Trump on American Muslims: 'Wonderful people, but there's something going on there'

It should come as no surprise that Donald Trump considers himself vindicated on his claims that thousands of New Jersey Muslim-Americans "celebrated" on 9/11. No, he has still not been able to find a shred of evidence for his claim—but who cares?

"I took a lot of heat—two, three days of heat, then people saying 'you know, maybe he's right.' Now they're all talking about it. Somebody had to bring it up. And I'll tell you what, if I didn't bring it up, it would have never been brought up."

This is exactly the same boast that someone would give after they've declared that the federal Office of Weights and Measures has been overrun with lizard people in a plan to steal all our Inches. You can use it in almost any situation, and for any claim, so long as you've gotten people "talking."

"And we have Muslims—they're wonderful, we have wonderful people. But there's something going on there. They have to turn in, like for instance, these people in California, people knew he had bombs all over the floor, people knew it, why didn't they turn them in? You got to turn'em in. Because it's their culture, they're around each other, they know each other, they know what's ... you gotta turn'em in."

One, the only claim I have heard raised is that "these people in California" were getting lots of packages in the mail and that a neighbor thought that odd. I haven't heard the claim that neighbors knew he had "bombs all over the floor," but that nobody thought to mention it because that is just the Muslim "culture." This appears to be another Trumpism, and one that will be accepted as fact by the usual rubes before the week is out.

Two, this might be a good opportunity to review other American "cultures" that seem to have difficulty piping up when deadly mischief is afoot. Why did nobody find the Planned Parenthood murderer's behavior unusual? What of the Las Vegas shooters, who were so intent on shooting government workers that they dropped by the Bundy Ranch, weapons in hand, in order to offer up their services as potential murderers?

And what of Donald Trump supporters? Now there’s a hotbed of extremism; it was only a week ago that a Donald Trump supporter in California was arrested for telling Muslim-Americans at a local mosque that he was going to “kill them all”—and police did, indeed, find a pipe bomb on his floor. Perhaps that’s the incident Donald Trump was thinking of? That fellow posted a picture of his bomb on his Facebook page (Trump supporters have an odd “culture,” in general) but was foiled after one (and only one, apparently?) of his non-bomb-liking Facebook friends turned him in.

Where was I? Ah, right, Donald Trump explaining Muslims to us. Thank heavens we have him to explain these things.