President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for chief of staff, Reince Priebus, said that Trump will “suspend” immigration from countries in which “systematic terrorism is taking place.” While electioneering on December 7, 2015, Trump called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”
In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Priebus was asked if Trump’s position is as his selection for national security adviser, General Michael Flynn, wrote on Twitter in February “fear of Muslims is rational.”
Priebus responded that while Flynn’s words were “not a blanket statement for everyone, there are radical members of that religion that need to be dealt with.” He said that Trump’s policy was that “where systematic terrorism is taking place, where countries… are harboring and training terrorists, we’re going to temporarily suspend immigration from that country or region until a better vetting system is put in place.”
Priebus added “that there are some people within that particular religion that we do fear,” but a Trump administration does not “believe in religious tests” or “blanketly judging an entire religion.”