Donald Trump drew criticism for not defending the president at his New Hampshire town hall meeting Thursday, but he strongly defended himself on social media Saturday. Obama, who was born in Hawaii, is a Christian.
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Cruz said, “We’ve seen the rights of Christians undermined all over the country“, under Obama, adding that he “has at times acted as an apologist for radical Islamic terrorists”.
“This is the first time in my life that I have caused controversy by NOT saying something“, Trump admitted in a tweet on Saturday, more than 24 hours after first fielding the question in which a man described Muslims as “a problem” in the United States. “You know he’s not even American“, the man said.
Republican frontrunner Donald Trump tumbled into fresh controversy on Friday after declining to challenge a questioner at a campaign event who asked when the United States can “get rid of” Muslims.
Rather, he said: “We are definitely going to be looking at lots of different matters”. You know our present president (Barack Obama) is one.
“The next thing is when these guys go to Congress, as for your question, when they go to Congress, a couple of things happen”.
Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who is close with McCain, said on MSNBC on Friday that Trump is “playing into this hateful narrative” about Obama.
She also called on Trump to “start behaving like a President” and repudiate “the level of hatefulness in a questioner in an audience that he was speaking before”. “I take him at his word for that”, Huckabee told reporters before a lunchtime address to the California Republican Convention in Anaheim.
Trump’s opponents jumped on his absent response.
Trump, who once was a driver of the “birther” movement that falsely claimed Obama wasn’t born in the U.S, at first laughed off the question, but then let the man continue.
His campaign team said he had pulled out of the Heritage Foundation because of a “significant business transaction” that needed his attention. You know lots of folks are saying that awful things are occurring and lots of folks are saying that. “Those two things are self-evident, ‘” he said.
“I think you have an obligation of a leader to do that”, Christie said. Trump added. “Obama has been terrible , I will be great”.
Santorum has also refused to slam Trump, most recently during Wednesday’s Republican debate, when he stood out among the four contenders on stage for refusing to lob attacks at Trump, calling them a distraction.
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“Mr. Trump was asked about training camps”.
