNITY: But how do we determine who's who?
RUBIO: ... they want to live in a country -- that's a hard thing to do. I mean, I admit that that's a much more difficult thing to do. And we're going to have to explore that. This is -- again, this is a new problem we've faced just in the last few years, where we used to be worried about people coming from abroad, but now in addition to that, we face people that are being radicalized here at home, as well.
And so this is a complex issue and it requires us to treat it seriously and to acknowledge that it is certain interpretation of the Muslim faith that is leading groups like ISIS to do what they're doing.
HANNITY: Let me play for you -- Ami Horowitz (ph) in May of last year actually went to Minneapolis and asked some residents, some Muslim residents, what they thought about -- what they wanted for the law of the land in America. And I want to play it for you and get your reaction to it.
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HANNITY: But my question, Senator, is I know that European countries have struggled with this question -- no-go zones, sharia courts and attempts to separate, et cetera. Do you worry about that when you hear those answers from American Muslims?
RUBIO: Well, of course. I mean, when you hear those answers from anyone, you would be concerned about someone who is saying that they want to impose on this country and on local jurisdictions religious tests and religious laws that are held in other countries around the world. You would be concerned.
And again, the purpose of our permanent immigration system should be to attract people to this country who are coming to become Americans, which is one of the reasons why I've argued that we need to move towards a merit- based system of immigration
HANNITY: Yes.
RUBIO: ... where the primary criteria that we would use to admit someone to the country would be what job are they going to fill, what skills do they have, for what economic purpose are they coming to the United States?
It isn't going to solve all these problems. This is a very unique situation that we're now facing that's really begun to accelerate over the last few years. And I think we need to think about it very seriously and very responsibly in a way that can pass both constitutional muster but also keep our country safe.
HANNITY: All right, Senator, always good to see you. Appreciate it. Congratulations on your poll numbers.
RUBIO: Thanks, Sean.
HANNITY: It seems to be a three-way race right now, you, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. So it's getting interesting. Thank you.
RUBIO: Thank you.
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