Homeland Security Committee chief: 'Inflammatory' rhetoric helps ISIS

Michael McCaul
(Image credit: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

As politicians amp up their rhetoric and criticisms of ISIS in light of the recent terror attacks in Paris and the ISIS-inspired shooting of 14 people in San Bernardino, California, Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas), who serves as the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, is warning against going overboard.

"Any time somebody is making inflammatory statements about Muslims or whatever, [ISIS] can take that and use it to their advantage for recruiting purposes," McCaul said Wednesday. McCaul mentioned that he sees terrorists using clips of incendiary remarks from American politicians to bolster ISIS's numbers. "They take things like this and they spin it," he said, "to inflame the Muslim world, to get more recruits to join the cause to fight in Syria."

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Bonnie Kristian

Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.