In this task, you are given a text of many news articles seperated by special token "|||||". Your task is to summarize them.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump took to Twitter on Friday afternoon to stress that he didn't suggest the U.S. keep a "Muslim database." 
  
 I didn't suggest a database-a reporter did. We must defeat Islamic terrorism & have surveillance, including a watch list, to protect America — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 20, 2015 
  
 Donald Trump's 2016 opponents piled on him on Friday for the response he gave Thursday evening to a television reporter who asked whether he would use databases to track Muslims. While Trump didn't directly answer that question, when the reporter continued to follow up and asked whether such a system would mean going "to mosques to sign these people up," Trump said, "Different places, different places." Trump added, "You sign them up, but it's all about management." 
  
 That conversation stemmed from a Yahoo News story published earlier in the day in which Trump said, "We're going to have to do certain things that were frankly unthinkable a year ago." When Yahoo News asked Trump "whether this level of tracking might require registering Muslims in a database or giving them a form of special identification that noted their religion," the story said that Trump "wouldn't rule it out." 
  
 Trump's tweet is his first clarification of the remarks. The federal government does already maintain a "terrorist watchlist," as Trump called for in his tweet. 
  
 Democrats and Republicans alike denounced the idea of tracking Americans on the basis of religion. 
  
 "Hopefully we already have a database on everybody in this country," Republican Ben Carson said when asked about it on Friday. However, he added, "If we're just going to pick out a particular group of people based on their relgiion, based on their race... that's setting a pretty dangerous precedent." 
  
 On the campaign trail in Hollis, New Hampshire on Friday, Ohio's Republican Gov. John Kasich said, "We are not at war with Islam. We are at war with jihadist terrorists." 
  
 He added, "Those who want to divide and impose tests -- religious tests, where people are going to go and register, or deportation squads, they're going to try to go into neighborhoods and ship people out of this country. We don't need division in America. We need to be united." ||||| Very little seems to damage Donald Trump's poll numbers. | Getty Why the Muslim database won’t doom Trump The latest comments on Muslims play straight into his populist appeal. 
  
 In the last 24 hours, Donald Trump has said he “absolutely” would implement a database of American Muslims and that participation would “have to” be compulsory. Asked how that would differ from the registration of Jews in Nazi Germany, he responded only, “You tell me.” 
  
 Is his campaign imploding? Fat chance. 
  
 Story Continued Below 
  
 Just as Trump’s provocations aimed at Mexican immigrants and John McCain’s war record have fueled his presidential run rather than destroyed it, his latest demagoguery on Muslims plays straight into his populist appeal. 
  
 “He has made so many other inflammatory irresponsible statements … that I’m skeptical this will hurt him either,” said Colorado-based Republican consultant Dick Wadhams. “He definitely benefits from this notion of he tells it like it is and he doesn’t care what people think.” 
  
 On terrorism, as on so many other issues, what sounds outrageous to political and media elites can sound reasonable to large swathes of the American electorate, said veteran New Hampshire-based Republican strategist Dave Carney. 
  
 “When [elites] sit around and have a wine after work and some brie and they talk about the situation and geopolitics and what’s going on in the Mideast they’re talking about the Sunnis and the Shia and Alexander the Great and … what font the f**king French should’ve used to draw the maps after World War I,” he said. “Americans after work, if they can have the time to have a beer and see what’s going on, think there are these radical Islamist terrorists who want to kill us.” 
  
 A Trump campaign insider said the candidate’s willingness to go where other politicians will not helps him with voters. “Trump says what everybody else is thinking,” said the person. “ISIS has declared war.” 
  
 On Friday, Trump’s Republican rivals condemned his position. Jeb Bush called it “just wrong,” John Kasich said it “strikes against all that we have believed in our nation’s history,” and Ben Carson called the singling out of religious groups for monitoring a “dangerous precedent.” Even Ted Cruz, Trump’s staunchest defender in the Republican field, disavowed the idea. “I’m a big fan of Donald Trump’s, but I’m not a fan of government registries for American citizens,” he said at a campaign stop in Iowa. 
  
 But rather than apologize or back down, Trump shifted the blame to the media, a tactic that has so far served him well in navigating the never-ending controversies sparked by his words. “I didn't suggest a database-a reporter did. We must defeat Islamic terrorism & have surveillance, including a watch list, to protect America,” he tweeted on Friday afternoon. A spokeswoman for the Trump campaign did not respond to a question about whether Trump still supports requiring American Muslims to register for a government database. 
  
 The Trump insider said the campaign was unfazed by negative coverage from mainstream outlets of the candidate’s provocations. “The non-politically correct person will always be attacked the most. That’s just the nature of our media,” the person said. 
  
 “He’s been at war with the media this entire campaign and his polls numbers continue to rise,” said Wadhams. 
  
 While Trump’s brash statements, and the antagonism they provoke between the candidate and the media, heighten his appeal to many Republican primary voters, there are downsides to the demagoguery as well. Only 37 percent of registered voters view Trump favorably, compared to 56 percent who view him unfavorably, according to a nationwide Quinnipiac poll released earlier this month. Among all presidential candidates, only Bush and South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham registered worse net favorability ratings in the poll. Numbers like that could prove a long-term liability in a general election should Trump defy initial expectations and carry his party’s nomination. 
  
 And Wadhams said that Trump’s continued willingness to push the normal bounds of civility and political discourse could undo him yet. “It makes you wonder just when is he going to go too far, or if the aggregate of all these statements is going to affect him,” he said. 
  
 Despite the recurring predictions of Trump’s demise, Carney said he was not holding his breath. “Even after Magellan circumnavigated the globe people predicted that the world was still flat.” ||||| It came as Mr. Trump has regained some momentum in the Republican presidential race, with polls showing his support on the rise nationally since the Paris attacks, and Ben Carson’s on the decline. 
  
 Image Senator Ted Cruz of Texas distanced himself from Mr. Trump’s comments about a database of Muslims, saying he was not a fan of government registries. Credit Joe Raedle/Getty Images 
  
 By Friday, though, he appeared to pull back slightly from the idea. In a post on Twitter, Mr. Trump complained that it was a reporter, not he, who had first raised the idea of a database. And his campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, insisted that Mr. Trump had been asked leading questions by the NBC reporter under “blaring music” and that he had in mind a terrorist watch list, not a registry of Muslims. 
  
 Still, nowhere, even on Friday, did Mr. Trump, who has rarely acknowledged being at fault in a campaign predicated on his strength as a leader, clearly state that he was opposed to the idea of a registry of Muslims. 
  
 For months, Mr. Trump has set the tone and pace of the Republican primary, forcing his rivals to respond to his statements and in some cases to try to emulate his style and positions. His periodic eruptions have seemed to power his campaign; he has denigrated Senator John McCain’s record in Vietnam because he was a prisoner of war, said that the Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly was bleeding from “wherever,” insulted Carly Fiorina’s looks and read Senator Lindsey Graham’s cellphone number aloud before a crowd of thousands. Through it all, his supporters have held firm. 
  
 Yet rivals who have been pulled sharply to the right by Mr. Trump on issues like immigration broke with him this time — a rare public distancing by politicians who have seemed handcuffed out of fear that swinging back at Mr. Trump would make them the butt of his next joke or offend his supporters. 
  
 In the Yahoo interview on Thursday, which came on the heels of his calls to close some mosques and carefully monitor others, Mr. Trump suggested, with few specifics, that he would impose new measures to deal with terrorism. |||||
Donald Trump—apparently taken aback by the strong reaction to his support for a mandatory database on US Muslims—is stressing that it wasn't his idea. "I didn't suggest a database—a reporter did," he tweeted on Friday. "We must defeat Islamic terrorism & have surveillance, including a watch list, to protect America." After Trump's initial remarks, in response to questions from Yahoo News and NBC reporters, many of his fellow Republicans denounced the idea of tracking Americans based on their religion, including Ben Carson, who warned that it would be "setting a pretty dangerous precedent," CBS reports. Trump's campaign manager complained that the NBC reporter had asked the question amid "blaring music," reports the New York Times. The issue brought what the Times calls a "rare public distancing" by politicians who have seemed afraid of becoming Trump's next target. One of the few who refused to join the attacks on Trump Friday was Ted Cruz, who said: "I'm a big fan of Donald Trump's, but not a fan of government registries of American citizens," the Washington Post reports. Analysts tell Politico that the controversy probably won't do much to damage Trump, whose poll numbers are rising. "He definitely benefits from this notion of he tells it like it is and he doesn’t care what people think," and he hasn't been hurt by his many other "inflammatory irresponsible statements," GOP consultant Dick Wadhams says.