The covert ways in which the Obama and Bush administrations implemented these policies did not incite protest. Both Bush and Obama utilized rhetoric that made it appear their policies were targeting not Muslims but terrorism. In his State of the Union address in 2002, George W. Bush said of Islam, "Let the skeptics look to Islam's own rich history—with its centuries of learning, and tolerance, and progress" (CNN 2015). Similarly, Obama avoided using the term Islamic radical terrorism in an attempt to distinguish Islam from terrorism. The rhetoric used by both presidents presented to the public the notion that Islam and Muslims were not targets of discrimination or racism by the state but rather that these policies were focused on terror. In contrast, the public today is more aware that Trump's overt anti-Muslim and Islamophobic rhetoric is racist toward Muslims.

XREF: Connects to literature on how euphemistic framing legitimizes state discrimination; parallels research on dog-whistle politics.

Saher Selod, Forever Suspect_ Racialized…, loc. 480