Washington Post (Plum Line):
By Greg Sargent
November 30, 2015
Over
the weekend, Donald Trump continued to dig in behind his assertion that
“thousands and thousands” of people in New Jersey cheered the fall of
the Twin Towers. But
the argument remained in a kind of he-said-she-said netherworld that
skirted the debate’s actual subtext. It was about whether any actual
evidence exists of Trump’s claims, and not about his deeper implication
that you should fear the violent intentions of
huge numbers of American Muslims.
Now Trump’s demagoguery has taken a new turn that could focus the debate a bit more directly on this implied message.
On
Morning Joe today, Bloomberg’s John Heilemann asked Trump directly
whether he thinks Islam is an inherently violent or peaceful religion.
Trump declined to answer,
and instead suggested that there is a “lot of hatred” coming out of a
“big part” of Islam:
HEILEMANN:
“Do you think that Islam is an inherently peaceful religion that’s been
perverted by some? Or do you think Islam is an inherently violent
religion?”
TRUMP:
“All I can say is there’s something going on. I don’t know that that
question can be answered. It could be answered two ways. It could be
answered both ways. But
there’s something going on there. There’s a lot of hatred coming out of
at least a big part of it. You see the hatred. We see it every day. You
see it, whether it’s in Paris, or whether it’s the World Trade Center….
“There’s something nasty coming out of there. You could answer it any way you want. But at least we have to know the problem.”
How
will the other GOP presidential candidates react to this? It seems
plausible that Jeb Bush might forcefully denounce it, since Bush has
unequivocally condemned Trump’s
vow to close mosques and his suggestions that we may need a Muslim
registry.
Ted
Cruz is beginning to escalate his attacks on Trump, apparently in hopes
of winning over Trump’s evangelical supporters. But Cruz was very quick
to claim after the
Paris attacks that Muslim refugees in particular should be barred from
entering the United States.
Marco
Rubio at first tiptoed carefully around Trump’s mosque comments, and
while he subsequently came down a bit harder on them, he plainly has
exercised caution around
Trump’s gradual ratcheting up of demagoguery, perhaps out of fear of
alienating Trump supporters.
By
declining to say whether Islam is a violent religion, and by suggesting
that “hatred” is coming out of a “big part” of Islam, Trump has exposed
the xenophobic subtext
of his rhetoric about Muslims, much the way his previous comments about
Mexicans helped illuminate the true intended appeal of his immigration
prescriptions. Of course, for all we know, this might only help him
further with his supporters.
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