I think it’s pretty clear that I am not a Donald Trump fan. That said Hillary Clinton’s remarks in White Plains, New York on Monday in response to terrorist attacks in Minnesota, New York and New Jersey were deplorable.
She accused Trump of giving “aid and comfort” to ISIS. Seriously. Look, Donald Trump’s remarks are not making young Muslims decide they want to strap on a suicide vest, pick up a machete, AR-15 or create a pressure cooker bomb. The problem is with Islam itself and it is time that Democrats wake up to that reality. Ultimately the battle needs to be won within Islam itself.
Let’s be clear presidential candidate rheotric isn’t causing terrorist attacks to ramp up.
And to call his rhetoric something akin to treason is over the top. He may be a lot of different things, but he’s not a traitor.
Is Trump’s rhetoric helpful? Absolutely not and I’ve been pretty hard on him about his rhetoric. Being nice, however, isn’t going to turn this around. If appeasing the Muslim world was all it took for America to be safe we wouldn’t have had any terrorist attacks on our soil since Obama took office.
Also the rise of ISIS happened on President Obama and Secretary Clinton’s watch so to blame Trump is ridiculous.
You can watch Clinton’s remarks below.
Trump responded in a statement:
Today, Hillary Clinton showed again that she will say anything – and blame anyone – to shift attention away from the weakness she showed as Secretary of State. The Obama-Clinton doctrine of not taking ISIS seriously enough has emboldened terrorists all over the world. They are hoping and praying that Hillary Clinton becomes President so that they can continue their savagery and murder.
While our President has referred to them as the ‘J.V. Team’ and Hillary Clinton calls them our ‘determined enemies,’ I have been willing to call them exactly what they are: radical Islamist terrorists.
I will bring an end to these senseless acts of violence. They are wrong to say that we’re in a fight about ‘narratives.’ These terrorists pose an existential threat to our country, our values, and our way of life.
When I am President, terrorists like today’s suspect in the New York and New Jersey bombings, Ahmad Khan Rahami, and yesterday’s knife-wielding ISIS sympathizer in Minnesota, Dahir Adan, will be stopped. We will not look the other way. We will not allow political correctness and soft-on-terror, soft-on-crime policies to threaten our security and our lives.
Revelations that the Obama Administration wrongly granted citizenship to over 800 immigrants awaiting deportation from countries of concern to national security or high rates of immigration fraud puts this weekend’s attacks in a broader perspective. The safety and security of the homeland must be the overriding objective of our leaders when it comes to our immigration policy.
That’s why I’ve proposed extreme vetting for immigrants from troubled parts of the world where terrorists live and train, and oppose Hillary Clinton’s 550% increase in the number of refugees from the conflict in Syria. These are tough problems that require tough leadership. We need to get smart and get tough fast so that this weekend’s attacks do not become the new normal here as it has in Europe and other parts of the world.