Donald Trump has backtracked from his support for a government database to track Muslims in the United States – an idea that drew sharp criticism from his Republican presidential rivals and disbelief from legal experts.
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“I would certainly implement that, absolutely”, he said in on-camera comments.
Russell D. Moore, the president of the Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission of the Southern Baptist Convention, said, I do think its scary when we have candidates talking about shutting down houses of worship, about having badges for religious groups.
Trump said Saturday “it doesn’t matter” if he couldn’t hear the question posed to him on Thursday, “but I do want databases for those people coming in, but I also insist on the wall, and it was all fine”.
Trump’s comments were the latest and perhaps the most extreme contribution to what is an already sharply charged debate over whether the USA should accept Muslim refugees from Syria and Iraq in the wake of the Paris attacks last Friday. Bush called it “just wrong”. “That’s not strength. That’s weakness”, Jeb Bush told CNBC Friday. Marco Rubio said the idea was “unnecessary” and not something Americans would support. “Here is the story, just to set it clear: I want surveillance of these people”.
“We’re going to have to look at a lot of things very closely”, Trump told Yahoo News. “I want surveillance of these people and of certain mosques”, the front-running Trump stated at a marketing crusade event in Birmingham, Ala.
“We are better as a nation than what we have shown, and today we call on Americans to reject hatemongering and xenophobia”.
Twenty-two percent of Utahns said they’d choose Carson to be the 2016 GOP nominee, while 9 percent picked Trump.
Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim rights group, said other Republican candidates should say whether they would close mosques, create a database of Muslims or require Muslims to carry a special ID card.
Asked whether Muslims would have to register at mosques, Trump said, “Different places”. Trump did not say no to either idea.
Democrat Hillary Clinton on Friday tweeted that the idea of tracking people based on their religion is “shocking rhetoric” and “should be denounced by all seeking to lead this country”.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders blasted Trump’s words as “outrageous and bigoted”.
Indeed, Trump’s following comments during the interaction with the reporter seem to have been taken out of context, as noted by liberal news website Slate.
He also suggested he would consider warrantless searches, according to Yahoo, saying, “We’re going to have to do things that we never did before”. “I never responded to that question”, he said.
Instead, when asked how to do it, Trump said: “It would be just good management”. In October, Trump said his Presbyterian faith was “middle of the road”, but “Seventh day-Adventist, I don’t know about”.
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In its statement, the ADL also slammed other candidates’ recent remarks on Syrian refugees, saying such comments “cross[ed] the line into scapegoating”.
