WASHINGTON (AP) – Republican Donald Trump asserted Monday 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 49 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 ahead of a speech he planned later Monday 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 “radicalized,” 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.”
The gunman, identified by police as Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old U.S. citizen from Fort Pierce, Florida, opened fire with an assault-style rifle inside a crowded gay nightclub in Orlando early Sunday, killing at least 49 people before dying in a gunfight with police. Another 53 people were hospitalized, most in critical condition.
Trump’s longstanding proposal to temporarily ban foreign-born Muslims from entering the United States has triggered outrage from Democrats and Republicans alike, who see it unconstitutional, un-American and counterproductive. But it has helped him win over many primary voters who fear the rise of Islamic extremism and believe that “political correctness” – the fear of offending Muslims – is damaging national security.