New York: Has US President-elect Donald Trump dumped his controversial plan to set up a registry for Muslims or immigrants from majority-Muslim countries?
According to prominent Arab-American stand-up comedian Mo Amer, the answer is yes.
Amer, who found himself sitting next to Eric Trump, son of US President-elect, on a flight to Scotland, and quickly used the opportunity to discuss what will happen to Muslims under the Trump administration.
“Good news guys will not have to check in and get IDs,” Mo Amer wrote in a recent Facebook post, which also had a picture of him sitting down next to the son of the president-elect. “That’s what I was told.”
Amer also spoke to Buzzfeed about the experience with Trump — who was reportedly flying to Scotland to check in on the Trump International Golf Links — and said he talked about Donald Trump’s proposals for a form of government registry for Muslims or immigrants from majority-Muslim countries.
“And I said– just FYI I’m not getting that ID s*** done. You gonna really make my people get ID cards and all this? You know we’re not doing this s***,” Amer recounted telling Eric Trump.
Eric Trump, 32, told Amer not to worry, and to not “believe everything you read.”
“Do you really think we’re going to do that?” Eric Trump continued, according to Amer.
Trump had made sharply provocative remarks about Muslim refugees from Syria and Iraq during campaigning in the race for the White House.
Last year, Trump had said he was open to requiring Muslims in the United States to register in a database. His comments had triggered criticism from Muslim groups in the country.
The two then discussed the election results. “[Trump] basically acknowledged the fact that his father played this thing like a mad genius and that’s how he got elected and he admitted it,” Amer said. Trump then told Amer that the president-elect is a “good, good man.”
According to Amer, who said the discussion was largely pleasant, Eric Trump seemed “disconnected from the reality of race attacks and violence. The vibe that I got, this was a game to them and they had no regrets and they did it to win and they will most likely keep doing it.”
Once Trump was asleep, other people on the plane began taking selfies with him, and Amer jokingly said Muslim prayers over him.
Amer’s Facebook post quickly went viral, with many asking him questions about the interaction, US media reports said.
Amer, 35, was born in Kuwait to Palestinian parents, and came to America as an asylum-seeker after the first Gulf War and became a US citizen in 2009.
PTI