Donald Trump Doubles Down On ‘Muslims Celebrated 9/11’ Rhetoric, Is It The Beginning Of The End?

Republican Presidential candidate Donald Trump shocked many on Sunday, November 29, when he refused to retract statements in which he claimed to have seen American Muslims celebrating in the streets of New Jersey after the September 11 attacks. In a rally last week, Trump claimed that he remembered seeing thousands of Muslims in Jersey City, New Jersey, celebrating the collapse of the World Trade Center with tailgating and dancing in the streets.

Many outlets refuted Trump’s claims in the following days, and some likely expected Trump to back away from his statements, if not admit that he was mistaken or confused. Instead, during a phone interview on Meet the Press, Trump insisted that not only was his claim valid, but that hundreds of people had come forward to support his claim.

“Hundreds of hundreds and maybe even thousands of people having a tailgate party…hundreds of people have come forward to agree with me. “

The Guardian reports that Trump went on to say that New Jersey, particularly Paterson, which is a city he suggested may also have seen Muslims celebrating the September 11 terrorist attacks, has a large Arab American community, and suggested that it stood to reason, if celebrations occurred in the rest of the Muslim world, they also occurred in places in the United States with large Muslim populations.

Meanwhile, after doubling down on his statements, Trump initiated a full-scale attack on the media at large. The biggest targets are CNN and the New York Times.

.@CNN has to do better reporting if it wants to keep up with the crowd.So totally one-sided and biased against me that it is becoming boring

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2015

The failing @nytimes should focus on fair and balanced reporting rather than constant hit jobs on me. Yesterday 3 boring articles, today2!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 26, 2015

Donald Trump’s patented brand of shoot-from-the-hip, fake-it-til-you-make-it politics has resonated with the Tea Party, a subsection of the Republican party disillusioned with the perceived politics-as-usual attitude of the United States government. At his best, Trump appeals to the core goals of the Tea Party. In fact, Trump has used his business background as proof that he satisfies six of the Tea Party’s fifteen “Non-negotiable Core Beliefs.”

The backing of the Tea Party and Trump’s refusal to back down, compromise, or even apologize when he’s wrong has bolstered his position in the Republican Presidential primary.

So far, Trump’s only real competition has been Dr. Ben Carson. Carson is also a political outsider. According to The Atlantic, Carson’s political career launched with a keynote speech at the National Prayer Breakfast in February 2013, which turned him into a conservative media darling almost overnight. But Dr. Carson’s poll numbers suffered this week after a series of foreign policy gaffes, leaving him 15 points behind Donald Trump with little hope of gaining back that ground.

Everything isn’t rosy for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign either. Reuters reports that Trump’s poll numbers don’t look as good today as they did when he became the front-runner in July. While Trump is still by far the highest polling Republican candidate, his numbers dropped 12 points over Thanksgiving week, down to 31 percent from a high of 42 percent. The most likely reason is that Trump’s campaign rhetoric in the past two weeks has taken a turn that many consider racist.

There are signs that Trump knows he has to court a more ethnically diverse pool of supporters if he wants to win the presidency. According to CBS News, Trump sent out a press release announcing plans to meet with “a coalition of 100 African-American Evangelical pastors” to receive their endorsement of his candidacy. In fact, two of the pastors claim that the meeting was pitched to them as a discussion, and both claim they have no intention of endorsing Donald Trump. In response, Trump cancelled a press conference planned with the religious leaders.

For now, at least, it looks like the same rhetoric that catapulted Donald Trump to the front of the Republican field, may make it impossible for him to win a general election.

[Photo by Steve Nesius/Associated Press]