For the second time in two weeks, the Trump Organization faced calls to cancel a planned event at Mar-a-Lago, President Trump’s private club in Palm Beach, Fla., because the event was being organized by a group that has espoused anti-Muslim views.
The group, the Center for Security Policy, is holding a private event at Mar-a-Lago on Nov. 23, according to Fred Fleitz, the group’s president and chief executive. The center has been designated as a hate group with anti-Muslim ideology by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a civil rights organization also known as CAIR, called on Thursday for the Trump Organization to cancel the event. This month, the annual gala for an anti-Muslim organization, ACT for America, which was slated to be held at Mar-a-Lago in November, was canceled after news reports appeared about that event.
“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,” Robert McCaw, CAIR’s director of government affairs, said in a statement on Thursday.
“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,” he said, “including that former President Obama is Muslim and that mosques want to destroy Western civilization from within.”
The Trump Organization did not immediately respond to phone calls and emails seeking comment on Thursday evening. A woman who answered the phone at Mar-a-Lago said no one was available to speak to the news media.
Word of the center’s event at Mar-a-Lago surfaced on Thursday, the same day that Mr. Trump chose the Trump National Doral resort near Miami to host the next Group of 7 meeting, raising questions about a conflict of interest.
On Thursday, Mr. Fleitz of the Center for Security Policy defended his organization, a think tank based in Washington that is focused on national security. He said that the criticisms lodged by the Council on American-Islamic Relations were based on statements made by the center’s founder and former president, Frank Gaffney. Mr. Fleitz took over the center in January, but Mr. Gaffney remains its executive chairman, which Mr. Fleitz said was “like an emeritus role.”
A radio show hosted by Mr. Gaffney is featured on the organization’s website.
“He doesn’t represent the center,” Mr. Fleitz said. “He’s not the president anymore. I’m the president. I set the agenda for the center.”
Mr. Fleitz added, “I think I’ve been very careful in trying to be respectful to everybody, no matter what their religion or race or ethnicity is.”
“Muslim-Americans are an important part of our society, of the fabric of our society,” he said. “They are doctors and lawyers, friends and neighbors. I don’t want to see anyone discriminated against based on race, or religion or gender.”
Mr. Fleitz said he had not been contacted by the Trump Organization after news surfaced on Thursday about the November event.
Mr. Gaffney has promoted theories that the Muslim Brotherhood is infiltrating mosques and the American government, engaging in a “stealth jihad” to “Islamize” the country — views that he stood by when reached by telephone on Thursday evening.
He said many of his views could be found on the center’s website. (Mr. Fleitz said he had taken down some pages from the site, though he did not know specifically what Mr. Gaffney was referring to.)
Mr. Gaffney said he did not speak for the Center for Security Policy anymore.