His anger barely contained, President Barack Obama tore into Republicans and their presidential nominee, Donald Trump, for their obsession with the phrase “radical Islam,” two words that Obama said accomplishes nothing in the war on terror.

Just days after the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history, perpetrated by what Obama called an “angry, disturbed, [and] unstable” man, the president took the opportunity to slam his Republican opponents during a speech Tuesday defending his administration’s approach to combatting Islamic extremism.

The G.O.P., he said, was stymieing efforts to fight terrorism by refusing to confirm his nominee to work in Homeland Security and by blocking Democratic efforts to strengthen gun-control laws that would ban assault weapons and prevent terror suspects from buying weapons. (“People with possible ties to terrorism who aren’t allowed on a plane, shouldn’t be allowed to buy a gun!”) But most of all, Obama focused his ire on the undiplomatic phrase “radical Islam,” which conservatives have criticized him for not using.

“What exactly would using this label accomplish?” Obama asked, frustration creeping into his voice. “What exactly will it change? Will it make ISIL less committed to trying to kill Americans? Would it bring in more allies? Is there a military strategy that is best served by this?

“The answer is none of the above,” he continued. “Calling a threat by a different name is not going to make it go away. This is a political distraction.”

Echoing long-standing conservative critiques, Trump claimed Monday that by not using the phrase “radical Islam,” Obama and Hillary Clinton were being willfully blind to the religious ideology driving ISIS, out of a politically correct desire not to offend Muslims. Later Monday, Clinton brushed aside the criticism by nonchalantly saying that she was perfectly fine using the phrase, though she argued that “it matters what we do, not what we say.” Both radical jihadism and radical Islamism “mean the same thing,” Clinton said. “I’m happy to say either, but that’s not the point." The presumptive Democratic nominee’s comments are a notable departure from her position as recently as December, when she told ABC’s The Week that the phrase “sounds like we are declaring war against a religion.”

Obama, for his part, remains unwilling to make Clinton’s rhetorical concession, even for strategic reasons. “Up until this point, this argument about labels has mostly been partisan rhetoric and, sadly, we’ve all become accustomed to that kind of partisanship, even when it involves the fight against these extremist groups," the president said, implicitly echoing the sentiment, if not the substance, of Clinton’s comments. “And that kind of yapping has not prevented folks across government from doing their jobs.”