Trump’s comments were not surprisingly trashed by Democrats and Muslim American activists. It’s a threat they have long feared.
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But the White House demanded deeper repudiation.
But Trump has been here before – his blustery statements only seem to have deepened his appeal to a subset of Republican voters, leading to a frustrated party establishment.
Connie Ryan Terrell, the executive director of the Interfaith Alliance, said Tuesday the group is “horrified and disappointed” by Trump’s comments. “We want to work with you, we want you to turn in the bad ones”.
“It’s morally reprehensible. It runs counter to the Constitution”. They’re suddenly comparing him to things far more sinister than a clown.
The Philadelphia Daily News evoked Nazi imagery on its front page with a tight profile shot of the front-runner, right arm extended up and out at a 45-degree angle and the headline “The New Furor”. (Soon Bachmann would leave Congress, depriving Gaffney of an important political collaborator.) The most recent Republican nominee for president, Mitt Romney, largely refused to countenance Gaffney-style anti-Sharia conspiracy theories. “How do you respond?”
Once again, even across “The Pond”, Donald Trump is dominating the day’s news cycle. Trump, a product of entertainment/politics culture hard to find historical parallels for, has unsurprisingly dominated news coverage.
Now the primaries are less than two months away. “With thesurging power of this anti-Muslim narrative in the media, combined with everything ISIS says and does, it’s entirely understandable how there can be a sea change in American opinion towards Muslims”, he says. “If this ban is imposed, many students won’t be able to go and study in the United States”. The comic relief is over, the site founder declared.
Asked about Trump’s remarks, Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said Muslims serve in the U.S. armed forces and that America’s war strategy to combat Islamic State hinged on support from Muslim countries.
Jeff Kaufman, chairman of the Iowa Republicans Party, said on Twitter, “We don’t make ourselves safer by betraying bedrock constitutional values”.
Like an inflatable punching bag, though, Trump has repeatedly bounced back from controversy and defied the disdain of opinion elites.
Trump showed little concern for critics on Tuesday.
Trump’s campaign dismissed criticism that his plan would likely be unconstitutional for singling out people based on their religion.
As expected, this comment fueled a number of reactions, most of which cast Trump in a negative light. She said that they were also told not to return home to the West Coast, were the vast majority had settled before the war.
Fellow Republicans denounced him with varying degrees of acerbity.
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After years of lobbying by Japanese-American lawmakers, former US President George H.W. Bush penned a formal apology in conjunction with the federal government’s reparations payments to Japanese-Americans in 1991, saying that the US should “recognize that serious injustices were done”. Lindsay Graham, R-South Carolina, described Trump as a “xenophobic, race-baiting religious bigot”. Ted Cruz, R-Texas – has refused to join in condemning Trump.
