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.

• 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'.

• Reince Priebus: Trump announced that Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus would become his chief of staff. When asked, Priebus said he was 'not going to rule out anything' when it came to banning Muslim immigration, but seemed to suggest that such a ban would not explicitly prohibit Muslims outright. In an interview on ABC’s 'This Week.', he said of Islam: 'Clearly there are some aspects of that faith that are problematic and we know them; we’ve seen it'.

• 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.'

• Mike Pompeo: a congressman from Kansas, is reportedly planned to be nominated for CIA director. He is a prominent critic of the nuclear deal between the US and Iran, and has already promised to undo it when in power. He has called Edward Snowden a 'traitor' who should be 'given a death sentence' for having leaked National Security Agency secrets. He criticized a 2014 Senate report that found certain CIA interrogation techniques, such as waterboarding, to be unconstitutional, and has opposed Obama’s plans to shut down the Guantánamo Bay prison. He has also expressed many Islamophobic views, such as accusing Muslim leaders of being 'potentially complicit' in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing. The Council on American-Islamic Relations denounced the accusation as 'false and irresponsible.'

• Mike Huckabee: The former Arkansas governor, two-time Republican presidential candidate, and Southern Baptist minister has been reported as likely to be Donald Trump’s ambassador to Israel. Huckabee is a known proponent of Christian Zionism. His views on Islam also resemble those of other members. In 2015, he called on President Obama to resign as he, along with Hillary Clinton, 'served as apologists for radical Islamic terrorists' and was supposedly more concerned with attacking Republicans than defeating ISIS.

Affiliations

• Frank Gaffney