Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell would refuse to draft legislation barring non-American Muslims from entering the U.S. if a President Donald Trump asked him to do so.
The Kentucky Republican, who has distanced himself from Trump on issues like trade and the Iraq war, endorsed Trump last month and called on other GOP lawmakers to unite behind him.
Recommended Stories
But McConnell remains adamantly opposed to the presumptive Republican nominee’s call for a “total and complete” ban on foreign Muslims seeking to enter the U.S.
“What would you do if President Trump calls you up from the White House and says, ‘OK, Mitch, I need you to draft legislation to ban Muslims from entering the U.S.,’ which he has called for to happen?” CNN’s Jake Tapper asked the Kentucky senator during an interview Thursday afternoon.
“I’d say no,” McConnell responded. “I think that’s a really bad idea. Most Muslim-Americans are patriotic.”
McConnell has previously said such a ban would “prevent the president of Afghanistan from coming to the United States [or] that the king of Jordan couldn’t come to the United States.”
Nevertheless, he sees Trump as the lesser of two evils in a general election against Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, who could clinch her party’s nomination with a victory in California next week, and believes the candidate has made progress on proving his conservative credentials.
“One thing Trump did that I do like [is] he came up with a list of very qualified, credible nominees from which he would likely pick a Supreme Court vacancy,” McConnell told Tapper.
“I think that was reassuring,” he said.
