TEL AVIV – The Huffington Post’s Arab world edition posted a headline hailing “Muslim adversary” Donald Trump’s loss to Sen. Ted Cruz in the Iowa Caucus on Monday.
“Muslim adversary Trump defeated in first election. The state of Iowa shocked him by giving its votes to opponent, Cruz,” read the title of the article in HuffPost Arabi.
In August, Ariana Huffington announced the launch of HuffPost Arabi, which she explained, “will span the entire Arab World — comprised of 377 million people living in 22 countries, stretching from Mauritania in the northwest corner of Africa to Oman on the eastern tip of the Arabian Peninsula — and the Arab diasporas everywhere from Brazil to Japan.”
Huffington continued: “So much coverage of the Arab World is from the outside looking in, and the voices of the people most affected by what’s happening are frequently unheard. Our original reporting by independent journalists will showcase the richness of the Arab world — political debates and business news, but also arts and cultures, religions and traditions, food and human stories.”
Headlines similar to HuffPost Arabi’s Trump coverage of Iowa were run in news media outlets across the Arab world.
The Egyptian Masral Ekhbaria news website led with a headline declaring, “Muslim enemy Trump defeated in Iowa.”
The Egypt24 news site similarly reported that “Muslim adversary Trump” was “defeated in Iowa.”
The same headline ran in the Saudi-based Sada web portal.
Al Hayat, one of the leading daily pan-Arab newspapers, claimed Cruz pulled a “coup” over Trump in Iowa, while the Lebanese Ad-Diyar newspaper reported Iowa Caucus results “shocked” the “Muslim enemy” Trump.
Trump came in second place in Iowa despite the latest polls giving him a nearly five point lead over Cruz and the other GOP candidates.
In December, Trump angered the larger Muslim world when he called for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”
Speaking on ABC’s Good Morning America in the wake of his remarks, Trump clarified that under his proposal American Muslims can come and go as they please.
“If a person is a Muslim, goes overseas, and comes back, they can come back. They’re a citizen. That’s different,” Trump explained. “But we have to figure things out.” Trump expressed his hopes that a shutdown “will go quickly,” as soon as “our leaders figure out what the hell is going on.”
Speaking on CNN following his “shutdown” proposal in December, Trump further warned that the country risks more terrorist attacks if his plan for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration is not implemented.
“You’re going to have many more World Trade Centers if you don’t solve it – many, many more, and probably beyond the World Trade Center,” Trump told CNN’s Chris Cuomo.
Trump speculated that there are already terrorists inside the country. “They want our buildings to come down; they want our cities to be crushed. … They are living within our country. And many of them want to come from outside our country.”
Aaron Klein is Breitbart’s Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio.” Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.