Confirming that he has no intention of backing down from his comments in the aftermath of the Orlando mass shooting, when he renewed his calls for a ban on Muslim immigration into the US, Donald Trump said on Sunday that the US should “seriously” consider profiling Muslims inside the country as a terrorism-fighting tool, the latest example of the Republican presidential nominee-in-waiting increasingly backing positions that single out Muslims, a gambit which as last week’s media commentary demonstrated has substantial risks even if it also demonstrates Trump’s unwavering eagerness to isolate the US for Muslims if only on a temporary basis.
“I think profiling is something that we’re going to have to start thinking about as a country,” Trump said when asked on CBS whether he supported more profiling of Muslims in America. “It’s not the worst thing to do. You look at Israel and you look at others, and they do it and they do it successfully. And you know, I hate the concept of profiling, but we have to start using common sense,” he added.
Trump last week drew widespread criticism from many in his own party for his comments on American Muslims after the Orlando attack, in which a U.S. born Muslim man killed 49 people at a gay nightclub. Trump also reiterated his support for more scrutiny of mosques, saying that could resemble a controversial New York City surveillance program that has been shut down. “If you go to France right now, they’re doing it in France. In fact, in some instances they’re closing down mosques.” Reuters confirms that police in France closed some mosques shortly after gunmen aligned with Islamic State militants killed 130 people in Paris in a series of attacks on Nov. 13.
The Orlando gunman, Omar Mateen, expressed support for Islamic State, but officials believe he was “self-radicalized”. Trump vocally disagreed and put the blame on external “Islamic Radicalization” that pressured the gunman to unleash the worst episode of mass shooting in US history.
Trump also has called for a suspension of immigration from countries with “a proven history of terrorism.” Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, has said the comments show Trump is unfit to be president. House of Representatives Speaker Paul Ryan said a Muslim ban is not in U.S. interests, and has further threatened to sue Trump if the billionaire is elected and passes a ban through an executive order.
Trump brushed off the criticism on Sunday and said he would put up his own money for his campaign if needed. “It would be nice if the Republicans stuck together,” Trump said in an ABC interview. “I can win, one way or another.”
As AP adds, Trump also said the government should investigate mosques in the U.S. in much the same way the New York Police Department’s Demographics Unit spied on Muslims and mosques around the city with help from the CIA. The group assembled databases on where Muslims lived, shopped, worked and prayed, infiltrated Muslim student groups, put informants in mosques and monitored sermons, the Associated Press reported in 2011.
The NYPD, under Mayor Bill de Blasio, announced it had abandoned the program following lawsuits and complaints. “You do (it) as they used to do in New York prior to this mayor dismantling” the program, Trump said Sunday.
Meanwhile, Americans are “strikingly” divided over whether to single out Muslim communities as part of a plan to fight terrorism, according to an AP-GfK poll conducted March 31 through April 4. Forty-nine percent of respondents said they favor surveillance programs aimed at predominantly Muslim communities in the United States to obtain information about possible radicalization. Forty-seven percent of those surveyed opposed the practice.
This may also explain why as Reuters reported, “Trump chipped away at Hillary Clinton’s lead in the presidential race this week, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Friday, as the candidates clashed over how to respond to the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.”
The poll, conducted from Monday to Friday, showed Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee, with a 10.7 point lead among likely voters over Trump, her likely Republican rival in the November presidential election. That’s down from a lead of 14.3 points for Clinton on Sunday, the day an American-born shooter who declared allegiance to militant group Islamic State killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida.
Trump on Sunday cast the use of profiling as a matter of “common sense” over “political correctness.” If – as the AP polls confirms – more Americans agree than disagree with him, the latest round of predictions of Trump’s imminent campaign demise could join the countless other such forecasts already decomposing on the trash heap of ever more incorrect political punditry.
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