NBC News' Richard Engel On Trump's Proposal To Ban Muslims: “This Is Not The Country I Know”

Engel: This Is “A Black Spot On Our Collective Foreign Policy And Our Conscience,” It Also “Feeds Into The ISIS Narrative”

From the December 7 edition of MSNBC's The Rachel Maddow Show:

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RACHEL MADDOW (HOST): Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump speaking tonight with my friend Greta Van Sustern on the Fox News Channel. Joining us now is NBC News Chief Correspondent Richard Engel. Richard, it's great to have you here.

RICHARD ENGEL (NBC NEWS CHIEF CORRESPONDENT): What has happened since I last spoke to you? I was in Paris.

MADDOW: You left the country. We broke everything.

ENGEL: I came back and things have gone totally mad. The country is in a panic. There is demagoguery. This is really not the country that I know.

MADDOW: You are somebody who I know because we're friends, I know that you do not care very much about partisan politics. You're not a like horse race kind of guy. And I know that you can, you box a lot of that stuff out when you think it's kinda small ball. But this, this concerns you. This matters.

ENGEL: This is not small ball, actually. It would be interesting to say oh this is just fun. This is just more you know he's trying to score a few points. But the world watches this. The world sees the leading political candidate from one party making these kind of statements and still doing well and having these rallies. And those vox pops you showed where people are saying, yes, we need to do them. Send them back home. Those are going around the world right now, and people realize this person is leading in the polls. That must be what Americans think. I was today with an ambassador from the Middle East. Today. And we were talking exactly about this subject. And he said, well, people in our country watch what is going on, and it makes us very concerned. So from the world perspective, it is absolutely an image, an impression, a black spot on our collective foreign policy and our conscience. And it also just feeds into the ISIS narrative.

Previously:

On CNN, Reza Aslan Explains How The Media Is Failing In Its Reporting On Islam

Watch A Radicalization Expert Push Back On Fox's Advocacy Of Muslim Profiling