Obama: If We Follow Trump’s Lead On Muslims, The Terrorists Will Have Won

President Barack Obama speaks about about new rules aimed at deterring tax inversions, Tuesday, April 5, 2016, in the briefing room of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
Start your day with TPM.
Sign up for the Morning Memo newsletter

Updated at 1:31 p.m. ET

President Obama on Tuesday blasted Donald Trump’s renewed call to ban Muslims from entering the United States, arguing that such a plan would only let terrorists win.

In a public address from the Treasury Department about the fight against the Islamic State and the deadly shooting in Orlando, Florida, Obama let loose on Republicans for constantly criticizing his refusal to use their pet phrase “radical Islam” and singled out Trump’s recent rhetoric about Muslims and terrorism as especially “dangerous.”

Obama set out to destroy a popular Republican talking point that Obama cannot possibly be an effective leader in the fight against terror if he cannot use the phrase “radical Islam.”

“What exactly would using this label accomplish? What exactly would it change? Would it make ISIL less committed to trying to kill Americans? Would it bring in more allies? Is there a military strategy that is served by this?” Obama asked, referring to the phrase “radical Islam.” “The answer is none of the above. Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away. This is a political distraction.”

“There’s not been a moment in my seven and a half years as president where we have not able to pursue a strategy because we didn’t use the label ‘radical Islam,'” he added. “So someone seriously thinks that we don’t know who we’re fighting?”

Obama said that his deliberate refusal to use the term “radical Islamic terrorism” has “nothing to do with political correctness and everything to do with actually defeating extremism.”

The President also singled out Trump and his proposed ban on barring Muslims from entering the U.S. He said that he’s now “seeing how dangerous this kind of mindset and this kind of thinking can be.”

Obama noted that some of the recent attacks were carried out by American citizens and asked, “Are we going to start treating all Muslim Americans differently? Are we going to start subjecting them to special surveillance? Are we going start to discriminating against them because of their faith?”

“We’ve heard these suggestions during the course of this campaign. Do Republican officials actually agree with this? Because that’s not the America we want,” Obama said. “It does not reflect our democratic ideals. It won’t make us more safe, it will make us less safe.”

The President said that such rhetoric is only “fueling ISIL’s notion that the West hates Muslims.”

He warned that if Americans ever abandon the basic freedoms that the country was founded to protect, “then the terrorists would have won.”

“And we cannot let that happen. I will not let that happen,” he said.

Latest Livewire

Notable Replies

  1. Obama rarely shows emotion, especially anger, but he looked furious during that speech (at least in the synthetic android way Obama shows). And he read Trump for filth.

  2. Its likely that Sir Donald will wet his pants if he meets one on one with Obama.

  3. I only saw a short clip where he asked what using the phrase would accomplish. There was definitely the hard-working, responsible person’s palpable scorn for unserious nonsense-mongers. It makes you blanch a little even if it’s not directed at you. It was the same when he released his long-form birth document—he was pissed, showed it, and it made you understand how he’s beaten so many opponents over the years.

  4. Every dumb Republican bitching about Radical Islam ignores the fact that this man took out Bin Laden and dismantled Al Qaeda. Fuck them all.

    Lord, I’ve been so angry these past couple of days. My poor blood pressure.

  5. Great hits, Obama, but you also need to point out the Trumpian tendency to outright lie, such as the BS about no vetting of refugees. This type of statement by Donald “the draft dodging coward” Trump has to be immediately questioned as being either as a result of uninformed ignorance or pathologic lying.

Continue the discussion at forums.talkingpointsmemo.com

49 more replies

Participants

Avatar for system1 Avatar for david_e_brown Avatar for ajaykalra Avatar for epirali Avatar for littlegirlblue Avatar for meri Avatar for smiley Avatar for mattinpa Avatar for chammy Avatar for squirreltown Avatar for wwss Avatar for mantan Avatar for slagathor Avatar for mike_in_houston Avatar for sarenarterius Avatar for 538liberal Avatar for kfraz43 Avatar for chicago11 Avatar for dommyluc Avatar for georgeh Avatar for edhedh Avatar for ouprofessor Avatar for nalinali Avatar for susan314

Continue Discussion
Masthead Masthead
Founder & Editor-in-Chief:
Executive Editor:
Managing Editor:
Deputy Editor:
Editor at Large:
General Counsel:
Publisher:
Head of Product:
Director of Technology:
Associate Publisher:
Front End Developer:
Senior Designer: