Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL), who was in Brussels over the weekend, appeared on Breitbart News Daily Thursday morning to talk about the terrorist bombings, and what he described as the “fundamental question” of whether Europe has the political will to battle Islamist terrorism.

Sessions agreed with Breitbart News executive chairman and host Stephen K. Bannon that there is a vast gulf between the will of the European people to fight for their security, and that of political elites who prattle about the vital role “political Islam” should play in European life.

“Political correctness is extraordinarily high,” Sessions observed, saying of one European conference he attended, “if the American people heard one of their politicians talking like that, it would be an uproar.  It would be pitchforks out.”

He thought Belgium might have learned a grim lesson at terrible cost this week.  “They’re already beginning to take more steps to share the information that they have,” said Sessions.  “It’s very hard to share this information — they use different names, they use fake passports, they come in as refugees… this is a very dangerous threat to them.”  

Sessions mentioned a report previously flagged by Breitbart News that an army of over 400 battle-hardened jihadists were being redeployed from the battlefields of Syria and Iraq into Europe.  “This is the kind of danger that I don’t think has resonated sufficiently with the people or the leaders… but the people are far more alert to it, it does appear, than some of their political leaders,” he said.

He blamed the politically-correct attitudes of the elite for institutional blindness of an overwhelming threat, which Bannon noted it was effectively impossible for either European or American law enforcement to manage, given the sheer numbers of Muslims involved, and the fact that up to 20 police and intelligence personnel are required to monitor each terror suspect.

“We’re not willing to question large flows of people — some of which have very radical views about how our government should be organized, and who should run the government.  They don’t favor the Constitutional order that we cherish,” said Sessions.  “It’s like, I’m going to prove everybody’s equal, and I’ll admit anybody into our country, and to deny that is somehow invalidating the values that we in the West share.”

He noted that the United States admitted 680,000 migrants from Muslim countries between 2009 and 2013.  “That is a huge number, and it’s difficult to know which ones might be radicalized now, and which ones might be radicalized in the future,” he warned.

Sessions said that building the political will to combat terrorism and Islamist extremism would require, first of all, broader acceptance of the idea that America is a legitimate nation, with a morally legitimate right to police its borders against illegal immigration, and set legal immigration levels in accordance with its economic and security needs.

“If you don’t secure the border, as Trump said, you don’t have a nation.  Your sovereignty is undermined,” he warned, making the case that only nation-states can properly confront the menace of global terrorism.

Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00AM to 9:00AM EST.

Listen to the full interview with Senator Jeff Sessions below: