Yesterday Republican presumptive Presidential nominee Donald Trump delivered a controversial speech (
full text) in reaction to the June 12 killing of 49 people at a night club in Orlando, Florida. Focusing on immigration, Trump said in part:
We cannot continue to allow thousands upon thousands of people to pour into our country, many of whom have the same thought process as this savage killer.
Many of the principles of Radical Islam are incompatible with Western values and institutions.
Radical Islam is anti-woman, anti-gay and anti-American.
I refuse to allow America to become a place where gay people, Christian people, and Jewish people, are the targets of persecution and intimidation by Radical Islamic preachers of hate and violence.
Here is part of the
New York Times coverage:
Without distinguishing between mainstream Muslims and Islamist terrorists, Mr. Trump suggested that all Muslim immigrants posed potential threats to America’s security and called for a ban on migrants from any part of the world with “a proven history of terrorism” against the United States or its allies. He also insinuated that American Muslims were all but complicit in acts of domestic terrorism for failing to report attacks in advance, asserting without evidence that they had warnings of shootings like the one in Orlando.
Mr. Trump’s speech, delivered at St. Anselm College in Manchester, N.H., represented an extraordinary break from the longstanding rhetorical norms of American presidential nominees. But if his language more closely resembled a European nationalist’s than a mainstream Republican’s, he was wagering that voters are stirred more by their fears of Islamic terrorism than any concerns they may have about his flouting traditions of tolerance and respect for religious diversity.
