Post by Kiwithrottlejockey on Feb 8, 2016 12:46:35 GMT 12
from The Telegraph....
‘I have at least 20 Muslim friends’, says Donald Trump,
but he can't name them
Republican debate: Presidential hopeful has defended himself against accusations
of Islamophobia by telling The Telegraph he has “at least 20” Muslim friends.
By DAVID LAWLER in New Hampshire | 7:14PM GMT - Sunday, 07 February 2016
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks with members of the media after
a Republican presidential primary debate. — Photo: Associated Press.
Our US editor, Ruth Sherlock in Manchester, New Hampshire, fires a question at Trump:
DONALD TRUMP has defended himself against accusations of Islamophobia by telling The Telegraph he has “at least 20” Muslim friends.
The Republican presidential candidate has repeatedly said that “Muslims love him” despite his provocative policies, but has so far failed to name any single individual Muslim supporter.
Asked by The Telegraph to elaborate, Mr Trump again ducked the question responding: “Oh, I could give you about 20 of them.”
Mr Trump bills himself as the “straight-talking” anti-establishment candidate, in an election that is in large part being shaped by a popular disaffection with conventional Washington politics.
After the shooting in San Bernadino, California, in which 14 people were killed in an attack by supporters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, and in response to the growing refugee crisis, Mr Trump responded by calling for all Muslims to be temporarily banned from the United States.
The comments sparked an international backlash with business partners in Arab countries disowning him.
In Dubai, a firm building a multi-billion dollar development in Dubai with Mr Trump stripped the tycoons name and image from the property.
Donald Trump Junior, Mr Trump's son, was also unable to tell The Telegraph who his father's Muslim friends were, saying only that they had “completed a lot of business deals” in the Middle East.
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Republican candidates argue over whether to wage war — and how: Ruth Sherlock sees an old topic rear its head — but can The Donald be serious?
DONALD TRUMP, ever the lover of controversy, sought to shock from the debate stage last night by announcing that as president he would “bring back water boarding” and “worse”.
“I would bring back water boarding,” he told the moderators at the Republican debate, when asked about his views on “enhanced interrogation techniques” by the US military. “And I would bring back a hell of a lot worse.”
Mr Trump's campaign has been driven in large part by his outlandish and often ghoulish statements, which have placed him at the centre of the media spotlight — in an election race where airtime is all. This has shaped voters' view of him as a man who “tells it like it is”.
Having labelled Mexican immigrants “rapists”, made derogatory comments about women, and sought to temporarily ban Muslims from the United States, Mr Trump last night picked a new topic: torture.
The Republican presidential candidate, whose soaring campaign was set back by a sound defeat at the hands of Ted Cruz in the Iowa primary, would not expand on his comments on torture.
He initially ignored The Telegraph's questions on the subject in the spin room after the debate until. Only when pressed did he reply: “One day you'll see”.
It was not the first time the real estate mogul has praised the use of torture and said he would use it to extract information from prisoners.
At a rally in Ohio in November he told a cheering crowd that they could bet his “ass” he would. “Would I approve waterboarding? You bet your ass I would — in a heartbeat,” Mr Trump said then. “And I would approve more than that. Don't kid yourself, folks. It works, okay? It works. Only a stupid person would say it doesn't work.”
After several years of war weariness, polls show that with the rise of ISIL, a growing number of Americans are once again starting to lean towards an interventionist foreign policy.
According to Pew's latest data, 57 percent of Republicans believe that US anti-terrorism laws don't go far enough in protecting the nation, and just 30 percent think they are going too far in restricting civil liberties. The percentage of Republicans who think the US does too little to solve the world's problems is up 28 percentage points, to 46 percent. The share who think it does too much is down to 37 percent.
Last night, Mr Trump's answer was the last in a series of responses to the questions by rival Republican candidates who were locked in a battle to prove their neoconservative credentials.
Ted Cruz hedged his bets, saying he “would not bring it back in any widespread use”.
Mr Rubio also left the question on the table, sticking to a nebulous response that it is not right to give away intelligence secrets.
Whilst Mr Trump has caught the headlines with his maverick and often unrealistic comments, it is Mr Rubio that, of all the Republican field, has a deeply ideological hawkish agenda, ready to be implemented should he reach the Oval office.
His plans to increase military spending and expand America's presence abroad, and encourage the spread of democracy, are a revival of the neo-conservative policies and rhetoric of George W Bush.
In fact, several of his key advisers and staff — including Alex Conant, his communications director — first earned their political stripes working for Mr Bush.
Mr Rubio has tried to distance himself from the neo-conservative label — mindful of how the designation was rendered toxic by the Bush administration invasion of Iraq in 2003.
But he has, at the same time, embraced its tenets. He employs rhetoric reminiscent of Mr Bush's time in office, speaking last week about how, as president he would tackle ISIL, the jihadist group, by starting a “real war on terror”.
“When I am president we are going to have a ‘real war on terror’,” he promised his audience. “The best intelligence agencies in the world are gonna tell us where the terrorists are. The best military in the world will destroy them.”
The least hawkish response to the water boarding question, perhaps ironically then, came from Jeb Bush. The former Florida governor and brother to the president who fashioned the doctrine that Mr Rubio is so earnestly following, said he believed the current restrictions were “correct”.
But he then quickly added that he would instead expand Guantanamo Bay, the American detention camp in Cuba where prisoners may be detained without trial, and which President Obama has promised to shut down.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/us-election/12144741/Republican-debate-Donald-Trump-and-Marco-Rubio-to-come-under-fire-live.html
