The crowd on board the USS Yorktown for a Donald Trump rally on Monday night were clear in response to his highly contentious call for the US to be shutdown to incoming Muslims – virtually without exception they said: Bring it on.
“I’m 110% for it,” said Dan King, 66, a coast guard veteran at the event in Charleston harbor. “Until they can figure out how to stop all these illegal criminals coming in to this country, we need to act.”
King was one of about 400 Trump supporters who packed into the hangar deck of the second world war aircraft carrier just hours after the Republican presidential frontrunner had made one of the most controversial statements of any candidate running for the White House in decades. His proposal that all US borders should be entirely closed to all Muslims from around the world until the nature of the terrorism threat was understood was greeted with astonishment and outrage around the US and beyond.
But among the Trump faithful, his call for a “total and complete shutdown” for Muslims was made with almost unanimous approval. Asked why the shutdown should be focused blanketly on Muslims, King said: “Because Muslims are the ones who are doing all the terrorism. If they are not doing it, then it wouldn’t be done.”
Asked what he thought of Barack Obama’s Oval Office address to the nation on combatting Islamic State and the domestic threat of extremism, he replied: “What’s his name? I refuse to say it. I call him Muhammed Kobama.”
Gary Duncan, 72, was equally delighted by the Trump proposal. “Hell, we have got to be realistic. I know it’s not politically correct, but we have a problem right now.”
Duncan, wearing a Stars and Stripes tie and sporting quizzically a fur hat with the symbol of Soviet Communism imprinted on it, said one of his best friends was a Turkish Muslim. “And even he thinks shutting the border to Muslims is a good idea.”
Some Trump supporters said they backed his idea for a freeze on incoming Muslims, but did so with a twinge of regret. Robin Gilligan, 55, a Charleston schools worker, said she was aware of its contradiction with America’s historical reputation.
“We are a country of freedom and we have taken people in from all over the world in the past. It’s a great thing that we are all here from all over the globe.”
But she went on: “Under the circumstances, at this point, it’s sad but something has to be done. After France, and what happened in California, I think a lockdown might be necessary. We should stop them coming in to this country for a time.”
Suzanne Sforza, 74, a retired schools worker, said she would back greater surveillance for Muslims already living in the US legally after the San Bernardino attack last week in which 14 people were killed. “There are so many people already inside the country who are affiliated with Isis,” she said.
Among the relatively few supporters in the crowd from a younger generation, views were a shade more questioning. Rick Pennington, 23, said he thought Trump had put out his Muslim shutdown statement as a political move to attract attention to his campaign.
“It’s unconstitutional – it wouldn’t happen. It’s just Trump being Trump,” he said.
But then he added: “At least it’s more than Obama’s doing about the problem.”
Cody, a 20-year-old student who declined to give his last name, said in his view Trump could go further. “I think we should stop anyone coming in until we have the security measures figured out.”
Asked about Trump’s proposal for just Muslims to be filtered out, he said: “I think that sounds good. After all, we haven’t heard about Christian terrorism for a while.”
