Trump says US has thousands capable of similar massacre
Print Edition
THERE are thousands of people in the United States “sick with hate” and capable of carrying out the sort of massacre that killed at least 49 people in a Florida nightclub, Donald Trump said yesterday.
“We can’t let people in ... We have to be very, very strong,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said in a TV interview.
“The problem is we have thousands of people right now in our country. You have people that were born in this country” who are susceptible to becoming “radicalized,” he told Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends.”
He claimed there were Muslims living in the US who “know who they are” and said it was time to “turn them in.”
Trump’s longstanding proposal to temporarily ban foreign-born Muslims from entering the US has triggered outrage from Democrats and Republicans alike. But it has helped him win many voters who fear the rise of Islamic extremism.
“There are people out there with worse intentions” than the perpetrator of the shootings in Orlando, Trump said. “They have to report these people.”
He told CNN: “You look at the people that have come to the country, and are here, and for that we need intelligence-gathering. We have to look at the mosques. The (Muslim) communities know the people that have the potential for blowup.”
Later in the day, Trump planned to further address the shooting in a campaign speech originally intended to attack Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee.
The switch came a day after Trump called for Clinton to drop out of the race for president if she didn’t use the words “radical Islam” to describe the Florida massacre.
Trump will retool his talk in New Hampshire to “further address this terrorist attack, immigration and national security,” his campaign said.
Trump’s hardline approach to fighting Islamic terrorism was a hallmark of his primary campaign.
Besides proposing a temporary ban on foreign Muslims, he has advocated using waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods to try to stave off future attacks.
Trump called on President Barack Obama to resign for refusing “to even say the words ‘radical Islam’” in his response to the attack.
He said Clinton should exit the presidential race if she does the same.
In an address from the White House, Obama called the tragedy an act of terror and hate. He did not talk about religious extremists.
He said the FBI would investigate the shootings as terrorism, but added that the gunman’s motives were unclear.
Like Obama, Clinton called the shootings acts of terror and hate, but did not use the words radical Islam.
Instead, she said efforts to defend the country must be redoubled, including “defeating international terror groups, working with allies and partners to go after them wherever they are, countering their attempts to recruit people here and everywhere, and hardening our defenses at home.”
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