Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump confirmed Sunday that his ban on allowing Muslims into the U.S. has “morphed” into his new policy of “extreme vetting,” removing an explicit litmus test from his immigration platform.
“The Muslim ban is something that is in some form morphed into extreme vetting from certain areas of the world,” Trump said during the second presidential debate of 2016 when moderators noted how his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, has disavowed the religious test.
“We are going to areas like Syria, where they are coming in by the tens of thousands because Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton want to have a 550 percent increase of [refugees than under the policies of President] Obama. People are coming into our country, and we have no idea who they are, where they are from, what their feelings about our country is.”
The Democratic presidential nominee pushed back at that characterization, arguing her call for increasing the number of refugees entering America would not harm the country.
“I will not let anyone in this country who I think poses a risk to us, but there are a lot of refugees, women and children,” she said.
“There are children suffering int his catastrophic war [in Syria] largely because of Russian aggression, and we need to do our part.”