Rep. Ross gets testy over travel ban

Rep. Dennis Ross (R-Fla.) on Friday got into a heated exchange with MSNBC “Morning Joe” panelists regarding his proposal to ban air travel to contain the Ebola virus.

Ross said Thursday that he will introduce legislation that stops any commercial flights from traveling between the U.S. and West African countries afflicted by the Ebola outbreak.

{mosads}When Ross appeared on MSNBC on Friday to discuss the proposal, the show’s panelists hit him with heavy criticism and claims that such flights don’t even exist.

“Just to clarify, what flights are you talking about?” panelist Eugene Robinson asked Ross. “There are not regularly scheduled commercial flights from the affected countries to the United States, there are none.”

Ross said that he believes there are such flights scheduled, but was interrupted by guest Jeremy Peters, who insisted there is no direct travel between the U.S. and the affected West African countries.

“Then we don’t have a problem, everybody is contained, right?” a visibly perturbed Ross said. “They are not, they are traveling.”

Peters said that those people who are traveling from West AFrica are going through Europe first, and that Congress needs to do a better job of explaining how a travel ban would stop the spread of Ebola.

“I never said it would solve the problem,” Ross said after rolling his eye’s to Peters’s remarks. “It’s a step in the right direction, we know where the source is.”

Watch the fiery debate above.