PETE HEGSETH: It appears [the White House] chose this mosque on purpose. For one of two reasons -- they have got to know, it has ties to a more extreme form of Islam or at least a more fundamentalist form. But it also could be that they say, we're not going to see those distinctions. This White House is saying, it doesn't matter, a mosque is a mosque, an imam is an imam. If they don't have direct ties to terrorism, then we're apart of showing that we're an inclusive country. Of course we are. I appreciate the president's desire and willingness to show, and Americans are pluralistic. They do embrace people of faith who do so in good faith. But in this particular case there are so many ties to political Islam, to the Muslim Brotherhood, to the desire to expand that funding extremist groups overseas. Imams who went out to other mosques that worked with radicals. It just sends all the wrong signals of the priorities for this White House.
ANNA KOOIMAN (CO-HOST): And quickly, is this an opportunity for the president to rally these groups and say let's make a distinction between radical Islam and normal Islam?
HEGSETH: It should be. It could be. But that's not what he's going to do. He's going to stand there and say, look at all these wonderful patriotic American Muslims who we should be embracing without looking at the political -- again, the political ideology behind so much of that. Which is driven by a supremacist ideology, tied to extremists around the globe, funding it, supporting it, preaching it and harboring some those extremists' ideologies.
