Donald Trump continued to defend his failure to correct a town hall audience member who said President Obama is a Muslim, arguing in an interview with CBS that it’s not clear whether the man who asked the question was a “bigot.”
In an interview for “60 Minutes” set to air in full on Sunday, CBS News’ Scott Pelley asked Trump what his decision not to call out a supporter who said that Muslims are a “problem in this country” says about the real estate mogul.
“Well, he said much more than that. That was part of the statement. He then went onto say other things,” Trump responded.
When pressed again by Pelley about “the bigotry part,” Trump said, “He said mostly about Obama. … I don’t have to defend President Obama. He’s not gonna defend me. So whether you agree with the man or don’t agree — and there were people in that audience, as you probably noticed, that did agree with him.”
Pelley then suggested that the man’s question was a “testing moment” for Trump.
“I don’t think so,” Trump said.
And when Pelley said that the man who asked the question was a “bigot,” Trump disagreed.
“You don’t know that. I mean, he asked a question. You don’t know that he was a bigot,” Trump said.
Pelley reminded Trump that the man said that Muslims are “a problem in this country.”
“All right. I love the Muslims. I have many, many friends — people living in this building, Muslims. They’re phenomenal people. But like everything else you have people where there are problems,” Trump said in response.
“Now we could say there are no problems with the Muslims. There’s no problems. There’s no terrorism,” Trump continued. “They didn’t knock down the World Trade Center. To the best of my knowledge the people that knocked down the World Trade Center — you know where they’re — they didn’t fly back to Sweden.”
Watch the preview of Pelley’s interview with Trump via CBS:
