WASHINGTON — Let the record show that this was the moment in the 2016 U.S. presidential election campaign that Donald Trump was effectively yanked from the funny pages.
Media that frequently derided him as a buffoonish sideshow in the serious process of picking a president were suddenly comparing him to things far more sinister than a clown.
That abrupt shift in coverage was triggered by his proposal to ban Muslim travel into the United States — a policy that one spokesman indicated would even apply to citizens returning home, although Trump clarified Tuesday that they'd be exempt.
The change appeared on multiple fronts, perhaps most graphically on the front page of the Philadelphia Daily News: "The New Furor," was its lead headline under an unflatteringly timed photo of Trump with an extended arm.
An interviewer on MSNBC told him: "There's a number of Americans you're really scaring right now, including me."
Another interviewer on CNN put it more bluntly: "Leaders from your own party (are) saying this is un-American and extreme and that it makes you a fascist. How do you respond?"
This was the day after Trump read out a statement on his new policy to a partisan crowd. He received cheers throughout a caustic speech where he railed against the media in the back of the room as, "absolute scum."
Around the time he was taking the stage, the Huffington Post announced its own policy change. Trump was no longer to be treated as a joke. The website had covered Trump in its entertainment section since the summer.
Now the primaries are less than two months away. Trump remains in first place in the Republican polls. And he's supplemented his promise to deport 11 million mostly Hispanic illegal migrants with a policy aimed at Muslims. It would be the United States' first culture-based entry ban in approximately seven decades, since the repeal of Asian-exclusion laws.
The comic relief is over, the site founder declared.
"(Trump's campaign has) morphed into something else: an ugly and dangerous force in American politics," Arianna Huffington wrote in a post. "So we will no longer be covering his campaign in Entertainment...The 'can you believe he said that?' novelty has curdled and congealed into something repellent and threatening — laying bare a disturbing aspect of American politics."
The anti-Trump rhetoric hardened elsewhere.
He was condemned across the political spectrum with more severity than when he insulted Mexican migrants; made fun of Sen. John McCain's prisoner-of-war experience; and told what was widely perceived as a menstruation joke about a female TV personality.
Like an inflatable punching bag, though, Trump has repeatedly bounced back from controversy and defied the disdain of opinion elites. He brushed off the concerns of interviewers Tuesday.
When pressed about how his plan would work — because American travel documents do not have a religious affiliation stamped on them — Trump explained that border guards would ask a question.
"They would say, 'Are you Muslim?'" Trump told MSNBC. If travellers answer yes, he said, they'd be banned.
Fellow Republicans denounced him, with varying degrees of acerbity. Jeb Bush called him unhinged, but some presidential candidates higher up in the polls, like Sen. Ted Cruz, distanced themselves more cautiously.
The Republicans' top figure in Congress paused during his weekly media scrum to say he'd break his own rule of not commenting on the primary elections.
"This is not conservatism. What was proposed yesterday is not what this party stands for. And more importantly, it's not what this country stands for," said Paul Ryan, who went on to salute the Muslims fighting in the military, serving as members of Congress, and helping fight ISIL.
A moment later, though, Ryan was asked whether he'd support Trump in the general election: "I'm going to support whoever the Republican nominee is, and I'm going to stand up for what I believe in as I do that."
TRUMP REJECTS CRITICISM OF HIS PROPOSAL TO BAN MUSLIMS FROM US, COMPARISONS TO HITLER
MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. — Donald Trump on Tuesday stood by his call to block all Muslims from entering the United States, even as the idea was widely condemned by rival Republican presidential candidates, party leaders and others as un-American.
Trump's call Monday for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States" has drawn an unusually forceful level of rebuke and condemnation from across the party and abroad.
"I don't care about them," Trump told CNN in an early-morning phone interview, when asked about denunciation by Republican Party leaders. "I'm doing what's right."
Trump's campaign has been marked by a pattern of inflammatory statements, dating back to his harsh rhetoric about Mexican immigrants. He has taken a particularly hard line against Muslims in the days since the Paris attacks, advocating enhanced surveillance of mosques due to fears over radicalization.
Despite his controversial rhetoric, Trump has held on to his status as the front-runner for the 2016 Republican nomination, with less than two months to go before the first primary contests. Many Republicans worry that his rise will damage the party's chances of winning the White House in November, as Hillary Rodham Clinton consolidates her own front-runner status on the Democratic side.
"This is not conservatism," House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters after a closed-door Republican caucus meeting in response to Trump's comments. "What was proposed yesterday is not what this party stands for and more importantly, it's not what this country stands for."
British Prime Minister David Cameron slammed Trump's proposal as "divisive, unhelpful and quite simply wrong." Muslims in the United States and around the world denounced it as unconstitutional or offensive. The front page of the Philadelphia Daily News featured a photo of Trump holding his right hand out as if in a Nazi salute with the headline "The New Furor."
But Trump, who appears to revel in controversy, didn't back down, saying that banning all Muslims "until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on" is warranted after last month's attacks by Muslim extremists in Paris and last week's shooting in San Bernardino, California, that killed 14.
"We are now at war," said Trump, who further defended his plan by comparing it with President Franklin Roosevelt's decision to intern Japanese Americans during World War II.
Trump's proposed ban would apply to immigrants and visitors alike, a sweeping prohibition affecting all adherents of a religion practiced by more than a billion people worldwide. The current Republican poll-leader announced his plan to cheers and applause at a Monday evening rally in South Carolina, where many supporters welcomed the proposal.
Since the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris that killed 130 people and wounded hundreds, a number of Republican presidential contenders have proposed restrictions on refugees and tighter surveillance in the U.S.
But Trump's proposed ban goes much further, and his Republican rivals were quick to reject the latest provocation from a candidate who has delivered no shortage of them. "Donald Trump is unhinged," Jeb Bush said via Twitter. "His 'policy' proposals are not serious."
Sen. Lindsey Graham went further, warning that Trump's rhetoric risked inflaming tensions in the Middle East, echoing concerns that it plays right into the recruiting strategy of Islamic State militants, who have framed their battle as a war between Islam and the West.
"He's putting our soldiers and diplomats at risk, he's empowering the enemy," said Graham, another Republican presidential contender, in an interview with CNN. Trump, he said, is making new enemies of people "who came to our side in Iraq and Afghanistan and who are under siege in their own countries."
"It basically becomes a death sentence for them," he added, describing Trump as "ISIL man of the year."
Trump's proposal has also drawn criticism from legal experts who challenge its constitutionality and feasibility.
Leti Volpp, a University of California expert on immigration law said "there is no precedent for a religious litmus test for admitting immigrants into the United States."
"Excluding almost a quarter of the world's population from setting foot in the United States based solely upon their religious identity would never pass constitutional muster," Volpp said.
