Donald Trump has come under fire for calling for temporarily banning all Muslims from entering the U.S. Trump not bothered by comparisons to Hitler The billionaire businessman refuses to back off his proposal to temporarily ban all Muslims from entering the U.S.

Donald Trump went on a series of rhetorical rants on Tuesday morning, saying he does not mind comparisons to Adolf Hitler and tussling with morning show anchors about his proposal to temporarily ban all Muslims from entering the United States, calling his approach more akin to what Hitler's American contemporary did during World War II.

“You’re increasingly being compared to Hitler. Doesn’t that give you any pause at all?” ABC News' George Stephanopoulos asked the Republican poll leader on "Good Morning America," displaying an image of the Philadelphia Daily News' punning Tuesday front-page headline "The New Furor."


In response, Trump said no, invoking what he termed President Franklin D. Roosevelt's "solution for Germans, Italians, Japanese many years ago" during World War II. “This was a president that was highly respected by all," Trump said, remarking upon the Democratic president's actions during the war. "If you look at what he was doing, it was far worse."

Pressed whether he would then advocate the establishment of internment camps for Muslims, for example, Trump forcefully denied that notion. “No, I’m not. No, I’m not. No, I’m not," he said, remarking that European cities like Paris and London no longer look like they once did.

"I hope it will go quickly. I hope we can figure it out," Trump said. "We will have many, many more World Trade Centers as sure as you're sitting there, our country will never be the same."

Trump, no stranger to dropping rhetorical bombs since he announced his presidential run in June, still managed to stun with his proposal emailed late Monday with the simple title: "Donald J. Trump Statement on Preventing Muslim Immigration."

In it, Trump used research from the Center for Security Policy, which has been called an extremist group, to back his claim that an alarming number of Muslims want to unleash violence in the United States. "Without looking at the various polling data, it is obvious to anybody the hatred is beyond comprehension," Trump said in his statement, which many in the media believed might have been a hoax when it landed. "Where this hatred comes from and why we will have to determine. Until we are able to determine and understand this problem and the dangerous threat it poses, our country cannot be the victims of horrendous attacks by people that believe only in Jihad, and have no sense of reason or respect for human life."

The proposal came less than a week after a married Muslim couple killed 14 people and wounded 21 in a shooting attack that is apparently the most deadly terrorist act on U.S. soil since 9/11. Trump's statement, which he promoted at a Pearl Harbor Day rally in South Carolina on Monday night, played into Americans' fears stoked by the attack and also gave Trump a chance to draw attention back to him after a poll released earlier in the day showed Ted Cruz zooming past him in Iowa.

Many of his rivals quickly condemned the comments, with Jeb Bush calling Trump "unhinged," Chris Christie calling it “a ridiculous view,” and Marco Rubio saying, "His habit of making offensive and outlandish statements will not bring Americans together."

But the outcry only further threw attention Trump's way, and the billionaire businessman did not let up on Tuesday morning.

He continued trying to justify his proposal in interviews on CNN's "New Day" and MSNBC's "Morning Joe," the latter of which suspended its interview with Trump only minutes into the segment after co-host Joe Scarborough complained that the candidate was not allowing him to ask any questions. The show returned with a full panel of questions, and the entire segment ran more than a half-hour.

During his questioning on MSNBC, Trump was grilled on what the customs process would look like for a Muslim non-citizen attempting to enter the U.S.

“That would be probably — they would say, are you Muslim?" Trump told contributor Willie Geist.

“And if they said yes, they would not be allowed in the country," Geist volunteered. “That’s correct," Trump responded.

In the same interview, Trump also claimed that the Muslim community is not doing enough to self-report suspicious activity in light of last Wednesday's attack in California. Asked by co-host Mika Brzezinski whether he would want to engage the Muslim community, the Manhattan mogul said he would not, "but the Muslim community has to help us, Mika. They’re not helping us."

"The Muslim community is not reporting what’s going on. They should be reporting that their next-door neighbor is making pipe bombs and they’ve got them all over the place. The mother’s in the apartment, other people, his friend was buying him rifles. Nobody was reporting that," he said of the San Bernardino case. "The Muslim community has to help us, because without the Muslim community, we would have to get very tough and much tougher, and I don’t want to do that. But the Muslim community is not a one-way street. The Muslim community knew that this guy, what he was doing, and his wife, his very heavily radicalized wife, they knew what they were doing was wrong. Nobody called the police. Nobody said this is what happened.”

At the start of the interview on ABC, Trump forcefully defended his statement, citing "tremendous support" and the "thousands and thousands of people you saw last night" at his rally in South Carolina. "We were on a ship. There were thousands of people there, there were thousands of people outside that couldn’t get in. And frankly, it was a standing ovation that wouldn’t stop," he remarked.

"I mean, people went and interviewed the people that were at my speech last night, and they just want to see something happening. We had the World Trade Center, we had the pre-World Trade Center," he said, referring to both the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that destroyed the twin towers as well as the Feb. 26, 1993, bombing.

"You know, remember, a lot of people forget now — they tried to blow it up twice. We had so many other incidents, and we had now the last incident in California. Now it turns out that $28,000 was deposited in this punk’s savings account probably given by some people that we are fighting," he speculated, following reports Monday that more than $28,000 had been deposited into the account of San Bernardino co-attacker Syed Rizwan Farook. "Something has to be done," he added.

Trump, who on MSNBC declared himself to be more specific than any other candidate in the race, had a parting message for Muslims: “We love you, we want to work with you, we want you to turn in the bad ones, we want you to practice vigilance, we know that if you know a lot, in many cases, we want you to turn in the bad ones. We all want to get along. We want to get back to a normal, peaceful life."

On how he would get it done, Trump, offered no specifics other than to again lambaste President Barack Obama's Sunday night speech on defeating ISIL and to repeat his Monday statement.

“What I’m doing is I’m calling very simply for a shutdown of Muslims entering the United States — and here’s a key — until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on. They don’t know. Our president, I watched him make a fool of himself the other night with a speech that nobody still knows — I tweeted out, is that all there is? He didn’t say anything. He doesn’t know what’s going on. And we have people in this country that want to blow up our country. You know it, and so do I," he said on "Good Morning America."

Donald Trump responds to criticism of Muslim proposal Donald Trump's interviews on his Muslim proposal.

"The polls have come out, and various polls that I’ve quoted, with 25 percent of those polls agreed the violence against the Americans in the United States is justified. And they’re looking at the jihad. They want a global jihad. George, we can't take it sitting back. You will have many more World Trade Centers. It will only get worse," Trump warned. "You look at Paris, you know, and I’m not talking about the horrible carnage that took place. Paris is no longer the same city."

American Muslim citizens would be able to come back to the U.S., Trump said, adding, "but we have to figure things out."

Many legal scholars came out against the proposal, saying such a religious test would violate the U.S. Constitution. And the spectrum of blowback stretched wide and far. Former Vice President Dick Cheney said on Hugh Hewitt's radio show, "Well I think this whole notion that somehow we need to say no more Muslims and just ban a whole religion goes against everything we stand for and believe in. I mean religious freedom’s been a very important part of our, our history.”

Huma Abedin, the vice chairwoman of Hillary Clinton's campaign, sent an email to supporters saying, "I’m a proud Muslim — but you don’t have to share my faith” to know “my disgust."

After Obama aides spoke out on Monday evening, White House communications director Jen Psaki said at a POLITICO Playbook breakfast on Tuesday morning that Trump is not the only Republican making irresponsible comments, but she said the real estate mogul's statement are especially dangerous.

"So the reason it’s dangerous ... is that this is kind of sending a message that the American people, that our values are different from what they once were. Sending the message that we want to be in competition or we want to be, you know, thwarting the Muslim community instead of working with the Muslim community as a partner," Psaki said.

On the Republican side, Sen. Lindsey Graham re-upped his criticism, speaking on both CNN and MSNBC on Tuesday morning to call out his presidential rival. “He is a wrecking ball for the Republican Party. He is a xenophobic, race-baiting, religious bigot, and I think that’s who they’re supporting. Time will tell how long this goes."

The heads of state Republican parties in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina also expressed public disapproval of Trump's proposal. "There are some issues that transcend politics. While my position [as party chairwoman] is certainly political, I am an American first," said New Hampshire GOP Chairwoman Jennifer Horn, who has been a Trump critic, according to WMUR. "There should never be a day in the United States of America when people are excluded based solely on their race or religion. It is un-Republican. It is unconstitutional. And it is un-American."

In response, Trump told Stephanopoulos, "Well, first of all, George, she’s a Bush person. And she wants to see Bush, and Bush has crashed like nobody else has ever seen anyone crash before."

The United Nations' refugee settlement agency said Tuesday that campaign rhetoric from the United States is doing real harm.

"What the candidate you are speaking of was speaking of was an entire population, but this also impacts the refugee program," Melissa Fleming, a spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commission on Refugees, told reporters in Geneva, according to Reuters. "Because our refugee program is religion-blind. Our resettlement program selects the people who are the most in need."