Trump’s backing off of this, which was quite clearly and definitely a policy proposal when he made it, suggests that he wilts under pressure, as the pressure on him for this has been intense indeed. In fact, this is why the Left has targeted his rallies and committed violence at them. This is why he was nearly banned from Britain, and why London’s Muslim mayor, among so many others, has denounced him.
This proposal is also a chief reason why he has outlasted all the contenders and stands as the man with the best chance to be the Republican nominee. Poll after poll has shown that a huge number of Americans supports a temporary moratorium on Muslim immigration — not because huge numbers of Americans are “racist,” as the Left feverishly imagines, but because most Americans know that there is a problem with Islamic terrorism, and most Americans see that the current approaches aren’t working to stop it.
None of Trump’s detractors have ever bothered to offer an alternate plan — how can they, since there is no way to distinguish jihadis from peaceful Muslims? And that’s precisely why Trump proposed the ban in the first place. But now it looks as if whether the next President is Hillary or Trump, the denial and willful ignorance regarding the jihad threat, and the resulting policy errors, will continue.
“Trump: Muslim ban ‘just a suggestion,'” by David Wright, CNN, May 12, 2016:
Washington (CNN)Donald Trump, who issued a December press release “calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States,” said Wednesday such a ban “hasn’t been called for yet” and it was “only a suggestion.”…
“We have a serious problem, and it’s a temporary ban — it hasn’t been called for yet, nobody’s done it, this is just a suggestion until we find out what’s going on,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee told Fox News Radio’s Brian Kilmeade Wednesday.
But when Trump first introduced the proposed ban back in December he explicitly said in both a speech and in a press release: “Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”