Betsy McCaughey, a surrogate for Donald Trump's presidential campaign, suggested World War II-style internment camps for Muslim refugees on Tuesday because she said that American women were being exposed to "gang rapes."
Echoing a line from Trump's Monday speech on terrorism, McCaughey told CNN host Alisyn Camerota that Hillary Clinton "appears to want to be the Angela Merkel of the United States bringing in over 600,000 refugees" from Syria.
Although Camerota pointed out that McCaughey's statement was not true, the Trump supporter ignored her and continued.
"Let me tell you what the danger is," she said. "Number one, rape. When you look at what's happening across Europe, women and young girls are being gang raped by Syrian and Muslim refugees who claimed it was because these women were scantily dressed."
"What's your source?" Camerota wondered.
"It's in the European papers, gang rapes of women in Germany and Switzerland and Sweden," McCaughey insisted. "It's well known there and well documented."
(In fact, the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention victim survey shows that the number of sex crimes is virtually unchanged since 2005.
Over a hundred women did report sexual assaults in the German city of Cologne on New Year's Eve, which was widely blamed on an influx of refugees. But one high-profile gang rape cased blamed on Muslim men earlier this year turned out to be a fabrication.)
According to McCaughey, banning Muslims from certain regions "for a while" was the "prudent" way to alleviate the risk of sexual assaults.
"Take a look at what we did during World War II, for example," she stated. "We need to have the same kind of meticulous vetting that we did during previous wars because we are at war."
Clinton surrogate Christine Quinn argued that McCaughey proved that Donald Trump was just "putting lipstick on" his initial call to ban all Muslims.
"During World War II, we put Japanese-Americans in internment camps," Quinn noted. "So, we need to understand our full history here."
"I'm not talking about putting people who reside in the United States in internment camps!" McCaughey exclaimed. "People who reside in the United States are protected by the Constitution and those Japanese-Americans should have been."
"But people who live in the rest of the world are not protected by the United States Constitution. They do not have a constitutional right to become Americans!"
She added: "There is no reason to expose Americans to rape, to enormous economic hardship and to potential terrorism simply to open our doors at a time when it's not necessary. Americans are charitable people, but there are limits and we have to look out for our own country first."
