Former secretary of state John Kerry did not mince words appearing on NBC’s “Meet the Press” Sunday morning just hours after the latest terror attack to hit England.
Kerry told NBC News moderator Chuck Todd that a Muslim travel ban — as demanded in a series of tweets by President Trump Saturday night after the London attacks that killed seven people — would be “cannon fodder to the recruiters.”
Kerry said that Britain has “had a longstanding problem with respect to greater levels of alienation, a harder time assimilating into the broader British society, a lack of similar opportunity … I’m going to leave it to her [Prime Minister Theresa May] and to them to sort that out, particularly five days before an election.
He went on to say that the “travel ban will be cannon fodder to the recruiters. It’s the worst thing we could do. But we do need to do and we do extraordinary screening.”
As for Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord last week, Kerry said that the president trying to find a better deal is “like O.J. Simpson saying he’s going to go out and find the real killer.”
EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt was also a guest on Sunday’s show, telling Todd that “the rest of the world applauded” the Paris climate accord “because it put us at an economic disadvantage.” The decision of the United States to withdraw from the agreement “was not a political decision.”
Seven people were killed and more than 40 injured in linked attacks in London Saturday night, the third deadly terror incident to strike the U.K. in the last three months.
Three men, who had used a white van to strike pedestrians on London Bridge and then attacked passers-by with knives at shops and restaurants in nearby Borough Market, were shot dead by police within eight minutes, according to the BBC.
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