Hillary Clinton on Tuesday bashed Donald Trump’s response to the mass shooting in Orlando, accusing him of stoking “conspiracy theories” that President Obama is sympathetic to Islamic terrorists.
“Yesterday morning, just one day after the massacre, he went on TV and suggested that President Obama is on the side of the terrorists,” she told a crowd in Pittsburgh.
“Even in a time of divided politics, this is way beyond anything that should be said by someone running for president of the United States.”
She called Trump's “shameful” and “disrespectful” to the families of the 49 people killed in the attack, which was the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history. She labeled Trump “a leader of the birther movement” that questions whether Obama was born in the U.S. and bashed him for attacking a federal judge’s Mexican heritage.
“It was one thing when he was a reality TV personality, raising his arms, shouting, ‘You’re fired!’ ” she said.
“It’s another thing altogether when he is the Republican Party’s presumptive nominee for president. We don’t need conspiracy theories and pathological self-congrats. We need leadership, common sense and concrete plans because we are facing a brutal enemy.”
Trump on Monday morning said Obama either doesn’t understand the threat of radical Islamic terrorism or “there’s something going on” that is "inconceivable."
"He doesn't get it, or he gets it better than anybody understands. It's one or the other, and either one is unacceptable," Trump said.
Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, also criticized the national security speech Trump gave Monday, during which he accused Democrats of failing to understand the threat from radical Islamic terrorism. Trump called for a broader ban on immigration from "dangerous" countries, noting that the parents of the Orlando shooter were from Afghanistan.
“We have a dysfunctional immigration system which does not permit us to know who we let into our country, and it does not permit us to protect our citizens,” Trump said.
Clinton said she "sifted through the bizarre rants, the outright lies" in Trump's speech and questioned why he is "fixated" with Democrats using the term "radical Islamic terror."
"I must say I find this strange. Is Donald Trump suggesting that there are magic words that once uttered will stop terrorists from coming after us?" she asked.
"If Donald suggests I won't call this threat what it is, he has not been listening. But I will not demonize and declare war on an entire religion."
Her remarks were in line with Obama's, who earlier Tuesday mocked Trump and called the debate over using the term radical Islam a "political distraction."
Clinton said Monday that she was "happy" to use the term "radical Islamism" to describe the ideology but that she cared more about actions than words. She drove that point home during her Tuesday speech, highlighting her role as secretary of State in the killing of al Qaeda mastermind Osama bin Laden.
"It didn't matter what we called bin Laden; it mattered that we got bin Laden," she said.
And she questioned the effectiveness of blocking immigration from countries with a "history" of terrorism.
"The terrorist was not born in Afghanistan, as Donald Trump said yesterday," she said, noting a slip of the tongue he made during his speech.
"He was born in Queens, New York, just like Donald was himself. Muslim bans and immigration reforms would not have stopped him. They would not have saved a single life in Orlando."
