Trump says not ashamed of Islamophobic remarks

US presidential candidate Donald Trump says he is not ashamed of his proposal for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States."

“Not at all,” Trump said in an interview on Tuesday with ABC News. “We have to do the right thing.”

Trump on Monday called for “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States” until American “representatives can figure out what is going on.”

Later on Monday in a speech aboard the USS Yorktown, Trump read part of his statement aloud. "We have no choice," he declared, saying they want to kill Americans.

Trump told ABC News on Tuesday that disallowing Muslims from entering the US would be a “short-term” measure until elected American leaders can “figure out what is going on.”

He said the United States should bar Muslims from entering the US as soon as possible.

“We don’t know what’s happening. We have a president that doesn’t have a clue. We need toughness and smartness and we have to do it quickly,” he said.

Trump stated that he is not a bigot as many commentators are calling him. “I’m a person that has common sense. I’m a smart person. I know how to run things. I know how to make America great again.”

Trump’s outrageous demand has been roundly condemned by nearly all presidential candidates, both Republican and Democrat, as well as Amnesty International and the White House.

Margaret Huang, Interim Executive Director of Amnesty International USA, issued a statement on Monday saying that such hate-filled rhetoric must be rejected.

"Trump's proposal caters to the worst instincts of ethnic and religious prejudice – the kind that marked the worst chapters of US history, including Japanese internment. All political figures should reject the scapegoating and fear-mongering at play here. Bigotry should not masquerade as a counter-terrorism measure,” the statement said.

Meanwhile, the White House also blasted Trump's proposal calling for a "total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States."

"It's totally contrary to our values as Americans," White House Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes told CNN on Monday afternoon. 

Trump has adopted a more virulent tone against Muslims and Islam since the last month Paris attacks that were allegedly claimed by Daesh.

The New York billionaire has also called for a database to track Muslims across the United States, and he has also said that the US would have "absolutely no choice" but to close down mosques.

According to American scholar Dennis Etler, the fact that Donald Trump's outrageous call to bar all Muslims from entering the US has “struck a chord” with some Americans “speaks to the level of ignorance and Islamophobia within certain segments” of the US society.

“Even though Trump's outrageous demand is widely rejected by most Americans the mere fact that he could make such a proposal and be taken seriously by many voters is an ill omen,” Etler, professor of Anthropology at Cabrillo College in Aptos, California, told Press TV on Tuesday.

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