Donald Trump has repeatedly dodged questions on whether he would have backed the internment of Japanese-Americans instituted by former President Franklin D. Roosevelt during World War II, to which Trump and others have compared his proposal to bar Muslims from the United States.
“I would have had to be there at the time to tell you, to give you a proper answer,” the Republican presidential front-runner told Time magazine in a report Tuesday morning.
Less than one hour later, Trump told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, “What I’m doing is no different than FDR.”
“This is a president highly respected by all, he did the same thing,” Trump said, arguing that “If you look at what [FDR] was doing, it was far worse.”
“We have no choice but to do this,” he said. “We have people that want to blow up our buildings, our cities. We have to figure out what’s going on.”
In 1942, Roosevelt issued a presidential proclamation that initiated the relocation and internment of thousands Japanese Americans to camps into camps operated by the Department of Justice and guarded by U.S. Border Patrol agents. The move came shortly after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941.
Trump had previously shied away from the comparison during a lengthy interview on MSNBC Tuesday morning, during which he sparred with the panel over the constitutionality of his proposal.
“I am not proposing that,” Trump told host Joe Scarborough when asked about internment camps. “This is a whole different thing.”
While Trump appears reluctant to use history to justify his proposal, his campaign co-chair in New Hamsphire was eager to draw the comparison.
“What he’s saying is no different than the situation during World War II, when we put the Japanese in camps,” State Rep. Al Baldasaro, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, reportedly said. “The people who attacked innocent people in Paris came through open borders. From a military mind standpoint, all Donald Trump is saying is to do what needs to be done until we get a handle on how to do background checks.”
State Rep. Steve Stepanek, the other co-chair of Trump’s operation in the Granite State agreed, saying “we should suspend bringing in these people until we have a clear solution.”
“Not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims, and we haven’t figured out how to tell the difference between a Muslim who isn’t a terrorist and a Muslim who is a terrorist,” Stepanek told WBUR.
Trump ranks second in the Washington Examiner‘s presidential power rankings.
