Just hours after US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump called for a ban on the entry of Muslims into the US, one of his Middle Eastern business partners, the Dubai-based Landmark Group, responded by removing all Trump-branded products from the shelves of its Lifestyle stores.
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Mogul and reality show star Trump said on Monday that he backs “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what the hell is going on”.
But on Thursday, an image of Trump and his daughter, Ivanka, was removed from a billboard advertising the golf course outside the construction site, according to Reuters.
It earlier said it ‘would not comment further on Trump’s personal or political agenda, nor comment on the internal American political debate scene’.
Trump also made comments in 2011, as well as this year, falsely saying that Kuwait paid nothing to the USA for driving out occupying Iraqi forces during the 1991 Gulf War.
It is believed that Trump has also put money into the project.
The move comes as Dubai-based Landmark Group pulled all Trump home decor products at its 180 Lifestyle stores.
“Obviously you can see what has happened, but I have no comment on it”, said Damac’s vp of communications Raed Gerges, speaking to local broadsheet The National.
Public reaction to Trump’s comments in the Middle East and Asian nations with large Muslim populations was limited, with many newspapers restricting their coverage to short news stories. Trump, whose mother was a Scot, owns two golf courses in Scotland – one outside Aberdeen and Trump Turnberry on the southwest coast.
Late Thursday, Bulent Kural, the general manager of Trump Towers in Istanbul, said his company “regrets and condemns” Trump’s call to ban Muslims from entering the U.S.
Compare Mr Trump’s proposal – and his apparent openness to a federal registry of Muslims and the closure of mosques by authorities – to the Republican Party’s invitation to a Muslim businessman to deliver a prayer at its 2000 nominating convention.
And that could significantly impact the value of the Trump brand: “I kind of look at the damage being 100 percent and maybe irreparable as we move forward”, Jackson said.
Damac began selling Trump-branded mansions with a starting price of 6.5 million dirhams (S$2.5 million) in March, the company said at the time.
‘Muslims have invested hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars (in America), creating jobs for Americans.
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“The people with whom I’ve spoken are offended, and their concern is calibrated to the degree they think Mr. Trump might be elected president”, he said. “They can go invest it somewhere else”. “I’ve not yet met anyone who agrees with him”.
