Trump’s campaign fires back, expressing shock Clinton would accuse the billionaire of treason.
Donald Trump says the latest domestic terror attacks prove the need to remove the stigma around profiling. Hillary Clinton says Trump's "demagogic" popping off borders on treason and shows why he's unfit to be commander in chief.
The dueling arguments, played out on Twitter and cable news, sharply politicized the latest outbreak of domestic terror — a series of planted bombs throughout New York and New Jersey, as well as a stabbing spree at a Minnesota mall.
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"We don't wanna do any profiling," Trump bemoaned during a phone interview with "Fox and Friends" on Monday morning, before going on to suggest that racial profiling is exactly what's needed.
"If somebody looks like he's got a massive bomb on his back, we won't go up to that person and say, 'I'm sorry,' because if he looks like he comes from that part of the world, we're not allowed to profile," Trump continued.
He argued that law enforcement officials "know who a lot of these people are" but "don't wanna be accused of profiling" and "of all sorts of things."
"Give me a break," he said during the interview, in which he also boasted about correctly deeming Saturday's explosion a bombing before law enforcement had confirmed it ("I should be a newscaster because I called it before the news," he told Fox News).
With Trump grabbing headlines for his latest comments, Clinton reshuffled her day — which is largely focused on millennial voter outreach — to hold an impromptu news conference from a White Plains, New York, tarmac.
She touted her bona fides during the media availability, while dismissing her opponent's inflammatory rhetoric as fuel for terrorists and a distraction from the "serious challenge" America faces in combating the Islamic State.
"I'm the only candidate in this race who has been part of the hard decisions to take terrorists off the battlefield," Clinton told reporters.
"I won't get into classified information, but I have sat at that table in the Situation Room, I have analyzed the threats, I have contributed to actions that have neutralized our enemies," she added. "I know how to do this and I understand how we don't want this to get even bigger than it already is."
The reaction from the candidates vying for the White House was, like the candidates themselves, drastically different. Trump offered few details about what he would do as president to combat the Islamic State but vowed to "hit them much harder." He slammed the media for attacking him — "because my poll numbers now are so good that they're so worried," he said — and recommended more racial profiling in New York, a state that faced intense criticism over its controversial stop-and-frisk policy targeting minorities.
"Do we have a choice? Look what's going on," Trump said. "Do we really have a choice? We're trying to be so politically correct in our country, and this is only gonna get worse. This isn't gonna get better."
Trump's comments in the wake of the latest attack were true to form. Following domestic attacks in San Bernardino, California, and Orlando, Florida, Trump proposed a temporary ban on Muslims and triumphantly tweeted that he is appreciative of "the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism," respectively.
For her part, Clinton scheduled a news conference, where she delivered a statement offering her condolences before taking questions from the press. She portrayed herself as the steady hand America needs, calling for an improved visa system and "tough vetting" while dismissing Trump and his criticism of her record.
"Well, it's like so much else he says: It's not grounded in fact. It's meant to, you know, make some kind of demagogic point," Clinton said. "And the facts are pretty clear that, you know, we still have challenges."
And as for Trump's plan, Clinton continued, it doesn't exist — and it's not a secret. "He keeps saying he has a secret plan. Well, the secret is he has no plan," she said.
She also accused Trump of being treasonous with an inconspicuous remark about the GOP candidate "giving aid and comfort to our adversaries" — the definition of treason, according to a clause in the Constitution.
Trump's campaign seized on the remark, with senior communications adviser Jason Miller painting it as "an attempt to distract from her horrible record on ISIS" and blaming Clinton for the rise of the Islamic State by helping spawn the vacuum that founded the Islamic State with support for the removal of troops from Iraq in 2011.
"Nothing she says or does can ever un-ring that bell," he said in a statement. "The only thing we can expect from a Hillary Clinton presidency is more attacks on our homeland and more innocent Americans being hurt and killed."
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