Donald Trump on Monday will call for a new ideological test for admission to the United States, vetting applicants on their stance on issues like religious freedom, gender equality and gay rights.
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He warned that Trump’s assertions last week about President Barack Obama founding the Islamic State could be used by extremists to target American service members in Iraq.
The senior campaign official who previewed Trump’s speech did not address Trump’s initial description of the ban, but described the current proposal as one of withholding visas for individuals from any country “where we can not perform adequate screenings” and where there is heavy terrorist activity. The new screening would be modelled on vetting from the Cold War era, he added.
The Anti-Defamation League immediately took to Twitter to express concerns about Trump’s reiterated call to ban Muslim entry and entry from countries subject to violence.
The official called on the State Department to release a list of individuals who had obtained visas to the U.S. since 2001 who have since “been charged, implicated or accused of terrorism” in order to determine which countries should be banned.
He said that implementing the policy overhaul would require a temporary halt in immigration from “the most unsafe and volatile regions of the world that have a history of exporting terrorism”.
At home he demanded new immigration screening, saying that the perpetrators of a series of attacks in the United States – including the September 11, 2001, hijackings, the 2013 Boston bombings and the recent mass shooting in an Orlando nightclub – involved “immigrants or the children of immigrants”.
Bannon’s website has been a cheerleader for Trump’s campaign for months and also critical of Republican leaders, including House Speaker Paul Ryan.
Clinton has seized on Republican concerns about Trump, highlighting the steady stream of GOP national security experts who say their party’s nominee is unfit to serve as commander in chief.
The Clinton campaign says Trump has a responsibility to disclose his campaign manager’s ties to Russian Federation.
Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump speaks at Youngstown State University in Youngstown, Ohio August 15, 2016.
Trump, a wealthy NY businessman whose volatile campaign has alienated some in the Republican establishment, faced a fresh rebuke on Monday as he falls behind Clinton in opinion polls ahead of the November 8 election.
“As president, I will call for an global conference focused on this goal”, he said.
Although Trump has repeatedly said he plans to lean on the party to pay for key operations such as voter door-knocking, it is increasingly clear that he will have the money to build on his own if he chooses to do so. He focused on the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq in 2011 and the military intervention in Libya, which Clinton advocated when she was secretary of state. The government would use questionnaires, social media, interviews with friends and family or other means to determine if applicants support American values like tolerance and pluralism. Trump did not clarify how USA officials would assess the veracity of responses to the questionnaires or how much manpower it would require to complete such arduous vetting. The time is overdue to develop a new screening test for the threats we face today.
Trump’s campaign announced earlier that it would finally begin airing its first ads of the general election next week in the battleground states of Florida, Ohio, North Carolina and Pennsylvania.
Trump is expected to spend significant time in his speech going after Obama and Clinton, the former secretary of state, blaming them for policies he argues allowed the Islamic State group to spread.
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While Trump had not been expected to list on Monday which countries’ citizens would be banned from the USA, the senior campaign official offered Syria and Libya as examples of two countries that would be affected by the ban.
