Walk back, no walk back – that is the confusion Donald Trump campaign has caused with a series of statements concerning presumptive Republican nominee’s position on his controversial plan to ban Muslims from entering the United States.
While on a visit to Scotland – in the middle of Brexit crisis – Trump seemed to have adopted a nuanced approach to his initial sweeping proposal on banning all Muslims but his spokespersons had different explanations.
“This is not accurate,” Hope Hicks, a spokesperson for the campaign, said on Monday. “There has been no change from the exchanges over the weekend.”
The proposal that shocked much of the world and immediately drew renunciation by Democratic and several Republican leaders, has been dogging the Trump campaign lately. Despite his political rhetoric, the candidate now faces a continuing down slide in the latest polls vis-a-vis Hillary Clinton.
Initially a CNN report suggested that Trump was planning to modify his proposal for “a total and complete shutdown on Muslims” by applying the ban to countries with “known terrorism links.”
The billionaire businessman’s national spokesperson Katrina Pierson seemed to agree with the reports while trying to put a positive spin on the proposal.
“I know the news media was reporting that the initial ban was against all Muslims, and that simply was not the case,” she said. “It’s only really a change if you never knew what the ban was to begin with.”
In Scotland Trump had declared on Saturday : “I want terrorists out. I want people that have bad thoughts out. I would limit specific terrorist countries and we know who those terrorist countries are,” he told reporters in Scotland.
The conflicting statements from Trump and his spokespersons have confused even some of his strongest supporters.
The real estate tycoon, who has been accused of exploiting fear and anger among segments of American voters, has never said he was wrong on his proposed ban of all Muslims, which was first announced last December as a backlash against terror attacks.
It is also unclear as to people from which countries would face ban and how their records on terrorism would be measured.
The apparent flip-flopping coincides with polls that show Trump trailing behind his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, who has her set of concerns among voters to smooth out in the upcoming months.
The presumptive GOP nominee, who has run a highly unusual campaign, is currently facing a serious popularity problem, with nearly two-thirds of American voters saying he is unqualified to be president.
An ABC News/Washington Post survey released Sunday says 64 percent of voters believe Trump is not fit to lead the country, while 37 percent said the same about Clinton. In terms of overall support, Trump lags behind the former secretary of state by 51 to 39 percent gap.
At the same time, Trump’s campaign has also fallen far short of Clinton’s in terms of fundraising. According to filings released by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), Clinton had $42.5 million in cash at the beginning of June, 32 times more than Trump’s $1.3 million cash reserve. It would be interesting to see as to what extent the GOP stands behind one of the most divisive figures to contest the race for the highest office.
