The national spokesperson for Donald Trump's presidential campaign seemingly saw no difference between law-abiding Muslims and the "insurgents" Trump purports to want to keep out of the US with his proposed ban on Muslim immigration in a heated discussion with CNN's S.E. Cupp on Tuesday.
"No one's talking about allowing insurgents," Cupp said to Katrina Pierson. "You're talking about not allowing regular Muslims. That's what you're talking about. No one's talking about insurgents."
"Yes, from Arab nations," Pierson responded. "You know what? So what? They're Muslim."
"So what?" Cupp asked. "That's not the nation we live in, Katrina."
"But it is, S.E.," Pierson countered. "Simply because you have people coming across through the refugee system and the visa system -- including the woman that came in San Bernardino on a visa system, as well as some of the 9/11 hijackers. We have to put a pause to figure out how we could better vet these people."
Trump's proposal has garnered criticism from both Democrats and other Republicans, while Cupp called it "dumb" for being impossible to enforce.
"It just doesn't make a lot of sense. I also think it gives ISIS exactly what it wants, which makes us less safe," she said. "I also think it's pretty morally repulsive, and I think it's unconstitutional and unAmerican. And I don't see a shred of what Donald Trump is suggesting that is conservative by nature at all. So I'm not really sure what his supporters are turned on by here."
Pierson, however, dismissed House Speaker Paul Ryan's (R-WI) statement earlier in the day that Trump's proposal "is not conservatism."
"Speaker Ryan and the rest of the establishment haven't really been pushing Republican values to begin with," she said.
Watch the discussion, as aired on Tuesday, below.
