Wednesday 9 December 2015

Trump doesn't back down on call for Muslim ban

Donald Trump continued to call Tuesday for a “shutdown” of Muslims entering the United States, saying the plan has “tremendous support” despite condemnation from critics who range from Republican rivals to the White House to foreign governments.“We have people who want to blow up our buildings, our cities,” Trump said on ABC’s Good Morning America.Trump said he has received calls of support from people concerned about terrorist attacks ranging from 9/11 to last week’s mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., and “they just want to see something happen.”
The ban on Muslims entering the U.S. would be “a temporary measure,” Trump told ABC, until U.S. officials “can figure out what’s going on.” In various interviews, Trump said he would exempt Muslim world leaders and the Muslim troops in the U.S. armed forces.While other candidates attacked Trump’s proposal as unwise and unconstitutional, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said they should go further and say they would not endorse the New York businessman if he becomes the GOP nominee.“What he said is disqualifying and any Republican who’s too fearful of the Republican base to admit it has no business serving as president either,” Earnest said.Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., said that “I disagree with Donald Trump’s latest proposal. His habit of making offensive and outlandish statements will not bring Americans together.” Former Florida governor Jeb Bush described Trump as “unhinged.”Trump’s proposal, made on Monday, came less than a week after the San Bernardino shooting by a Muslim couple who had been radicalized and may have been supporters of the Islamic State.It also came the same day a new poll showed him falling behind Texas Sen. Ted Cruz in Iowa, which opens the Republican nomination process with caucuses on Feb. 1.The plan drew strong rebukes from a variety of Republicans, including former vice president Dick Cheney.“This whole notion that somehow we need to say no more Muslims — and just ban a whole religion — goes against everything we stand for and believe in,” Cheney told radio host Hugh Hewitt. “I mean religious freedom’s been a very important part of our, our history.”The Republican Party chairs in the first three states holding delegate contests — Iowa, New Hampshire, and South Carolina — also criticized Trump.So did Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus, who told the Washington Examiner: “We need to aggressively take on radical Islamic terrorism but not at the expense of our American values.”Members of Congress, including Republicans, also attacked Trump.House Speaker Paul Ryan, R-Wis., said Trump’s proposal isn’t what the party or the country stand for. Noting that Muslims serve in the armed forces and in the government, Ryan said that “some of our best and biggest allies in this struggle and fight against radical Islamic terror are Muslims.”Asked about the reaction, Trump said on MSNBC’s Morning Joe that Republicans have been “condemning practically everything I say, and then they come to my side.” Trump denied that he made his proposal because of the Iowa poll showing him in second, describing that survey as an “outlier.”Democrats also attacked Trump’s plan, and some presidential candidates began fundraising off of Trump’s comments.Huma Abedin, longtime aide to Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, sent a fundraising email to backers describing herself as a “proud Muslim” outraged by the Republican’s plan.“Trump wants to literally write racism into our law books,” Abedin wrote. “His Islamophobia doesn’t reflect our nation’s values — it goes far enough to damage our country’s reputation and could even threaten our national security.”Clinton herself called Trump’s idea “shameful” and “dangerous,” and added: “At a time when America should be doing everything we can to fight radical jihadists, Mr. Trump is supplying them with new propaganda. He’s playing right into their hands.”Foreign governments also criticized Trump, saying his anti-Muslim comments would help the Islamic State and other terrorist groups argue that the United State is waging war against Islam. The office of British Prime Minister David Cameron described Trump’s proposed ban as “divisive, unhelpful and quite simply wrong.”The Council on American-Islamic Relations criticized Trump’s remarks as unconstitutional and un-American.“It seems that Donald Trump is now channeling the worst of the worst of the Islamaphobia industry in the United States,” said CAIR spokesman Ibrahim Hooper.Hooper also said there is a “toxic anti-Muslim environment” in the country since the attacks, and Trump may benefit politically from his proposal.“That’s the most frightening part,” Hooper said.Former president George W. Bush declined comment. Spokesman Freddy Ford said that Bush “spoke a lot about this during his presidency, and he won’t be weighing in anew now — or commenting on or giving oxygen to any of Trump’s bluster.”Bush frequently drew a line between true Islam and radical Islam, describing the latter as “the perversion by a few of a noble faith into an ideology of terror and death.”Rick Kriseman, the mayor of St. Petersburg, Fla., offered his own suggestion via Twitter: “I am hereby barring Donald Trump from entering St. Petersburg until we fully understand the dangerous threat posed by all Trumps.”

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