Washington: Republican Donald Trump on Monday asserted there are thousands of people living in the United States ‘sick with hate’ and capable of carrying out the sort of massacre that killed at least 50 people in a Florida nightclub. “We can’t let people in. … We have to be very, very strong,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee said in one of a host of broadcast interviews he undertook in advance of a speech he planned later in New Hampshire.
“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 ‘radicalised,’ the billionaire real estate mogul told Fox News Channel’s ‘Fox & Friends’. He claimed that there are Muslims living here who ‘know who they are’ and said it was time to ‘turn them in.’
Trump, who got embroiled in controversy early in the presidential sweepstakes when he advocated a ban on Muslims being admitted to the United States, said “there are people out there with worse intentions” than the perpetrator of the shootings in Orlando on Sunday.
“They have to report these people,” he said.
Trump planned later to further address the deadliest shooting in modern US history in a campaign speech originally intended to attack Hillary Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee. That 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 nightclub massacre.
Trump will retool his talk in New Hampshire to ‘further address this terrorist attack, immigration and national security,’ his campaign stated on Monday. A gunman wielding an assault-style rifle and handgun opened fire inside a crowded gay nightclub in Orlando early Sunday, killing at least 50 people before dying in a gunfight with police.
Another 53 people were hospitalised, most in critical condition.
Authorities identified the shooter as Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old US citizen from Fort Pierce, Florida. Trump’s hardline approach to fighting Islamic terrorism was a hallmark of his primary campaign. Besides proposing a temporary prohibition on foreign Muslims from entering the country, he has and advocated using water boarding and other harsh interrogation methods to try to stave off future attacks.
In the hours after the Orlando shooting, Trump issued a statement calling 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 in the gay nightclub as terrorism, but added the gunman’s motivations were unclear. Like Obama, Clinton called the shootings acts of terror and hate, but did not use the words radical Islam in a statement released by her campaign.AP
