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After initially making a big show of being horrified by Donald Trump’s call to ban Muslims from entering the US, conservative pundits and politicians are now executing an about-face. The talking point they seem to have settled on is that Trump’s astoundingly bigoted position is “opening a discussion” on this issue — with the implicit assumption that it’s actually worth discussing.

Call me cynical, but I thought they’d do it even sooner; I’m only surprised it’s taken them a few days to start the walk-back. Because let’s face it — bigotry, prejudice and racism are now some of the main defining characteristics of conservative ideology. Donald Trump didn’t create this; he’s simply exploiting and exacerbating a virulently xenophobic strain that’s always been there.

Here’s an example from Right Wing Watch; Alabama Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions first offers a weak caution about Trump’s ban, then proceeds to endorse it as an idea that is “appropriate to discuss.”

“Well, he’s treading on dangerous ground,” Sessions told Stephen Bannon on Breitbart News’ SiriusXM program this morning, “because Americans are so deeply committed to freedom of religion, that is a major part of who we are.”

“But,” he added, “at the same time, we’re in an age that’s very dangerous and we’re seeing more and more persons enter and a lot of them have done terrorist acts and a lot of them believe it’s commanded by their religion … So I think it’s appropriate to begin to discuss this, and he has forced that discussion. We may even have a discussion about it in Judiciary Committee today. But, you know, it’s time for us to think this through and the classical, internal American religious principles I don’t think apply providing constitutional protections to persons not citizens who want to come here.”

“As a principle, we want to be not condemnatory of other people’s religion,” he continued. “And there are millions of wonderful, decent, good Muslims, hundreds of millions worldwide, and so we’ve got to be really careful that we don’t cross that line and I guess Mr. Trump has caused us all to think about it more concretely.”

Nothing exposes the fraud of the conservative “religious freedom” talking points like their support of Trump’s call to ban Muslims from the US. In their world, “religious freedom” only applies to Christianity, and only the more extreme conservative versions.