Sounding more like a run-of-the-mill triangulating politician every day, Donald Trump told a New Hampshire audience yesterday that if he becomes president, Syrian refugees “are going back” home. Of course, for many that would be a death sentence.
As civilians flood out of Syria to escape the brutal civil war there, many nations including the U.S. are stepping up to help. Last month, President Obama pledged the U.S. would take up to 10,000 Syrian refugees. Back then, Trump seemed sympathetic to their plight, telling Fox News “something has to be done” and suggesting he was “open” to the U.S. taking some of them.
But yesterday, Trump abruptly reversed himself. He didn’t explain why, but his speech sounded like shrill pandering to the anti-immigrant, anti-foreigner, anti-everybody-else nativist crowd:
“I’m putting people on notice that are coming here from Syria as part of this mass migration, that if I win, they’re going back!” he said, adding: “They could be ISIS …This could be one of the great tactical ploys of all time. A 200,000-man army maybe, or if you said 50,000 or 80,000 or 100,000, we got problems and that could be possible. I don’t know that it is, but it could be possible so they’re going back — they’re going back.”
Much of Trump’s appeal to the frustrated Republican electorate comes from his I’m-not-a-politician, no more politics-as-usual, things-are-gonna-change campaign theme. If he throws that away and begins managing his message to fit polls and focus groups, he’ll be just another candidate in a crowded field of wannabes panhandling for Republican primary votes.
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