Here he is on Face the Nation this morning reiterating his views:
It would be nice if John Dickerson corrected him once in a while but hey, I guess his job is to give Trump a platform for his psychopathic lies so that's fine.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is defending his public remarks about Muslims in America, saying he is advocating common-sense positions rather than playing on people's fears.
"I'm not playing on fears. I don't want to play on fears. I understand the whole world," Trump said in an interview with CBS' "Face the Nation" that aired Sunday. "I have Muslim friends who are great people. And by the way, they tell me, 'there's a big problem.' I'm not playing on fears. I'm playing on common sense."
Earlier this week, Trump said in a Fox News interview that the U.S. should "take out" the families of terrorists. He has also said he wouldn't rule out the idea of requiring American Muslims to register in a database.
He said Sunday that "there can be profiling" of Muslims but stopped short of calling for a Muslim-only database.
"You have people that have to be tracked. If they're Muslims, they're Muslims. But you have people that have to be tracked," he said. He added that he wants "real vigilance," and said, "whether it's mosques or whatever."
"If you have people coming out of mosques with hatred and with death in their eyes and on their minds, we're going to have to do something," Trump said.
He lamented the fact that some neighbors of San Bernardino shooting suspect Syed Rizwan Farook reportedly did not report suspicious activity at his home because they worried they would be profiling.
"If they thought there was something wrong with that group and they saw what was happening, and they didn't want to call the police because they didn't want to be profiling, I think that's pretty bad," he said. "Everybody wants to be politically correct, and that's part of the problem that we have with our country."
He also said that the "tremendous problem with radical Islamic terrorism" won't be solved until President Obama "gets the hell out" of office.
"I would go after a lot of people and find out whether or not they knew. I'd be able to find out. Cause I don't believe the sister," he replied.
He also said he would "certainly go after the wives" of terrorists and said he would "be very tough on families, because the families know what's happening."
As an example, he said that the 9/11 attackers "put their families on airplanes a couple of days before, sent them back to Saudi Arabia for the most part. Those wives knew exactly what was going to happen. And those wives went home to watch their husbands knock down the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and wherever the third plane was going... Those wives knew exactly what was happening."
His other proposals to fight terror attacks include allowing more people to carry gunsand changing the way the government and media label those who plan terrorist attacks.
"You fight it with intelligence. You fight it by beating them at their own game. You fight it by not saying "mastermind." Like you did, like other people did. I see the word 'mastermind,'...I call them the guy with the dirty hat. The guy with the dirty, filthy hat," Trump said. "These people are animals. These people are not masterminds. They're not even smart people. I bet you they have very low IQs."
Additionally, he said, the U.S. needs to get better at countering internet propaganda by the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).
"The press is making them into something, they're making them into Robin Hood. And young people and other people are following," he said. "We came up with the Internet, but they're using it better than we do."
One thing Trump did not say he definitely supported: to ban people on the no-fly list from purchasing firearms. A Democratic bill to enact that plan failed in a Senate votethe day after the San Bernardino shooting.
"I'd certainly take a look at it. I would. I'm very strong into the whole thing with Second Amendment -- but if you can't fly, and if you've got some really bad -- I would certainly look at that very hard," Trump said.
He also said that "people could look at" those who are amassing a large collection of ammunition, but "we can't do anything to hurt the Second Amendment. People need their weapons to protect themselves, and you see that now more than ever."
Here's Jake Tapper this morning:
The family of the couple who killed 14 people in San Bernardino claims they had not idea what the terrorists were plotting. Donald Trump says he doesn't buy it and he has called for more monitoring:
Trump: We have to start looking at families now we have to look at them very tough. I think his mother knew what was going on. She went into the apartment. Any body that went into that apartment knew what was going on. We'd better get a little tough and a little smart or we're in trouble.
Here's what he said about this last week:
“I would knock the hell out of them [the Isis militants],” he told viewers on the right-wing talk show, presented by Elizabeth Hasslebeck, Steve Doocy and Brian Kilmaede.
President Barack Obama “doesn’t know what he’s doing,” Mr Trump claimed, before adding he would do his “best” to defeat the militants.
“But we're fighting a very politically correct war. And the other thing is with the terrorists, you have to take out their families,” he claimed.
"They, they care about their lives. Don’t kid yourself. But they say they don’t care about their lives. You have to take out their families.”
And this:
Do you think the wives and the families knew exactly what was going to happen with September 11th?” Mr. Trump said in an interview that aired Thursday on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor.”
Host Bill O’Reilly said he didn’t know, and Mr. Trump said: “Well I do, and I think they did.”
“We have to be much more vigilant, and we have to be much tougher,” Mr. Trump said. “We can’t allow this to happen: They take the wives, they put ‘em on planes, they send ‘em home. ‘Let’s go home and let’s watch Daddy tonight on television knock down the World Trade Center’ — there has to be retribution. And if there’s not going to be retribution, you’re never going to stop terrorism.”
Mr. Trump said on “Fox and Friends” this week that while he would do his best to avoid civilian casualties in the fight against the Islamic State terrorist group, “you have to take out” terrorists’ families.
He told Mr. O’Reilly that “take out” means that “you have to wipe out their homes where they came from.”
“You have to absolutely wipe ‘em out,” he said. “It’s the only way you’re going to stop terrorism. You have all these cells all over the place.”
Asked if he would kill the family members of terrorists, Mr. Trump said: “I don’t want to be so bold.”
“I want to tell you they would suffer,” he said. “They know what was going on. If you look at what happened with these terrorists, they put their wives on the planes — those wives knew exactly what was happening, the children, everybody knew.”
Asked how he knows that, Mr. Trump said: “Because I know. Because that’s the way life is. Because I’m a realist. That’s the way life works. The wives knew what the husbands were going to do.”
Everyone on TV this morning was acting as if this was just another anodyne comment, like "I'm going to cut corporate tax rates" or "we need to assemble a coalition."
This psychopath is the front runner for the Republican Party. At what point will the press stop acting like what he's saying is business as usual?