It was not long after the 2024 election that Arab Americans and Muslims who had voted for Donald Trump realized they had been had.
An election poll conducted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) showed that Vice President Kamala Harris won a measly 20 percent of Muslim votes, while former President Donald Trump narrowly beat out Harris with 21 percent. The big winner among Muslim voters was Green Party candidate Jill Stein who came away with a whopping 53 percent of Muslims’ votes.
To put it bluntly, Harris was rejected by a staggering 80 percent of Muslim voters.
The reason: Gaza. The Biden Administration’s unqualified support for Israel’s genocidal war on the people of Gaza was a slap in the faces of Muslim and Arab American voters. Kamala Harris also lost votes due to several incidents where the Harris campaign seemed to go out of its way to alienate Muslim and Arab American voters.
Green Party candidate Jill Stein, who was unequivocally opposed to US support for Israel, called for a ceasefire in Gaza and an embargo on US arms shipments to Israel. Harris ought to have done the same.
And then there were the Arab Americans and Muslims who voted for former president Donald Trump.
Donald Trump??? The Donald Trump who in 2017, in one of his first acts as president, had instituted a Muslim travel ban??? That Donald Trump???
Yes, that Donald Trump.
Trump actively courted Muslim and Arab American voters by promising to bring peace to Gaza.
Trump visited Dearborn, Michigan, home to the largest concentration of Arab Americans in the US. Harris did not. Trump appeared on stage in Michigan with Muslim community leaders. Kamala Harris, displaying the political awareness of a tree stump, campaigned alongside former Congresswoman Liz Cheney, daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, a principal architect of the US invasion of Iraq.
Trump’s Long Record of Islamophobia
Trump’s outreach to Muslim, Arab American, and Palestinian voters was hypocritical, unscrupulous, and dishonest. In short: classic Trump. Trump’s record shows that he is no friend to Muslims.
Trump has called for police surveillance of mosques and claimed that after 9/11 “thousands and thousands” of Muslims celebrated in Jersey City, New Jersey and that he had seen the celebrations on TV. (They didn’t and he hadnt.)
Trump proposed setting up a computer database that would track all Muslims in the US.
Trump in his first term moved the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, Islam’s third-most holy site; he cut off US funding for UNRWA, the UN agency which provides relief to Palestinian refugees; and backed Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Golan Heights. The Trump Administration brokered agreements for normalized relations between Israel and four Arab states which the Associated Press observed “were not contingent on progress toward Palestinian statehood — a major victory for [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu.”
On the 2024 campaign trail, Trump promised to reinstate his “famous” (“infamous” is more like it) Muslim travel ban from his first term. The Trump Administration is already at work on a new travel ban.
Trump’s anti-Muslim remarks are too numerous to recount here, but readers can start with the list compiled by the Muslim advocacy group MPower Change: “86 Times Donald Trump Displayed Or Promoted Islamophobia.” This list was compiled in April, 2018. I shudder to think how long it would be if it were assembled today.
For now, here are just a couple of Donald Trump’s many alarming Islamophobic statements:
On December 7, 2015, Trump tweeted that Muslim immigrants represented an “extraordinary influx of hatred & danger coming into our country” and warned that “We must be vigilant.”
On March 9, 2016, in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Trump said: “I think Islam hates us” (Trump made it clear that “us” referred to “people who are not Muslim”).
Trump has repeatedly claimed that the US has a “Muslim problem.”
Trump promised Muslims that he would end the slaughter in Gaza. Muslims who voted for him, gambled that Trump would keep his promise. That would have been easy to do. Trump could have ended US arms shipments on his first day in office. He hasn’t. Instead, Trump the real estate mogul has proposed turning Gaza into a luxury resort—just not for Palestinians. Trump will do everything he can to help Israel drive out the Palestinians because he wholeheartedly supports Benjamin Netanyahu.[1] The Palestinians are being forced out and, despite the ambiguity of some of Trump’s public statements, will not be permitted to return.
First They Came for Mahmoud Khalil
On March 8, ICE agents arrested (“detained” is the polite euphemism) pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil as he and his wife were returning to their Manhattan apartment. The Trump Administration accuses Khalil of being a “Hamas sympathizer.” On his social media site, Truth Social, President Trump wrote that “This is the first arrest of many to come.”
On X.com (formerly Twitter before Elon Musk got his hands on it), Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote: “We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.”
I can’t help thinking that the “and/or green cards” part was an afterthought. The reason the ICE agents gave Khalil, 30, a recent Columbia University graduate student, for his arrest was that his student visa had been revoked. The Trump Administration had to scramble when it discovered that Khalil, a Palestinian who was born and grew up in Syria, is a Legal Permanent Resident (green card holder). A green card conveys greater protection than a visa.
On March 12, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt inadvertently spilled the beans. Leavitt told reporters that “Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Secretary of State has the right to revoke a green card or a visa for individuals who serve or are adversarial to the foreign policy and national security interests of the United States of America” (emphasis added).
That’s why the Trump Administration is trying to deport Khalil. The Justice Department has not alleged that Khalil has committed any crime. The Trump Administration is persecuting Khalil solely because he is a critic of US foreign policy, specifically US support for Israel’s slaughter of Palestinians.
Trump’s Truth Social post goes on to say:
“If you support terrorism, including the slaughtering of innocent men, women, and children, your presence is contrary to our national and foreign policy interests, and you are not welcome here.”
Funny. Isn’t that what Israel is doing?
Mahmoud is being held in an ICE detention facility (i.e., a prison) in Louisiana. The New York Times reports today that Mahmoud has not been allowed to speak privately to his lawyers. I have no doubt that Mahmoud’s wife (who has asked media to withhold her name owing to safety concerns), a US citizen who is eight-months pregnant, has been going through hell ever since ICE led her husband away in handcuffs. What happens next is up to the courts.
Note.
[1] I take that back. In a November 25, 2024 interview, Time magazine asked the President-Elect whether he “trusts” Netanyahu. Trump replied: “I don’t trust anybody.” Those may be the truest words Trump has ever spoken.
The post How Donald Trump Conned Muslims and Palestinian Americans appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Charles Pierson.
Charles Pierson | Radio Free (2025-03-14T05:49:25+00:00) How Donald Trump Conned Muslims and Palestinian Americans. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2025/03/14/how-donald-trump-conned-muslims-and-palestinian-americans/
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