Republican Presidential Nominee Donald Trump said that if elected president, he would "absolutely" support efforts to track Muslims in the U.S. via a mandatory database system, an apparent escalation from a statement earlier this week when he said he was open to requiring Muslims in the U.S. to register in such a database.
Trump had been asked about the issue by an NBC News reporter, and when questioned on whether all Muslims in the country would be legally obligated to sign into the database, he responded, "They have to be - they have to be."
"I would certainly implement that. Absolutely," he added. "There should be a lot of systems, beyond databases. I mean, we should have a lot of systems, and today you can do it. But right now we have to have a border, we have to have strength, we have to have a wall."
Trump appeared to have immigration and border security in mind when making his answer. However, it's unclear if his database would only apply to refugees, or if Muslim-Americans born in the U.S. would also be applicable, according to Newsmax.
These answers, however, seem to be at odds with a follow-up question from a CNN reporter who asked whether he would rule out a database for Muslims, to which Trump responded, "I don't know where you heard that."
The reporter told him that Yahoo! News had asked him about it originally, but Trump denied ever answering to that specific question.
He added that he didn't "know who wrote it," and declined to answer any further questions about the subject.
Though his intentions are unclear, the confusion comes after Trump had called for the U.S. to pause its program for resettling Syrian refugees following last Friday's attacks in Paris.
Bringing them "into this country is suicide," he said, "I call it the Trojan horse."
