Donald Trump has said that he “would certainly implement” a database system keeping track of all Muslims in the United States, according to a report in MSNBC.
“I would certainly implement that. Absolutely,” Trump said in Newton, Iowa, in between campaign town halls.
“There should be a lot of systems, beyond databases,” he added. “We should have a lot of systems.”
When asked whether Muslims would be legally obligated to sign into the database, Trump responded, “They have to be — they have to be.” Despite Trump being repeatedly asked to explain the difference between requiring Muslims to enter their information into a database and making Jewish people register in Nazi Germany. He responded four times by saying, “You tell me.”
On Friday morning, Trump rival Jeb Bush called the comments “just wrong.”
“You talk about internment, you talk about closing mosques, you talk about registering people. That’s just wrong. I don’t care about campaigns,” he said on CNBC. “It’s not a question of toughness. It’s to manipulate people’s angst and their fears. That’s not strength, that’s weakness.”
Hillary Clinton also denounced Trump’s statement on Twitter.
Ibrahim Hooper, national spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, sounded incredulous when he was asked about Trump’s comments, telling NBC News: “We’re kind of at a loss for words.”
“What else can you compare this to except to prewar Nazi Germany?” Hooper asked. “There’s no other comparison, and [Trump] seems to think that’s perfectly OK.”
Rabbi Jack Moline, executive director of the nonprofit Interfaith Alliance, drew the same comparison Thursday night.
“My father was in World War II, and he fought to preserve America against what the Nazis were doing,” Moline told NBC News.
“This is exactly why there is an America, to not be like that,” he said.
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The US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump
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