Wall Street Journal
By Colleen McCain Nelson
December 16, 2015
After
Donald Trump called for a total shutdown of Muslims entering the U.S.,
President Barack Obama urged Americans to remember that their freedom is
bound up with the
freedom of others, regardless of what faith they practice.
Less
than a week later, senior White House officials met with American
Muslim and Sikh leaders. And on Tuesday, the president told 31 newly
naturalized U.S. citizens that
“immigrants and refugees revitalize and renew America.”
On each occasion, White House officials said Mr. Obama was simply voicing long-held beliefs.
“It’s
not as if the president went out of his way to describe these values,”
White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest said after Mr. Obama spoke
Tuesday at a naturalization
ceremony. “These are the kinds of things the president has long fought
for.”
But
whether coincidence or coordinated effort, the cumulative effect has
been a not-so-subtle condemnation of Mr. Trump and other Republican
presidential candidates who
have opposed allowing Syrian refugees to resettle in the U.S. or who
have suggested that only Christian refugees should be accepted.
Throughout
this presidential campaign, White House officials have deflected a
steady stream of questions about the GOP candidates’ views and
declarations. The president
won’t be weighing in on every utterance from the campaign trail, they
say.
But
Mr. Trump’s call to block Muslims from coming to the U.S. has sparked a
sharp and sustained response from the president himself, even though
Mr. Obama never mentions
the businessman and Republican front-runner by name.
The
presidential pushback started with Mr. Obama’s speech last week marking
the 150th anniversary of the abolition of slavery. He hailed those who
had fought discrimination
in the past and urged today’s Americans to rise above fear and to keep
in mind “the freedom of others – regardless of what they look like or
where they come from or what their last name is or what faith they
practice.”
The
president’s call for Americans to “push back against bigotry in all its
forms” provided a stark contrast between Mr. Obama and the GOP
presidential candidates, said
Mr. Earnest, the White House spokesman. “But I would contest the notion
that this is something that the president newly inserted into his
remarks to respond to one individual,” he said.
When
a few of the president’s top advisers met with Muslim-American and Sikh
leaders Monday and convened an interfaith conference call, Mr. Earnest
said at least one of
the meetings had been scheduled previously, but he noted that combating
religious discrimination was a “timely topic of conversation.”
Despite
intense criticism from Democrats and even some Republicans, Mr. Trump
has stood by his proposal to block Muslims from the U.S., saying in
Tuesday night’s GOP debate
that this is a matter of security, not religion.
The
president’s most emphatic counter to Mr. Trump’s plan came Tuesday,
when he spoke to a group of new Americans. Mr. Obama said “immigration
is our origin story,” but
that this country sometimes has succumbed to fear, citing Japanese
internment during World War II.
“How
quickly we forget. One generation passes, two [generations pass], and
suddenly we don’t remember where we came from,” Mr. Obama said. “And we
suggest that somehow
there is ‘us’ and there is ‘them,’ not remembering we used to be
‘them.’ On days like today, we need to resolve never to repeat mistakes
like that again.”
The president never spoke the words “Donald Trump.” But the message was clear.
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