Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump stepped up his anti-Muslim rhetoric on Monday, using the background of Orlando terrorist strike and revived an innuendo that he had popularised earlier — that President Barack Obama may be a Muslim.
In a foreign policy speech, Mr. Trump > reinforced his proposal to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the U.S . “The bottom line is that the only reason the (Orlando) killer (Omar Mateen) was in America in the first place was because we allowed his family to come here,” Mr. Trump said.
Mr. Trump also gloated over his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton’s statement that she was willing to use the term ‘radical Islamism’ to describe the terror threat against the U.S. She had earlier refused to use it, preferring to call it ‘radical jihadism”. “I am happy to say either. I think they mean the same thing,” Ms. Clinton said, adding that for her “it matters what we do more than what we say”, recalling the role she played in the operation that killed Osama bin Laden.
“I have been hitting Obama and Crooked Hillary hard on not using the term radical Islamic terror,” Mr. Trump tweeted. “Hillary just broke — said she would now use!”
Terror terminology Mr. Obama does not use the word “radical Islamic” or “Islamist” to describe terrorism. In an interview, Mr. Trump said of Mr. Obama: “He doesn’t get it or he gets it better than anybody understands — it’s one or the other, and either one is unacceptable.”
“Look guys, we’re led by a man that either is not tough, not smart or has something else in mind. And the something else in mind — people can’t believe it. People cannot believe that President Obama is acting the way he acts and can’t even mention the words radical Islamic terrorism. There’s something going on. It’s inconceivable. There’s something going on.”
In 2012, Mr. Trump had suggested that Mr. Obama was not born in the U.S., and that he could be a Muslim. This notion has significant following in the U.S. — a 2015 poll showed 45 per cent Republicans and 23 per cent of all Americans believed that Mr. Obama was indeed one. Mr. Trump’s call for a temporary ban on Muslims coming into the U.S. was supported by 42 per cent of all Americans, according to a Reuters poll in the first week of June.
Mr. Obama has no plans to change the way he talks about terrorism, said White House press secretary Josh Earnest.
“It only gives the terrorists what they want, which is legitimacy, undermining relations with Muslims fighting terrorism at home and abroad. Many of those organisations pervert the religion of Islam to justify their murderous, nihilistic agenda,” Mr. Earnest said.
Ms. Clinton said the discussion on terrorism must not target an entire religion. “I’m not going to demonise … and declare war on an entire religion. That’s just plain dangerous,” she said.
