Repbulican presidential candidate Lindsey Graham said that the lesson of three Americans stopping a Moroccan man on a train in France meant that “the whole world is a battlefield. Radical Islam is everywhere.”
Fox News Sunday host Tucker Carlson asked the South Carolina senator about three Americans who disarmed a man on a train who likely intended to shoot multiple people on board. “This guy was floating around Europe like other people like him. Is there a lesson here about immigration policy? Europe has a lot of people like this. What should we learn from it?”
In response, Graham said, “[It’s] not so much about immigration policy as that terrorism is on the rise. Western passport holders that go to Syria and come back to Europe and eventually the United States to attack us. So what I would do as president is I would hit them in Syria. If this war goes on much longer in Syria, it’s going to be a perfect platform to hit us here at home. These people with Western passports can go to Europe and eventually go to America.”
“I hope they will be eligible for a purple heart,” he said, referring to the three Americans, one of whom suffered non-life-threatening injuries. One of the Americans serves in the Air Force and another is a National Guardsman. The third is a California college student.
But then Graham quickly pivoted to his long-running strategy of pushing America to pursue wars on multiple fronts. “Here is my theory, Tucker: The whole world is a battlefield. Radical islam is everywhere. It’s not about Iraq or Afghanistan. I hope we will recognize that the battlefield is the entire world, even on a train in France.”
“Radical Islam is the enemy of mankind, our nation,” he concluded.