Trump shifting on Islam? Calls for Muslim ban dropped from website

UPDATE:

Trump’s statement was reposted online after this story was published.

ORIGINAL STORY:
Will President Trump be different from candidate Trump?

That’s the question on everyone’s minds as America reacts to the news of Trump’s victory on Tuesday.

One sign of a potential change was discovered by U.K. publication The Independent.

They reported that the section of Trump’s campaign website which included his plan to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. was quietly scrubbed from the internet Tuesday as Trump was winning the White House.

“The page was available on the morning of the election on 8 November, according to online caches,” the Independent reported. “The page now redirects to a page encouraging voters to donate to his campaign.”

Thescrubbed Dec. 7, 2015 press release stated that”Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on,”according to a cached version of the page.

A Trump campaign spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

But press releases from just a month earlier are still live on the website, including one titled, “Donald Trump again vows to ‘bomb the s*** out of ISIS.‘”

Why would the immigration ban release be scrubbed?

Jacob Bender, executive director of Council on American-Islamic Relations Philadelphia chapter, speculated that such a ban might be an implausible campaign promise.

“What’s said on the campaign trail gets watered down when the hard fact of governing becomes a reality,” he said. “The ban itself was an insult and a smearing of 1.6 billion people around the globe and their faith. … and it probably would have been declared unconstitutional to place a religious test on entry, on who can come in to this country.”

“If it’s a sign that President-elect Trump is moving away from some or many or we hope all of his incendiary statements during the campaign, we are thankful,” Bender continued, “but the Muslim community remains vigilant.”

At the time, Trump said he wanted to stop immigration by Muslim due to what his press release called “hatred toward Americans.”

“Without looking at the various polling data, it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension,” Trump said in a statement included with the now deleted press release.

“Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine,” he continued.”Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life.”

Trump originally issued the statement five days after reportedly ISIS-linked husband-and-wife terrorists Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik killed 14 people in a San Bernardino, California, social services agency. Both were killed by police during an ensuing confrontation.