Donald Trump

US Republican president-elect and billionaire businessman.

Links with counterjihad movement

Policy proposal to 'ban all Muslims'

In December 2015, Trump proposed in a speech to 'ban' the entry into the U.S to all Muslims, referring to the refugee crisis . As a justification for it, he used a survey that was created by the Center for Security Policy's Frank Gaffney, claiming to show that many US-based Muslims were willing to use violence against other Americans and that even more wanted the option to be governed by Sharia. The survey turned out to be 'bogus'.

Appoints foreign policy adviser with strong counterjihad movement links

Of the eight people appointed as advisors to 2016 candidates Donald Trump and Senator Ted Cruz, all have connections to Center for Security Policy and half hold ranking positions within the group.

• Walid Phares: Lebanese-American 'counter-terrorism expert'. Mother Jones revealed that Phares, 'was a high ranking political official in a [Christian] sectarian religious militia responsible for massacres during Lebanon's brutal, 15-year civil war.' He was a guest on an ACT! for America series in 2011 and has spoken at several events organized by the Center for Security Policy (CSP).

• Senator Jeff Sessions – described as 'one of the most outspoken anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim federal officials' by the Southern Poverty Law Center. He received the “Daring the Odds” award from the David Horowitz Freedom Center for his efforts to prevent undocumented youth from receiving temporary status in the United States in 2014. In September 2015, Sessions attacked Obama’s plan to resettle Syrian refugees in the US, stating, 'it has also been reported that 3 in 4 of those seeking relocation from the Middle East are not refugees but economic migrants from many countries.'

• Joseph E. Schmitz – Senior Fellow with the Center for Security Policy. He spent three years as the Pentagon’s Inspector General before leaving under a barrage of scrutiny. According to the Los Angeles Times, 'Schmitz slowed or blocked investigations of senior Bush administration officials, spent taxpayer money on pet projects and accepted gifts that may have violated ethics guidelines.' He is a co-author of two CSP reports: 'Shariah: The Threat to America,' and 'The Secure Freedom Strategy: A Plan for Victory Over the Global Jihad Movement.'

Other advisors on Trump's transition team

• Kris Kobach: only a few days after Trump was elected in 2016, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, considered for the post of attorney general at the time, said in an interview that Trump’s policy advisers had discussed drafting a proposal for his consideration to reinstate a registry for immigrants from Muslim countries. Kobach was reported as a key member of Trump's transition team, and had already helped design the registry program, known as the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, while serving in George W. Bush’s Department of Justice after the September 11 attacks. But the program was abandoned in 2011 after it was deemed redundant by Homeland Security and denounced by civil rights groups for unfairly targeting immigrants from Muslim-majority nations.

Kobach also said the new administration could push ahead rapidly on construction of a U.S.-Mexico border wall without seeking immediate congressional approval, and that they would attempt to overturn Barack Obama’s 2012 executive action that has granted temporary deportation relief and work permits to more than 700,000 undocumented people. Trump himself said he supports 'extreme vetting' of Muslims entering the United States as a national security measure, and that once he took office, he would remove immigrants with criminal records who are in the country illegally.

Kobach already has a history of drafting laws and pursuing legal actions to crack down on illegal immigration. He helped draft an Arizona law that required state and local officials to check the immigration status of individuals stopped by police in 2010, before parts of it were deemed unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. In Kansas, 2013, he pushed a law requiring voters to provide proof-of-citizenship documents, such as birth certificates or U.S. passports. A U.S. appeals court blocked that law after challenges from civil rights groups. Regarding his views, he believes that illegal immigrants in some cases should be deported before a conviction if they have been charged with a violent crime.

• Steve Bannon: was appointed as White House chief strategist by Trump. This raised many criticisms, as politicians and commentators argued that he harbored sympathies for white nationalist arguments and rhetoric. Organizations including the Southern Poverty Law Center and the Anti-Defamation League condemned him for 'aggressively pushing stories against immigrants' and his association with 'unabashed anti-Semites and racists'. Bannon is the former executive chairman of far-right Breitbart News, and was Trump’s campaign chief from August through election day. A story from the Politico claims that 'depending how Bannon shapes it, Breitbart could become the closest thing the United States has ever had to a "state-run media enterprise", to quote a phrase by a former Breitbart spokesman'.

During the Human Dignity Institute's conference in 2014, Bannon spoke about how the West was engaged in 'a global war against Islamic fascism':

'We have to face a very unpleasant fact: and that unpleasant fact is that there is a major war brewing, a war that's already global. It's going global in scale, and today's technology, today's media, today's access to weapons of mass destruction it's going to lead to a global conflict that I believe has to be confronted today'.

In 2015 he interviewed Trump for Breitbart News Daily. In the interview, he appeared to frame solving the problems posed by climate change and ISIS as mutually exclusive:

'Do you agree with the pope and President Obama that [climate change] is absolutely a path to global suicide, if specific deals are not cut in Paris, versus focusing on radical Islam?'. Trump chose ISIS.

He also appears to believe the secularization of the US is tied to the rise of 'jihadist Islamic fascism,' which he has said is 'metastasizing far quicker than governments can handle it' and is headed toward the UK and the rest of Europe.

• Reince Priebus: Trump announced that Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus would become his chief of staff. NPR reported that 'the selection of Priebus, who has served as party chairman since 2011, suggests conciliation toward the establishment Republicans with whom Trump has often shared a strained relationship'.

• Frank Gaffney: the Wall Street Journal and New York Times both reported on November 15th that counterjihad activist Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy, would be advising the Trump transition team, although Gaffney denied it the following day.

• Clare Lopez: vice president of the Center for Security Policy, is reportedly being considered as Trump's deputy national security adviser. Lopez believes that 'infiltration [of the U.S. government by the Muslim Brotherhood] is obviously very deep and very broad within the bureaucracy, not just the top level, but throughout the federal system, including the intelligence community.'

• Retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn: was named to be White House national security adviser, elevating the controversial surrogate to be the chief arbiter of virtually every major defense and foreign policy decision. He had been forced out as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2014 after 30 years of his military career. According to Politico, this 'signals the president-elect’s intention to wage an aggressive war on terrorism — possibly without the diplomatic and cultural sensitivities that have been the hallmark of President Barack Obama’s approach, which Flynn has repeatedly criticized'. Flynn's views on Islam appear to be very much hard-lined: in the past he has argued that 'Islam is a political ideology,' and 'a malignant cancer' . In a recent book co-authored with conservative scholar Michael Ledeen, Flynn wrote against 'political correctness' and accused Obama of having failed to recognize 'the war being waged against us.'

'This administration has forbidden us to describe our enemies properly and clearly: they are Radical Islamists. They are not alone, and are allied with countries and groups who, though not religious fanatics, share their hatred of the West, particularly the United States and Israel. Those allies include North Korea, Russia, China, Cuba and Venezuela.'

Affiliations

• Frank Gaffney