Donald Trump statement on banning Muslims from US disappears from his website
Exclusive: Passage posted on 7 December 2015 mysteriously vanishes late on day of election
Your support helps us to tell the story
This election is still a dead heat, according to most polls. In a fight with such wafer-thin margins, we need reporters on the ground talking to the people Trump and Harris are courting. Your support allows us to keep sending journalists to the story.
The Independent is trusted by 27 million Americans from across the entire political spectrum every month. Unlike many other quality news outlets, we choose not to lock you out of our reporting and analysis with paywalls. But quality journalism must still be paid for.
Help us keep bring these critical stories to light. Your support makes all the difference.
A statement on Donald Trump's plan to ban all Muslims from entering the US has mysteriously disappeared from his website.
On the same night that millions of votes were pouring in for the real estate mogul turned politician, the page linking to his December 2015 statement was removed.
The page now redirects to a page encouraging voters to donate to his campaign.
The page was available on the morning of the election on 8 November, according to online caches studied by The Independent. But the redirect was added later the same night.
Caches like the Wayback Machine work by crawling websites intermittently and making a copy of what it finds there. As such, it is not possible to say exactly what time the redirect was added, but only that the change had been made between those two times it was crawled.
Mr Trump was widely condemned for his call shortly after the terrorist attacks in Paris in November 2015 to temporarily ban all Muslims from entering the country until he figured out "what the hell was going on".
The Republican and his allies have consistently defended the ban, insisting the measure was about Americans’ "safety" and not about discriminating against religion. Videos and speeches defending the ban remain on the Trump campaign website.
The Trump campaign could not be immediately contacted.
It would not be the first time the Trump team has scrubbed pages from its websites.
After speculation rose that Melania Trump did not not complete her university degree, her biography page was taken down and redirected to the homepage for Mr Trump’s golf course.
Mr Trump won the presidential election on 8 November with 279 electoral votes.
Subscribe to Independent Premium to bookmark this article
Want to bookmark your favourite articles and stories to read or reference later? Start your Independent Premium subscription today.
Join our commenting forum
Join thought-provoking conversations, follow other Independent readers and see their replies
Comments