Bill Kristol: 'Republicans Are Making A Huge Mistake'

Bill Kristol: 'Republicans Are Making A Huge Mistake'

Conservative pundit Bill Kristol said on Sunday that "Republicans are making a huge mistake" if they link the NSA scandal with other recent scandals.

Kristol defended the NSA's surveillance program, which include collecting millions of phone records every day, as necessary for national security.

"National security is different from internal matters of the government," he told Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace. "We’re dealing with foreign threats here."

He continued:

"They’re not allowed to go into that data until they have a warrant signed off on by a judge. That is totally different from the IRS abuses, which I think are very serious, and I think it’s very important for conservatives and Republicans to make that distinction.”

The Weekly Standard editor called the IRS' targeting of Tea Party groups "genuine abuses of government power."

When news broke of the NSA's tactics earlier this week, there was outrage on both sides of the aisle. Republican Senator Rand Paul (Ky.) called the NSA's program "an extraordinary invasion of privacy."

Watch the video below, courtesy of Mediaite:

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