Trump Win Not Official Yet, But Muslim Registry Foes ‘Convert’ To Foil His Alleged Plan
Is it possible that Donald Trump will not be president of the United States after all? Whether or not he is officially announced as the winner of the election by the Electoral College on December 19, there are many Americans that are working to thwart some of Trump’s ideals such as the Muslim registry.
Snopes, Fact Check, and the U.S. Government’s official Archives website have all noted that the official date that the Electoral College turns in their votes for Trump or Hillary Clinton is December 19, 2016.
Currently, there are almost 4.5 million Americans that have signed a petition on Change.org that asks the Electoral College to deny Donald Trump from officially being named as the winner of the 2016 presidential elections.
In the meantime, it is unclear if Trump will get blocked by the Electoral College — if opinions in publications such as USA Today are accurate.
Nevertheless, there are many American organizations that are working to muddle any of Donald Trump’s nefarious plans concerning Muslims.
In the past, Donald Trump has said in interviews that he would require all Muslims to register if they were associated with that faith or heritage group.
A commonly cited reference to the things Donald Trump has said about asking Muslims to register in a database come from almost exactly a year ago on November 19, 2015. At the time, Donald Trump told NBC News the following.
“I would certainly implement that [a database system tracking Muslims in the United States]. Absolutely… There should be a lot of systems, beyond databases. We should have a lot of systems.”
Although Trump allegedly took down from his website that he would ban Muslims from entering America, according to L.A. Times, a June 17 report from Vanity Fair states that it is their opinion that Donald Trump is known for double-speak.
Interestingly, some Americans are playing Trump at his own game. For example, at Register Us, there is a general sign-up for non-Muslims to say they are Muslim when they actually are not. The idea is to get Americans to register as Muslims on paper in order to throw a wrench in the cogs of Donald Trump’s anti-Muslim plans.
If half of America is registered as Muslim, it might be financially impossible for Trump to deport, intern, or use registry data effectively, and organizers of a Muslim registry want to show Donald Trump that they stand in solidarity with Muslims. As non-Muslims, they wrote the following in their statement on the website.
“Register US was started by three New York City-based friends who are moved by progress, passionate about inclusion, and extremely fearful of the next four years under a President Trump. We’re not experts or professional activists; we did this because we care about what our country stands for. We are building a community to stand as one and take action against Trump’s ideas.”
Adding to this, there are similar statements and petitions by other organizations. For example, VS Goliath (soon to be replaced by Bend the Arc) describes themselves as a “Jewish movement that’s fearlessly taking on injustice in our country—with American grit and a whole lot of chutzpah.”
Currently VS Goliath has a petition with over 13,600 signatures that have signed the following statement addressed to Donald Trump.
“As an American Jew, I’m adding my name to our own ‘registry’ in solidarity with my Muslim neighbors. There’s no place for your rhetoric in American politics in the 21st century. Retract your statements and apologize immediately.”
Other ways that some groups being targeted by Trump are being protected include an alliance of city officials from around America that have made it public knowledge that they will designate their city as a “sanctuary city” for immigrants if needed. According to Yahoo, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said that immigrants should not feel afraid because his city is “their home.”
Unfortunately, the idea that there is a threat to Muslims, immigrants, or minorities because of the rhetoric that Trump used in his campaign appears to be real. For example, USA Today quoted Richard Cohen of the Southern Poverty Law Center claiming that the post-election has had some of the worst hate crimes since September 11, 2001.
“Since the election, we’ve seen a big uptick in incidents of vandalism, threats, intimidation spurred by the rhetoric surrounding Mr. Trump’s election. The white supremacists out there are celebrating his victory and many are feeling their oats.”
On the Southern Poverty Law Center website, they estimated that, between November 9 and November 14, there were “437 reports of hateful intimidation and harassment” collected by that organization. Over 120 of those reports were anti-immigrant and far less were Muslim.
Contributing to the idea that Trump supporters are leaning toward treating Muslims, immigrants, or minorities differently, on November 17, Washington Post paraphrased the following from an interview with Carl Higbie, a former spokesman for a significant Trump super PAC, on an episode of Megyn Kelly’s Fox News show.
“[T]he mass internment of Japanese Americans during World War II was a ‘precedent’ for [Trump’s] plans to create a registry for immigrants from Muslim countries.”
Carl Higbie also cited in that interview that what Trump was doing was not new since America has created a Muslim or immigrant registry in the past for Iranians.
Ultimately, Bernie Sanders gave Donald Trump advice on his “harsh campaign talk” against Muslims or immigrants. According to NPR, Bernie Sanders said Trump needs to apologize and stated the following.
“Let me be clear — I happen to think that Donald Trump is a very smart person, and he would not have been elected president if he were not a very smart person… I would hope very much that given his background and given some of the, what I consider to be, terrible, terrible things that he has said on the campaign trail to minorities [that Trump would consider apologizing].”
[Feature Image by Tom Pennington/Getty Images]
