One by one, Republican officials across the country lashed out at Trump’s plan, announced the night before, which calls for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” to help quell the threat of terrorism.
Advertisement
Muslim leaders in the United States also hit out at Trump.
Campaigning in South Carolina, Trump offered no exceptions for Muslims serving in the USA military.
The quandary facing some in the GOP is how to condemn Trump and his policies without antagonizing or putting off his supporters.
“As he says, we have to find out who they are and why they are here”, he said. “We have to figure out what’s going on”.
In New Hampshire, Republican National Committeeman Steve Duprey called Trump’s idea “abhorrent”.
Trump’s controversial comments earlier this year about Mexican immigrants “bringing crime” and “being rapists” led to the PGA of America taking October’s Grand Slam of Golf away from Trump Los Angeles. But Reince Priebus is ostensibly in charge of keeping the Republican Party respectable-looking-no matter how many candidates tear the drapes and vomit on the sofas, so he’s got to come out against this thing that would quite clearly be un-Constitutional and has people throwing around words like fascism.
-“Although we are not as advanced as the USA, we have never elected such people to power in Pakistan”, human rights lawyer Asma Jahangir tells Reuters, after initially saying, “It’s so absurd a statement that I don’t even wish to react to it”.
Rod Weader, a 68-year-old real estate agent from North Charleston who attended the rally and said he agreed with Trump’s plan “150 per cent”. MSNBC host Joe Scarborough asked Trump.
During the daily press briefing on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest was asked about Trump’s proposal and whether President Obama would be doing more to combat anti-Muslim sentiments.
Yet the White House risked stepping on that message with an offhand comment mocking Trump’s appearance.
Waleed says Trump’s proposal to ban Muslims isn’t going to solve the problem.
House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters after a closed-door meeting with fellow Republicans that such views are “not what this party stands for, and more importantly, it’s not what this country stands for”.
From the Democratic presidential campaign, Bernie Sanders said “Trump and others want us to hate all Muslims” and Hillary Clinton called the proposal “reprehensible, prejudiced and divisive”. But, he added, “I’m going to support whoever the Republican nominee is and I’m going to stand up for what I believe in as I do that”.
“It’s a very extreme group who claim to be Republicans”.
“I’m not concerned about those people, what I’m concerned about is their fear”, she said.
Muslims in Boston also condemned Trump’s comments and accused him of playing right into the hands of the terrorists.
Muslims make up around 3 percent of the population in Canada, which prides itself on being multicultural.
Advertisement
The most positive response to the ban came from Ann Coulter, the incendiary conservative author who has been Trump’s most outspoken media cheerleader. Columnist Adriana Cohen wrote in the Boston Herald that Trump should go a step further and call for closing the US border entirely.
