Do you think the families and loved ones of the Orlando victims wish Omar Mateen’s father, an anti-American Afghan, had never been permitted to enter the United States? Do you think the great majority of Americans agree?
The answer seems obvious: but not to the clueless cast of Morning Joe, which today trashed Donald Trump’s call for a ban on Muslim immigration. Mika Brzezinski epitomized the willful blindness, claiming the Muslim ban has “no connection at all” to the Pulse massacre.
The Associated Press reported today that Mateen’s father, Seddique Mateen, who emigrated to the US from Afghanistan, was the host of a TV show filled, according to a former Afghan official, with “anti-US tirades.” He praised the Taliban as “our warrior brothers.” If Mateen père had been denied entrance to the US, Mateen fils would never have been born here and would not have been in a position to carry out his Islamic terrorist rampage. The Muslim ban has “no connection at all?” We’d laugh, except we want to scream.
DAVID IGNATIUS: If [Trump’s] polarizing rhetoric continues. it begins to make Muslims feel like they’re on another side, and then it’s a very different problem.JOE SCARBOROUGH: And Willie, we certainly saw that this weekend. More talk of Muslim bans. More talk of exclusion. More talk, again, that has made many people believe, from Donald Trump, many people believe, that a lot of his words, a lot of his rhetoric, actually he’s playing into the ISIS playbook.WILLIE GEIST: As we started our coverage yesterday morning, we heard from Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Donald Trump’s first tweet, anyway, was relatively measured by his standard. Thoughts and prayers for victims and things like that. But as the day went on, he talked again about the Muslim ban. He’s going to talk about it today and this week. He’s apparently going to double down on that.SCARBOROUGH: Again, this is a guy born in America.GEIST: This is in reaction to Omar Mateen, the shooter yesterday, was born in New York and he lived in Florida. He’s a United States citizen. No wall would have kept him out.MIKA BRZEZINSKI: So he’s using this to try to prop up the Muslim ban and roil hatred, even though it has no connection at all.
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