Rubio: Trump’s Muslim ban comments a distraction

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) said in an interview broadcast early Sunday that fellow GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump’s call to ban Muslim travel into the U.S. was a distraction in the wake of the deadly attack in San Bernardino, Calif.

{mosads}“If you look at the statements he made this week, obviously I think he made them partially to recapture the limelight after having lost it,” Rubio said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

“And I do think we lost some of the focus on the attacks in San Bernardino and focused on a plan that isn’t really a plan and is never going to happen,” he added.

Rubio said, however, that Trump “touched on some issues that people are concerned about.”

“He is reminding us in that process that people are really upset and they’re really scared,” Rubio said. “And they’re worried.”

“Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on,” Trump’s campaign said in a press release last Monday.

Rubio said in the NBC interview on Sunday that a Muslim travel ban is “not going to happen.”

“I think it violates a lot of the things that we think about our country,” he said. “But also, the practical reality that in order for us to identify homegrown violent extremism and prevent it or root it out before it takes action, we are going to need the cooperation of Muslim communities in this country.”

“And the other part is that there is a narrative that ISIS and other jihadists pose that this is a war between Muslims and the rest of the world,” Rubio added. “And that sort of victimization narrative is something we shouldn’t contribute to. On the other hand, we have to acknowledge that there is a radical element in Islam, jihadism, that needs to be called by name and needs to be confronted.”

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