Donald Trump dodged a question at a campaign event on Thursday night from a man in New Hampshire who stated that Barack Obama is a Muslim and "not even American".
At Mr Trump’s first campaign event following Wednesday’s Republican debate, he took questions from a crowd of 3,000 at a high school in Rochester, New Hampshire. The first person to ask stated: “We have a problem in this country, it’s called Muslims. We know our current president is one.”
At that point, Mr Trump said “right” uneasily. The questioner then added: “You know he’s not even American, birth certificate man.” At that point, Trump said somewhat resignedly “we need this question” to scattered laughter at the audience.
Donald Trump not denouncing false statements about POTUS & hateful rhetoric about Muslims is disturbing, & just plain wrong. Cut it out. -H
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) September 18, 2015The questioner eventually wrapped up by noting, “But anyway, we have training camps growing where they want to kill us. That’s my question. When can we get rid of them?”
Mr Trump responded as vaguely as humanly possible. “We are going to be looking at a lot of different things,” he said. “A lot of people are saying that and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening out there, we’re going to be looking at that and plenty of other things.” The Republican frontrunner then quickly moved on to the next question.
In a statement, the Mr Trump campaign said: “The media wants to make this issue about Obama. The bigger issue is that Obama is waging a war against Christians in this country. Christians need support in this country. Their religious liberties are at stake.”
A Trump spokesperson further emphasized to the Guardian that the Republican frontrunner’s answer was solely in response to the “training camps”, which is a common far-right conspiracy theory, and not the preamble to that.
Although Mr Obama is a practising Christian, conspiracy theories have long focused around the fact that his Kenyan father, Barack Obama Sr was a Muslim and as to whether Mr Obama was actually born in the US. Advocates of these theories are known as “birthers” and have long been relegated to the fringe of political discourse.
Questions about Mr Obama’s religion and heritage are not uncommon at Republican campaign events. In a 2008 event, then GOP nominee John McCain disagreed with a questioner who asserted that Mr Obama was “an Arab”. McCain said at the time “No ma’am. He’s a decent family man and citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that’s what this campaign is all about.”
In contrast, Mr Trump has long promoted birther theories and said as recently as July "I don't know" in response to a question about whether Mr Obama was born in the US. The billionaire even said in 2011 that he sent investigators to Hawaii to track down Mr Obama's birth certificate.
Within hours of Trump's remarks, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton condemned his statement in a tweet.
Guardian Services