EIGHT YEARS LATE: Obama had a tense exchange with CNN’s Jake Tapper over why he won’t say ‘radical Islamic terrorism’
During a CNN town-hall event focusing on the US military, Gold Star mother Tina Houchins asked Obama why he won’t use the term.
Some critics, including Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, have argued that Obama’s insistence on not using the term to refer to terror attacks committed in the name of groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda shows that he isn’t well-equipped to fight terrorism.
“The truth of the matter is that this is an issue that has been sort of manufactured, because there is no doubt, and I’ve said repeatedly that where we see terrorist organizations like Al Qaeda or ISIL, they have perverted and distorted and tried to claim the mantle of Islam for an excuse, for basically barbarism and death,” Obama said.
“These are people who kill children, kill Muslims, take sex slaves — there’s no religious rationale that would justify in any way any of the things that they do,” he added.
Obama later seemed to allude to Trump as he continued to answer Houchins’ question.
Trump makes a convenient distraction.
Then this, from a different writeup of the same interview:
Obama believes that “the work that this military has done, and the work that our law enforcement has done, has made us significantly safer today than we were when 9/11 happened.”
We don’t seem to be much safer from “workplace violence” or “assault weapons” crimes committed by people whose faith POTUS isn’t honest about.