McCaul: When you vote, ask yourself if you feel safer
When you vote, ask yourself if you feel safer Washington Examiner <img height=”1″ width=”1″ style=”display:none” src=”https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=224132...″ />
By Cassi Pollock • 7/3/16 12:01 AM
McCaul: When you vote, ask yourself if you feel safer | Washington Examiner <img height=”1″ width=”1″ style=”display:none” src=”https://www.facebook.com/tr?id=224132...″ />
Citing the attacks in San Bernardino, Calif., and Orlando, Fla., Rep. Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, said the threat isn’t going away. (Graeme Jennings/Washington Examiner)
Citing the attacks in San Bernardino, Calif., and Orlando, Fla., Rep. Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican, said the threat isn’t going away. (Graeme Jennings/Washington Examiner)
McCaul: When you vote, ask yourself if you feel safer
By Cassi Pollock • 7/3/16 12:01 AM
Rep. Michael McCaul, a Texas Republican who came to Washington in 2005 and rose to chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee in 2013, believes Americans will be asking a simple question before they vote this year.
“Do you feel safer than you did before?” McCaul told the Washington Examiner. “Most people would say, ‘No, I don’t.'”
America’s national security has fallen behind significantly since President Obama took office, said McCaul, who previously served as Texas’ deputy attorney general and as the U.S. attorney general’s chief of counterterrorism and national security.
Citing the attacks in San Bernardino, Calif., and Orlando, Fla., McCaul said the threat isn’t going away. “I wish it would, but it’s not going away in my lifetime. I just hope it goes away in my children’s lifetime.”
Subscribe today to get intelligence and analysis on defense and national security issues in your Inbox each weekday morning from veteran journalists Jamie McIntyre and Jacqueline Klimas.
Though he said that prospect should deter Americans from voting for Hillary Clinton in the presidential election this fall, he also has yet to endorse Donald Trump, who McCaul said will need guidance on national security and foreign affairs. “I don’t think that’s his particular strength right now, but I think it can be with the right team around him,” McCaul said.
He also voiced frustration with Cuba, which in June denied visa applications from McCaul and several other lawmakers who were seeking to inspect suspected lackluster security at the country’s airports. The island nation, which sits 90 miles off the coast of Florida, is set to begin sending 110 daily flights into the U.S. this fall.
“This whole let’s open Cuba up to everybody — well, they just denied the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee access to Cuba,” McCaul said.
Washington Examiner: The president has been pushing for gun control in the wake of the Orlando shooting. If you were president, what would have been your response to Orlando?
McCaul: First, I would have acknowledged what it was, and that’s the impact of radical Islamist extremism in the United States and the threat that’s very real to Americans. The president did the right thing by going to Orlando personally and grieving with the victims. That was probably the deadliest attack since 9/11.
