A Trump supporter and retired Navy SEAL earned a scolding from Fox News’ Megyn Kelly on Wednesday when he brought up the subject of internment camps while making the case for a national registry of Muslims.
During an interview with Kelly, Carl Higbie mentioned the camps that imprisoned Japanese-Americans during World War II as precedent for a registry.
“It is legal, they say it will hold constitutional muster. I know the ACLU is going to challenge it, but I think it will pass,” Higbie told the Fox News host.
“And we’ve done it with Iran back — back a while ago, we did it during World War II with Japanese, which, call it what you will, it may be wrong …”
At that point, Kelly jumped in and asked: “Come on, you’re not proposing we go back to the days of internment camps, I hope. You know better than to suggest that, that’s the kind of thing that gets people scared, Carl.”
Higbie said he was not at all in favor of camps.
“Look, the president needs to protect America first, and if that means having people that are not protected under our Constitution have some sort of registry so we can understand, until we can identify the true threat and where it’s coming from, I support it,” he said.
The conversation was in response to Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach saying in an interview with Reuters that Trump’a advisers have discussed drafting a proposal to reinstate a registry for immigrants from Muslim countries.
Earlier on Wednesday, a publicist had offered reporters the chance to interview Higbie about Trump adviser Steve Bannon, to try to counter negative stories about Bannon. The publicist would not tell TheWrap who she worked for, but denied working for Bannon.
Here’s the video:
Trump surrogates are already citing Japanese internment camps from WW II as "precedent" for Muslim registry pic.twitter.com/DVnjtom0mc
— Brendan Karet (@bad_takes) November 17, 2016