As you know Trump said a lot of things on the campaign trail last year about radical Islam and Muslims, but according to Tillerson his views are ‘evolving’ now that he’s taking trips to Muslim countries and meeting more Muslims:
USA TODAY – President Trump’s visit to Saudi Arabia this week has already begun to soften his attitudes about Islam, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said Monday after a two-day summit in which Trump was treated to extraordinary Arab hospitality.
“I think the President’s views — like, we hope, the American people’s views — are going to continue to evolve,” Tillerson said on the flight from Riyadh to Tel Aviv.
Tillerson’s candid assessment, made to reporters aboard Air Force One Monday, represents a remarkable turnaround for a presidential candidate who campaigned on a platform that argued for “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.” And Tillerson suggested there’s even more room for Trump to moderate his views as he’s exposed to more Muslim leaders.
“Nothing helps you learn and understand people better than coming to their homes, where they live and seeing them face to face, seeing their families, and seeing their communities,” Tillerson said. “We all share the same wants and desires for ourselves and our people, and our families,” he said. “We want our children to grow up without fear. That’s such a strongly held view around the world, certainly among the Muslim world certainly among the non-Muslim world.”
So is this trip really about peace in the Middle East or is it about repairing the damage Trump did to his reputation last year during the campaign trail?
As I’ve pointed out, I dislike the entire premise of this trip. Islam is not a peaceful religion, no matter how many times Trump and other political leaders say it and there won’t truly be peace between Israel and her neighbors until Christ comes back. This we know from the scriptures.
That said, there is a varying degree of hostility toward Israel from the Muslim countries right around her, with much of it being very hostile. However in some cases, like that of Saudi Arabia, they have much bigger problems within the Muslim world itself. Arabia is very afraid that their Iranian enemy could get nuclear weapons, therefore they take a softer tone towards Israel simply out of self-preservation.
Trump can probably work with some of this to create little deals here and there between Israel and some Muslim countries like Arabia, just as we’ve seen in the past with Israel, Egypt and Jordan. But I don’t think it will ever rise to the level of a true peace deal that Trump clearly believes he can orchestrate.
However, don’t put it past Muslim countries like Turkey to orchestrate a phony peace deal and use someone like Trump as a useful idiot to make it look like real peace. I’m not convinced there will ever be any peace deal but I do think it’s possible that the Muslim nations could do as their phony prophet once did, to make ‘peace’ treaties with Jews in order to give them time to ramp up for invasion and conquest.
So we’ll see what eventually comes of all of this. But if I had my druthers, Trump wouldn’t have gone all over the Middle East on his delusional ‘peace’ tour, but he would have gone straight to Israel and the Vatican and stood with them against the forces that want to divide Israel to create a Palestinian State, proclaiming that we would have Israel and the church’s back against anyone who tried to make such a wicked deal. Now that would be something I could cheer about.