In my view, and in the view of a lot of intelligence experts, the terrorist threat that we face now has morphed significantly from the days of 9/11 to homegrown violent extremism. We have to be concerned and focused on homegrown violent extremism, countering violent extremism that exists within our borders.
I think that ISIS is a problem and it's really a symptom of a much greater problem.
We are very definitely in a new phase in the global terrorist threat where the so-called lone wolf could strike at any moment.
If you build - if you spend billions of taxpayer dollars to build a wall over, let's say, a mountain, if you build a 10-foot wall over a 10,000-foot mountain, and someone is determined to climb the 10,000-foot mountain, they're not going to be deterred by the 10-foot wall. It's a matter of common sense.
I think that the potential for homegrown terrorist attacks is something that we have to be very concerned about, because, in many respects, it's harder to detect when you have an independent actor who may be living in our midst, in our own communities.
And we need a president who is a uniter, not a divider; who can lower the temperature, not raise the temperature. And I wish President Trump would spend more time trying to go beyond his immediate base to reach people, and use the presidential microphone to try to bring people together, instead of the rhetoric that seems to divide us.
The Secret Service hates to complain about something. They're secret by nature. They're not boastful; they don't like to be in the limelight. And therefore, they need middle management, i.e., a Cabinet-level person, to be their advocate, to Congress, to the White House, to ensure that they have adequate funding.
There's a lot of sensitivity about federal involvement in elections around the country. I think that it would be appropriate to consider - whether there should be some basic federal minimum standards to the cybersecurity around the election infrastructure. We have federal standards for aviation security, for auto safety, for a lot of things, and elections are pretty important in the country.
President Trump talks about extreme vetting, and we actually do have extreme vetting when it comes to refugee resettlement. Refugee resettlement is the most thorough, cumbersome, multilayered vetting system we have for the admission of anyone to the country.
I'll never forget what a Catholic priest told me; he said, "If you try to padlock the door, you have to give people an alternative path - an alternative, safer path. You can't padlock, and you shouldn't padlock a burning building."
With every case from years ago there should be lessons learned.
The good news is that the international coalition, in which our military contributes, has done a lot to reduce the ground space, the territory in Iraq, Syria that ISIL once occupied a couple years ago. That's a good thing. And a lot of that, frankly, has occurred in Trump administration, so I'll give them credit for that.
I hope that the states are taking seriously their obligations to harden the cybersecurity around the election infrastructure that Americans rely upon and need.
Politics, in my judgment, has become not just the means to a policy ends, but it's become the end itself. Politics has become the sport that we all watch, and we all pay attention to.
