Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort to host hate group that promotes Islamophobia and claims Obama is a Muslim
The anti-Muslim group Center for Security Policy (CSP) has announced that it's planning to organize an event at President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida.
The CSP is reportedly holding its annual Flame Dinner fundraising event at Trump's resort on November 23, and the tickets for the event are being sold for $650, according to the Palm Beach Post.
CSP's founder, Frank Gaffney, is infamous for fanning the conspiracy theory that former President Barack Obama was Muslim after the leader visited Saudi Arabia and Egypt on official trips.
"The man now happy to have his Islamic-rooted middle name featured prominently has engaged in the most consequential bait-and-switch since Adolf Hitler duped Neville Chamberlain over Czechoslovakia at Munich," Gaffney had written in an article for the Washington Times in 2009. "There is mounting evidence that the president not only identifies with Muslims but actually may still be one himself."
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has previously described the CSP as a formerly respectable think-tank turned "conspiracy-oriented mouthpiece for the growing anti-Muslim movement" in the US.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the largest Muslim civil rights group in the US, has reportedly called for the Trump Organization to cancel the event at their club.
The Trump Organization, earlier this month, had said that an event scheduled to be held by ACT for America, which is also listed as an anti-Muslim hate group by the SPLC, would "absolutely not be taking place" at Mar-a-Lago after news broke that the president's resort was hosting the hate group.
CAIR Government Affairs Director Robert McCaw, in a statement, said: "The Trump Organization made the right decision to cancel a previous event hosted by an anti-Muslim hate group, and we call them to do so again. The President of the United States should not profit from a group that makes its money by demonizing an entire faith and whose founder traffics in widely-debunked conspiracy theories, including that former President Obama is Muslim and that mosques want to destroy western civilization from within."
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the CPS founder also believes other baseless theories like the Muslim Brotherhood infiltrating the U.S. government.
Gaffney, in the past, has also frequently opposed building mosques in the United States.
"While there are a number of right-wing figures who claim that American Muslims are trying to undermine the United States, Gaffney has undue influence," the ADL said. "His anti-Muslim allegations and studies have been cited by politicians. Thanks to his think tank and conference appearances, Gaffney's theories reach a relatively wide audience."