RE: If someone made a nasty or controversial statement about me to the president, do you really think he would come to my rescue? No chance!
Which begs the question... why is calling someone a Muslim a nasty thing?
The intent, as you point out, is to "beg the question". The intent is to distract from the facts, well known to every U.S. senator, all of them but John McCain having signed Senate Resolution 511, April 2008, “Recognizing that John Sidney McCain, III, is a natural born citizen.” the resolution sponsored not by Republicans but by Obama's campaign co-chair Claire McCaskill.
Resolutions are talking points and carry no force of law. Testimony invited by the sponsors of the resolution (all of whom are Democrats protecting McCain) by former federal judge and DHS Chairman Michael Chertoff included:
Chertoff: “My assumption and my understanding is that if you are born of American parents, you are naturally a natural-born American citizen,” “That is mine, too,” said Leahy.”
SR511 was hurriedly submitted when Obama and McCaskill's first effort to cover McCain's well known eligibility problems. It was Senate Bill 2678, February 2008, co-sponsored by Obama and McCaskill, called the "Foreign Born Children of Military Parents Natural Born Citizen Act." It failed to pass.
McCain's problems were well publicized by the New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times, dozens of law school professors who submitted essays to legal journals, and to half a dozen Congressmen who submitted Constitutional amendments to Article II Section 1 that would have made Obama and McCain, along with Schwarzenegger (by Orin Hatch) eligible.
It is doubtful that anyone in Congress doesn't know that our CIA Director, John Brennan, is a Wahhabi Muslim, converted when he was Chief of Station in Riyadh in the 1990s. Only a few with public exposure have spoken openly about Brennan. A former Mother Jones journalist was about to publish an expose but conveniently died as his car exploded in Los Angeles, videos confirming that the BMW's engine was ejected before the care collided with a tree.
Admiral James Lyons, Commander of the Pacific Fleet is harder to silence, and has the sources, having created the espionage branch of the Navy Seals. The senior FBI specialist on Jihad, John Guandolo, a decorated Marine officer and Naval Academy graduate before joining the FBI, was removed during purge a of anyone knowledgeable about Islam. The purge removed the word "Islamic Terrorism" and many like it from the lexicon permitted to government employees. Guandolo exposed the Brennan conversion, related to him by other CIA converts. (Fans of "Homeland" will perhaps recall the scene in which a meeting at CIA headquarters is delayed while an officer completes one of his prayer sessions.) Guandolo had written the FBI training manuals on Islamic Terrorism, thrown out at the behest of CAIR and ISNA officials in a letter to John Brennan.
Given that Sharia Law controverts our Constitution Brennan should not have been confirmed. But to date, being a Muslim violates no law, though any Muslim swearing sole allegiance to our Constitution is committing apostasy, or, more likely, lying to promote Islam, ordained by the Quran, Taqiyya.
Having been born to an alien father is illegal if you occupy the presidential office. There is no law preventing an ineligible candidate from running. One candidate in 2008 was not even a citizen and the two major candidates naturalized, and thus not natural born citizens. At least Obama was legally honest about his having been naturalized by the 14th Amendment. McCain kept his head down and said nothing about his status, protected by the same media, WaPo, NYT, Chicago Trib, which had, until the Summer of 2008, published competent legal analysis of McCain's insufficiency, exemplified by Arizona Professor Gabriel Chin's thorough analysis.
There are very legitimate issues regarding Muslims in government, but the media and government have so thoroughly concealed those issues that the questions posed to Trump can be nothing other than chatter intended to keep real questions buried. We have officials like James Clapper and, yes, George Bush, who call Islam a religion of peace while Prime Minister Edogan of Turkey and Hilary's friend (Hilary boasted of killing him after he had become our ally) Kaddafi, and Osama bin-Laden are more honest and tell us that Islam is Islam." "There is no such thing as "radical Islam."