Donald Trump just completed his speech in response to the massacre in Orlando, and he made his position clear. It wasn’t so much a speech as a summons to jihad. Trump left absolutely no doubt that he isn’t merely declaring war on terrorists. He’s declaring a pogrom on Muslims in the United States.
While Clinton’s speech earlier in the day did not name Trump, the reverse was not true. Trump took time to blame Clinton both before and during the speech. Repeatedly Trump drew a connection between allowing Muslims to immigrate to the United States and being against women and gays. Trump declared that his actions in banning Muslims would do more to protect women and gays than all of “Hillary’s words.” It’s clear that Trump’s response to anything he’s said about women is going to be to point at Muslims.
According to Trump, Hillary Clinton has called for a 500% increase in Syrian refugees (she hasn’t) and the burden is on Hillary to explain why she wanted to “flood” America with “vast numbers” of people who are anti-woman and anti-gay.
Ask yourself, who is really the friend of women and the LGBT community, Donald Trump with his actions, or Hillary Clinton with her words? Clinton wants to allow Radical Islamic terrorists to pour into our country—they enslave women, and murder gays.
President Obama also took a lot of blame from Trump who asked that everyone “Remember the famous apology tour” — even though it never happened. Trump laid the blame for events in Orlando directly on immigration policies of President Obama, who was guilty of “deadly ignorance.”
In addition to Muslims, Trump took time to blame all issues—from the 2008 crash to the low wages over the last forty years—on immigrants. It was the most singularly nationalist, nativist speech given by a major political figure in America since the folding of the America First movement at the outset of World War II.
Trump called Muslim immigration a “bigger, more horrible version of the Trojan horse” and warned that immigrants were trying to teach “our children how wonderful ISIS is, and how wonderful Islam is.”
Trump declared that Omar Marteen (who Trump refused to name) was “born in Afghan” and brought to the United States by parents who were also from “Afghan.” Marteen was born in the United States to parents who immigrated in 1979 following the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. But Trump’s claim that Marteen was an immigrant fit neatly into a speech which included numerous calls to restrict immigration and statements that our immigration policy was at fault.
Trump stated that the United States had “already admitted four times more immigrants than any country on Earth” and that America continues to admit millions more. What this means isn’t clear, since 98% of the population is either immigrants or descendants of immigrants. It’s an arbitrary value, chosen just so Trump can treat our nation as being more porous than others.
Rather than consider any action on restricting access to guns, Trump declared that he would meet with the NRA to make sure that Americans had access to more guns to “have the means to protect themselves” against terrorists.
Hillary Clinton says the solution is to ban guns. They tried that in France, which has among the toughest gun laws in the world, and 130 were brutally murdered by Islamic terrorists in cold blood. Her plan is to disarm law-abiding Americans, abolishing the 2nd amendment, and leaving only the bad guys and terrorists with guns. She wants to take away Americans’ guns, then admit the very people who want to slaughter us.
I will be meeting with the NRA, which has given me their earliest endorsement in a Presidential race, to discuss how to ensure Americans have the means to protect themselves in this age of terror.
Syrian refugees came in for particular attack. In addition to claims that Hillary wants to expand the numbers, Trump maintained that the refugees were entering the nation in a “tremendous flow” and that they had “no documentation.” He proclaimed that when he became president, “They’re out of here.”
In truth, 60% of Syrians have been displaced from their homes by the civil war in that nation. Of the four million refugees world wide, the United States has agreed to accept only 10,000, fewer than 4,000 of whom have been settled in the country so far. The average refugee has been waiting for at least two years from the time the applied to enter the country, and despite what Trump says, has been extensively investigated.
Trump painted all Muslim immigrants, or immigrants from Muslim countries, as a threat. He gave a an annual number of “100,000 immigrants from the Middle East and many more Muslims from outside the Middle East.” Total immigration to the United States each year is around one million. Mexico, China, and India top the list of nations providing immigrants, with no Middle Eastern countries in the top 20. The highest would be Pakistan, which provides about 13,000 immigrants a year. Omar Marteen was not an immigrant.
In addition to directing blame toward Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama for “weak” and “politically correct” approaches to Muslims, Trump directed a lot of his demands toward Muslims already in the United States. He declared that “Muslim communities have to work with us. Have to turn in the people who are bad. They have to do it, and they have to do it forthwith.” Trump indicated that Muslims were protecting terrorists in their midst and that “They knew that [Marteen] was bad. They knew the people in San Bernadino were bad.” He also claimed that officials allowed the San Bernadino shooters to go undetected because of “racial profiling.”
If people know what’s going on and they don’t tell us… these people have to have consequences. Big time.
Trump finished with promises of safety for all Americans … so long as they follow the rules.
