Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump embraced the politics of fear in the wake of the deadliest shooting in U.S. history, declaring Americans to be living in an “age of terror" and himself as the only leader resolute enough to confront threats at home and abroad.

“If we don’t get tough and smart and fast were not going to have our country anymore,” Trump said in a speech at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire. “There will be nothing, absolutely nothing left.”


It was a remarkable and harsh speech, filled with inaccuracies and delivered less than an hour after Hillary Clinton had concluded a speech of her own on the same topic in Ohio.

The dueling addresses could not have been more different and they represented an abrupt intensification of the general election, even as the candidates denied they were seeking political advantage from the tragedy. The speeches came before the family members of all 49 victims at the gay nightclub in Orlando had been notified of their loved ones’ deaths, according to Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Trump began his address in the hushed tones he employs when using a teleprompter, but soon he found his more familiar and louder voice.

He was as loose with the facts as he was aggressive in presenting them, at one point declaring that the shooter in Orlando was “an Afghan” (he was born in New York) and misrepresenting Clinton’s immigration plans (saying wrongly she “wants to allow radical Islamic terrorists to pour into our country”).

“Tell me how stupid is that,” Trump said.

And he sought to tap into the anxieties of Americans who watched as a nightclub was shot up in Orlando only months after a holiday party was attacked in San Bernardino.

“Radical Islam is coming to our shores,” Trump warned. “And it’s coming. With these folks, it’s coming.”

He spoke of “easily exploited visa programs” and infiltration “bigger than the legendary Trojan horse ever was.”

“They’re trying to take over our children,” he said at one point. “They’re pouring in and we don’t know what we’re doing,” he added at another.

Clinton delivered a far more cerebral address, ticking off a three-point plan to combat terrorism: dismantling their support networks abroad, reinvesting in law enforcement at home (including new gun control measures) and working to prevent domestic radicalization.

She called identifying “lone wolves,” as the Orlando shooter appears to have been according to early reports, “a top priority” and that she would pull together a new initiative to stop them.

More broadly, Clinton sought to align herself in the mainstream of American presidents and presidential candidates, calling for the country to come together in a moment of tragedy, even quoting the last Republican president, George W. Bush.

“I have no doubt we can meet this challenge if we meet it together,” she said

Trump, in contrast, sought to realign the traditional rules entirely, casting himself as the only leader capable of saving America. He called President Obama incompetent hours after questioning his motives combating terrorism in a television interview on Monday. ("There's something going on,” Trump said with ominous innuendo on Fox News. “It's inconceivable.")

“The days of deadly ignorance will end,” Trump said in his speech, “and they will end soon if I’m elected.”

Trump renewed his call for close to seal off America’s borders to Muslim immigrants and refugees, and gave it fresh justification, saying it was to protect the gay community from those “who reject our values.”

Trump trashed Clinton as “weak” and a leader with “no clue.”

“She has no clue what radical Islam is and she won’t speak honestly about it if she does in fact know,” he said.

Clinton didn’t mention Trump by name.

But Trump was the subtext of her address, as she blasted “inflammatory anti-Muslim rhetoric” and pointedly declared, “As I look at American history this has always been a country of ‘we’ not ‘me.’”

She invoked the "spirit of 9/12” — the day after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, when she was the Democratic senator from New York. The mayor was Republican, the governor was Republican, the president was Republican, she said, but, “We did not attack each other, we worked with each other.”

On Monday, it was a time that seemed far longer than 15 years ago.

“This,” as Trump said, “is a very dark moment in America’s history.”