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With Trump and Carter, there is no comparison

2 min read
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In the week since Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump put forth his, um, novel idea of barring Muslims from entering the United States for some unspecified period of time, many of Trump’s acolytes came to his defense by suggesting, hey, President Jimmy Carter did the same thing with Iranians during the Iranian hostage crisis that stretched from 1979 to 1981.

The implication of this argument seems to be if Carter, a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, builder of homes for Habitat for Humanity, and a figure widely respected for his reason and compassion, would bar Iranians from the country, then what Trump is proposing isn’t all that outlandish.

Who knows, maybe The Donald could even nab his own peace prize?

Sorry, but the argument doesn’t hold up at all under scrutiny.

It is true Carter barred Iranian nationals from entering the United States, except for humanitarian reasons, while U.S. embassy personnel were being held hostage in Iran. But he took the action as part of a larger set of sanctions meant to punish Iran and use as leverage to get the hostages released. Not allowing Iranians to enter the country would, the thinking went, punish Iran economically and within the broader global community.

Trump, on the other hand, is throwing out the unwelcome mat to the adherents of one religion – 1.6 billion people – who come from any number of points on the globe, from India and Indonesia to Australia and Austria, and have as much to do with ISIS and terrorism as your average Unitarian organic farmer living quietly in Asheville, N.C.

Kermit Roosevelt, a University of Pennsylvania law professor and great-great-grandson of President Theodore Roosevelt, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “The difference is that Iranians were citizens of, and owed allegiance to, a country that was acting against the United States. The class of ‘all Muslims’ has no similar connection to ISIS or terrorists. That makes the analogy seriously flawed.”

He’s got that right. Trying to compare Trump’s proposal to what Carter did 35 years ago is completely and utterly specious, as is just about any other comparison between Trump and Carter.

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