Donald Trump’s bigoted proposal to shut down Muslim immigration to the US has won him praise from white nationalists — it wouldn’t be the first time, either — so it’s really no surprise that Trump is yet again invoking another ugly chapter of modern US history in order to further advance his racist agenda.
Addicting Info blog recaps Trump’s recent interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos:
In an unhinged rant on ABC News, Republican frontrunner Donald Trump used Japanese internment during World War II — a racist policy America later publicly apologized for — to justify his new plan to ban Muslims from coming to the United States.
Trump was speaking wtih ABC’s George Stephanopoulos about his recent incendiary comments regarding Muslims, although it wasn’t much of a dialogue. Rather than allow Stephanopoulos to ask questions, Trump ranted for the duration. In the midst of this sad performance, Trump insisted what he was doing wasn’t wrong because during World War II, America behaved badly, too.
“We’re at war” with Muslims, Trump claimed. “We have a president that doesn’t want to say that, but we are now at war.”
Trump didn’t seem to be able to decide whether he supported torching the Constitution or not. He remarked that President Franklin Roosevelt had created internment camps.
When pressed over whether he was advocating for something similar, Trump said no. Then he said yes.
TRUMP: Take a look at Presidential Proclamations 2525, 2526, and 2527 having to do with alien Germans, alien Italians, alien Japanese. Read what they did. You know they stripped them of their naturalization, they went through a whole list of things. They couldn’t go five miles from their homes. They weren’t allowed to use radios, flashlights. I mean take a look at what FDR did many years ago…
STEPHANOPOULOS: And you want to bring that policy back?
TRUMP: No, I don’t want to bring that back, George, at all. I don’t like doing it at all. It’s just a temporary measure until our representatives, many of whom are grossly incompetent, until they can figure out what’s going on.
You heard it here first: Trump wants to enact the kind of regressive, inhumane policies from a different era, but only until America solves the insolvable problem of international terrorism. How comforting.
Trump also endorsed another vile plan twice this past fall, a plan despicably known as “Operation Wetback.”
In September, Trump said he’d model his “very humane” mass-deportation plan after President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1954 mass round-up, which expelled one million immigrants and some of their families to Mexico, with dozens dying in the desert from dehydration or exposure.
And at a nationally-televised Republican Presidential debate in November, Trump again endorsed “Operation Wetback.”
Trump said Eisenhower “moved immigrants just beyond the border; they came back. Moved them again beyond the border; they came back. Didn’t like it. Moved them way south; they never came back. Dwight Eisenhower. You don’t get nicer, you don’t get friendlier.”
So it sounds like President Trump would be running at least two plans (simultaneously?) to keep immigrants and Muslims out of the United States. No wonder the white supremacists are loving him.
Here’s what one had to say about his anti-Muslim proposal:
Former Klu Klux Klan official and politician David Duke offered his support for Trump’s proposal on his radio program on Tuesday, saying the media is attacking Trump because his comments call into question a U.S. foreign policy pushed by Zionism.
“The Jewish knives are coming out on Donald Trump,” Duke said on his radio show of Trump’s comments.
“How come it’s against America values to want to preserve the heritage of the country?” Duke asked, paraphrasing Trump. “We’re overwhelmingly a Christian country and overwhelmingly a European country.”
Another white supremacist commented Trump was the “the only candidate speaking sense”:
“The Daily Stormer, the white nationalist website that has endorsed Trump, editor Andrew Anglin wrote in a post “Glorious Leader Calls for Complete Ban on All Moslems” that Trump was the only candidate speaking sense.
“Why were these monkeys ever allowed in in the first place? What an insane, stupid concept,” he wrote with a link to Trump’s comment. “Finally: Someone speaks sense.”
When asked about endorsements from white supremacists, Trump comments “everybody likes me.” The Republican frontrunner for President, guys.
