A Trump administration will take on this fight and send a clear message to the Islamist terrorists: you may have fired the first shot, but rest assured, America will fire the last.
— Michael McCaul
Our adversaries no long fear us, and our enemies are plotting against us.
We've had to pull out of so many countries in Northern Africa.
I think the effective thing is, I passed this bill to combat violent extremism in the United States as effective outreach to the Muslim community, so you can pull the religious leaders really on to our team, if you will, to protect us from radicalization from within those communities.
The phenomena here is the foreign fighter threat, the revolving door from Europe to the region in Iraq and Syria and back through Turkey, back into Europe. And that's what happened in the Paris attackers.
It's one thing for someone to travel over to Syria and Iraq and come back. But, boy, it's a lot easier if they activate someone who's already here.
You can have the best technology, but you if have a corrupted, radicalized, bribed official that has access to the plane to put the bomb in the cargo, as what happened in Sharm el-Sheikh, that's a real problem.
It's a very angry electorate out there. I think Trump is tapping into that.
I would like to take a moment of silence to remember all those who lost their lives at the hands of ISIS, especially Americans James Foley, Steven Sotloff, and, most recently, Kayla Mueller.
We're trying to find needles in the haystack, and the needles are going dark, and it's because of this phenomenon we can't track their movements.
I can reveal today that the U.S. government has information to indicate that individuals tied to terrorist groups in Syria have already attempted to gain access to our country through the U.S. refugee program.
I was in Cairo, Egypt, where Sinai - ISIS conducted the Russian airliner downing. We're concerned about safety and security at these last point-of-departure airports flying directly into the United States - in that case, JFK.
Cairo has flights into JFK, and they're going to open another one at Dulles... As long as we have flights coming directly to the United States, I think it's putting Americans at risk.
You can have the best technology, but if you have an inside job of a worker that has access to the plane that's corrupted or bribed or radicalized, they can get a bomb on that aircraft and blow it up.
Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is the largest external operation force within al Qaeda.
Little wars start big wars.
I think drones are a good tool to go after high-valued targets.
What you're seeing is tension that we've seen for years between President Erdogan and his military, his military being more secular, President Erdogan being a little more in the Islamist side of the house.
I was a federal prosecutor when we exercised powers under the Patriot Act or under the FISA court.
I'm over here with the French counterterrorism experts talking about the 'Charlie Hebdo' case, how we can stop foreign fighters from coming out of Iraq and Syria to Europe, but then we have this phenomenon in the United States where they can be activated by the Internet, and, really, terrorism has gone viral.
In Europe, you have very different situation than you do in the United States. In Europe, it's very segregated. And you have the diasporas in Belgium that I saw. And they're being radicalized because they're not assimilated with the culture. I don't think we have that same situation in the United States.
200,000 ISIS tweets a day, 1,000 investigations in all 50 states. It's really hard to stop all of it. But we have to get control over this Internet propaganda that is poisoning the minds of the United States.
There's a conspiracy going on online every day between these top U.K. individuals within ISIS leadership out of Syria.
I would advise Donald Trump to try to bring and unify this party together.
I think it's important to note that after the airstrikes began in Iraq and Syria, ISIS began a very aggressive social media campaign calling for these types of attacks, these lone wolf attacks.
Delay is not our friend. Delay is our enemy.
We're dealing with an enemy now, ISIS, that has a very sophisticated social media program.
There's no national strategy to deal with combating terrorism and foreign fighters.
The head of ISIS called for attacks during the season of Ramadan, which is what you have seen both in Orlando and now in Istanbul at the airport.
That's what really concerns me about the modern-day terrorists that we face is this global expansion.
We pulled out of Libya. Now look what's happened: a safe haven, a vacuum, ISIS training militants to hit in Tunisia.
Yemen is one of the most dangerous spots in the world.
My number one objective continues to be to defund or delay the implementation of Obamacare. But as long as any piece of this law is standing, it needs to apply to all Americans equally, and that includes members of Congress and our staff.
I think a lot of programs, policies have been put in place since 9/11, have prevented a 9/11-style attack. On the other hand, I think the threat has become greater, not lesser.
I think there is a failure in foreign policy. And you have to acknowledge that under Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton was the architect of that foreign policy. Whether it was malevolent or not, I don't know.
We have a failed state in Syria.
One of the chapters outlined in my book talks about the Iranian influence with Venezuela, these terror flights that go back and forth that we don't manifests on, and then nuclear material smuggled across our unsecure southwest border from Mexico into the United States.
What I'm concerned about are two things. I think one that John Miller talked about, and that's the radicalization over the Internet that ISIS is very adept at doing. The other one is a foreign fighter threat.
Now we're dealing with a younger generation of terrorists that are very, very savvy with computer skills, very savvy over the Internet, and very savvy with social media of the likes that we have never seen before.
This is the new wave, the new generation of terrorism. It's gone viral. It's very dangerous, and it's very hard to stop.
I am speaking as a Republican now, not a national security expert, but I believe that my party needs to come together.
This policy of containment is not a winning strategy. We need a policy to defeat and destroy ISIS once and for all.
Do we want a back door in an iPhone where the government can go in to track movements if they have probable cause? I know the director of the FBI and local law enforcement want that capability.
I am extremely concerned that Syrian and ISIS recruiters can use the Internet at lightning speeds to recruit followers in the United States with thousands of followers in the United States and then activate them to do whatever they want to do.
Remember, the Boston bombers were Chechen rebels.
We want to do this methodically, smart, starting with border security then looking at immigration reform measures.
Libya is a failed state and becoming a launching pad for external operations, as is Sinai in Egypt.
Without - you know, good intelligence stops plots against the homeland. Without that intelligence, we cannot effectively stop it.
We worry a lot about ISIS traveling overseas from Syria to the United States, but I think one of the greatest fears are those already within the U.S. who are being radicalized and inspired by the ISIS propaganda that's out there on the Internet.
I would argue it should be a policy to defeat ISIS where they are, where they exist and prevent them from coming into the United States.
