During an appearance on Monday’s Hardball, Washington Post columnist and MSNBC contributor Eugene Robinson took great joy in tying Donald Trump’s views about President Obama’s religious beliefs to the entire Republican Party.
Robinson maintained that the GOP “brought this on itself” after Trump refused to denounce individuals who question Obama’s citizenship and maintained that the party was full of anti-Muslim bigots: “if you have an irrational hatred of President Obama and you think he’s an illegal immigrant or whatever, if you are an Islamophobe...the Republican Party makes a home for you.”
Prior to Robinson’s comments, David Corn of the far-left Mother Jones magazine also did his best to tie Trump’s repeated denial that President Obama was a U.S. citizen to the entire Republican Party:
This is about him sending signals, not dog whistles but semiforce signals to the Republican base that you know what, you suspect Obama, that there’s something shady about him, I’m with you. I’ve lead the birther movement and I believe even worse that. And so he doesn't have to say it. He just has to say that I'm not going to answer the question. I don't want to talk about it. You know I see it differently. It's all quite clear. More than half of Republicans believe the president’s a Muslim.
See relevant transcript below.
MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews
September 21, 2015
GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Why can't you just say definitively yes or no President Obama was born in the United States -- you raised it many times, and he is not a Muslim.
DONALD TRUMP: George, you have raised the question. I haven’t raised the question. I don't talk about it. And I don't like talking about somebody else's faith. He talks about his faith and he can do that. But I don't talk about other people's faith.
CHRIS MATTHEWS: He just ignored the question from Stephanopoulos when George said what about whether the president’s a citizen or not, whether he’s an American or not. He answered a ridiculous answer about a Muslim-
DAVID CORN: This is about him sending signals, not dog whistles but semiforce signals to the Republican base that you know what, you suspect Obama, that there’s something shady about him, I’m with you. I’ve lead the birther movement and I believe even worse that. And so he doesn't have to say it. He just has to say that I'm not going to answer the question. I don't want to talk about it. You know I see it differently. It's all quite clear. More than half of Republicans believe the president’s a Muslim.
EUGENE ROBINSON: The party brought this on itself.
MATTHEWS: Many months they put up with this.
ROBINSON: Because if you have an irrational hatred of President Obama and you think he’s an illegal immigrant or whatever, if you are an Islamophobe, which party are you going to choose, right? I mean, which party makes a home for you? And the answer is the Republican Party makes a home for you.
