In what would appear to be an unlikely courtship, an adviser for Republican presumptive nominee Donald Trump is quietly reaching out to Muslims to gain their support for his presidential bid.
The Hill reports.
Trump's proposal during the primary campaign to temporarily ban all Muslim immigrants as a way to decrease threats of terrorism against the United States has alienated him from many in the community.
Although he has recently stepped back from those statements, calling the proposal merely a "suggestion," the American Muslim community remains highly skeptical.
Walid Phares, a foreign affairs adviser for Trump, said that most of the backchannel talks have been with Muslim Republicans who hope to influence his policies or want to clarify his positions.
In contacting others in the Muslim community to try and convince them to support Trump for president, Phares attempted to downplay the plan to ban Muslim immigrants. He told The Hill it "is just a few sentences in a foreign policy announcement and a tweet, it's not like he’s written books or published articles or delivered lectures on this. He'll continue to add context and distinction to his position as he gets new information."
The real estate mogul has already received clear support from The American-Mideast Coalition for Trump, which put out
a statement in March backing the candidate due to his rejection of the Iranian deal, opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic influences in the U.S., willingness to fight against terrorist groups, and determination to help persecuted Christian communities in the Middle East.
But despite his attempts to step back some of his anti-Muslim remarks, Trump's main problem remains, as
Hot Air has pointed out, that "the tough talk – on radical Islam, on immigration, on ISIS, – is what worked. So he’s in a bit of a bind now. He may want to back away from some of his more colorful comments …but he can’t do so too openly without turning off some of the people who support him because of that rhetoric.
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