Ken Cuccinelli says Afghan refugees are being brought to the United States in order to destroy the country
Cuccinelli and host David Brody also attack the Somali community in Minnesota and a Muslim community in Michigan
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From the September 16, 2021, edition of Real America's Voice's The Water Cooler
DAVID BRODY (HOST): Welcome back to The Water Cooler, everybody. The border crisis continues to worsen with every passing day that the Biden administration is in office. In fact, new drone footage from Fox News over the Del Rio Bridge in Texas shows just over 8000 thousand migrants waiting to be processed, which is twice as many as it was just yesterday. And yet radio silence from border czar Kamala. I want a T-shirt that says that. No, I don't. And to make matters worse, this, of course, also comes as we're allowing thousands of Afghan refugees into our country, leaving plenty of reason for the American people to be concerned about the vetting process of all of these folks. Well, let's get more on that now. Joining me to weigh in, former acting deputy secretary of the Department of Homeland Security and senior fellow at the Center for Renewing America. Take a breath, Ken Cuccinelli. Ken, thank you for joining me, sir.
KEN CUCCINELLI (SENIOR FELLOW, CENTER FOR RENEWING AMERICA): Good to be with you, David.
BRODY: Well, look, Ken, obviously, we can't process all these people properly. I mean, so what do you think is going to happen, given that it's unlikely the administration is going to intervene? What's happening here?
CUCCINELLI: So with respect to the Afghans, the raw numbers are overwhelming for the vetting process. Realize I think most people – I certainly do – want to see those Afghans who truly helped our troops come over to escape the Taliban because they're being hunted. The Biden administration, of course, completely botched getting those folks out. But those are people we know something about, we know a fair bit about. And so the vetting is a lot of the vetting already took place when they were hired. So that's easy. The challenge and the objection that I have. that Center for Renewing America has, and so many others is bringing in 90 percent of these folks who aren't American citizens, who aren't potential SIVs. And SIVs, for your viewers, is a visa designation, special immigrant visa for the folks who helped us over there in Afghanistan and in Iraq. In Iraq, there were four thousand cases of fraud and they're investigating another hundred thousand, which should tell you how difficult this vetting process is. And that's for people we already know something about; the other 90 percent that the Biden administration is bringing over, we know nothing about or very little. We may get a little something from their documents, but now we're relying on getting information from the Taliban as the host government. This is not a workable situation from a security vetting standpoint. And this is a population that starts out fairly radical on the jihadist scale. I mean, left of center, Pew Foundation Longitudinal Study, five years, they found that 99 percent of Afghans want to live under Sharia law and 61 percent of them believe that non-Muslims should have to live under Sharia law. Almost 40 percent thought that there were some occasions where suicide, murder, blowing yourself up in defense of Islam was acceptable. This is not consistent with our tolerance of other religions in the First Amendment. It is not consistent with our values in this country and it's not being vetted for – not being vetted.
BRODY: Well, then that's where I want to go with this, the vetting process. I mean, you know, the deal. I just look it up on the Internet. But I mean, I see it there. This takes, what, a couple of years? A year. I mean, this is a very long process. And this is not there's no way – the Biden administration says, oh, biometrics, we got it taken care of. Come on, does anybody really believe they're going through the full vetting process here?
CUCCINELLI: No.
So the typical process is about 18 to 24 months. There are 14 steps. And that assumes we're getting the information we need from all the sources. Again, with the Taliban now in control over there makes this more difficult. And over the last 15 years, since the SIV program was set up, we did about seven hundred and fifty a year and now we're going to do 50 or a hundred thousand people that we don't have any information on in literally a matter of weeks. It's not possible, David. It's not possible.
BRODY: No, for sure. I'm glad you gave us that perspective. Ken, when it comes to Afghan refugees, tens of thousands of them are being resettled, as we know, all over the country. In fact, we heard from Stephen Miller not long ago here on this show that there are even more than that coming. He said this is just the beginning. So why haven't we at least closed the border temporarily while we figure this all out? I know it's a bold move, especially from the Biden administration, but wouldn't that be the logical play?
CUCCINELLI: David, there you go. Thinking logically, no place in this administration.
BRODY: My bad.
CUCCINELLI: So but honestly, another way to look at it is just a consistent element of their open borders policy. It isn't just our southern border. It's come in from anywhere. We don't care who you are or how dangerous you are, come on in. It's only the Republicans who are the threat. It isn't people from other countries, some of whom may want to destroy our country. I mean, that is the attitude of this administration. It's reflected on the southern border, including in how they're not dealing with the COVID threat as it relates to the southern border. It's consistent with their massive open-door policy with respect to Afghan refugees. And there's a long history, by the way, of dealing with refugee flows in the region near their home. That is a universal international consensus that America, Joe Biden's administration, is abandoning here at the risk of our security.
BRODY: Yeah, for sure. And that's a whole nother can of worms, if you will, or at least another topic to discuss. But you mentioned politics. Oh, shocking. The politics is involved in this because one does have to wonder if there's a political motive here for the left when it comes to allowing refugees in. Look at Minnesota. I mean, Minneapolis, to be exact. The Ilhan Omar, very far left, a Muslim, pretty extreme views. She's a representative out there in Minneapolis, they're resettling 300 refugees out there. That doesn't sound like a lot, but my guess is it's still more than they're letting on. I mean, you just want to wonder about this stuff.
CUCCINELLI: Yeah. I mean, once these folks are let leave the military bases that they're being housed on, including right in my backyard here at Quantico military base, Marine Corps base, they can go wherever they want. And the Somali experience in Minnesota is not a good one for America. This is not a case of assimilation. This is a case of setting up a balkanized pocket within the United States. And, yes, we are a country of immigrants, but that presumes that we're a melting pot. If you refuse to melt in, and I would suggest that the data we have on the average Afghan suggests that's a possibility, a strong possibility, and we've seen it with the Somali community in Minnesota, then you shouldn't be immigrating here. More accurately, America shouldn't be letting you immigrate here.
BRODY: And there have been not only Minnesota, but I think of Dearborn, Michigan, as we know with what's going on for there with Rashida Tlaib. We know the situation – they're doing a call to prayer in Dearborn, Michigan. They've been doing that for a while. But here's the point. You have all of that and you do wonder where this is going, because judges, even you mentioned Sharia law at the top of our show or top of the segment here. I mean, there are some judges. You just look it up. It's legitimate stuff. I mean, they are ruling saying, look, Sharia law needs to weigh in here, not the US judicial system. I mean, what in the world? This is the concern of quite a few Americans, and the left, they don't care and they don't get it and they don't want to get it.
CUCCINELLI: Well, I don't know, I think this is part of their goal. They really want to atomize this country. They want to atomized families, heck, individuals. They want to treat you as having however many genders you want. They believe that kind of societal destruction and chaos works to the advantage of their political power. And I think that's true. But it also works to the destruction of us all in the not very long run. And that's the path they're on. And look, this reconciliation bill, David, has a massive amnesty component in it. And the last election bill they had, had a massive element of letting illegal aliens and non-citizens vote without penalty in federal elections. This is part of a comprehensive strategy on the left. This is not a one-off occurrence.
BRODY: Very interesting. I'm glad you tied it all together. Ken Cuccinelli, great to have you on the show.