During the election campaign stadiums full of Trump supporters cheered loudly when Trump promised to ban Muslims from America and held forth on how there was something about Islam that caused its followers to hate America.
If the Trump campaign had not already assigned the “lock her up” meme to Hillary Clinton, we would have heard the Trump mobs chanting “Lock them up! Lock them up!” every time he mentioned the Muslim faith.
His coalition included millions of Americans who are suspicious of Islam — including large numbers who believe Islam is evil; Islam is not a religion protected by the constitution; Muslims should be banned from the USA; and American Mosques should be shuttered.
So what do these followers make of Trump’s Saudi speech where he repeatedly praised Islam, cited Muslims as critical allies in the war on terror and referred to Saudi Arabia as “sacred land.”
Will his followers’ heads explode? Will they feel betrayed? Or will they once again defend his cynical hypocrisy by saying "He's lying to the Muslim leaders to trick them, but in his heart he still agrees with us that Muslims can't be trusted and all of them want to impose Sharia law on Americans"?
Is Trump undermining this slice of his coalition in a deliberate attempt to impress more middle-of-the-road Americans, or has he just cluelessly thrown a large slice of his base under the bus in order to earn flattery from a roomful of Arab billionaires?