Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:33 pm
A democracy is only as good as the people in it. And right now, ours is under siege.
Carl Higbie, a former Navy SEAL and Trump PAC spokesperson, tried to justify President-elect Donald Trump’s Muslim registry plan by citing World War II Japanese Internment camps as precedent on The Kelly File.
“We’ve done it before based on religion, we’ve done it based on region. We’ve done it with Iran back, back a while ago. We did it during World War II with the Japanese,” the Trump PAC spokesman said.
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Trump surrogates are already citing Japanese internment camps from WW II as "precedent" for Muslim registry pic.twitter.com/DVnjtom0mc
— Brendan Karet (@bad_takes) November 17, 2016
When host Megyn Kelly asked if he was really proposing the re-implementation of the camps, he said no, he’s not proposing that at all, “but what I am saying is we need to protect America first.”
Kelly tried to stop him from terrifying the nation, “That’s the kind of stuff that gets people scared.” To which he responded with a chilling, “I’m just saying there’s precedent for it…. The President has to keep America safe.”
So we’re back to justifying anything under the guise of “safety.”
During World War II, people of Japanese ancestry were rounded up, taken forcibly from their homes, and kept imprisoned in internment camps. Sadly it seems some of us missed history class and don’t understand why reacting to fear by isolating people based on religion or race isn’t a great model for democracy.
Donald Trump said he would surround himself with the best people, but he has done the opposite.
Obama inspires us to be our best and most generous democracy, while Trump and his entourage are a bleak lesson in how important it is to stay engaged in our democracy.
Image: Fox News The Kelly File, screen capture
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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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