Trump gets a little less comical

This may not look quite as strange when there's somebody in it, but I'm not sure. Via.

So, this happened: faced with a fan who denounced President Obama as a "Muslim" and "not even an American", Donald Trump didn't stop him (that's the official narrative—actually it was a lot worse than that, as we'll note below). Was he out of line? Nah, according to all sorts of people, including some of his rivals:

“It’s not my job, it’s not Donald Trump’s job, it’s not anybody’s job to police a question,” former Pennsylvania senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum told reporters about Trump’s refusal to correct the man in New Hampshire who called President Barack Obama a Muslim. “The questioner can say whatever he wants, it’s a free country.”

Or as the Trumpster himself put it,

If I would have challenged the man, the media would have accused me of interfering with that man's right of free speech. A no win situation!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 19, 2015

Oh right, free speech. And yet,

Last month, Donald Trump threatened to fight Black Lives Matter protesters if they attempted to speak at one of his events.

Some people have freer speech than others, I guess. I wonder how that works? Like what is it about #BlackLivesMatter folks that differentiates them, in freedom terms, from a white guy in a Trump T-shirt?

That's not really even what Trump did, though. Most of the commentary has focused on the familiar stupidity about Obama, which Trump as birther has associated himself with for a long time now, but as Amy Davidson for the New Yorker notes, there were much more sinister things in the remarks in relation to the American Muslim community, and Trump didn't so much allow the man to speak as collaborate with him, as you can hear in the video:

“We have a problem in this country: It’s called ‘Muslim,’ ” the man said. Trump nodded.

The man continued, “You know our current President is one—”

“Right,” Trump said.

“You know he’s not even an American,” the man continued, and at that Trump interrupted again, saying, “We need this question. This is the first question!” The word “first” was subsumed in a Donaldian chuckle—the kind that serves as an ambiguous indicator of both sarcasm and glee.

“But, anyway, we have training camps growing, where they want to kill us,” the man persisted. “That’s my question: When can we get rid of them?”

“We’re going to be looking at a lot of different things,” Trump replied. “And, you know, a lot of people are saying that, and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening out there. We’re going to be looking at that and many other things.”

That's a bit of a blood libel and a charter for genocide: "When can we get rid of them?" "We're going to be looking at a lot of things." I'm just about ready to stop laughing.

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