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  • When talking about the world's 1.6 billion Muslims, American presidents are traditionally

  • very careful to differentiate between the vast majority who practice the religion peacefully

  • and the small minority who don't.

  • There's nothing in there, in Islam that condones the kind of brutality that we've seen

  • Our actions today were not aimed against Islam, the faith of hundreds of millions of good,

  • peace-loving people.

  • We are not at war with Islam, we are at war with those who have perverted Islam.

  • President Donald Trump has not continued this tradition.

  • Do you think Islam is at war with The West?

  • I think Islam hates us.

  • There's something, there's something there that's a tremendous hatred.

  • To understand why Trump is breaking with his predecessors, you have to understand his chief

  • strategist, Steve Bannon.

  • Before he joined the Trump campaign, Bannon ran the far-right website Breitbart, where

  • he hosted a daily radio show.

  • The face of terror is not the true faith of Islam.

  • Islam is peace.

  • If you listen to Bannon's radio show, and watch his speeches, you start to get a sense

  • of how he sees the world.

  • Bannon believes that the US and Western Europe are in the middle of an historical struggle

  • against Islam itself.

  • Bannon isn't talking about the American founding fathers, he's talking about European

  • leaders who fought off Muslim conquests in the 8th and 16th centuries.

  • That is the context in which Bannon approaches policy today

  • This context also helps us understand Bannon's views about refugees from the muslim world.

  • In a 2015 interview, Bannon and then-Representative Ryan Zinke of Montana discussed Obama's

  • plan to take in10,000 refugees from Syria.

  • Bannon seems to think Syrian refugees are incapable of adapting to the American way

  • of life.

  • Before Breitbart, Bannon made documentary films.

  • In the outline for one film, which he didn't end up making, Bannon warns of an Islamist

  • takeover of the United States.

  • The opening scene features the call to prayer and a flag of the Muslim star and crescent

  • flying over the U.S. capitol building.

  • Though his current focus is on Muslims, Bannon has expressed a desire to keep all foreign-born

  • people out of the U.S.

  • In a 2015 interview, he disagreed when Donald Trump

  • said we should keep high-skilled immigrants in the US.

  • Less than 14% of Silicon Valley CEOs are Asian.

  • But the fake statistic supports his view: that legal immigrants are just as problematic

  • if not more, than those who are here illegally.

  • The number is closer to 13 percent, but Bannon's point is that

  • immigrants somehow make America less American.

  • He believes they don't share American values, and that, even when here legally, they take jobs

  • away from native-born Americans.

  • And, in this view, Bannon is way out of sync with mainstream Republicans,

  • who, along with business interests like the Chamber of Commerce, have long said they welcome

  • legal immigrants.

  • We're gonna need more legal immigration.

  • Immigrants are an economic engine of vitality for our country, they make things happen.

  • We need to figure out how to have more legal immigration.

  • Immigrants are the lifeblood of our society.

  • I think probably, you know, the most dedicated Americans are those who come here as immigrants.

  • Bannon blames legal immigrants for what he describes as a bleak economic landscape for

  • native-born Americans.

  • If you're under 30 years old, your children are going to be poor, and your grandchildren

  • are going to be paupers.

  • The only way to stop this from happening, Bannon says, is to rise up against those whom

  • he calls the ruling political class, those who allow immigration, legal and illegal,

  • to continue.

  • Think about it.

  • If the elites are so good, how did we get in this jam?

  • This is the fourth great crisis in American history: we had the Revolution, we had the

  • Civil War, we had the Great Depression and World War II, this is the great fourth turning

  • in American history

  • Bannon's views have already started to influence policy.

  • Multiple news outlets have confirmed that he was behind the executive order temporarily

  • banning travelers from 7 majority-muslim countries and almost all refugees from entering the

  • US.

  • A federal judge has temporarily halted the ban, but with the president's ear, and a

  • seat on the National Security Council, Bannon's vision of a closed America, at war

  • with Islam will continue to influence policy.

When talking about the world's 1.6 billion Muslims, American presidents are traditionally

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