Stands for, and, more importantly, its not what this country stands for. Nonetheless, mr. Trump continues to lead in the polls for the republican nomination for president. And if the republicans should somehow sour on him, he has now raised the possibility of a thirdparty run. Good morning, everyone. Im bill ritter, in for diana. Yes, radical muslims are spreading terror and violence in many quarters of the world, but is banning all muslims from coming here the answer . Most americans says it is not it is not what this country stands for. Today we dive deep on this issue. Were gonna have a discussion with a moderate muslim activist and organizer, get her point of view. But, first, mr. Trump, who was on our campus this week the most controversial week of his most controversial candidacy. The way donald trump takes criticism apparently is by digging in his heels, even deeper. This week, in our studio, trump refusing to back down even an inch on his controversial and unconstitutional plan to stop anyone whose muslim from immigrating, both on live with kelly and michael and in an interview with our political you have to say it. Look, were a country of laws. Were a country where you have to behave. You cant knock down buildings. You cant do the kind of things that have been happening in our country what happened in california, what happened with the World Trade Center twice. But tons of anger at trump, like at this rally at new york city hall. There is nothing left to say about donald trump, except that he is a disgusting, racist demagogue who has no business running for president period. Trumps proposed muslim ban met with nearly universal condemnation in the political world. But in the world of trump supporters, they seem to love the guy. Its a shortterm problem. I just think its gonna be good for the safety of the u. S. A. Meanwhile, trump insists hell get the republican nomination and wasted not a nanosecond tearing into democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton. Hillary clinton doesnt have the strength or the stamina to be president. She doesnt have the stamina to be president. Trump predicting he can win not just the nomination, but the presidency. But could he win if he runs as an independent, splitting the conservative vote . Trump downplaying that scenario, saying, why would he leave the Republican Party when hes 20 points ahead . I think ill get the republican nomination. I have great friendships in the Republican Party. Theyre a little bit stunned at whats happened, because nobody expected a thing like this to happen, but its happened. And one of the reasons its happened is because i tell the truth. The hard truth is trumps proposal is likely unconstitutional, and he has no power or ability to make that happen, but it is, nonetheless, causing something of a firestorm here in new york and across the country. But here in new york, in the citys muslim communities, men making their way to midday prayers in queens, saying trumps blaming all muslims for terrorism, and they say thats wrong. A spokesperson for one Muslim Community says trumps proposed ban is just what extremists want, because it divides all communities and drives some into this is not what the majority of americans think. We know that americans dont hate muslims, so we know that, although these statements are divisive, we know that we can unite. Mr. Bhatti says people should go to a mosque and see whats really being discussed there before they judge muslims. And president obama, in an Oval Office Speech a week ago, calling for national unity. If were to succeed in defeating terrorism, we must enlist muslim communities as some of our strongest allies, rather than push them away through suspicion and hate. That does not mean denying the fact that an extremist ideology has spread within some muslim communities. Its a real problem that muslims must confront without excuse. Muslim leaders here and around the globe have to continue working with us to decisively and unequivocally reject the hateful ideology that groups it is, in fact, the worlds second largest religion. According to demographers, its set to become the Worlds Largest by the end of this century. And, yet, so many people are defining it by the smallest sliver of radical islamists, and that gives them even more power. Joining us to talk about all this and much more is sahar alsahlani, a board member of the council on americanislamic relations in new york. Sahar, thank you for joining us. Well, thank you for having me. Well, my pleasure. I want to get your take on all this, and lets just start with mr. Trumps proposal. When you first heard it, what was your reaction . Well, when i first heard it, it didnt surprise me, because mr. Trump has not left it doesnt seem to me hes left any minority unattacked. I mean, obviously, he has a chronic pattern. He started with hispanics. Hes attacked the black lives matter movement; a couple weeks ago, made fun of a disabled reporter. So its not surprising that he would continue this pattern. One of the things that really surprises me the most is when he talked about banning the muslim if he knew the history of muslims in the United States my arab heritage you know, culturally, im arabic. But my muslim heritage we were not immigrants. We were slaves that were brought over from africa. Those were the first muslims that came, back in the 14th, 15th, and 16th century. So weve had a long history of islam in america. Thomas jefferson, you know, invited muslims to come and have iftar with him. He had a copy of the quran. We had muslims involved in the revolutionary war, in the civil war, in the civil rights movement. So weve been involved in the tapestry of this country for years. I came here people often growing up would say, my family came here on the mayflower. Go home. And i would kind of say, well, i came here on a plane with a student visa. I was a baby, and my mom came to do her phd. You know, sometimes you kind of wonder about you come from iraq, right . I come from iraq originally. And you grew up where . I grew up in pittsburgh, so he doesnt understand the contribution or how entangled we are with the history of american society. So, how have we gotten to this point . I mean, you know, there are terrorists who attacked this country. There are terrorists right now at work. And yet moderate muslims like yourself and most muslims are getting the blame for all. How did we get to this point . I think when somebody attacks another person, it comes from unresolved pain. I think it comes from fear of the unknown. I think it comes from not knowing your neighbor. I think it comes from not doing a lot of internal work, and it comes from perhaps him not understanding his own spirituality and his own comrades in the american society. Every religion, every nationality, every race has its extremes on the political spectrum. How do you, as an activist, deal with the radical extreme, which has sparked fear in a lot of people . How do you deal with that . What do you say to people who say, well, you know, now im afraid of muslims . Well, i do a lot of work in the interfaith arena. I grew up in catholic schools. I grew up in a jewish neighborhood in pittsburgh. So ive been part of the interfaith pluralistic society. And what i have learned is that all religions are road maps to justice. You know, all the scriptures are road maps to justice. And the essence of all faiths is attaining for a Peaceful Society in this world. So, how do you get people who are now taking an extreme position to listen to what you just said . How does that happen . You know, everybody, when they are lost or when they are in a community thats perhaps facing oppression or facing poverty or facing relocation or migration or facing lack of theyre gonna react. And you dont know the context or the situation thats gonna drive them to extremes, whether its in ferguson or whether its in iraq or whether its in, you know, a lowerincome neighborhood, or whether their lack of education. You dont know what drives a person internally to seek, to go to these kind of recruitment places. But what we can do is we can look within our own faith to see how we can try to cooperate within each other to solve these problems together. You know there are many people who say, well, until moderate muslims take up the fight and help stop the radicals within their religion, its gonna continue. What do you say to them . And are you doing that . Well, i think weve been doing that for a very, very long time. I think, at times, kind of diminishes the work that weve been doing to contribute to society. Most muslims that i know are involved already in the public sector. I mean, you cannot go to a hospital or to a university or transportation and not find a muslim, either at the highest level or at the lowest level. I think most religious organizations do have their extremists, whether its the kkk i mean, that certainly does not represent christianity, as much as they, you know, wail and say, were christian. They want to say they do. Exactly. So its up to the person to get to know their neighbors and understand the other religions. Well, i hope people listen to you this morning, and i thank oh, thank you. All right, sahar. Thank you so much and good luck to you. When we come back, were gonna continue our discussion on the trump immigration firestorm. Will it help or hurt him and what about a thirdparty run . Welcome back to upclose. Its hard to remember any other time in history when one president ial primary candidate has thrown as Many Political stink bombs into a race as has new Yorker Donald trump and still managed to lead the pack. The man seems to thrive on getting slammed by the public and still leading the pack. Our political analyst this morning jeanne zaino, Political Science professor at iona college and n. Y. U. Have you ever seen anything like this . Not that i can remember. No, it has been quite a race, and were not even in 2016 yet, which is the shocking part of this. Trump said on the piece we had earlier with dave evans to dave evans he said, you know, republicans are stumped by this because they have never seen anyone like me. You have sat on this chair for months and said, it might not last, it might not last. But youve changed your tune the this is lasting. It has lasted a lot longer than i thought it would. Now, do i think he is going to i still dont think hes gonna be the nominee. Why not . Because i think the Republican Party knows that it is a big risk to put him out there as the nominee. At this point, republicans have a good sense that they are not going to win the white house, and what do they have to do . They have to watch those downballot races. And their fear is if donald trump is at the top of that ticket, no republicans or half of the republicans dont come out and vote, what happens to the senate . Do they lose it . Probably. What happens to the house . They probably lose it. And lets not forget besides the white house, republicans dominate in every other field local, state, and legislature. They dont want to lose that. So thats their big concern right now. Thats why you heard paul ryan come out so strongly this week. And lindsey graham. And lindsey graham. Donald trump. Absolutely. I mean, youve got senators running for reelection on the republican side who are now in fear of losing. And, you know, they are not gonna let this happen. So, you know, could he get the nomination . Absolutely. But is it likely . Probably not, because the party is going to fight. So, while he is winning in numbers than anybody else right now 36 no one is 20 within that theres so many negatives. You have two out of three americans in a general election right now saying they dont trust this guy. Yeah, absolutely. So, you look at the latino vote. If he keeps going this way, Hillary Clinton can likely get 3 4 of the latino vote. There is no way the republicans win with those kind of numbers against them. And we also know that when you attack one minority group, other minority groups fall off the wayside. And so weve seen that. We saw that last time around with mitt romney. So its likely that they are gonna have trouble attracting point. And so you cannot win in this country demographically if your appeal is to white voters only. We saw the report this week that the Republican National committee higherups were having a secret dinner or whatever it was. Maybe it wasnt so secret, cause people found out about it. Talking about this very possibility, that theres a bifurcated or a divided convention this summer. Tell me what that means a divided convention, a brokered convention. Theyre denying that thats what they were talking about. It came up, but so what that would mean is in order to win the nomination, you have to get the majority of the delegates. If you go into that convention and, on the first ballot, you dont have a majority of delegates, you are technically in a brokered convention. And that means that youre gonna to second, third, fourth, fifth ballots, and many of those delegates, depending on state laws, will be up for grabs. And so there will be some negotiating going on, and youre gonna see back and forth between who can attract and put together a coalition and get the majority of those delegates. So, you know, we havent seen that since 1952. So, im not gonna say its gonna happen, cause it hasnt happened for a long time. And they dont want that. They dont want it to happen. But they also dont want to, again, lose the senate, lose the house, and lose their momentum at the state and local level. So this is a huge concern for them. And if it comes to that, and its looking like it could if it comes to the fact that you have got cruz and trump going into the convention with the most delegates but not a majority, thats very likely something that could happen. Does it open the possibility of some sort of white knight coming in and riding in on a horse . Well, yeah, theres been talk paul ryan could they put a mitt romney on there . You know, anybody to keep them afloat at the legislative level. The other interesting thing, though, is theres a school of thought which says they may be best served to push trump out of the party, have him run as an independent, because he will attract republicans, theyll attract republicans. More republicans go out to vote. They dont get the white house, but they maintain the lowerballot races. Absolutely. Theres a lot of things they have to think about. All what if right now, but the lack of coattails is a very interesting point. Jeanne zaino, thanks a lot, as always. Just ahead, corruption and albany words that go together like bacon and eggs, bagels and cream cheese, sheldon and silver. Will the corruption charges against top democratic and Republican Leaders in the legislature finally clean up the state capital . Who hope they do next. Welcome back to upclose. Corruption in albany yes, they have tried to get rid of it for decades. Governor cuomo, running for reelection and election, originally saying he would stop it. He hasnt. And now one of the most powerful democrats in state is a federal felon. Could spend the rest of his life in prison. Sheldon silver, once the speaker of the assembly, convicted on corruption charges. And former Senate Majority leader republican dean skelos convicted in his corruption trial. Is it time to limit the outside income of legislators . I sat down recently with two reformers Zephyr Teachout, Fordham University law professor; and john kaehny, the executive director of reinvent albany, a group that advocates for a more ethical government. I asked them if well finally see now some reform in the state capital. The groundwork has been laid by activists, but now the general public is just fed up. So i think in the short term, we can see a ban on outside income. Even the governor, who i dont agree with on many things, is advocating for that. And then i think we have to move towards a publicfinancing system. The private financing system is basically legalized bribery. So we have a lot of very legal activity happening in albany right now that looks a lot like what Sheldon Silver is going away for. Isnt this a little, though, like the latest gun violence, the latest gun massacre . People get all hot and bothered about gun control and Everything Else and say, we got to do something, and then nothing happens. People have been talking, john, about, you know, corruption in albany for decades. 50 years ago, new york city was more corrupt than albany, than the State Government was. And people would, you know, pull out their hair and say, nothing can ever change here. Well always be the center of corruption. And new york city was synonymous with political corruption, and now its not. Now its considered one of the cleanest city governments in the u. S. Things can change. Were not stuck forever in this hellhole of corruption which we have right how. Shelly silvers conviction and him likely going to prison, unless he is victorious in some appeal he might ask for, then when would it ever change . Well, theres this great saying. Youre saying, look, were never gonna change anything. Everything always seems impossible until it happens. So its not impossible. I do think what were gonna see, though, and were already seeing is some resistance on those in albany. So i dont think we can count on albany cleaning itself just because people are angry about Sheldon Silver. I do think its gonna take actual inperson people going to their lawmakers office, saying, this is not okay. And another thing that i think is important is to recognize this isnt just sort of a crime that hurt nobody. The evidence shows that Sheldon Silver was taking illegal and legal money from Luxury Developers who, basically, totally gutted new york citys silver was taking money from Luxury Developers who radically increased the cost of living in you heard zephyr talk about limiting outside income. How many state legislators legislatures have rules that limit the outside income of elected people . Some have rules limiting them, but in new york, the reform groups and many editorial boards want to see a congressionalstyle cap on outside income, which congress has had now since the 1970s, which would restrict your outside income to 15 of the highest salary in the legislature. Would it mean raising the salaries of legislators . It probably will. Well, it could, it might. But what we know right now from a big study that my group and new York Public Interest Research group did earlier this year was that only about a third of state senators and a fourth of state Assembly Members would be affected at all by a congressionalstyle cap on outside income, because most legislators dont get that much outside income. So what were looking at is outside ban but would significantly reduce outside income and improve disclosure and transparency, so we would know where people are getting their money, and that really strikes at the center of both the silver and the skelos trial, which is both of them have received significant amounts of money through the law firms that they work for. Youd think that these jobs would be fulltime jobs, that they wouldnt have time to do all this other stuff. Yeah, i mean, this is shouldnt they be fulltime jobs . Yeah, they should be fulltime jobs. This is a really basic principle. You cant serve two masters. The idea that you are sort of serving the interests of new yorkers while youre getting on the side a lot of money from private interests thats common sense. One of the appeals, though, to these to the billionaire candidates who come along the bloombergs, the trumps, jon corzine they could make that argument, and they did all the time when they ran, and mr. Trump certainly is now, that im not beholden to anybody. Im funding this campaign. I dont need anyone elses money. You agree with it or not, its my opinion. Im not being lobbied by someone. Argument. Its not a democracy you know, the basic idea that anybody can run and we actually all have the capacity to have our voice heard. But i think youre absolutely right, that the reason people are drawn to that is theyre so fed up with illegal bribery. So theres not that much controversy on the academic or thinktank or goodgovernment group side, as to what needs to be done. People agree that there needs to be restrictions on outside income or a complete fulltime legislature. More agreement on outsideincome restrictions than fulltime. Some people think there should be a citizen legislature, but we like to think of it more in terms of reducing outside conduit for bribery. Thats what were seeing now in. Silver case. Closing whats called the llc loophole, which is unlimited basically unlimited business that needs to happen. Theres zero disagreement on side. And then making state spending completely transparent so that the roughly 3 billion in discretionary funds, in money that the governor and the Legislature Gets to pick and choose who that goes to that needs to be fully disclosed. We dont know we the public do not know where about 3 billion in state spending is problem. A lot of money, too. And, also, to professor teachouts point Public Financing of campaigns, which has worked terrifically well in new york city to reduce corruption and create a much, much more diverse city council, would work tremendously well for the whole state. So you think the time is right, like its never been before. And coming out of the other end of this tunnel, you think there will be action . Well, i think a lot depends on andrew cuomo. And he ran you have to remember in 2010 on an clean up albany and he has lost almost all credibility as an anticorruption reformer in the last five years. He cant ignore this. And youve seen, even in his immediate response, theres a slight effort to back away, saying, theres no appetite. You know, using the passive language. He shouldnt be able to ignore this. This really is a test of whether hes gonna have any credibility as an anticorruption governor. Statements. It means using the extraordinary power of the governorship in new york to say this is a priority, we have to push this through now. And if he does that, i think the public will respond. But right now, i dont think he can get away with just a few sentences. The governor will have huge, huge public support and support in editorial boards and from journalists who cover these issues if he becomes a champion on reforming albany. People will get up, and they will cheer for him, and thats not whats happening. You ran against governor cuomo. Yes. Whats that experience like for you . What did you learn . You want to do it again . Oh, i loved it. The only sad part is that i didnt win. But i you know, ive been writing and thinking and talking about government and politics for a long time, and ive been involved in politics, but i had no idea how inspiring it is to actually get out there and talk to the organizers in all parts of the state. So i do plan to run for something again. Well see what that is. But in the meantime, theres nothing like traveling the state and the city to make you fall in love with it more. And i think one of the real sadnesses theres real sorrow that comes along with this corruption is that we are a state that builds things. We built the erie canal. We built the m. T. A. Were the leader. And as weve become more corrupt, weve just stopped being leaders. Weve stopped building. And so i actually think youre talking about what we need to make new york more attractive that you cant new york that we all want of corruption. Good point. Well end it there. Except, of course, if you want to disclose here and break some news of what office youd run for. Not saying yet. Our discussion with Zephyr Teachout and john kaehny about corruption in albany. And on that note, that will do it for this edition of Eyewitness News upclose. If you happened to have missed any of todays program, you can catch it again on our website abc7ny. Thank you all for watching. Im bill ritter. And for all of here at