As many recoil from Trump’s proposal to stop Muslims entering the US, in front of hundreds of fervent supporters the Republican frontrunner doubles down

“We are the noisy majority,” Donald Trump proclaimed on Monday night to a crowd of his supporters who responded with an appropriately noisy cheer.

“We used to call it the quiet majority, but people are fed up – they are fed up with incompetence, they are fed up with stupid leaders, they are fed up with stupid people.”



For good measure, as Trump often does, he repeated the phrase just to make sure. “They are fed up with stupid people.”

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The noisy majority unleashed by the Republican presidential frontrunner on an unprepared and increasingly bewildered America was out in force. They had come to hear Trump praise himself, to promise to make the country great again, and to unveil his latest wonder plan – the absolute lockdown of the country to all Muslims everywhere.

“We need a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States while we figure out what the hell is going on,” he said, prompting a huge roar. The crowd of about 500 Trump faithful stood up as one and bellowed its approval.



“Hell yeah!” cried a man dressed in a T-shirt that said “Bikers for Trump”. Beside him another man wearing a leather jacket covered in air force insignia raised both his arms high into the air in a sign of victory.

It’s not clear whether the location was conceived or coincidental, but Trump could not have chosen a more militaristic setting for his anti-Muslim policy roll-out. Within the hangar deck of the USS Yorktown, a second world war aircraft carrier berthed in Charleston, South Carolina, he spoke publicly for the first time about what is arguably the most extreme proposal to come from any US presidential candidate in decades.

A few feet above his head was suspended a B-24 Liberator, an American warplane renowned for its heavy bombing capabilities much in keeping with Trump’s rhetorical style.

“I wrote something today that was very salient, very important,” the candidate said, adding that it was “probably not politically correct”. Then, as the crowd hung on his every word, he lowered his voice to an intimate whisper, leant into the microphone, and said: “But. I. Don’t. Care.”

“We are out of control,” he went on. “We have no idea who’s coming into this country. We have no idea if they love us or hate us. We have no idea if they want to bomb us.

“By the way, I have friends who are Muslims. They are great people. But they know we have a problem because something is going on, and we can’t put up with it, folks, we can’t put up with it.”

Western political leaders over the past half-century have tended to put their energies into assuaging the fears of the public, building confidence and optimism, raising hopes of a better, more peaceful tomorrow. Donald Trump, on the strength of his USS Yorktown act, is a master at the opposite.

He conjured up visions of an America overrun with Muslims determined to wreak violence on their fellow citizens in the relentless pursuit of jihad. Reading from the statement released earlier in the day, in a voice that grew more booming and strident with every unsubstantiated remark, he cited polling statistics from the Center for Security Policy, “a very highly respected group of people who I know, actually”.

The Center for Security Policy is a Washington-based neoconservative thinktank that is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors hate speech, as “at the forefront of a well-funded effort to vilify Muslims in the United States and instill a climate of fear”.

A quarter of all Muslims, Trump said, on the back of the center’s work, believe that violence against Americans is justified. “These are people who are here, by the way,” the presidential hopeful said.

“They’re from Detroit,” shouted a man in the crowd.

“They should go home,” a woman cried out.

“They think they are going to change our religion. I don’t think so. I don’t think so – not going to happen,” said Trump.

Citing further polling results from the center, he said that more than half of American Muslims think they should have the choice to be governed according to sharia law. He spat out the word “sharia” as though it were verbal poison.

“Where the hatred comes from and why, we are going to have to determine,” he said, his words bouncing off the walls of the aircraft carrier and reverberating back on himself. “We can’t live like this. It’s going to get worse and worse.”

For good measure, he repeated that too: “It’s going to get worse and worse, folks.”

When the rally was disrupted on five separate occasions by hecklers shouting “Black lives matter”, the throng of Trump supporters erupted. “Trump! Trump! Trump! Trump!” they chanted in an attempt to drown out the protesters.

When that didn’t work they went for: “USA! USA! USA! USA!”

“Be nice to her, I don’t want her hurt,” Trump said, mindful of the bad press that followed his less considered remarks about the rough handling of a Black Lives Matter protester in Alabama last month.

Before he was done, Trump also threw out a new policy objective on tackling extremist content from violent jihadists on the internet. He said it was time to go and talk to Bill Gates “and a lot of other people who understand what’s happening about closing up the internet in some way. People will say ‘Freedom of speech! Freedom of speech!’. These are foolish people.”

When Donald Trump first burst on to the scene in the early summer, he was widely dismissed as a has-been reality TV star who would before long be subsumed (you’re fired!) by the Republican establishment. Then he started talking about rapist Mexicans, pledging to deport 11 million undocumented Hispanics, and refusing to rule out a government database of all American Muslims.

He has now been consistently in the lead in opinion polls, ahead of all his Republican rivals, every day bar just a few since 20 July. The first-in-the-nation nomination contest in Iowa is 55 days away.

Wise pundits still predict that Trump will drop away as the vote approaches. But judging from the range of support he garnered on board the USS Yorktown on Monday night, drawn from across the generations, they shouldn’t be too certain.

“I really liked his honesty,” said Steve Connors, an 18-year-old high school student who will be voting next November for the first time.

“He speaks our language,” said David Moreau, an army veteran aged 70, who has backed the Democratic candidate in every presidential election since Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Next year, his vote will go to Donald Trump.