Trump campaign removes Muslim-ban link from website

Some of the most controversial proposals US president-elect Donald Trump made while running for office were gone from his campaign website by Thursday, including his call to ban Muslims from entering the country and his promise to cancel the Paris Climate Agreement.

The link to a proposal titled: "Donald J Trump statement on Preventing Muslim Immigration", in which he called for "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States" vanished, along with his list of potential Supreme Court justice picks as president and certain details of his economic, defence and regulatory reform plans.

The Trump campaign did not respond to multiple emails seeking comment on the website changes.

The links, which now redirect readers to a campaign fundraising page, appear to have been removed around Election Day on Tuesday, when Trump won a historic upset against Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, according to a website that records historic snapshots of web pages.

Offensive statements

In an appearance on CNBC on Thursday, Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal praised Mr Trump for removing the Muslim ban proposal from his website and also said Mr Trump had deleted statements offensive to Muslims from his Twitter account.

Several tweets attacking Muslims that Mr Trump sent while campaigning for president remained in his feed on Thursday, however, including a March 22nd tweet in which Trump wrote: "Incompetent Hillary, despite the horrible attack in Brussels today, wants borders to be weak and open - and let the Muslims flow in. No way!"

A November 30th, 2015 tweet from a supporter which Mr Trump quoted in a tweet of his own repeated the claim that Muslims celebrated the attacks of September 11th, 2001, and suggested Mr Trump include footage of the celebrations in his political ads.

At a news conference with other civil rights leaders on Thursday, Samer Khalaf, president of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said the group was still worried about Mr Trump's policies' effects on Muslims.

“We thank him for removing those words,” Mr Khalaf said, referring to the Muslim ban proposal, “but you know what, words are one thing, actions are something totally different.”

Core positions

Most of Mr Trump's core policy positions remained on his website, including his central immigration promise to build an "impenetrable physical wall" on the border with Mexico and make Mexico pay for its construction.

It was not the first time the Trump campaign has made unexplained changes to its site.

The campaign this year also replaced the part of the site describing Trump’s healthcare policy with a different version. When contacted about it by Reuters in September, the campaign put the original page back up.

Reuters