Is Obama doing enough to prevent an Ebola outbreak in America?

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Is Obama doing enough to prevent Ebola outbreak in America?

New questions over why admin won't issue travel ban

This is a rush transcript from "The Kelly File," October 3, 2014. This copy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

MEGYN KELLY, HOST: And now new questions are being raised about why the administration isn't doing more to prevent a potential outbreak of a disease that has killed over 3,000 people in West Africa. Just yesterday the CDC director rejected the idea of imposing a travel ban on countries hit with the virus calling the solution quick and simple and wrong.

J. Christian Adams is a former DOJ attorney and legal editor for P.J. Media. So, it's a virus that's spreading like wildfire overseas. But they've said that they could contain it and that it was very unlikely, the president said, that it would come here. Does he, now that it is here, have the legal authority to put a stop to these flights?

J. CHRISTIAN ADAMS, FORMER DOJ ATTORNEY: He does, Megyn. I reported today that federal law gives the president broad discretionary authority to stop entering into the United States from people from these countries. It says that he can ban entry for the interests -- if they're detrimental to the interests of the United States. All he has to do is issue a proclamation, write a paragraph, sign the paper, stop people from Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia and maybe Nigeria from coming into the United States.

Megyn, right now over the Atlantic, a fully-loaded Delta 767 Flight 479 is coming from Liberia to land at JFK tomorrow morning. It's been happening every day for a month while this crisis has melted down.  And they haven't done a single thing about it.

KELLY: Direct flights. So he could do it with a stroke of a pen.  The pen and phone that he's so fond of using, he could easily use them to stop these direct flights from this suffering country into the United States.

ADAMS: Well, he could also ban all passport holders from these countries. Or anybody who has an entry and exit stamp on their passport for visiting these countries.

KELLY: OK. But wait, the defenders say, the people who don't want the ban say that would only hurt us because they say the reality is people would get through. And what we really need to do is shut down Ebola in these African countries and wipe it up there. And we can't do that if we tell Americans who want to go over there, good doctors who want to go other there and help them, you may get out but you're never getting back in because we're going to ban you.

ADAMS: Nonsense. Load up a bunch of C-130s out of the Charleston Air Force Base with supplies and doctors and do military transports back and forth. These are people like the person in Dallas who vomited everywhere, who lord knows what he did on the airplane and the Dulles Airport.

KELLY: He was asymptomatic in the airplane they said.

ADAMS: Yes. Well, you don't have to be asymptomatic to spread this disease.

KELLY: They say you do.

ADAMS: Well, we'll see. We'll see. And he certainly was symptomatic when he is vomiting all over the apartment complex.

KELLY: That's the problem. And, you know, the sheets with everything on it have been sitting there in place until today with all the family members in that house, no hazmat. They've all been exposed potentially. And then we see the judge escorting them out with no hazmat suit on himself.

I'll give you the last word. I got to run.

ADAMS: Why does this president not protect the American people? Why does he care about these esoteric faculty lounge debates more than he does protecting Americans from death and mayhem? It is a pattern in this administration.

KELLY: Well, we'll take that up in our next segment. Chris, good to see you.

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