In a normal administration, the question of whether or not the president thinks Muslims should be banned from serving in Congress would be an easy one for the White House press secretary to answer, but since it’s Donald Trump in office, Sarah Huckabee Sanders has no idea what the answer is.
On Monday, Trump officially endorsed Judge Roy Moore, the Republican candidate in the Alabama senatorial race who has not only been accused of sexually assaulting and harassing multiple underage women, but has also openly expressed bigoted views. In 2007, he wrote an op-ed attacking Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim member of Congress in U.S. history, for his faith and argued that Muslims as a whole shouldn’t be able to serve in office.
When asked if the president agreed with Moore’s stance, Sanders failed to give a conclusive response.
“I haven’t asked him about past statements from Roy Moore,†she said. When pressed on her previous assertion that Moore and Trump shared similar agendas, she said, “I’m saying he supports the President’s agenda; the President doesn’t necessarily support everything of Moore’s agenda.â€
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Given the fact Trump has his own ban on Muslims who want to enter the country and that just last week he retweeted a series of anti-Muslim propaganda videos containing factually incorrect claims, it’s easy to guess where he stands on whether there should be a ban in Congress.
Still, given the number of times Trump directly contradicted his former press secretary Sean Spicer’s attempts to gave answers typical of politicians — like the many times he insisted to reporters that the travel ban was not a “ban,” only for Trump to proudly announce in all caps that he would be calling it a ban — Sanders undoubtedly has to check if the game plan will be to give an insincere, diplomatic answer or to start chaos by announcing that the president does, in fact, agree.
