Graham rips Trump, Obama, Clinton on Orlando response

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) on Tuesday laced in into Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama for their responses to the Orlando, Florida, terrorist attack, dismissing the presumptive Republican nominee's blanket rhetoric against Muslims and the White House's prescription for tougher gun restrictions.

The gunman who perpetrated the worst attack on U.S. soil since 9/11 was born in the New York City borough of Queens, Graham said, musing on Fox News' "America's Newsroom" that if "Mr. Trump's idea that we're going to win the war against radical Islam by banning all Muslims, I guess now American citizens, Muslims, makes it harder to win the war."


"I've been to Iraq and Afghanistan 37 times. Most Muslims are not buying what radical Islam is selling. It is our job to partner with people in the faith like the king of Jordan, the president of Egypt to destroy radical Islam over there before it comes here," Graham added.

Gun control, which Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson suggested Tuesday is "part and parcel" of protecting the country from terrorism, "doesn't win the war against radical Islam," Graham said. "And banning the entire faith from America makes it easier for the enemy to recruit," he said.

Neither Trump nor Clinton have a plan to "win a war that we can't afford to lose," he continued, "and President Obama has been a pathetically weak commander in chief when it comes to engaging radical Islam, always marginalizing it, not dealing with it."

"Here's my suggestion to the American people. The FBI stopped following this man because they couldn't prove a crime. They should have followed him as long as necessary to gather intelligence to see if he was sympathetic to the enemy and would one day do what he did. Obama has turned the war into a crime," Graham said. "I'm not fighting a crime, I'm fighting a war. And if we find an American citizen associated with suicide bombers and expressing allegiance and sympathies to radical Islam in any form, we should follow them for intelligence-gathering purposes to protect our country. I'm not trying to fight a crime, I'm trying to prevent attacks as part of a war. This is what Obama doesn't understand, this is what Clinton doesn't understand."