Donald Trump Claims That More Than A Quarter Of All Muslims Are Terrorists
Following a weekend filled with a violent rally in St. Louis, a canceled one in Chicago and calls for him to cool the temperature and take responsibility for his damaging and incendiary rhetoric, GOP Presidential frontrunner and giant Oompa Loompa Donald Trump appeared on numerous Sunday talk shows to snarl at and insult the hosts. During his appearance on Fox News Sunday, Trump did just that to host Chris Wallace, while also tossing out misleading stats or outright lies.
While his interview on Fox was similar to those with CNN’s Jake Tapper and NBC’s Chuck Todd, in which he was pressed on his condoning of violence at his rallies, there was at least one moment that stood out from the rest. Discussing his comments from last week where he said “Islam hates us,” Wallace tried to point out that only about 100,000 Muslims are engaged in jihadist activities, which is a very small percentage of the 1.6 billion people who are Islamic.
He then asked Trump, “So why draw a battle line against an entire religion, including major countries that are helping us in the fight against ISIS?” Of course, since we are talking about both a pathological liar and a wannabe fascist demagogue, he refuted Wallace’s facts with pure bullshit.
Citing some poll he heard about, the Trumpster said “27% are really very militant about going after things” and that Wallace’s claim that roughly 100,000 Muslims are jihadists is “a ridiculous number.” He also said radical Islamic terrorism is taking place everywhere in the world, making sure to scare the shit out of virulently Islamophobic base.
Now, where the hell did Trump even get his numbers on Islamic terrorism? It would appear he is taking an August 2014 poll done in France and projecting it upon all Muslim people. The poll, conducted by a Russian news agency, stated that 16% of all French people had a positive view of ISIS and 27% of those aged 18-24 saw the terrorist group in a favorable light.
Mind you, this was of all French citizens, not just Muslims, and it was only one poll citing a narrow age group and whether they liked a terrorist organization. Yet, for Trump, it is good enough to conflate with all Muslims around the world and claim that more than a quarter of them, or hundreds of millions, are terrorists. If PolitiFact checks this statement, they will assuredly give it a ‘Pants on Fire’ rating.
Of course, this is Trump’s MO, and he ain’t changing anything about it. Just throw out as much bullshit as you can and hope people just get numb to the lies. As Huffington Post’s Sam Stein said on HBO’s Real Time Friday night, he “spouts 20 lies a minute. It becomes almost impossible to call him out on a single one.”
Below is video of the interview:
