Wayne Allyn Root, the conservative activist and conspiracy theorist who helped Donald Trump campaign in Nevada and became one of Trump’s most enthusiastic boosters on the campaign trail, rejoiced in an interview on Newsmax TV last week that a Trump administration will appoint “people to important positions who have problems with radical Islam instead of people in important positions who are Muslims.”
Discussing Trump’s announcements that he’ll nominate Rep. Mike Pompeo to head the CIA, Root said, “They say [Pompeo’s] problem is he’s been negative toward Muslims and Islamic radicals—my God, that makes America great again! We finally have an administration that can use the word Islam and terrorism in the same sentence, and we’re naming people to important positions who have problems with radical Islam instead of people in important positions who are Muslims!”
When host Bill Tucker asked Root if he meant “all Muslims” or “radical Muslims,” Root replied that “number one, we are at war with radical Islam” but claimed that “the Muslim world in general says nothing” about terrorism.
“There are no real shouts of outrage from the Muslim world, just like there were no shouts of outrage from the German world [during the Nazi era], so therefore they bore some responsibility as well,” he said. “And I’m angry—I won’t hold them as the killers, they don’t need to go to prison, we don’t need internment camps—but I am absolutely angry, shocked and outraged at the Muslim community and I do think they bear some responsibility.”
“There were no Muslim Man Marches in Washington, D.C., to protest terrorism,” he continued. “Why? Why aren’t they speaking up? Just like Nazi Germany, they’re saying nothing. So I do have a problem with Islam. I think the war is against radical Islam, but we have to admit there are problems in general with the religion of Islam, why the people don’t speak up against terrorism.”
