Trump Proposes New, Ideological Test For Some Visitors And Immigrants

“I just said it so many times, virtually every time I was interviewed: Keep the oil, keep the oil”. He said the billionaire’s contention that the US should have kept the oil in Iraq “like some bandit nation” was “completely nonsensical”.

“We will defeat radical Islamic terrorism just as we have defeated every threat we faced at every age”, said Trump in OH, a battleground state considered essential to winning the U.S. presidential election.

Trump has since said he was being sarcastic in accusing Obama of founding IS.

Trump’s immigration proposals were the latest version of a policy that began with his unprecedented call to temporarily bar foreign Muslims from entering the country – a religious test that was criticized across party lines as un-American. Nor did the campaign say whether additional screenings would apply to the millions of tourists who spend billions of dollars visiting the United States each year.

“In addition to screening out all members of the sympathizers of terrorist groups, we must also screen out any who have hostile attitudes towards our country or its principles or who believe that Sharia law should supplant American law”, Trump said. “All those Iraqi kids who have been blown to pieces”.

Trump’s allies said the speech showed that Trump has the ability to be presidential and handle the responsibilities of commander-in-chief.

More than 4,400 troops were killed in Iraq and the United States spent almost $61 billion to rebuild the country during the past war, according to the Iraq special inspector general.

His approach will first focus on building global support to halt the spread of Islamic extremism as expressed by the Islamic State group, al-Qaida and other groups.

Reversing his previous skepticism regarding the continued usefulness of NATO, Trump praised the mutual defense treaty organization for enhancing its anti-terrorism capabilities and said he would be prepared to have the USA “work very closely with NATO” to defeat Islamic terrorists. That will include joint military operations, increased intelligence sharing and cyberwarfare.

“Any country that shares this goal will be our allies”, Trump said. “We cannot always choose our friends, but we can never fail to recognize our enemies”. “The Republican presidential nominee cited two interviews in which he expressed skepticism about the war but failed to mention a 2002 interview with radio host Howard Stern, who asked him if he supported a US invasion”.

Michael Steel, former adviser to former House Speaker John Boehner, questioned Trump’s approach on immigration.

In addition to advocating a temporary suspension of immigration from “some of the most risky and volatile of the world that have a history of exporting terrorism”, Trump further called for a “restoration of common sense in security procedures. They have a big, big problem in Russian Federation with ISIS”, he said. But he did advocate a new ideological test for newcomers, backed by what he described as “extreme vetting”.

Instead, Trump repeated the untruths that he opposed both the Iraq War and intervention in Libya from the beginning, reversed his position on USA involvement with North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and called for – rather than his previously proposed “complete shutdown” of Muslims entering the country – new screening procedures for immigrants seeking entry to the United States. Trump panders to extremists and retweets racist propaganda without hesitation. “He has been, from day one, outlining different proposals he has had to make America safe, to make us more secure and to avoid this existential threat ISIS (is) posing for us”.