Mike Huckabee Responds to Paris Attack: "Wake Up and Smell the Falafel"

GOP presidential contender and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee summed up, in a blatant racial stereotype, what he thinks world leaders need to do in wake of terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday.

"It's time to wake up and smell the falafel," Huckabee told Fox News' Bret Baier this weekend, in the midst of a completely serious speech about how world leaders should react to the Islamic State's systematic massacre throughout the city of Paris on Friday that left at least 129 dead and hundreds injured.

Huckabee's outlandish remark was part of this argument for closing the United States borders to all refugees in wake of the attack, which he compares to "importing terrorism":

"What we saw in Paris was the result of open borders in Europe. The EU has proven itself to be a failure in dealing with terrorism. I think when you see the left-wing, socialist president of France — a very politically correct country — saying, 'It's time to close our borders,' and he does so immediately, I think it might be a clue to America that this idea of wholesale having people from the Middle East come and we have no idea who they are, when in fact one of the Paris attackers was one of those refugees, then, Bret, it's time to wake up and smell the falafel. Something isn't going right in this open immigration policy; we are importing terrorism."

After the passport of a Syrian refugee was found next to the dead body of an Islamic State member involved in the Paris attacks on Friday, 13 states announced wishes to close their state's borders to all Syrian refugees. "After full consideration of this weekend's attacks of terror on innocent citizens in Paris, I will oppose any attempt to relocate Syrian refugees to Alabama through the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program," Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley said in a press release on Sunday. "As your governor, I will not stand complicit to a policy that places the citizens of Alabama in harm's way." 

The other states — Illinois, Ohio, Florida, North Carolina, New Hampshire, Arizona, Indiana, Massachusetts, Louisiana, Michigan, Texas and Arkansas — have echoed similar statements since. 

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson made a short and sweet announcement via Twitter:

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott followed suit:

On Monday, President Barack Obama criticized Huckabee and other GOP candidates for their stance on refugees, calling it a "dark impulse."

"When I hear folks say, 'Well, maybe we should just admit the Christians and not the Muslims,' when I hear political leaders suggesting there should be a religious test for which person who's fleeing from a war torn country — that's shameful," Obama said to reporters in Antalya, Turkey. "That's not American. That's not who we are. We don't have religious tests to our compassion."

On Sunday, Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communication for Obama, said the relatively small number of Islamic State members who flee to Syria and return to the U.S. compared to that of Europe makes it unlikely that the terrorist group can carry out a large-scale attack on U.S. soil. "Our determination is there's not a specific, credible threat to the homeland at this time," he said in an interview on ABC's This Week With George Stephanopoulos. "But we're going to be very vigilant because we know the Islamic State has the aspirations to attack the United States as well as our European and other allies and partners." 

As of March, only 40 Americans have gone to Syria and returned to the United States, and they don't threaten the nation's security, according to the Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Time reported.