Sen. Marco Rubio said during Saturday’s debate that he would visit a mosque, which comes days after hitting President Barack Obama for visiting a mosque this past week.
“I would, but that’s not the issue,” Rubio started. “My problem with what he did is he continues to put out this fiction that there’s widespread, systematic discrimination against Muslim-Americans.
“First of all, let’s recognize this: If you go to a national cemetery in this country, you will see Stars of Davids and crosses, but you also see crescent moons,” Rubio told ABC’s David Muir. “There are brave men and women who happen to be Muslim-Americans who are serving this country in uniform and who have died in the service of this country, and we recognize that and we honor that.”
However, Rubio turned the point to combating Islamic extremism, a point he makes often, having said earlier in the 2016 campaign that mosques and other locations should be monitored to eradicate the issue.
“By the same token, we face a very significant threat of homegrown violent extremism,” Rubio said. “We need to have strong, positive relationships in the Islamic communities in this country so they will identify and report this activity. Especially mosques, for example, that are participating not just in hate speech, but inciting violence and in taking acts against us.”
The Florida senator also pointed out the issue of religious discrimination against Christians in the U.S., telling Muir that there’s a reason President Obama is being sued by the Little Sisters of the Poor and not any Islamic groups from the U.S.
