I checked on this story before publishing it because it seemed unbelievable that an American, let alone an American running for the highest office in the land, could utter such repugnant ideas. The video linked below actually documents Donald Trump saying, in his own words, that he would consider a national registry data base for American Muslims, and that idea could be carried out with "good management."
The idea of American Muslims wearing IDs was brought up by a reporter from Yahoo News, but Trump did not strongly denounce that idea, as any American would.
In a subsequent interview later in the day, an NBC reporter asked Trump to clarify his position on a data base registry for American Muslims. That's when Trump said a lot of things we don't like would have to be done -- including registering American Muslims. Watch the video linked below to hear with your own ears what Trump said with his own mouth.
Said Trump, "We’re going to have to do things that we never did before….we’re going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago."
Trump did NOT rule out a national data base registry for American Muslims, an idea that every American should reject in the strongest possible terms.
This video documents Donald Trump saying with his own words, that he would implement it with "good management."
Donald Trump did NOT unequivocally say that registering religious groups is unAmerican and an atrocious totalitarian idea. He didn't swat the idea of a national registry away when asked about it; Trump explained he would implement it with "good management." Nor did Trump explain what consequences American Muslims would face should they refuse to comply with registering with the government.
Donald Trump is the leading candidate for the T-GOP nomination for the POTUS.
Let that sink in.
31 comments:
We have Donald Trump today talking about having immigrants wearing identification, and bearing papers they can show. We have Jeb! talking about making 'em prove they're Christian. We have Christie talking about freight trains and bar codes.
We are not in Godwin's Law territory here, ladies and gentlemen. We are confronting the Real Thing. And this confirms the crucial lesson the Nazis taught us, or should have taught us:
The Nazis were not inhuman monsters. They were human, just as we are human. They did not demonstrate themselves as other than human. They showed us, once and for all, what human beings are capable of doing. There are choices to be made. We must make them better than the Nazis did. It is within our power to do that, as surely as it's possible for us to make the same frightful error they did. Without that lesson, all other considerations are for naught.
We have here the demonization of the Other, the casual suggestions of how one might deal with them, their identification as they live with the rest of us, the Dolchstosslegende of our society being undermined not just by the Other but by those granting the Other a common humanity. The Nazis loathed pacifists and Communists fully as much as they loathed Jews.
People like Christie and Trump must be fought, and fought on this level. This sort of evil--not too strong a word--must be unacceptable, must be not just disagreed with but rejected, definitively and forthrightly.
This is the sort of person Donald Trump and the TeaPublicans who support him admire and encourage. This is the result of their endless demonization of ALL Muslims, of calling ALL Muslims "vermin," of screaming for American Muslims to be DETAINED and DEPORTED! This is the type of idiot they all encourage:
"Montreal police have arrested a 24-year-old suspect in connection with a now-removed YouTube video, in which a man dressed as the Joker threatened to kill one Arab or Muslim person per week, starting next week. If the government won’t do anything about Muslims, the pistol-brandishing suspect said, he and a group of likeminded individuals would carry out his threat."
Here is a direct quote on their insane thinking about ALL Muslims:
"I believe that "moderate" Muslims don't want to kill us and behead us and enslave women and all that -- they want the radical Muslims to do that for them.
In other words, most "good" Muslims are complicit to some degree in the commission of horrific acts such as the Boston bombing or the WTC assault or the Charlie Hebdo and the most recent Paris massacre.
And importing tens of thousands more "refugees" from that Muslim sewer will only exacerbate the danger and waste more millions of borrowed money to add to our unmanageable debt.
Islam is NOT a religion, dammit. it's a control mechanism in the form of a cult, nothing less. It can be outlawed and banished just as was the KKK without violating the 1st Amendment."
The benighted person who wrote that apparently doesn't know that the KKK is NOT banished in this country, it still exists.
From the History channel website:
"...though fragmented groups became aligned with neo-Nazi or other right-wing extremist organizations from the 1970s onward. In the early 1990s, the Klan was estimated to have between 6,000 and 10,000 active members, mostly in the Deep South.
But what we've come to understand from the people who believe such rot is that facts and truth mean nothing when they're driven by hatred, fear, and rank ignorance.
And never forget that it is they who support Donald Trump, probably the most dangerous demagogue to run for president in this country's history. Never forget that in the link imbedded in this blog post, by his own words, he actually is considering a national data base registry for Americans who are of the Muslim faith. Again. Let that sink in.
Disgusting. Did Trump learn nothing from the horrors of the Third Reich or the internment of Japanese residents in the U.S. during WWII?
Ahab,
Do we even know if Trump is aware of the history of registering Jews in WWII Germany and the internment of Japanese-Americans in U.S.? If he isn't, then the T-GOP is supporting an ignoramus; if he is aware of that history, then the T-GOP is supporting a monster.
I think many in the GOP are onto something with their belief that based on the actions and words, we can assume all Muslims are extremists.
You see, if that is a logical way of thinking, then it is a perfect explanation of today's conservative movement.
And therein is the problem with the current line of xenophobic nationalistic thinking we are seeing on the rise here in the US.
Conservatives are advocating for policies that if practiced against them, they would never support as fair, just or constitutional.
Do what Trump wants, and the terrorists win.
Dave,
Conservative and liberal gun owners are the first to tell Americans that we can't condemn all gun owners because of the lawlessness of a few. Yet conservatives and some liberals condemn ALL Muslims because of the lawlessness of a few -- and jihadists are the few when we remember that there are approximately 1.6 billion Muslims on the planet.
What I'd like to know is what is the reaction from the T-GOP to Trump's suggestion that, if he were in the White House, America should institute a data based registry for Americans of the Muslim faith.
I've noticed that not one of the regular "Obama-is-a-tyrant" far right blogs are talking about this shameful idea.
Jerry, Trump is a menace to America. He's shown his utter ignorance on American values and the American constitution. But let's not forget that his supporters wrongly claim President Obama shreds the Constitution, but remain silent as Trump promises to piss all over it with his totalitarian ideas.
Shaw you can delete this after reading it if you like, but here's the mentality of the crazies on the far right:
"Of course we should allow Christans first . Of course not all Muslims are vermin ,
but I can’t be 100% sure"
This right winger admits he can't be sure that ALL Muslims are not "vermin."
Here's Godwin's law, but in this case, it applies: The Nazis referred to ALL Jews as "vermin."
The right wingers have choosen the historical company to identify with. They disgust me.
Wow! That site is a major source of stupidity and bad information. One particularly lame-ass writer claims Islam isn't a real religion because they don't have hospitals or charities?
Lame-ass writer: "as a religionislamfails on all counts. You are not invited into their mosque, they don’t have hospitals or provide services of any kind to the needy of all faiths, Boom, done. You’re not a religion. We don’t recoginize you as a religion, we disrecognize CAIR, we are taking away your tax exempt status and we will deport you for trying to practice sharia law. Then maybe we start getting somewhere."
American Muslims have a substantial presence in the health care industry. The Islamic Medical Association of North America, one of many such organizations,estimates that there are more than 20,000 Muslim physicians in the United States. Similarly, an analysis of statistics provided by the American Medical Association indicatesthat 10% of all American physicians are Muslims. While no Islamic hospitals exist in the United States, per se, several Muslim-based health clinics do. And let’s not forget that the hospital itself is not an American invention — it’s an Egyptian one. For that matter, the father of modern surgery wasn’t an American Protestant pioneer, either, but a 10th-Century Muslim physician from Spain, Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi.
Muslim charity groups in the United States are too numerous to catalog, though the Bay Area Islamic Networks Group, the UMMA Clinic in Los Angeles, the Chicago-based Inner-City Muslim Action Network and Dearborn’s ACCESS are examples of groups that provide crucial services and empower the underprivileged. In 2013, the Muslim charity Helping Hand for Relief and Development (HHRD) was rated among the top 10 charities in the United States.
It's not surprising to read how uninformed and ignorant most of the haters on the far right are because ignorance breeds fear, and they fear all Muslims. They don't bother to find out if what they trot out for their fellow ignorant pals to read is true, they just write stuff they pull out of their buttss. And it smells just like the crap it is.
Radical P.L., that guy who can't tell if all Muslims aare NOT vermin must agree with the leading TeaPublicans who are pandering to the absolute worst in Americans:
From the Washington Post:
"One of the front-runners [Trump} in the Republican presidential race said Thursday he would “absolutely” want a database of Muslims in the country and wouldn’t rule out giving them special ID cards that noted their religion.
Another top candidate [Carson] likened Syrian refugees — who are largely Muslim — to dogs. Some of them might be rabid, he said, which was reason to keep them all out.
And a third [Cruz] stood up in the Senate on Thursday and called for banning refugees from five Middle Eastern countries. He was explicit that the point was to keep Muslim refugees out while letting Christians from the same places in."
Oh Trump's aware alright, He's simply counting on millions of Americans not being aware. It looks more and more like such may be the case.
Shaw... it is only in the heads of conservatives where everything is seen as either/or. As in if you are in favor of letting any Muslims in, you are also in favor of letting terrorists in. You cannot be in favor of letting some Muslims in and keeping others out. It has to be one or the other.
This is just a variation of the same themes GW posited when he said you are either for us, [evidenced by participation in the Iraq debacle] or against us.
Witness the gyrations JEB! went through when he was asked about admitting Muslims and he spoke of bringing in Christians. When pressed as to how he would determine their faith, he had nothing. Perhaps because Christians tried that once before and it did not go so well for many.
Even within the church, many Christians disagree as to who is, and who is not a Christian. For the record, under the standard set by Bush, Cruz and others, here's a few denominations and religious groups that many conservative Christians worldwide do not consider adherents to the faith.
Catholics, Seventh Day Adventists, Universalists, Unitarians, Christian Scientists, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Mormons.
Each of these groups is seen by many as apostate, a sect, or a cult, but not within true historic Christianity. Should we have a religious test? Well, if those advocating such would stop and think, they might have a different idea.
Just because pandering gets you votes, does not give you a pass.
Lindsey Graham seems alone on the sanity train that is the GOP, mocking the meme of a clash of religion/civilizations. He said it was tried before... The Crusades.
As for whether the extremists are talking about this, yes they are. But they see no need to worry about a database as they want to take the Trump solution and "Bomb the Hell out of them". Then we won't have to worry, because they'll all be dead.
That group should really start a new party... the XNP or Xenophobic Nationalist Party... all pretense of a multiethnic, diverse, pluralistic nation is gone for them. They know, they've decided and any disagreement is proof of the idiocy of others.
Part of the issue here is that many in this country feel like things in the world are out of control.
Americans of all stripes want to know what is going to happen, and right now, that seems difficult. Add to that an enemy, ISIS, that does not stick to one place, is not easily identifiable and is brutally efficient in what they do, and we have a disaster.
The problem from the liberal side is this... the left has done a horrible job of addressing these concerns. And if there is no direct, concrete action that the US can take because we cannot just carpet bomb, or nuke an entire country, than our President owes us an explanation.
We expect politicians who want to go to war to address the American people, explain the rational, and get us on board. Why should we not expect the same from a liberal politician, in this case our President?
Why is President Obama not on television making the case for his policies? Why are his military and policy advisors not doing the same? Snark and churlishness, no matter how warranted, is not how a President should address members of another party, no matter how bad they may treated him.
GW Bush was lambasted brutally by the Dems. I need to look no further than my own Senator Harry Reid for this, but he never mocked Harry, or other Dems. Right or wrong, he was Presidential and respectful when dealing with his adversaries. Obama, not so much.
I am all in for accepting more refugees. But as President, Obama needs to come before the American people, tell us why it is important, and explain how the US Gov't will ensure that we are not importing potential terrorists. Simply saying it does not make it so.
In short, he needs to make the political case, something he has never liked, or been particularly good at. But that is too bad, it is part of the job.
The American people will stand by our President. We always have, but only when they level with us, bring us along and ask us to be part of the solution. Not tell us... Ask us! Something Obama has rarely done while in office.
You wouldn't find a national registry for guns absurd. Your discrimination is fine, but his is not? Thanks for proving again, that you are nothing but a hypocrite.
Anon @2:10 thinks guns and people are the same thing. That's the first absurdity. Second, I've never written a word on this blog about a national registry for guns, although I believe guns should be registered the same way cars are.
Anon's nonsensical statement is a damn fool false equivalency. People are not guns, and making only Muslims register for a data base national registry is unAmerican, unConstitutional, and clearly an idea straight out of Nazi Germany.
The problem with people like Anon @2:10 is they don't get it. And never will.
Well said by Dave Miller. Like it of not, Obama has been lax in leadership on the ISIS issue.
"Republicans are trying to make hay out of a sound bite of President Obama saying ISIL is contained. He was asked specifically about Iraq and Syria, and he was correct in his response. PolitiFact agrees.
Looking back at Obama’s interview where he made this comment, it is quite clear that it’s within a narrowly defined scope: ISIS’s territorial expansion in Iraq and Syria. He did not rule out the potential for a terrorist attack, and he also made it clear that the United States’ anti-ISIS efforts are a work in progress.
References or suggestions that Obama claimed ISIS no longer presents an active threat are incorrect.
Experts agree that the President was correct, though his choice of words wasn’t great, given some people’s inability to understand stateless terrorism.
Perhaps the problem is that the people jumping to conclusions aren’t able to keep up with the President’s nuanced, in-depth understanding of fighting stateless terrorism, and only understand delusional bumper sticker slogans that make them feel better, in spite of not actually addressing the problem at all."
PunditFact rates Obama administration's ISIS claim 'true'
NOTE: Any fact-checking site that verifies that what President Obama said is true is considered a "Commie" fact-checking site by the extremist righties. We ignore those idiots.
"...over the last 15 months, the U.S. has carried out 6,353 airstrikes against ISIS.
According to both Zack Beauchamp and Robert Pape, it is this air campaign combined with advancements by local ground troops that has "contained" ISIS in Iraq and Syria - possibly leading them to start seeking out targets overseas."
Why were restaurants, a stadium, and a concert hall in a Western capital “accurately chosen?”
The answer can be found in Syria and Iraq. There, since September 2014, ISIS has lost significant territory and faces the near-term prospect of losing to a multiprong offensive by the international coalition that could decisively cripple the terrorist group. With these daunting prospects, ISIS is lashing out, much like a cornered animal, and the Paris attacks are part of this." --Nancy LeTourneau, Horizons
Dave: “The problem from the liberal side is this ... the left has done a horrible job of addressing these concerns … our President owes us an explanation."
I agree with this assessment, and this has been President Obama’s Achilles heal from the start. To sell a counter intuitive position — to assuage the inevitable fear mongering and backlash that follows tragedy — means engaging the public with sound arguments. Former President Bush understood this; President Obama does not.
Not just any argument, but a moral one: The overwhelming majority of victims are not Americans or Europeans, but Muslims — by ratios greater than a thousand to one. How can we regard ourself as a moral people when we turn away refugees and compound the worst humanitarian crisis since WWII. Islamophobia is a form of victim blame.
Not just any argument, but a truthful one: The Paris incident was not the work of foreign born jihadis, but the work of homegrown malcontents with criminal records. It is also the product of high unemployment and years of discrimination.
Not just a moral argument, but a practical one: ISIS feeds off the refugee crisis and exposes our duplicities and xenophobias; then ISIS exploits our hypocrisy for use as a recruitment tool.
There is a logic and purpose behind extreme brutality. ISIS is an Apocalyptic Cult that feeds off chaos and blood and banks on the backlash — reactionary Islamophobia, victim blame, bigotry, hypocrisy, and sheer stupidity. Why deliver the ISIS narrative on a silver platter?
And why can’t the President just say it … LIVE on national television … in front of an American audience! The GOP wins when the President is MIA.
Trump tries to weasel out of what he said:
Trump denies he brought up the data base registry for American Muslims. While Trump is accurate in saying that the MSNBC reporter brought the issue up, he said in response, “Oh, I would certainly implement that. Absolutely.” It's on video. He didn't recoil at the idea, as a real American would, he said he'd implement it.
Shaw... and now Trump is refusing to even comment. Former US Generals are even calling him, and the other GOP folks out on this.
I would just start asking specific questions. Should US Representative have to register? How about Muhammad Ali? How about Dr. Oz, Fareed Zakharia and even Shaq, the former All Star center of the Los Angeles Lakers?
Perhaps for the GOP, a party that says follow the advice of military leaders, it is instructive to listen to Retired Admiral and JAG lawyer in the Navy... "it is a bad idea... it violates the freedom of religion clause of the 1st Amendment. Victory for the bad guys is to cause us to change what we stand for in fundamental ways. This would do that.”
Just sayin...
Let's contrast the words of President George W. Bush, 9 days after the attacks of 9/11...
"The terrorists practice a fringe form of Islamic extremism that has been rejected by Muslim scholars and the vast majority of Muslim clerics; a fringe movement that perverts the peaceful teachings of Islam."
I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It's practiced freely by many millions of Americans and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah.
The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself.
The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends. It is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists and every government that supports them.
Hard to imagine Trump, or any of the other GOP Presidential candidates, or the 40 or Dems that voted to stop Syrian refugees from coming here, uttering these words.
Truly this was President Bush's finest hour.
Dave, agreed. I wasn't a fan of the Bush II administration, but GWB acted correctly and with honor after the 9/11 attacks. I wonder why he hasn't spoken out now after what Trump has said.
Oh Christ Shaw, now Trump is Bush's fault....give it a break
Anon @2:12AM
Your comment gets the first prize for dumbest comment of the week.
When anyone mentions "Bush" in a declarative sentence, that doesn't mean he's being blamed for something. Trump isn't Bush's fault, Trump is the fault of people who don't know how to think.
Anon, can you read? Where in any words on any of these comments do we blame Bush?
Where?
Dave, it's likely Anon @2:12AM is an escapee from the blog that believes in "false facts."
Shaw... maybe, maybe not...
The meme of people blaming Bush, like that of apologizing for Americas sins, is a strong one. For many, apparently the simple act of including the name Bush in a comment is blaming. English, and how it is used is not a strong suit for many.
It is interesting in that I have been thinking about governmental apologies this week.
Here's one the US Government actually issued... to survivors of the internment camps we administered during WW II and in which thousands of Japanese Americans, mostly all of whom were US citizens, were imprisoned.
"A monetary sum and words alone cannot restore lost years or erase painful memories; neither can they fully convey our Nation’s resolve to rectify injustice and to uphold the rights of individuals. We can never fully right the wrongs of the past. But we can take a clear stand for justice and recognize that serious injustices were done to Japanese Americans during World War II.
In enacting a law calling for restitution and offering a sincere apology, your fellow Americans have, in a very real sense, renewed their traditional commitment to the ideals of freedom, equality, and justice. You and your family have our best wishes for the future."
The above is what it looks like when a government apologizes. Notice President Bush did not merely state facts, he offered the words, "sincere apology". He said we were sorry!
Sadly, I fear soon we may be issuing another real and sincere apology for the road we are currently traveling with our Muslim citizens if certain politicians, from both sides of the aisle, get their way.
Thank you for posting that, Dave. There's nothing wrong with admitting one's mistakes, whether it's an individual doing so, or a president of a country doing it. It shows strength, not weakness.
My nephew is married to an American woman of Japanese heritage whose father and mother and their families spent WWII in those camps. I had the privilege of meeting Mr. O at a few family gatherings (Mrs. O. had passed away years before my nephew married). Mr. O. never mentioned this to any of us, but we knew of it through my niece-by-marriage's stories. BTW, Mr. O.'s other daughter is a United States Representative from Sacramento, CA.
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