Washington: A day after US President Barack Obama criticised him for using the term “radical Islam”, Republican presumptive presidential nominee Donald Trump today vehemently defended his stand arguing that the phraseology makes a “big difference” in the war against terrorism.
“It makes a difference and it makes a big difference because unless you’re willing to discuss and talk about the real nature of the problem and the name of the problem, radical Islamic terrorism, you’re never going to solve the problem,” Trump said at a campaign rally in Atlanta, Georgia.
He was responding to the allegations of Obama that the use of controversial term ‘radical Islam’ would do more harm than resolving the issue.
“We’re trying to be nice. We have a President who wants to be so politically correct that he doesn’t want to use the term radical Islamic terrorism, doesn’t want to use it,” said Trump, who is known for his anti-Muslim rhetorics.
“He gives a speech yesterday, a long speech that at the end of it, nobody knew what the hell he was talking about.
Nobody knew. He’s trying to justify why he won’t use it and he said radical Islam because he didn’t want to use the word terrorism,” he said.
“Why he won’t use that term or why he doesn’t use it and how it doesn’t make difference, but it does make a difference,” Trump argued and alleged that his Democratic rival Hillary Clinton is blindly following the US President.
“Then crooked Hillary Clinton gets up the other day, and she wouldn’t use the term. She wouldn’t use it. But I was hitting her hard on it. Very hard. And finally, she gets up and she said, ‘I would use it.’ And by the way, the press didn’t report this. They said she used the term. They didn’t say about Trump,” he said.
“Clinton gets up and she sort of acted like, no problem using the term. And she said, ‘I would use the term.’ But she didn’t use it. But she didn’t call it radical Islamic terrorism. She said radical Islamism. And I’m not saying that’s wrong. Let’s see how much she uses it,” he said.
“She’ll basically do whatever Obama wants her to do. You understand why, because that whole thing is just ridiculous what is going on there. That’s just ridiculous. How that can happen in our country today is absolutely one of the great insults to law enforcement. And let’s see what happens. But she’s being totally protected. She is being 100 per cent protected,” Trump said.
PTI
