While outlining counter-terrorism plans that could include a database on U.S. Muslims, Donald Trump said Sunday he continues to top Republican polls because people believe their current leaders are “incompetent”.
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Ibrahim Hooper, national communications director for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Trump was “either mistaken or he’s lying”. “When the Syrian refugees are going to start pouring into this country, we don’t know if they’re ISIS, we don’t know if it’s a Trojan horse and I definitely want a database and other checks and balances”.
“I would bring it back”.
Trump cited NY City as an example, where law enforcement agencies have acknowledged monitoring mosques in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
Trump responded: “If somebody is on a watch list and an enemy of state and we know it’s an enemy of state, I would keep them away, absolutely”.
Trump also doubled down on his calls for a database to monitor Muslims and the possibility of shuttering mosques.
Trump says: “No, not at all. Thousands of people were cheering”, Trump said Saturday at a rally in Birmingham, Alabama. “They should not be allowed to come in”.
“I don’t want to close up mosques, but things have to happen where – you have got to use strong measures you’re going to see buildings coming down all over NY City and elsewhere”, he said. “It was well covered at the time”.
Although there were cheers in support of the 9/11 attacks in certain countries in the Middle East, police in New Jersey dispelled the popular internet rumor that Muslims had been celebrating in Paterson, New Jersey, the NY Times reported.
During the rally, a protester from the Black Lives Matter movement heckled the real-estate mogul. “There should be a lot of systems, beyond databases”, he said after an NBC reporter asked him about the issue.
In a statement on Trump, the ADL said, “His comments are irresponsible – not to mention factually challenged”. I mean, Jeb is a weak person who is a – you know, I call him a low energy person. He was screaming. I had 10,000 people in the room yesterday – 10,000 people.
For more on the 2016 USA presidential race and to learn about the undecided voters who determine elections, visit the Reuters website.
Stephanopoulos was asking Trump about comments he made recently to Yahoo Newsthat after Paris, the United States needs to be doing things that were “unthinkable” a year ago to fight the Islamic State.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has shown he is not one to back down.
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“I watched the World Trade Center go down”, Trump asserted, adding he watched in New Jersey, “as thousands of people were cheering as the building was coming down”.
