Obama Rips Into Trump Over Reaction to Orlando Shooting

On Tuesday, in the wake of the Orlando shooting, President Obama launched a "blistering verbal assault" on Donald Trump, according to CNN. And Paul Waldman at the Washington Post says Obama "ripped into Donald Trump's nightmare vision of America" with "his most detailed and comprehensive attack" yet. In his speech, Obama took major issue with Trump's call to ban Muslim immigrants and his demand that Obama use the phrase "radical Islamic terrorism," the New York Times reports. According to CNBC, Obama says attitudes like that "make it a lot easier to radicalize people here and around the world" and go against “the very values America stands for.” Obama calls it a "dangerous mindset."

Obama points out that the Orlando shooter was a US citizen born in America and would have been unaffected by Trump's proposed immigration ban. "Where does this stop?" CNN quotes Obama as saying. "Are we going to start treating all Muslim-Americans differently? Are we going to start subjecting them to special surveillance? Are we going to start discriminating [against] them because of their faith?” He also says the phrase "radical Islam" lumps Muslims and terrorists together and saying it wouldn't help. "Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away," he says. Obama called on Congress to pass stricter gun laws, including a ban on assault weapons, and to keep people on the no-fly list from being able to buy guns. “Enough talking about being tough on terrorism,” the Times quotes Obama as saying. “Actually be tough on terrorism.” (More Barack Obama stories.)