Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., said he disagrees with Donald Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims from entering the United States, and said the best way to curb terrorist events in the U.S. is to work more closely with Muslim groups.
Trump, the presumed GOP nominee, renewed call his call a ban on Muslim immigration following Sunday’s terror attack at a gay nightclub in Florida. But Johnson argued that the root cause of terrorism is “Islamic terror groups,” he said in a Monday interview with Green Bay talk radio host Jerry Bader.
“The best way to prevent the homegrown-inspired attacks is literally positive engagement with Muslim communities,” added Johnson, who chairs the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee. “Making sure that any immigrant population that comes into America assimilates, becomes part of our culture. That has been our history, it has made us strong.”
The shooter in Sunday’s deadly attack, Omar Mateen, was born in New York, but his parents are from Afghanistan and he had allegedly pledged allegiance to multiple terror groups, including the Islamic State, during the shooting.
Johnson said the U.S. needs to commit to “eliminating” Islamic terror, which he called “a real and growing threat.” Specifically, the U.S. needs to “defeat the messenger.”
And on gun control, Johnson said there has to be “delicate balance” between “security and constitutional liberties.”
“I want to err on the side of constitutional liberty and freedom,” he said. “Take a look at what’s actually going to work. The people that are proposing banning assault weapons, well, first of all they’re already banned. Assault weapon is a fully automatic, those are already banned.”
“So they start talking about assault style. OK, what does that mean? Those can be hunting rifles,” he said. “All these proposals, I’ve always heard in terms of additional gun control. You stack up what they’re proposing against past instances, well, that wouldn’t have prevented the vast majority of those instances so what would the point other than reducing our constitutional liberties and freedoms.”
Johnson said in March he was open to joining Trump on the campaign trail, but then later said in May he will support but not endorse him as the nominee. Considered one of the most vulnerable GOP senators, he faces a tough reelection campaign against former U.S. Sen. Russ Feingold.
