GREER, S.C.—The fuss over Donald Trump seems largely lost on many of those who support him. Where his critics see bigotry, they see common sense.
At Rosie’s Hotdogs in upstate South Carolina, Tracy Hooker isn’t interested in debating the merits of Trump’s proposal to temporarily block Muslims from coming into the United States.
She knows some people think it’s xenophobic. That others argue it’s impractical, legally dubious or both. And that every other Republican running for president has, in some way or another, rejected the idea that the plan is even worth talking about.
That’s why she says Trump is “my guy.”
He’s the only one who gets it.
“Think about it,” Hooker, 47, said of the Muslim tourists, immigrants and refugees Trump wants to bar from coming to the U.S. “You don’t know if they like us. You don’t know if they hate us,.” She added: “You don’t know why they’re here.”
To dozens of Trump supporters interviewed in the past week by The Associated Press in the first-to-vote states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, the near universal condemnation of the billionaire’s plan is simply baffling.
They hear Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan say, “This is not conservatism,” and British Prime Minister David Cameron call it, “Quite simply wrong.” They listen to U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon call Trump’s plan an “appeal to hate.”
And, they say, they marvel at how naive all the critics sound.
After the Paris and San Bernardino, California, attacks, they say only Trump is taking on what they believe is a clear and present danger to the U.S.
“When you’re in war, you have to take steps that are not American to protect yourself and defend the country,” said Margaret Shontz, of Cedar Falls, Iowa, as she arrived at a Trump campaign stop in Des Moines on Friday.
Trump’s call to bar Muslims from coming to America is “awesome.”
“Very needed,” she said. “Very necessary.”
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