He says Trump puts the U.S. at risk of "betraying that very thing that makes America exceptional.” | AP Photo Obama: Trump rhetoric helping ISIL

President Barack Obama charged Sunday that divisive rhetoric from Donald Trump on Muslims and terrorism is “ultimately helping do ISIL’s work."

“If we start engaging in the kinds of proposals that we've heard from Mr. Trump or some of his surrogates like Mr. [Newt] Gingrich, where we start suggesting that we would apply religious tests to who could come in here, that we are screening Muslim Americans differently than we would others, then we are betraying that very thing that makes America exceptional,” Obama said on CBS’ “Face the Nation.”


Trump has frequently charged that the United States is failing to do enough to prevent terrorist attacks, calling for a ban on immigration to the U.S. from countries “compromised by terrorism.” On Sunday, the Republican nominee included European countries France and Germany, which have been hit by recent attacks, suggesting on NBC’s “Meet the Press” they should be subject to “extreme vetting.”

Obama argued that the Islamic State is “being defeated in Syria and Iraq,” but there would still be instances where “small cells, individuals, are going to be able to do some harm to innocent people.”

“And we've got to do everything we can to prevent it,” Obama added, before taking another dig at Trump.

“One of the best ways of preventing it is making sure that we don't divide our own country, that we don't succumb to fear, that we don't sacrifice our values and that we send a very strong signal to the world and to every American citizen that we're in this together."