28 Mar 2024
Saturday 18 June 2016 - 14:42
Story Code : 219092

Trump's favorability hits new low over anti-Muslim remarks

Donald Trump's campaign has hit a new low as Republican lawmakers join US President Barack Obama in rebuking the presumptive Republican presidential nominees anti-Muslim rhetoric in the wake of the massacre in Orlando, Florida.

Obama, a Democrat, condemned Trump during remarks at the US Treasury Department on Tuesday, rejecting the real estate moguls demands that the president use the phrase "radical Islam" in reference to the Orlando massacre and other mass shootings.

"What exactly would using this language accomplish?" the president said. "Calling a threat by a different name does not make it go away."

Republican leaders, including the Speaker of the US House of Representatives Paul Ryan, echoed the president's fierce criticism of Trump's inflammatory response to the Orlando massacre that killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando on Sunday.

Ryan deplored Trumps proposal to ban Muslims from entering the US, telling reporters on Tuesday, "I do not think a Muslim ban is in our country's interest. I do not think it is reflective of our principles, not just as a party but as a country." Ryan called for "a security test, not a religious test" for immigrants.

Republican Senator Bob Corker, the Chairman of Senate Foreign Relations Committee who has praised Trump in the past, called the billionaire businessman's response to the latest tragedy "disappointing."

"Traditionally, it is a time when people rally around our country, and it's obviously not what's occurred, and it's very disappointing," Corker said.

The bipartisan backlash comes after Trump, in a speech on Monday, blamed the Orlando shooting on the US's "dysfunctional immigration system."

"The only reason the killer was in America in the first place was because we allowed his family to come here," Trump said.

The suspect, identified as 29-year-old Omar Mateen, was an American-born US citizen born to parents of Afghan background. He was allegedly a Daesh sympathizer.

As Trump continues to lose Republican support, he's also suffered a sharp drop at the polls, with presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton now leading him by 12 points. Clinton too joined Obama in sharply criticizing Trump's response to Orlando, calling it full of "conspiracy theories" and "pathological self-congratulations."

By Press TV
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