My response to Trump trying to get Muslims to support him: Go F**k yourself!

Trump is an anti-Muslim bigot!

Donald Trump wants Muslim Americans to forget the hell he put our community through in the past and now support him in the 2024 race—as we saw at his rally Saturday in Michigan. To be blunt: No politician has ever weaponized anti-Muslim hate like Trump did during the 2016 campaign and as President--as I wrote about years ago for MSNBC.com.  

I will never forget the horror of watching Trump on national TV time and time again during the 2016 campaign lying about Muslims to our fellow Americans in an effort to score points with the bigots of the GOP base. And worse, the MAGA crowd at his rallies cheered the hate directed at us. As an adult it was jarring but to Muslim American children at the time it was deeply frightening—as I heard from parents--making them wonder if they belong in this country and would their parents be deported simply for being Muslim.

Here are some of the worst of Trump’s campaign of anti-Muslim hate that has stayed with me from the 2016 campaign:

1.        Lying that Muslim Americans in New Jersey cheered the 9/11 attack. He repeated this over and over despite it being fact checked as a lie: “There were people over in New Jersey that were watching it, a heavy Arab population, that were cheering as the buildings came down. Not good.”

2.        Trump smeared all Muslims while on CNN in March 2016 as hating Americans: “I think Islam hates us. There’s something there that — there’s a tremendous hatred there.”

3.        Trump claimed in 2016 campaign that American Muslims were not fully American and wanted to destroy the nation from within: “This all happened because, frankly, there’s no assimilation. They are not assimilating . . . They want to go by sharia law. They want sharia law.”

4.        Trump claimed on Fox News that Muslims in America know where the terrorists are but we refuse to turn them in: “They're going to have to turn in the people that are bombing the planes. And they know who the people are. And we're not going to find the people by just continuing to be so nice and so soft.” 

5.        Trump’s calls for a ban on Muslims coming to America: “I, Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

Trump calling for a total Muslim ban and the MAGA crowd at the event cheering was one of the most bone-chilling events I’d seen in American politics at that point. (Trump’s Jan 6 terrorist attack has eclipsed that.)

The real world impact of Trump’s non-stop demonization of Muslims was that hate crimes against Muslims in 2016 actually reached a higher level than in the year after 9/11. Women with hijabs were punched in the face, mosques in America were being defaced literally with bigots writing the word “Trump” like it was a modern-day swastika, Muslim students were being bullied at record numbers and more. (Below is an image created by the Brennan Center in early 2017 summing up the hate.)

And as President, Trump continued with his hate directed at our community. His first act as President was to sign his “Muslim ban” by way of executive order. He retweeted anti-Muslim bigots on Twitter who were peddling lies about Muslims in America being a threat.  

Trump continually demonized Rep. Ilhan Omar who is Muslim and an immigrant to the point where at his 2019 rally, his despicable fans chanted about her, “Send her back!” And the list goes on.

And during the 2024 campaign, Trump is back to his anti-Muslim BS. He has repeatedly pledged that if elected he will impose a bigger Muslim ban. While making this vow, Trump has peddled even more anti-Muslim garbage, declaring, “When I return to office, the travel ban is coming back even bigger than before and much stronger than before. We don't want people blowing up our shopping centers. We don't want people blowing up our cities.”  In other words, he’s telling his base that Muslims will come to the US and blow up shopping malls. (Of course, at the same time, Trump despicably defends his Jan 6 terrorists as “patriots.”)

Since the war in Gaza, Trump has made it clear that he would never allow Palestinian refugees from that area into the United States. Worse, he has 100% backed up Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s mass slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza criticizing Biden for trying to “hold back” Netanyahu’s military actions.  And as reported yesterday in The Washington Post, Trump recently told Netanyahu, “Do what you have to do” when it comes to military actions in Gaza and Lebanon.

Yet Trump is now trying to attract Muslim Americans to support him. My response is simple: Trump can go F**k himself. Sorry, I’m from New Jersey and when it comes to despicable bigots like Trump that is the response he deserves.

However, for some in my community, all the above is meaningless. And to be clear, it’s one thing to have moral qualms about VP Harris and her role in the Biden administration’s backing of Netanyahu’s brutal and indefensible slaughter of Palestinians as well as now Lebanese civilians. Harris has expressed far more compassionate words than Biden and she has been publicly calling for a ceasefire since March—well before Biden. But she still has not addressed this issue from a policy point of view and shared as President how her policies would differ from Biden’s.

However, publicly endorsing Trump is despicable. Yet on Saturday in Michigan, we saw Trump welcome on stage during a rally a few Muslim Americans he claimed were “prominent leaders”  in the Muslim as well as Arab American communities in that battleground state.

What summed up how pathetic this was when Trump introduced Dearborn Heights Mayor Bill Bazzi and almost no one clapped.  The MAGA faithful looked confused and must have been thinking: “But I thought you told us to hate Muslims?!” And they were right—Trump did over and over again. (Later in the event Trump urged the crowd to cheer when he brought up the other Muslims, obviously aware how badly the silence sounded with Bazzi.)

This may shock some, but in 2020 nearly 30% of Muslim Americans voted for Trump—up from 16% in 2016. While I don’t know exactly who those people were, they tend to be the wealthy and/or very conservative. (An August poll of Muslims found Trump attracting less support than in 2020--at 12%--while about 30% supporting Harris and equal percentage supporting Jill Stein.)

Muslim Americans becoming active in all political parties is a great thing. While I’d prefer they all be progressive Democrats like me, no community is monolithic—nor is it in their best interest to be. But Muslims publicly endorsing Trump who has intentionally demonized Muslims for years to score political points, incited hate crimes against us, backed Netanyahu’s mass killing in Gaza and is pledging a larger Muslim ban is awful.

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