Donald Trump told the debate audience Tuesday that “tens of thousands of people” have “cell phones with ISIS flags on them.”
When asked how to make the country safer, Trump rattled off a list of familiar proposals from building a “great wall” to stopping the drug trade coming from Mexico. But he also alluded to thousands of people with ISIS flags on their cell phones who he would block from coming to the U.S.
“Our country is out of control. People are pouring across the southern border. I’ll build a wall. It’ll be a great wall. People will not come in unless they come in legally. Drugs will not pour through that wall,” Trump said. As far as other people, like in the migration, where they’re going — tens of thousands of people having cell phones with ISIS flags on them, I don’t think so. They’re not coming to this country if I’m president.”
Trump appears to be alluding to a Norwegian newspaper report that refugees in Norway had cell phones with pictures of ISIS flags and other brutal images on them.
According to the Netavisen report, however, a Norwegian official said there could be several reasons why refugees had the pictures. A rough translation of the story claimed: “One can be a witness and have a desire to show what you’ve seen, or you may have been tactically and have symbols associated with organizations that control areas passing through. What looks alarmingly out, may have other explanations than support for terrorist organizations, an official told the newspaper.”
The story was picked up by Infowars as well as the Daily Mail, which focused on the images themselves.
Obvously, Trump got the information from Infowars, the most trusted source of news in the country for all ignorant malcontents and others who’ve been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
The source VG is one of the two-three major newpapers in Norway:
Basicly the police says they have found pictures of decapitated heads and IS symbols on some phones. They don’t give any number or frequency of the findings of such photos on the phones of refugees entering Norway. Although they say a few hundred cases has been inspected.
It is probably not too many, as the equivalent of FBI in Norway (PST) is called into investigate every time the local police finds suspected media on phones, Ipads etc. If this was a major problem the PST would never had the capacity to investigate it, and would not have had this centralized task.
The Nettavisen.no source cited, is probably derivated from the VG.no story. Nettavisen is an Internet-only newspaper and seen as populistic and more right-winged-leaning than most other newspapers in Norway, while not anywhere near fascist or that extreme.
“Our country is out of control. People are pouring across the southern
border. I’ll build a wall. It’ll be a great wall. People will not come
in unless they come in legally. Drugs will not pour through that wall,”
Trump said. As far as other people, like in the migration, where they’re
going — tens of thousands of people having cell phones with ISIS flags
on them, I don’t think so. They’re not coming to this country if I’m
president."
…
That 1st statement is patently untrue. We are not “out of control”. And people are not “pouring across the southern border.” Why do I say that? Because I live less than 50 miles from that border. I know it a hell’ve a lot better than Trump does. There were hoards of people who used to enter illegally. But for better than half a decade the flow has been at net zero. As many as are entering are leaving.
And having an ISIS flag on a phone does not mean it’s owner is a member. They could’ve been looking at CNN or al Jazeera where I can find all sorts of ISIS stories. And I would remind Trump that the Mexican border is 2000 miles of very harsh country… That wall ain’t gonna be as easy as he thinks.
edit
One other thing that trump forgets…Nixon closed the border down completely in the 1970’s to try to stop the drug trade. Two weeks of zero border commerce. No people or trucks crossed. Produce companies were losing money. There was no trade EXCEPT the drug trade which was not slowed at all. And people still entered illegally. It was called “Operation Intercept”. It was a total failure.
In the 1980’s wehad a reprise under Gov. Evan Mecham. I witnessed a speech in which he said “In 2 years Arizona will be drug free.” There was a lot of snickering among my friends over that comment.
It’s not illegal to have a Nazi emblem on your phone, or anywhere else, at least within your private sphere. Is Trump saying possessing an ISIS flag emblem as your phone’s screen saver or elsewhere is, or should be, illegal? How would that square with the first amendment? I can actually express support for ISIS, publicly and legally, so long as I don’t provide funding or the means for them to acquire material support.
Of much more concern than this, Trump also repeated something he’s said before – a claim the the 9/11 hijackers put their wives and girlfriends on planes to fly to Saudi Arabia so they could watch the attacks on TV.
He’s raised this before - and been called out on it.
This is Alex Jones level craziness (although Jones doesn’t believe 9/11 really happened…) … it has been thoroughly debunked before, yet Trump just repeated it in tonight’s debate (as part of the justification for his plan for illegal targeted murders of family members of ISIS members).
I haven’t seen any discussion of Trump comments on this in any of the real time blogging of the debate — but it is another one of his demonstrable paranoid lying that needs to be called out.