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The national news media have moved onto the next stage of dealing with President-elect Trump’s victory over Hillary Clinton, which is to find fear everywhere they look.
Trump himself said on Nov. 13 to those who feared his victory, “I would tell them don’t be afraid, absolutely.” But that was cold comfort for much of the political media.
Tuesday on MSNBC, New York Times columnist Anand Giridharadas reflected on his Thanksgiving holiday with family in California, and said fear was on the menu.
“For people who look like us … it was the first Thanksgiving I think we celebrated with a measure of fear about the year to come, physical fear, fear about what will happen to people who look like us,” he said.
Trump secured 13 percent of the American Muslim vote, according to a poll by the Council on American-Islamic Relations. That’s three times the support 2012 Republican nominee Mitt Romney got from that group.
But after the election, reports said that American Muslims were afraid of what was to come.
“Muslims worried that they would be branded as terrorists because of their beliefs,” said the Times, citing interviews with four Muslims, one of whom was a Democratic elected official.
An Associated Press report said Trump’s incoming administration “leaves American Muslims reeling and scared.”
Throughout his explosive campaign, Trump did propose a ban of all Muslim immigrants, but later moderated it to increased vetting of immigrants from countries with ties to terrorism – and he said illegal immigrants should be deported.
He also suggested Muslim communities should be more closely monitored for signs of radicalism. But he never called for internment camps as the U.S. set up in WWII.
Still, CNN contributor and former Obama administration official Van Jones said Nov. 9 that Trump supporters “need to have a little bit of empathy and understanding for people who are afraid” Trump might set up such camps.
That same day, the left-leaning Slate published a column by Mark Joseph Stern headlined, “I am a gay Jew in America. And I am afraid for my life.” Stern’s column likened his fear to that of a Jew in the early days of Nazi Germany.
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/media-enter-fear-stage-of-trump-victory/article/2608455