Priebus: 'I'm not going to rule out anything, but we're not going to have a registry based on a religion'

(Image credit: ABC/Screenshot)

published 20 November 2016

Incoming White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus addressed in an interview Sunday confusion over whether President-elect Donald Trump is serious about creating a national registry of Muslims (or perhaps just Muslim immigrants) as he proposed on the campaign trail.

"Look, I'm not going to rule out anything, but we're not going to have a registry based on a religion," Priebus said while speaking with NBC's Chuck Todd. He continued:

"But what I think what we're trying to do is say that there are some people — certainly not all people — but there are some people that are radicalized. And there are some people that have to be prevented from coming into this country. And Donald Trump's position, President Trump's position, is consistent with bills in the House and the Senate that say the following: If you want to come from a place or an area around the world that harbors and trains terrorists, we have to temporarily suspend that operation until a better vetting system is put in place." [Priebus, via NBC]

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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.