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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“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”.
