Donald Trump won't rule out registering American Muslims in a national database

(Image credit: Isaac Brekken/Getty Images)

In a Yahoo interview published Thursday, Donald Trump argued that after the terrorist attacks in Paris, unprecedented and previously "unthinkable" steps must be taken to monitor American Muslims:

Yahoo News asked Trump whether his push for increased surveillance of American Muslims could include warrantless searches. He suggested he would consider a series of drastic measures."We're going to have to do things that we never did before. And some people are going to be upset about it, but I think that now everybody is feeling that security is going to rule," Trump said. "And certain things will be done that we never thought would happen in this country in terms of information and learning about the enemy. And so we're going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago."Yahoo News asked Trump whether this level of tracking might require registering Muslims in a database or giving them a form of special identification that noted their religion. He wouldn't rule it out. [Yahoo]

On Wednesday, Trump drew controversy for saying "We're gonna have no choice" but to shut down mosques. He reaffirmed his support for mosque surveillance in the Yahoo interview.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.