In a wide-ranging essay published Wednesday in The Hollywood Reporter, leftwing HBO host Bill Maher writes that Democrats could lose the upcoming general election over the party’s refusal to utter the words “Islamic terrorism.”
Speaking of Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump’s proposed pause on Islamic immigration, the Real Time host writes, “I absolutely don’t believe that we should ban all Muslims coming into this country… But let’s not kid ourselves: A certain percentage of them will be radicalized. The more Muslims in your country, the more that is a possibility.”
Maher adds:
Not to be an “I told ya so,” but when the Syrian refugee crisis happened, I said, ‘Certainly our hearts go out to these refugees, but the answer can’t be to empty Syria and every other country in the Middle East where people live under repressive conditions and bring them all to Europe.’ Now Sweden is sending 80,000 refugees back and German Chancellor Angela Merkel is saying, ‘Hey, when we said you could come here, we didn’t mean permanently.’
Rather than letting them settle in Germany, these millions of young Muslim men, how about let’s train them to go back and fight for their own country? That’s another one of my issues — the soft bigotry of low expectations. How come Saudi Arabia didn’t take in any Syrian refugees? I would think they’d fit in there a little more than in Cologne. Why don’t they fight their own battles? Why are Muslim armies so useless against ISIS? ISIS isn’t 10 feet tall. There are 20,000 or 30,000 of them. The countries surrounding ISIS have armies totaling 5 million people. So why do we have to be the ones leading the fight? Or be in the fight at all?
So no, Donald Trump is not right — but he will win the election if the American people have to choose between his demagoguery and a party that won’t even say the words ‘Islamic terrorism.’ I think the Democrats could lose on that issue alone, especially if there’s another attack.
Read the rest here.