Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump took on opponent Hillary Clinton, President Barack Obama and immigrants in a wide-ranging speech before a crowd of thousands in Greensboro Coliseum on Tuesday.
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In a speech a few hours later, he reiterated his call for a temporary ban on Muslims coming to the USA and said that as president he would “suspend immigration from areas of the world where there’s a proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe and our allies”.
“We have a president who wants to be so politically correct that he doesn’t want to use the term radical Islamic terrorism”, Trump said, noting Obama calls it “radical Islam” because he thinks it “doesn’t make any difference”.
He said groups like ISIS “want to claim that they are the true leaders of over a billion Muslims … who reject their insane notions”, and a move to single out Muslims in America “betrays the very values America stands for”. And if they don’t?
U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham of SC, who ran against Trump for the Republican nomination and has been a fierce critic since, said Trump’s response made him “unnerved”.
“Based on the incredibly inaccurate coverage and reporting of the record setting Trump campaign, we are hereby revoking the press credentials of the phony and dishonest Washington Post”, Trump, the Republican presumptive presidential nominee, wrote on his Facebook page. “There will be nothing left”, Trump said Monday. Even in a time of divided politics, this is way beyond anything that should be said by someone running for president. But the guy in the Republican party- I’m trying to be as honest with you as I know how- I think his temperament, his judgment, his policy choices are not going to make us safe.
Trump himself indicated that the decision came after he disagreed with a Washington Post article with the headline “Donald Trump seems to connect President Obama to Orlando Shooting”.
“I guess I appreciate Mr. Trump’s fieriness in talking about it, and strength, but you don’t do it by alienating the very people we need and those are moderate Muslims”, Kinzinger said.
The Orlando attack and the two major party candidates’ starkly different responses to it ensure that immigration and gun control will be prominent issues in the presidential contest between Clinton and Trump.
I do not think a Muslim ban is in our country’s interest… “It’s an assault on the ability of free people to live their lives, love who they want and express their identity”.
“Media fell all over themselves criticizing what Donald Trump ‘may have insinuated about @POTUS.’ But he’s right”, Trump posted on Twitter.
Obama is scheduled to travel to Orlando on Thursday to visit with the surviving victims and the families of those killed in the rampage on Sunday morning. “And it is just more evidence he is temperamentally unfit and totally unqualified to be commander in chief”. We have to stop them, and we will. So if Donald suggests I won’t call this threat what it is, he hasn’t been listening.
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“His comments have become even more inflammatory in recent days”, Clinton said.
