On Thursday, Sen. Cory Booker grilled CIA director and secretary of state nominee Mike Pompeo about his alliances with prominent anti-Muslim activists, including the Center for Security Policy’s Frank Gaffney. In an interview with Fox News Radio’s Todd Starnes the next day, Gaffney wondered if Booker had pursued this line of questioning because he was scared of U.S. Muslim groups sending “violent guys as sorts of enforcers against him.
“Why is it that Democrats like Cory Booker are turning a blind eye to this, are they scared of the Islamic radicals?” Starnes asked.
“I think that’s operating,” Gaffney said. “I wouldn’t presume to speak to Sen. Booker, or anyone for that matter, but I think it’s not an accident, comrade, as they say, Todd, that you have in the background—and by the way, groups like CAIR and the Islamic Society of North America, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, and the Muslim-American Society, and on and on, these groups are adept at kind of pointing to those violent guys as sorts of enforcers, you know? So I think that probably is operating.”
Gaffney also speculated that Booker could have been influenced by “some very formidable Muslim Brotherhood and jihadist-sympathizing Sharia supremacist communities in his constituency” or could have just generally been part of the left having decided “to throw in with these folks.”
