Trump surrogates are already citing Japanese internment camps from WW II as “precedent” for Muslim registry pic.twitter.com/DVnjtom0mc
— Brendan Karet (@bad_takes) November 17, 2016
Megyn Kelly’s Wednesday included sparring with Bill O’Reilly and discussing threats she experienced after Donald Trump trolled her on Twitter. Then she hosted Trump surrogate Carl Higbie, who tried to pump up Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s claim that Trump’s advisors are fully planning on a Muslim registry. Yes, a registry based upon religion.
Higbie raved about how he thinks this would be constitutional: “We’ve done it with Iran back a while ago … we did it during World War II with the Japanese.” At this point, Kelly’s mouth dropped open, and she countered, “Come on, you’re not proposing we go back to the days of internment camps, I hope. That’s the kind of thing that gets people scared.” Higbie insisted that he wasn’t proposing such a thing at all but wanted to illustrate how there was “precedent” for such a move. He totally wants everyone to realize that he doesn’t think this is the greatest thing to do, just that it’s been done before.
You know, precedent … which is generally a term that people use to guide future behavior based upon a past example.
Kelly wasn’t buying Bigbie’s innocent game and insisted, “You can’t be citing Japanese internment camps as precedent for anything the president-elect is gonna do!” To which Begbie reasoned that it’s okay to deny constitutional protection to some “people” for safety purposes, and Kelly shut that down too. Here’s a longer clip (courtesy of Mediaite) for the full contextual effect.