Obama urges respect amid furor over Trump stance on Muslims

President Barack Obama used an event commemorating the end of slavery to pointedly call for tolerance and respect Wednesday, amid a political firestorm over Donald Trump’s proposal for a Muslim travel ban.

In a speech at the US Capitol marking the 150th anniversary of the 13th amendment — which banned slavery — Obama did not mention the Republican presidential candidate by name but made the political context clear.

“Remember that our freedom is bound up with the freedom of others, regardless of what they look like… or what faith they practice,” he said, to loud cheers from lawmakers.

He urged Americans to do what previous generations had done and “rise above cynicism and fear.”

Obama‘s comments were much more subtle than those of his lieutenants, who have roundly condemned Trump’s remarks.

The White House on Tuesday angrily challenged Republicans to denounce their party’s presidential frontrunner for proposing to bar Muslims from entering the country.

Painting Trump as a “carnival barker” with “fake hair” whose campaign belonged in the “dustbin of history,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest said Trump’s plan should disqualify him from office.

“What Donald Trump said yesterday disqualifies him from serving as president,” concluded Earnest, describing the remarks as “offensive” and “toxic.”

Trump, the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, made the provocative remarks — just his latest on a range of topics on the campaign trail — after last week’s shooting that left 14 dead in California by a Muslim couple said to have been radicalized.

In a Sunday address from the Oval Office, Obama called the attack in San Bernardino an “act of terrorism,” but stressed there was no “war between America and Islam.”

Less than 24 hours later, Trump triggered calls for him to be barred from taking power after he urged a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”

The bombastic 69-year-old billionaire real estate mogul was unrepentant Tuesday, even as criticism rained down from the White House and as far afield as Ottawa, London and Cairo, where Egypt’s official religious body Dar al-Iftaa denounced his “extremist and racist” comments.

Trump stood his ground. Asked by ABC News whether he regretted calling for the ban, he said “Not at all. We have to do the right thing.”

And confronted with the charge that extremists would use Trump’s rhetoric as a recruiting tool, the candidate scoffed.

“I’m the worst thing that’s ever happened to ISIS,” he said.

Trump, whose comments were extreme even by his populist standards, was similarly lambasted by leading Republicans and campaign rivals.

Trump was the “ISIL man of the year,” thundered Senator Lindsey Graham, referring to his belief that Trump was succeeding only in fueling the radical ideology of the Islamic State group.

“Do you know how you win this war? You side with people in the faith who reject this ideology, which is 99 percent,” Graham told CNN, before invoking Trump’s campaign slogan — “make America great again.”

“And do you know how you make America great again?” asked Graham, who is lagging badly in the nomination race.

“Tell Donald Trump to go to hell.”

Other Republican contenders lined up to reject Trump’s proposal.

Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential frontrunner, said Trump was playing “right into the hands of terrorists” and Rick Kriseman, a Democratic mayor in Florida, tweeted he was “barring Donald Trump from entering St. Petersburg until we fully understand the dangerous threat posed by all Trumps.”