Trump blasted for not correcting man’s Muslim-related statements

Associated Press

ROCHESTER, N.H.

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump drew fire from Democrats and some Republicans on Friday after declining to rebuke a questioner at a town hall event who insulted Muslims and wrongly said President Barack Obama is a member of the faith.

“He knew, or he should have known, that what that man was asking was not only way out of bounds, it was untrue,” said Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, after a campaign event in New Hampshire. “He should have from the beginning repudiated that kind of rhetoric, that level of hatefulness.”

The question to Trump came Thursday night at a town hall in Rochester, N.H. The first person the billionaire real-estate mogul called on said, “We have a problem in this country. It’s called Muslims.”

“We know our current president is one,” the man said of Obama, who is Christian. “You know he’s not even an American.”

Trump, a driver of the “birther” movement that falsely claimed Obama was born outside the U.S., first responded with feigned exasperation – “We need the question,” he said, to laughs – before letting the man continue.

“We have training camps growing where they want to kill us. That’s my question,” the man in the audience continued. “When can we get rid of it?”

Trump did not dispute the man’s assertion that militants operate training camps on American soil and said he’d heard others raise the issue.

South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said via Twitter, “There is a right way to handle these situations and a wrong way to handle these situations, Donald.”