Ridiculing Donald Trump over his fixation with the phrase “radical Islam”, presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has said her Republican rival’s “reckless” ideas like banning Muslims from entering the United States would put the country in greater danger.
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Barack Obama on Tuesday gave a blistering speech against Donald Trump for his comments over the massacre of 49 people at an Orlando gay night club.
Trump and others in his party have also questioned Obama’s counter-terrorism efforts, saying he won’t even use the phrase “radical Islam” to describe the threat.
“Someone seriously thinks we don’t know who we’re fighting?”
Similar to the president’s critics, Amanda Rothschild, a research fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School, says ignoring terms like “radical Islam” could cause more deaths in the long run. “It’s a political talking point, not a strategy”, the President said. And you hear language that singles out immigrants and suggests entire religious communities are complacent in violence.
At the time, it’s likely that Obama was completely unaware of comments that one of Trump’s most visible supporters, New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, had made on a radio program just hours before, but his remarks could easily have been a direct response to them.
Trump said Clinton is a weak ally of women and gays because she advocates for an immigration policy that would result in importing more radical Muslims who oppress both groups. “We will assemble a team from across the government, private sector and our communities to get on top of this challenge”, Clinton said.
“I watched President Obama today and he was more angry at me than he was at the shooter”, Trump said, drawing boos from the crowd.
Obama said: “We now have proposals from the presumptive Republican nominee for president of the United States to bar all Muslims from immigrating to America”.
Trump wants his voters to see the world through an Us vs. Them lens, but he continues to define an increasing number of Americans as the latter. Because that’s not the America we want – it doesn’t reflect our democratic ideals.
Plus, Graham talked about the failure of law enforcement, on the federal level, to prevent the terror attack in Orlando because of his belief that President Obama has created an attitude of political correctness when it comes to taking on radical Islamic terrorists that inhibits law enforcement from being able to protect the American people. Mr Obama said, before going on: “Do Republican officials actually agree with this?”. Are we going to start discriminating them due to their faith?
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The U.S. President had earlier in a speech ripped through Trump’s “Muslim ban” rhetoric, saying such a risky mindset will make the Muslim Americans feel that their government is betraying them.
