President-elect Donald Trump's nominees must be pushed through by February at the latest, as the United States is "at war," considering the immigration issues and the growing threat from the Middle East.
"We need our team on the field," South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham told Fox News' "Sunday Morning Futures." "We need an FBI director, attorney general. We need them all. We've got to get it done. We're under attack here ... we're under siege."
Graham said he would vote for all of Trump's Cabinet nominees, and he said he is convinced they will all be confirmed.
"I want to do them sooner rather than later," he said. "When President Trump left office, we had the most secure border in American history. The caliphate was destroyed. ISIS was destroyed. And Iran was in a box. We killed [Qassem] Soleimani, the Iranian Revolutionary Guard leader."
But "the last four years have been a friggin' disaster" under President Joe Biden, Graham said. "They rolled back every policy that worked on the border. They went back into the Iran nuclear agreement, giving the Ayatollah hundreds of millions of dollars to use for terrorism."
Meanwhile, Graham, who chairs the Senate Budget Committee, warned that Republicans who are pushing for tax cuts must put securing the borders first or risk "playing Russian roulette with our national security."
"If we don't put the border first and get it done, it's going to be a nightmare for our national security," said Graham. "We've got millions of illegal immigrants that President Trump has promised to deport, and he should. Why are we doing mass deportation? Because we had mass immigration."
Trump's immigration plan calls for finishing the wall, doubling the number of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, and putting technology on the border, at an estimated cost of $100 billion.
"I'm willing to offset the $100 billion with cuts in other places, but there's no way in hell Democrats are going to give us $100 billion for mass deportation," Graham said. "Every day we delay is a dangerous day for America."
Graham added that he has never seen so many threats to the United States as he has recently.
"It started with Afghanistan," the senator said. "ISIS is on the move. They're coming here. Last year we found eight people from Tajikistan who were affiliated with ISIS."
However, Graham said, he also believes the tax cuts are necessary.
"I want the tax cuts," he said. "They're $4.7 trillion. They will ruin the economy if they expire at the end of the year.
"I will try to be a team player here. But I want to tell the American people, from my point of view, the No. 1 job is to secure the nation for the federal government."
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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