Carl Higbie is a vocal Trump supporter and surrogate who as appeared on both CNN and Fox as a pro-Trump Political Commentator. He is a former Navy SEAL and currently works as a spokesperson for the Pro-Trump super PAC “Great America,” which was one of the first super Pacs created in support for Donald Trump. Higbie has said many controversial things during the time as a political commentator, but this last one might be the most outrageous and unacceptable statements thus far. On Megyn Kelly’s Fox News program, he said that the horrible Japanese internment camps from WWII are a legal precedent for Trumps rumored registry’s of all Muslim Americans, implying that an argument of how the government should go about registering Muslims by saying, “we have done it before so, therefore, we can do it again.”
To begin with, I would like to say that Higbie isn’t directly connected to the Trump administration, but he has been one of most prominent backers, with his many appearances on TV and his rigorous campaigning all over the country. Consequently, he reaches a lot of Americans and Trump supporters. Furthermore, Higbie introduced Trump at one of his speeches during the primaries and Trump also tweeted about Higbie, thanking him for his support. In conclusion, he isn’t officially connected, however he is still one of the most prominent Trump backers, so what he says can’t have a large impact?
First and foremost, the Japanese internment camps were horrible and forced 120,000 people, many of whom were American citizens, to leave everything they had behind, sell their houses at high losses and move into what was for all intents and purposes prisons. They should never be repeated in any way or form nor should they be a source of inspiration for anything. The Japanese internment camps are one of the “most flagrant violations of civil liberties in American history.” After all, this is one of the topics that is not very deeply studied in schools in America, which could be why you might have not even heard of them, because it was an embarrassment.
Kelly and Higbie were discussing the claims from Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach’s that Trump’s Immigration advisers are planning on proposing the creation of a registry of Muslims in America. Trump has recently denied ever saying that he wants to create the registry, despite the fact that there are multiple examples of him doing just that.
When asked about it, Higbie said, “Yeah, and to be perfectly honest, it is legal. They say it will hold constitutional muster. I know the ACLU is going to challenge it, but I think it will pass. We’ve done it with Iran back a while ago. We did it in World War II with Japanese. Call it what you will… maybe wrong, but—” Kelly quickly interrupted to say: “Come on, you’re not proposing we go back to the days of internment camps, I hope.”
This resulted in Higbie clarifying by saying, “Right, I’m just saying there is precedent for it. And I’m not saying I agree with that.” Which suggests that he doesn’t want to bring pack the cruel practice. He, however, then proceeded to say: “Look, the president needs to protect America first. If that means having people not protected under our constitution have some sort of registry to understand, until we can identify the true threat and where they are coming from, I support it.” This latest statement makes his stance on the rights of Muslims in America a bit unclear. Many of the people in the Japanse internment camps were American citizens, but the supreme court still ruled that they could be unconstitutionally treated, and if you were to start a registry of Muslims, you would register many American citizens too.
“You can’t be citing Japanese internment camps as precedent for anything the president-elect is going to do.” – Megyn Kelly
Even though, he said that he doesn’t support creating new internment camps he didn’t denounce them in a very convincing way. He said “Call it what you will… maybe wrong, but…”. Maybe wrong? Maybe? NO, they were not “maybe” wrong they were definitely wrong.
Finally, the problem with his statements from the show is he brought up Japanese internment camps in a discussion about registering Muslims on his own. No one had even thought of mentioning it before he brought is up as an example that would justify registering Muslims. This is, as Kelly put it, “…the kind of stuff that gets people scared.” Statements like this coming from people that have political influence like Carl Higbie, through his job as political commentator and spokesman for the Great America Super Pac, makes people scared. Trump has said a large amount of anti-Muslim statements and has a senior adviser that has said similar things, so it’s no wonder that people get scared about the future for Muslims in this country. Especially since no one knows what the Trump administrations exact plan is for the register. All of the different rumors and contradicting statements only make people more and more anxious and afraid.
