Washington Free Beacon managing editor Aaron MacLean compared the ways that presidential candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton have proposed to handle the Islamic State terror group.
Fox News’ Heather Childers laid out the two plans given by both candidates.
She said Trump’s plan includes tightening border control, suspendeing immigration from "countries that had a history of terrorism," increasing screening of immigrant candidates, and controlling the amount of future immigration.
Clinton’s plan includes comprehensive background checks for gun purchases, keeping assault rifles off the streets, and supporting law enforcement so they can build relationships with Muslim communities.
MacLean pointed out that each plan has parts that have confused experts but parts of the American public have seen favorably. He first discussed Clinton’s attachment to gun regulation.
"Hillary Clinton’s focus on gun control certainly has met with a lot of push back from folks," he said. "For example, the so-called no-fly/no-buy rule, right. If you’re on the terror watchlist, you can’t buy a weapon, [which] would not, for example, have stopped Omar Mateen who was briefly on it for about a year, I think, on an FBI watch list but was taken off of it well before the attack that he perpetrated with firearms."
He then said that Trump’s plan is different due to his concentration on the immigration aspect that Clinton’s plan lacks.
"Trump’s plan focuses certainly on immigration, something that plays very well in the Republican primaries, plays very well with his base," he said. "It’s met with a fair amount of resistance particularly on the question of the immigration ban, which has kind of undergone this torturous journey from originally it was a Muslim ban, then it was a ban from Muslim countries, and now I believe they’re phrasing it as a ban from countries with an established history of terrorism, which is sort of a nebulous category."
"And I think folks are kind of confused about how that’s going to work considering that he also wants to work with allies to defeat ISIS, but of course, some of those allies are the very countries that have a problem with terrorism," he added.
Fox News’ Abby Huntsman asked MacLean who had a better plan.
MacLean said that either plan would be harder on ISIS than President Obama’s.
"Well, I’ll tell you, I think both plans would probably take a tougher line on ISIS than President Obama has, which is an admittedly low bar," he said.
MacLean said that Clinton would probably take a more hawkish response to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad as opposed to Trump, who would likely cooperate with the Assad regime and the Russians.
"President Obama has decided to cooperate with the Russians and to tacitly lay off Bashar Al-Assad, despite the resistance of a lot of the United States national security community towards that approach and the resistance from a lot of his own advisers," he said.
MacLean said that even though there are certain parts of Trump’s plan that are "hard to pin down," the public could probably expect much more bombings than the current rate. This would also mean more aggressive air tactics.
He added that Trump would probably continue cooperation with the Assad regime and the Russians that Obama is pursuing.