Dick Cheney says Donald Trump's Muslim ban 'goes against everything we stand for'

Dick Cheney.
(Image credit: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images)

It wasn't just Donald Trump's fellow presidential candidates speaking out against his proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States — the idea was also panned by former Vice President Dick Cheney.

"I think this whole notion that somehow we can just say no more Muslims, just ban a whole religion, goes against everything we stand for and believe in," Cheney told conservative radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt on Monday. "Religious freedom has been a very important part of our history and where we came from, a lot of people — my ancestors got here because they were Puritans." Cheney said it is important to "set up a vetting process" for refugees from Syria and other countries to make sure they don't "represent ISIS," but to solve the problem, the U.S. has "to look at why they're here, and they're here because of what's going on in the Middle East."

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Catherine Garcia, The Week US

Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.