Donald Trump is once again shifting the parameters of his proposed temporary ban on Muslims entering the country, calling Sunday for “extreme vetting” of persons from “territories” with a history of terror — though not explicitly abandoning his previous across-the-board ban.
In an interview with “60 Minutes” that aired Sunday, Trump zeroed in on people from suspicious “territories” as those who will receive deep scrutiny when trying to enter the United States. He did not directly repudiate his previous call for an outright ban.
“Call it whatever you want,” Trump told CBS when asked if he was changing his previously released policy.
“Change territories, but there are territories and terror states and terror nations that we’re not going to allow the people to come into our country,” he said.
Trump continued: “We’re going to have a thing called ‘extreme vetting.’ And if people want to come in, there’s going to be extreme vetting. We’re going to have extreme vetting. They’re going to come in and we’re going to know where they came from and who they are.”
Syrian refugees, however, appear to still be on Trump’s list of those people not allowed into the country. The presumptive Republican nominee, who heads to the convention this week for his official coronation, remained consistent on his calls to “not let people in from Syria that nobody knows who they are.” This ban appears more country-based than religious-based.
Trump’s initial proposal for a ban came in December of 2015. He called for a temporary yet “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” The 2015 policy proposed a blanket ban on Muslims based on what Trump called “hatred” of the West he said was innate in Islam.
The language around the ban later shifted when Trump traveled to Scotland, spurring questions when he told a reporter it wouldn’t “bother” him to allow a Scottish or British Muslim to come into the United States in light of his proposed ban. When asked moments later by The Daily Mail to further clarify those remarks, Trump responded: “I don’t want people coming in — I don’t want people coming in from certain countries. I don’t want people coming in from the terror countries. You have terror countries! I don’t want them, unless they’re very, very strongly vetted.”
Asked at the time which countries constitute the “terror countries,” Trump said, “they’re pretty well decided. All you have to do is look!”
He echoed this sentiment in a phone call with NBC News one day later. When asked by NBC’s Hallie Jackson which “terror nations” Trump would focus on, he did not give much by way of criteria for designating these countries. “Terror nations,” Trump repeated. “Look it up. They have a list of terror nations.”
This is the first time Trump himself has articulated the pivot and specification of the ban that many advisors have attempted to spin for him. Still, the businessman has not disavowed his prior plan for a blanket ban or stated that it’s being abandoned in the wake of a new policy that focuses on specific territories.
In back-to-back interviews with Fox News hosts Greta Van Susteren and Bill O’Reilly, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump condemned Muslims and immigrants for a horrific truck attack in the French resort town of Nice, France that occurred late Thursday.
No terror group or organization has yet claimed responsibility after 77 people were killed and about 100 injured when a truck plowed through a crowd celebrating Bastille Day fireworks. When Van Susteren asked Trump to contrast what Obama would say about the attack with what he would say, Trump immediately cited “radical Islamic terrorism” as a potential cause, then said “I don’t think the people come out of Sweden, okay? It’s probably, possibly but if it is indeed, radical Islamic terrorism, it’s about time that [Obama] would say so, okay?”
“I mean, it just happened now,” Trump admitted, before speculating that the attack could have been carried out by a Muslim as in “Orlando, like in San Bernardino, like in Paris, like in the World Trade Center, like many other places, if it’s radical Islamic terrorism.”
Even if the attacks are ultimately linked to Muslim or immigrants, Trump was speaking as a presidential nominee just minutes after the attack, when none of this information was known.
During his interview with O’Reilly, Trump appeared to backtrack a bit on his earlier comments, telling the host that we should “wait a little while, and let’s see what happens. Who knows? Maybe you will be surprised and maybe we will all be surprised” in the truck attack.
But in the same breath, Trump bashed the refugee process into the United States, claiming that the country will admit at least 10,000 unscreened Syrian refugees by the end of the fiscal year.
“They may be ISIS,” Trump said, alluding to the terror group Islamic State. “This could be the great Trojan horse of all time. I mean, this could be the ultimate Trojan horse.”
Syrian refugees actually undergo one of the most stringent processes to come to the United States, which can take anywhere between 18 and 24 months. The process requires at least 21 steps in which biographic information, biometrics, and documentation are shown and put under scrutiny.
Trump has long claimed that Muslims and immigrants could bring criminal activities to the United States. In fact, he launched his campaign by deriding Mexican immigrants as rapists, criminals, and drug dealers. Soon after Paris was under siege from a terror attack, Trump called for a ban on Muslims immigrating into the United States, later adding that Muslims should be put into a database so that they can be tracked. He has also condemned resettling Syrian refugees in the country, using a similar argument that they lack documentation.
On the basis of this speculation, Trump said he agreed that this was now a “world war scenario” and, as president, he would seek a formal declaration of world war from Congress.
“I would. I would,” Trump told O’Reilly. “If you look at it, this is war, coming from all different parts. And frankly, it’s war and we’re dealing with people without uniforms. You know, in the old days, you would have uniforms. You knew who you were fighting.”
Trump then pivoted to his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s U.S. immigration policies that would potentially allow undocumented immigrants to stay in the country.
“These people — we are allowing people into our country, who we have no idea where they are, where they are from, who they are, they have no paperwork, they have no documentation in many cases and Hillary Clinton wants to allow 550 percent more in than even Obama,” he added.
Prior to the interviews, Trump tweeted that he would postpone the announcement of his vice presidential candidate, originally set for Friday.
In light of the horrible attack in Nice, France, I have postponed tomorrow's news conference concerning my Vice Presidential announcement.
7/14 at 5:44 PM ET, Fox News reported a large truck had been driven through a crowd celebrating Bastille Day in Nice, France, killing dozens.
7/14 at 7:20 PM ET, Donald Trump phoned into live coverage of the attack on Fox News.
7/16 at 4:00 AM ET, two days later, ISIS released a statement claiming the attack as an outright act of ISIS, but noting that the attacker was responding to calls to act.
7/16 at 8:00 AM ET, French investigators found a possible, but yet unconfirmed connection to Jabhat al Nusra, an al Qaeda’s branch in Syria.
While this has the hallmarks of a terrorist attack, and may possibly be the case, there are potentially thousands of other possibilities to consider before actual facts from a formal investigation are even established. Have we learned nothing from the invasion of Iraq in 2003 on the basis of weapons of mass destruction? At the time, Republican President George W. Bush ignored timelines from UN weapons inspectors to perform their jobs, fabricated evidence, and rushed to judgement which left us with an inter-generational quagmire.
We should expect our leaders to have cool heads and sound judgement in the face of adversity, which was not on display here from Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump.
During a rally on Friday, he provoked anger when he asked a Turkish reporter whether he was friend or foe, days after suspected Islamic State suicide bombers killed 43 people at Istanbul’s Ataturk Airport.
A voice in the crowd in Denver called out: “Turkey.”
Mr Trump responded directly, asking: “Are you from Turkey, sir? Good… congratulations.”
He then turned to the audience, saying: “I think he’s friend. Are you friend or foe?”
He then went on to talk about the country’s response to ISIL.
“Turkey, by the way, should be fighting ISIL,” he said. “I hope to see Turkey go out and fight ISIL.”
The crowd cheered his words but they provoked anger among commentators, who pointed out that Turkey was a US ally, has provided bases for war planes attacking ISIL positions, and its own jets have run missions against the jihadist group.
However Turkey is also known to be playing a “double game” by refusing to stop ISIL fighters from crossing their southern border to attack their common enemy, the Kurds.
Donald Trump continues to propagate his dangerous “us versus them” mentality.
This is not the first time Trump has asked someone their allegiance at a campaign event. During rallies, when the presumptive GOP nominee hears sounds of a disruption, sometimes Trump will yell out the question to gauge whether the noise is coming from protesters or cheering fans.
If the noise is coming from a “foe” of Donald Trump, he usually follows with “Get them the hell out!”
Donald Trump’s trade speech Thursday veered off course when he didn’t stop a woman who, while pointing to her head, objected to the “heeby jobbies” worn by some employees at the Transportation Security Administration.
The comment during a town hall in New Hampshire was an apparent reference to hijabs, or headscarfs, that some Muslim women wear.
When the woman urged him to replace Muslims with U.S. military veterans at TSA, Trump said, “And we are looking at that,” seemingly indicating he was considering a new policy.
Reality
Racism isn’t necessarily what we say, it can also be what we don’t say.
Donald Trump let a woman make an incredibly insensitive comment, did not correct her, and even went so far to say yeah maybe we should look into removing Muslims from working at the TSA.
Donald Trump’s proposed ban on Muslims entering the United States has been a central issue of his campaign — but he has described the ban differently in the weeks since the mass shooting in Orlando.
While gaggling with reporters as he toured his golf club here, Trump suggested in an offhand comment that his ban wouldn’t apply to Muslims from countries not typically associated with terrorism.
“It wouldn’t bother me, it wouldn’t bother me,” Trump said when asked whether he would allow a Scottish Muslim into the U.S. under his policy.
His spokeswoman, Hope Hicks, told CNN Saturday that Trump supports barring only Muslims from “terror states,” not all Muslims.
Trump even indicated that the ban is not ironclad, telling CNN in a brief interview on Saturday he would consider allowing Muslims from states with heavy terrorist activity to enter the U.S., as long as they are “vetted strongly.”
He also told the Daily Mail that individuals from “terror countries” would be “even more severely vetted” but could ultimately be allowed entry into the country.
“People coming from the terror states — and you know who I’m talking about when I talk about the terror states — we are going to be so vigilant you wouldn’t believe it and frankly a lot will be banned,” Trump told CNN after touring his golf course here.
Trump also focused on the need to ban individuals from “terrorist countries” in an interview later Saturday with Bloomberg Politics.
“I want terrorists out. I want people that have bad thoughts out. I would limit specific terrorist countries and we know who those terrorist countries are,” Trump said, again not specifying which countries would be included.
With the many other flip-flops since becoming the Republican party’s nominee, Trump rejected almost every stance that his supporters loved which separated him from the other Republican primary candidates.
On December 7th, 2015, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump released a statement calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can “figure out what is going on.” The reasons Trump cited for the Muslim ban included studies that did not exist and unsubstantiated claims that there was a “great hatred towards Americans by large segments of the Muslim population” and the that “it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension.”
It was a statement that, by far, was one of the most bigoted statements Trump, or any other politician, has made in our lifetime.
Donald Trump responded to the worst terror attack since 9/11 with a no-holds-barred attack on Muslims and Hillary Clinton that played loose with the facts and was rife with inflammatory rhetoric.
He claimed Clinton wanted to disarm Americans and let Islamic terrorists slaughter them, while seeming to overinflate the number of Syrian refugees and insinuating the perpetrator of the Orlando attack was a foreigner.
In a speech pulsating with tough talk that will likely please his supporters, the presumptive Republican nominee also renewed his call for a ban on Muslim migration into the United States — and extended it to cover all nations with a history of terrorism. Hinting at a huge expansion of presidential power, he vowed to impose such a system by using executive orders.
“The current politically correct response cripples our ability to talk and to think and act clearly,” Trump said framed by two American flags at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire. “If we don’t get tough, and if we don’t get smart, and fast, we’re not going to have our country anymore. There will be nothing, absolutely nothing, left.”
Trump’s speech Monday was a clear attempt to use the fallout from Sunday’s attack in Florida that left 49 dead to position himself as a strong agent of change determined to flush out a culture of weakness and incompetence that he said had let terrorism fester and threatened the existence of U.S. culture itself.
It is a strategy that appealed to his base and helped him win the Republican primaries, and he is now deploying it after a rough couple of weeks signifying the start of the general election.
As part of that effort Monday, he delivered some of the most explosive and forceful political rhetoric uttered by a major U.S. political figure in many years, seeming to show little regard for facts.
Trump refused to name Omar Mateen, the killer who went on the rampage in an LGBT nightclub in Orlando, during his speech. But, adding a line not found in his prepared remarks, he said that he was born “an Afghan, of Afghan parents, who immigrated to the United States.” But the perpetrator of the Orlando massacre was born in New York to parents from Afghanistan.
The real estate magnate also appeared to equate all Muslims who seek to come to the United States with the perpetrators of recent terror attacks — another claim that seems to fly in the face of the evidence about a community that has been present in the U.S. for decades.
“We cannot continue to allow thousands upon thousands of people to pour into our country many of whom have the same thought process as this savage killer,” Trump said.
“Remember this, radical Islam is anti-woman, anti-gay and anti- American.”
He also accused Clinton of endangering the country with her plans to bring in more foreigners.
“Hillary Clinton’s catastrophic immigration plan will bring vastly more radical Islamic immigration into this country, threatening not only our society but our entire way of life,” he charged. “When it comes to radical Islamic terrorism, ignorance is not bliss. It’s deadly — totally deadly.”
He accused Clinton of wanting to “allow radical Islamic terrorists to pour into our country. They enslave women and they murder gays. I don’t want them in our country.”
And he repeated an unsubstantiated claim that Clinton wants to deny Americans’ 2nd Amendment rights.
Trump’s rhetoric — which was heavy on toughness but often short on policy details — contrasted sharply with the more nuanced and conventional response to the attack delivered earlier by Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee.
But he made a case that the current policies were not working and were leaving America dangerously exposed to a tide of Islamic terror he said was coming its way — an argument that many in the GOP find compelling.
He has pointed to the political benefits of the rising fears of terrorism following other recent attacks.
In each instance, Trump sought to project both strength and a lack of concern for the reaction to his provocative rhetoric, calculating that both would help him rise in the polls during the Republican primary. Indeed, a majority of Republican voters agreed with Trump’s call to temporarily ban all foreign Muslims from entering the United States.
“Whenever there’s a tragedy, everything goes up, my numbers go way up because we have no strength in this country,” Trump said on CNN after last December’s San Bernardino shooting. “We have weak, sad politicians.”
Donald Trump’s speech was heavy on inflammatory rhetoric, light on details and facts.
Trump: “The Muslim ban is temporary. We have to find out what is going on?”
There are terrorists running around in Syria and Iraq. They have a book. They think that book is great. The use their book to justify killing others. Why is that so fucking hard to understand? Can he shut up about his stupid ban now?
Plus, aside from being completely and totally xenophobic, there is one major logical flaw with this policy. Meet Omar Mateen, 29 year old who killed at least 50 people in massacre Orlando. An American, born in New York.
Meet James Wesley Howell, 20 year old who was caught with cache of weapons, ammunition and explosive-making materials in his car and apparent plans to attend the L.A. Pride festival in West Hollywood. An American, born in Indiana.
Exactly how would banning foreigners from entering the United States have solved the Orlando massacre or helped to prevent another possible shooting in Los Angeles by Americans?
Trump: A “tremendous flow” of Syrian refugees is pouring into the country free of screening also seemed to be an exaggeration.
Since May 1, 2016, 2,019 Syrian refugees have been admitted to the U.S., according to a State Department official, while only 1,736 were taken in over the first seven months of the fiscal year.
Interestingly, there are a lot of countries in the middle-east that are our friends, like Israel. So is Donald Trump inferring that Israelis are savages? If we remove our friends from the list of Middle-Eastern countries, like Egypt and Saudi Arabia, then that leaves only 33,000 immigrants who were admitted into the United States in 2014 from the Middle-East. That would mean Trump is off by 67%.
We’ll have to revise Donald’s truth grade to an ‘F’.
Trump: “[Clinton] wants to take away Americans’ guns and then admit the very people who want to slaughter us.”
Clinton has called for universal background checks and stricter controls on firearms, but has never called for the abolition of the 2nd Amendment. Another false statement.
Trump: “Remember this, radical Islam is anti-woman, anti-gay and anti- American.”
You know who has far more effective at being more anti-woman and anti-gay in this country? Republicans.
Donald Trump again warned of another 9/11-like attack on the United States if refugees are continually allowed into the country.
In an interview on the National Border Patrol Council podcast “The Green Line” the presumptive Republican nominee said:
Our country has enough difficulty right now without letting the Syrians pour in.
Trump also suggested ISIS is paying for refugees’ cell phone plans.
They all have cell phones so they don’t have money, they don’t have anything, they have cell phones. Who pays their monthly charges, right? They have cell phones with the flags, the ISIS flags on them.
When asked if he thought it would take an attack similar to 9/11 for the country to “wake up about border security,” Trump agreed.
Bad things will happen; a lot of bad things will happen. There will be attacks that you wouldn’t believe. There will be attacks by the people that are right now coming in to our country.
Trump also spoke about Hillary Clinton’s agenda for immigration reform and his own plans for border control, including his proposal to build a wall at the Southern border. The National Border Control agents’ union made its first-ever endorsement of a presidential candidate when it backed Trump in March.
The reference to Syrian refugees with ISIS phones appears to be from an article first reported by the Norwegian newspaper The Netavisen, where a few of the refugees had cell phone images with horrors of war, as well as images of flags, symbols and characters that can be linked to the terrorist group ISIS and other terrorist groups. The article was then floated on the conspiracy site Infowars and the British tabloid the Daily Mail that “hundreds” of refugees in Norway were found with photos of ISIS flags on their phones. And finally we have Donald Trump claiming “thousands.” Just like a game of whisper down the alley the reality is it was not “thousands of people” like Trump claimed.
Conveniently omitted from Donald Trump’s claim was the statements from the Norwegian officials in charge of investigating these incidents who say the images are most likely documentation of ISIS’s presence and what the individuals have witnessed, rather than a statement of support. Also the refugees had images of ISIS flags which they could use when passing through ISIS controlled areas as to avoid suspicion.
Ten veterans from Veterans Challenge Islamophobia unfurled a 10-foot banner during Trump’s speech in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina today. The banner read:
“Mr. Trump: Veterans are not props for hate. We stand with our Muslim sisters and brothers.”
The U.S. veterans who launched the effort have served in Afghanistan, Iraq and Vietnam. Many were also decorated for their valor. The veterans, some of whom hail from the organization Iraq Veterans Against the War, were forcibly escorted outside after Trump supporters waved signs while chanting Trump’s name. But the group’s actions will not be deterred.
Veterans Challenge Islamophobia plans to take its campaign to other primary states and will fly a similar banner in Las Vegas on Monday evening at Trump’s event there. They say they will continue until Trump and other Republican candidates cease their discriminatory attacks on Muslims.
“Mr. Trump’s hateful rhetoric insults both my Islamic faith and my military service. As a U.S. Marine who served in Iraq, I find it shameful that a major presidential candidate would impugn my patriotism, or that of other Muslims, because of our faith,” said Ramon Mejia, who served with the U.S. Marines in Iraq (2001-04).
“As an Army veteran, I deeply resent being used as a prop for intolerance by Mr. Trump. I enlisted in order to serve everyone in my country, including my Muslim sisters and brothers, and to protect constitutional freedoms like religious liberty,” said Maggie Martin, who served three tours in Iraq and Kuwait with the U.S. Army (2001-06).
“As a medic in Afghanistan, I worked closely with Muslim interpreters who risked their lives to support our mission. I’m disgusted when I see candidates like Mr. Trump — who never served in the military — try to demonize Muslims for his own political gain. We need to make it very clear: Islam is not a national security threat,” said Perry O’Brien, who served with the 82nd Airborne in Afghanistan (2001-04).
During his speech, Donald Trump did not respond directly to the protesters, but did make note of people who challenge him as security folded up the group’s banner.
“We’re going to make the wall 10 feet taller,” Trump said. “And every time they protest, it’s going to go up a little bit higher.”
Donald Trump has made many comments discriminating Muslims. Let’s let Veterans For Peace explain why that is bad:
Bigotry and racism violate all of the values we believed we were defending during our military service. The ideals contained in the Constitution, to the degree they have been manifested in America, have been a beacon to much of the world because of the diversity, openness, and respect for people of all faiths that most Americans live by. It will be a great calamity if we let fear give rise to hatred.
Fear-mongering endangers our national security and gives rise to hatred and racism that play into the hands of an enemy that wants to convince Muslims around the world that the West, led by the U.S., hates them, and that joining ISIL or similar organizations is the only way to truly observe and defend their religion. We can never defend ourselves effectively by playing into our adversary’s strategy, giving credibility to their recruitment propaganda. We endanger ourselves whenever we make that mistake.
Donald Trump’s tetchy relationship with protesters took another controversial turn on Sunday when he appeared to mock a turban-clad man ejected from a campaign rally in Iowa.
The incident began as Trump was inveighing against “radical Islamic terror,” a common theme in his stump speeches.
“Somebody has to say what’s going on,” he said roughly 15 minutes into an hour-long speech at Muscatine High School, before referencing the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the San Bernardino, Calif., shooting in December.
“When planes fly into the World Trade Center, and into the Pentagon, and wherever the third plane was going, when people are shooting their friends in California–” Trump said before abruptly pausing as his attention was drawn to the gym’s upper level, where a security guard and a police officer were confronting two protesters.
The protesters were trying to unveil a white sheet with the words “stop hate.” One of the protesters wore a beard and bright-red turban similar to those worn by Sikhs.
“Bye, bye,” Trump said sarcastically as the guard pushed the protester toward the exit and as the crowd began whistling. “Goodbye, goodbye.”
The capacity crowd then broke into chants of “U.S.A., U.S.A.,” before Trump appeared to make a quip about the protester’s turban, which was roughly the same color as Trump’s popular red “Make America Great Again” hats.
“He wasn’t wearing one of those hats was he?” Trump said, gesturing to a supporter’s hat and eliciting a laugh from the crowd.
“And he never will,” Trump continued, segueing back into his speech, “and that’s okay, because we got to do something folks because it’s not working.”
Reality
Sikh is not Muslim. Muslim is not Sikh. Read a little. You become less ignorant.
A Muslim woman wearing a hijab was escorted out of Donald Trump’s campaign event on Friday by police after she stood up in silent protest during Trump’s speech.
Rose Hamid, a 56-year-old flight attendant sitting in the stands directly behind Trump, stood up Friday during Trump’s speech when the Republican front-runner suggested that Syrian refugees fleeing war in Syria were affiliated with ISIS.
Despite her silence, Trump supporters around her began chanting Trump’s name — as instructed by Trump campaign staff before the event in case of protests — and pointed at Hamid and Marty Rosenbluth, the man alongside her who stood up as well.
As they were escorted out, Trump supporters roared — booing the pair and shouting at them to “get out.” One person shouted, “You have a bomb, you have a bomb,” according to Hamid.
“The ugliness really came out fast and that’s really scary,” Hamid told CNN in a phone interview after she was ejected.
That was one of the most bravest things I have ever seen. You cannot disagree that, even though it was a silent and peaceful protest, as a Muslim woman in that environment comes with a large amount of risk.
