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President Donald J. Trump’s State of the Union Address or: ‘The Plot Against America II’

My Fellow Americans, Vice President Palin, distinguished members of Congress, and esteemed guests, I am deeply honored to offer this State of the Union address, my first since being elected your president in November 2016.
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December 9, 2015

January 16, 2018

“My Fellow Americans, Vice President Palin, distinguished members of Congress, and esteemed guests, I am deeply honored to offer this State of the Union address, my first since being elected your president in November 2016. 

I must commence with a warning.  America is in a conflict unlike any ever before. We face a mortal enemy with whom we are engaged in a civilizational war over the very values that define our way of life and being.

As you know well, it is not my habit to beat around the bush.  This enemy must be named again and again: it is Islam.  And we in the West must wage battle against it to defend the Christian values on which our societies are built.  As my distinguished predecessor President George W. Bush once wisely declared, we are embarked on a new Crusade in the name of our American virtue.

Some critics have accused me of bigotry and discrimination.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  I have known and gotten along with Muslims in the past; some are loyal citizens of this country.  I have nothing against Muslims as individuals.  I do have a serious problem with the religion to which they pledge allegiance, for it is a religion of hatred and violence.

I have a very good sense of history.  I understand that war can be long and brutal.  The Thirty Years’ War in seventeenth-century Europe pitted combatants from competing religions against one another.  Since the first attack on the World Trade Center in 1993, we have been engaged in a war that has already lasted 25 years.  We must redouble our resolve to defend our homeland and defeat the enemy.

Toward that end, I report to you on the following:

1)  In this state of war, we will take the battle to wherever the enemy is to be found.  Immediately upon assuming office, I ordered repeated bombing raids against ISIS forces in Syria.  This campaign has been effective in displacing ISIS from its stronghold in Raqqa.  Yes, there has been collateral damage, but that is the unfortunate cost of a total war against evil.   We have chopped off the head of the snake, but the body continues to writhe, supported by hundreds of thousands of new recruits drawn to the noxious ideology of ISIS and its new allies, Al Qaeda, the Al Nusra Front, and Boko Haram.

2)  I have committed to date 300,000 American ground forces to eliminate the enemy in various battle theaters where the poison of radical Islam permeates: Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Nigeria.  We will not rest in our efforts to remove this dire threat.  I am grateful that the United States has been joined by two partners willing to defend the Christian West – France and Russia.  I commend my good friends President Marine Le Pen and President Vladimir Putin for their courage and conviction.  At the same time, our hearts go out to the families of the 28,000 American soldiers who have given their lives so far in the defense of liberty.  There will be more sacrifices, I’m afraid.  But we must make them to defeat the enemy.

3)  On the home front, we are also at war, and this requires emergency measures. I have instructed Secretary of Defense Ted Cruz, Attorney General Frank J. Gaffney Jr., and Special Advisor for Muslim Affairs Pamela Geller to intensify our efforts to monitor the Muslim population of this country.  I do not believe that all Muslims in America are disloyal, but far too many subscribe to the tenets of radical Islam.  This is the lesson we learned from the tragic terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California in 2015.  I repeat: we are at war at home!  Accordingly, I have put in place the following steps: 

a.  Regardless of nationality, all Muslims are being denied entry to this country at every port of entry.  At my request, the Attorney General has established a classification scheme to determine who is to be deemed Muslim.

b.  All mosques, community centers, and organizations devoted to Muslims in this country will be closed effective immediately.  Membership in them will be illegal until further notice.

c.  Effective immediately, the Department of Homeland Security is creating internment camps to house all Muslims inside this country, without exception.  This step is necessary to insure that acts of terrorism not be perpetrated on American soil.

Some may regard these steps as un-American. But I remind you that one of my great predecessors, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, issued Executive Order 9066 in February 1942, declaring that “the successful prosecution of the war requires every possible protection against espionage and against sabotage to national-defense material, national-defense premises, and national-defense utilities.”  This order allowed the internment of 120,000 Japanese-Americans who required surveillance in the wake of Pearl Harbor, when Japan was our declared enemy.  

As a businessman, I know what works.  And this internment worked.  Not only was the homeland secure during this period, but Japanese-Americans were compliant.  In fact, there were polls of the internees in which a substantial number asserted that they were content and even thankful for the protection afforded them.  I have little doubt that the Muslim population in this country will feel the same.

I hasten to mention three additional steps intended to restore pride and security to this country:

First, all homes must, by order of law, visibly display American flags on their doors or front lawns.

Second, the home of every loyal American citizen will be provided with an effective firearm to guarantee defense of our homeland.

Third, my immediate predecessor as president remains under arrest pending investigation of his links to radical Muslim terrorists cells.  He is in good physical condition, but will be treated with the full severity of the law should any criminal connection be found. 

My fellow Americans, these steps will assure the health and safety of our country at this critical time.  Now is the time for unity, not dissent.  We must join together under the Stars and Stripes to wage battle against the enemy, both beyond our borders and within them.  God bless all those who are willing to embark on this moral and virtuous Crusade.”


David N. Myers is the Sady and Ludwig Kahn Professor of Jewish History at UCLA.  Inspiration came from Philip Roth’s counterfactual novel The Plot against America and the television series “The Man in the High Castle.” 

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