In wake of Nice attack, Newt Gingrich calls for testing Muslims in the U.S.
Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump, and Newt Gingrich had three different responses to Thursday's deadly truck attack in Nice, France, which left 84 people dead.
Officials have not officially released any information on the suspect, but Gingrich, a former speaker of the House and one of Donald Trump's potential running mates, said in the wake of the attack, the U.S. should test every Muslim in the country. "Let me be as blunt and direct as I can be," he told Fox News host Sean Hannity. "Western civilization is at war. We should frankly test every person here who is of a Muslim background and if they believe in sharia, they should be deported. Sharia is incompatible with Western civilization. Modern Muslims, who have given up sharia, glad to have them as citizens." He also believes anyone who visits a website "favoring ISIS or al Qaeda" should be charged with a felony.
Trump told Fox News host Bill O'Reilly it would "be just fine" for NATO troops to launch a ground war offensive against terrorist targets, and said if president, he would seek a formal declaration of military action from Congress. "This is war," he said. "If you look at it, this is war. Coming from all different parts. … We're dealing with people without uniforms. In the old days, we would have uniforms. You would know who you're fighting."
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Hillary Clinton told CNN it is "clear we are at war with these terrorist groups and what they represent," but it is a "different kind of war and we need to be smart about how we wage it and win it." Clinton elaborated that the U.S. is "at war against radical jihadists who use Islam to recruit and radicalize others in order to pursue their evil agenda. It is not so important what we call these people as what we do about them." The Islamic State wold "love to draw the United States into a ground war in Syria," she continued. "They actually think the end times would be hastened if we had some confrontation in that region. So we've got to be smart about this, not get pushed or pulled into taking action that doesn't have the positive effect it needs to have."
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Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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