CHUCK TODD (HOST): Arsalan, what did the Bush White House do behind the scenes to make sure they got this right?
ARSALAN IFTIKHAR: Well I think, you know, what George W. Bush said after 9/11 in terms of showing solidarity with American Muslims - sadly, he'd be considered an outcast in today's 2015 Republican Party. I mean, you know, we see people like Donald Trump saying that we should have a database of all American Muslims. I wonder if the two Muslim members of Congress, my buddy Keith Ellison and Andre Carson, would they be in that database? Would Muhammad Ali, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, funniest guy in America, Dave Chappelle? You know, we talk about special IDs for Muslims. Would that be similar to the yellow Stars of David that many Jewish people had to wear in Nazi Germany? Would it be a yellow crescent this time?
[...]
IFTIKHAR: What's most important is that we're letting this talk by these Republican presidential front-runners, you know, go unchallenged. When Ben Carson, you know, refers to refugees as rabid dogs and, you know, Donald Trump talks about “these people” and I'm gonna surveil people and I'm gonna make them have special IDs and databases. And people are cheering. When they don't see any pushback, any meaningful pushback, it allows it, you know, to go unchallenged.
