The Slatest

Today in Conservative Media: Mocking the Backlash to the Muslim Ban

Protesters rally during a demonstration against the Muslim immigration ban at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Saturday in New York City.

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Conservative media continued their aggressive defense of President Donald Trump’s executive order banning citizens from seven Muslim-majority countries from entering the U.S. The move caused global chaos, sparked protests in dozens of U.S. airports, and prompted a series of judicial actions to block parts of the order.

The right-wing website the Blaze mocked backlash to the order writing, “You have to be suicidal, an idiot, or a liar to act like Trump has committed some kind of atrocity simply because he wants to ensure that we’re being extremely careful when we open our doors to people from nests of global jihadism.” The site also argued against the idea that the ban may inspire some foreign radicals to act, writing, “If Islam isn’t to blame for terrorism, why are you so worried about turning Muslims into terrorists?”

Breitbart seized on the same concern, calling Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer a “fear monger” for asserting that Trump’s order would “encourage lone wolves in America.” Meanwhile, another Breitbart post titled “Islamic State Supporters React Angrily to Trump’s Temporary Refugee Halt,” contained “exclusive” messages from alleged ISIS terrorists, which it claimed to have obtained from the Telegram app. One such alleged terrorist sympathizer said:

The madman Trump is still ignorant of politics, science and culture. That Islam-hating Crusader prevents Muslims from entering America. That failed Nazi thinks that this will stop the mujahedeen from striking his country. Doesn’t he understand that his country will implode? When that happens, he’ll panic and backpedal on his Islam-hating policies.

According to Breitbart, the message writer “offered no explanation as to how the U.S. will purportedly implode from implementing stricter security screening procedures aimed at keeping terrorists out of the country.”

In responding to American outrage over the order, Sean Hannity and Breitbart cited a poll saying 57 percent of U.S. voters favored a temporary ban on refugees from some countries. The posts then note that the survey was conducted prior to Trump’s order.

In a piece headlined “Trump’s Order on Refugees: Mostly Right on Substance, Wrong on Rollout,”  National Review’s editorial board defended the core of the action while scolding the “amateurism” of its implementation.

Several sites also continued to repeat Trump’s explanation for the ban. Trump said Obama had done the same thing in 2011, a claim that was debunked by the Washington Post fact checker as mostly false.