Back in December, after the San Bernardino shootings, Donald Trump called for a travel ban on Muslims to the United States, “until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.” This past week, Trump said that “there will always be exceptions” to this ban, like for newly elected London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who then rejected Trump’s offer. On Wednesday, the saga continues, with Trump saying that his Muslim ban is “just a suggestion.”
According to Think Progress, Trump downplayed his calls for a Muslim travel ban on Fox News personality Brian Kilmeade’s radio show, in response to Khan’s rejection, and his claim that London electing him as mayor disproves Trump’s view that Islam and Western liberal values are incompatible.
Here is a transcript of Trump’s answer to Kilmeade:
https://twitter.com/SopanDeb/status/730463736134291456?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
The highlights are that Trump accuses Khan of “denying Islamic terrorism” in his rejoinder against Trump, and of course, the reversal of previous statements that the ban would be certain: “We have a serious problem, 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.”
This is quite a reversal, although who knows what Trump would do if he were actually elected. It does look like the Republican nominee is trying to moderate himself somewhat, and that even he isn’t always immune to pushback from other politicians.
(via Think Progress)