Tuesday on Fox News Channel’s “Fox News @ Night,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) praised President Donald Trump given a conversation he had with Trump shortly before the appearance about the apparent terrorist attack in New York City earlier in the day.

Graham explained Trump understood the country was in a “religious war” with regards to that attack and he lobbied Trump to treat the suspect as an enemy combatant.

“I talked to him before we came over,” Graham said. “The one thing I like about President Trump — he understands that we’re in a religious war. And to the American people, we’re fighting people that are compelled by their religious views to kill us all. They kill fellow Muslims who don’t agree with their view of Islam. They kill Christians, vegetarians, libertarians, Jews — you name it. So, we’re in a war, and for the last eight years, the Obama administration turned the war into a crime. So, I talked to the president tonight. He is right to make sure when somebody comes into the country from a place where radical Islam, and that’s the enemy, thrives, then we’re going to ask extra hard questions.”

“He’s also right to look at this as a war,” he continued. “The last thing that I want this guy to hear tonight is, ‘You have the right to a lawyer.’ The last thing he should hear is his Miranda rights. I’ve been a military lawyer for 33 years. There is enough evidence to believe that he qualifies as an enemy combatant under the law of war. He can be held by our intelligence community as long as necessary to find out did he act alone and was he part of a bigger plot? So, I hope that President Trump will break the cycle of turning war into a crime by declaring this guy a suspected enemy combatant, hold him under the law of war until we know exactly who he is and what he did.”

Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor