Source: The Guardian

Appearing on that most revered of presidential forums (also called YouTube), Donald Trump released a video this week describing his plans to “make America great again for everyone, and I mean everyone”. I’ve learned not to believe Trump’s magnanimous act, but others really want to.

Henry Kissinger told Fareed Zakaria on CNN that we should give Trump “an opportunity to develop the positive objectives that he may have”. And Barack Obama told an audience in Peru that he wants “to be respectful of the office and give the president-elect an opportunity to put forward his platform and his arguments without somebody popping off in every instance”.

Well, forgive me, Mr President, because I’m about to pop off.

Have you lost all sense of judgment? You and Kissinger talk as if we have no idea who Donald Trump is or what he has been saying for months on end. But Trump has made it abundantly clear – momentary, opportunistic words of inclusion notwithstanding – that his administration will be loyal to the far-right fringes of the United States, leaving even the Republican establishment running behind him.

Trump’s announced cabinet choices simply leave no room for imagining a kinder, gentler Donald at the helm of the USA. Those of us concerned about the fate of the undocumented or the environment or reproductive rights see much reason to worry with the selection of Steve Bannon, Jeff Sessions, Mike Pompeo, and General Michael T Flynn to Trump’s inner circle. (This list reads like a roll call to the Dick Cheney fan club.) Among many other troubling things, all these men also share a deep antipathy to Islam.

General Flynn’s anti-Muslim views are as scary and they are well known. Trump’s pick for national security adviser has called Islam a “malignant cancer” and stated that “Islam is a political ideology” that “hides behind this notion of it being a religion”. (Note that Flynn is not talking about the “radical Islamic terrorists” that Republicans frequently invoke but about Islam itself.) Asked about Flynn’s views, current Republican National Committee chair and Trump’s designated chief of staff Reince Priebus told ABC News that “there are some aspects of the faith that are very problematic.”

I didn’t realize that Preibus was a scholar of Islam or perhaps even a mujaddid, a renewer of the faith who, according to popular Muslim tradition, comes to revive the practice of Islam for following generations. Or maybe he just said an ignorant thing that would sound bigoted if it were about another religion but today sounds like policy.

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