America’s top two Democrats launched a one-two punch against Donald Trump on Tuesday, hitting the presumptive Republican presidential nominee in simultaneous speeches with one message: He’s too dangerous to be commander in chief.

And their message was even bolstered by a House Republican leader.


President Barack Obama blasted Trump, who in the wake of America’s worst mass shooting called on the president to resign and for Hillary Clinton to suspend her campaign for refusing to utter the words “radical Islam.”

“Not once has an adviser said, ‘Man, if we use that phrase, we are going to turn this whole thing around.’ Not once,” Obama said, speaking from the Treasury Department following a counter-Islamic State meeting. “So if someone seriously thinks that we don’t know who we’re fighting, if there’s anyone out there who thinks we’re confused about who our enemies are, that would come as a surprise to the thousands of terrorists who we’ve taken off the battlefield.”

Further addressing the billionaire’s criticism, Obama said that the men and women of the U.S. military “know full well who the enemy is” as he sought to reduce Trump’s heavily emphasized attack to a “political talking point.”

“So do the intelligence and law enforcement officers who spend countless hours disrupting plots and protecting all Americans, including politicians who tweet and appear on cable news shows,” he said, taking an obvious but implicit jab at Trump. “They know who the nature of the enemy is. So there’s no magic to the phrase ‘radical Islam.’ It’s a political talking point. It’s not a strategy.”

Approximately 240 miles away, in Pittsburgh, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton slammed the real estate mogul’s “shameful” and “disrespectful” rhetoric, citing it as evidence that he is “temperamentally unfit and totally unqualified to be commander in chief.”

“I think we all know that that is a job that demands a calm, collected and dignified response to these kinds of events. Instead, yesterday morning, just one day after the massacre, he went on TV and suggested that President Obama is on the side of the terrorists,” Clinton said (Trump suggested in a Monday morning interview with Fox News that Obama was sympathetic to terrorists). “Now just think about that for a second. Even in a time of divided politics, this is way beyond anything that should be said by someone running for president of the United States.”

Bernie Sanders joined Obama and Clinton in their blistering rebuke of Trump, arguing that the Orlando attack came at the hands of one man, not one particular faith as a whole.

“To blame an entire religion for the acts of a single individual is nothing less than bigotry and that is not what this country is supposed to be about,” Sanders said in his remarks, which came within hours of Obama and Clinton's. “Our goal as a nation must be to bring people together to prevent violence, to prevent hatred and to create the nation that we know standing together we can create. Our goal must not be to allow politicians — Donald Trump or anyone else — to divide us up based on where our family came from, the color of our skin or our religion.”

As Democrats laced into Trump, he wasn't finding much backing from his fellow Republicans, in another stark contrast of Democratic unity and Republican disarray.

In a news conference on Tuesday, House Speaker Paul Ryan said a Muslim ban is not in America’s interest, as he once again found himself at odds with his party’s nominee. “I do not think it is reflective of our principles, not just as a party, but as a country,” said Ryan, who called Muslims “our partners.” “And I think the smarter way to go in all respects is to have a security test, not a religious test.”

But it was the simultaneous evisceration from Obama and Clinton that really cut deep, showing how the two can be a powerful force against Trump in the general election battle.

Obama was still bristling from Trump's accusation on Monday that the president was holding back the intelligence community and his argument that the U.S. is “importing radical Islamic terrorism into the West through a failed immigration system.”

“That kind of yapping has not prevented folks across government from doing their jobs, from sacrificing and working really hard to protect the American people,” said Obama, who insisted that by implying that the U.S. is at war with an entire religion “we are doing the terrorists work for them.”

“But we are now seeing how dangerous this kind of mindset and this kind of thinking can be,” Obama said, two days after Omar Mateen slaughtered 49 people and injured 53 others inside an LGBT nightclub in Orlando, Florida, before he was shot dead. “We’re starting to see this kind of rhetoric and loose talk and sloppiness about who exactly we’re fighting, where this can lead us.”

Trump on Monday also reiterated his proposed temporary ban on Muslims and basked in self-congratulations because “many are saying I was right” to propose a ban in the wake of the San Bernardino massacre last year.

“Maybe we shouldn't be surprised,” Clinton said in her remarks. “But it was one thing when he was a reality TV personality, you know, raising his arms and yelling, ‘You're fired.’ It is another thing altogether when he is the Republican Party's presumptive nominee for president. Americans, we don’t need conspiracy theories and pathological self-congratulations. We need leadership, common sense and concrete plans because we are facing a brutal enemy.”

Obama, in his seemingly coordinated offensive, urged for Trump’s polarizing policies to come to an end.

“We now have proposals from the presumptive Republican nominee for president of the United States to bar all Muslims from immigrating to America,” Obama said. “We hear language that singles out immigrants and suggests entire religious communities are complicit in violence. Where does this stop?”

Clinton said she read through Trump’s remarks, which she characterized as “bizarre rants” and “outright lies,” and derided his fixation with “radical Islam.”

“And what I found, once you cut through the nonsense, is that his plan comes down to two things. First, he is fixated on the words ‘radical Islam.’ Now, I must say, I find this strange. Is Donald Trump suggesting that there are magic words that once uttered will stop terrorists from coming after us?” Clinton asked, echoing Obama’s phrasing.

Trump, in an interview with Fox News host Sean Hannity that will air Tuesday evening, boasted that he shamed Clinton into saying “radical Islamism” on Monday. Clinton said she was happy to say either “radical jihadism” or “radical Islamism,” but argued that how she refers to the enemy isn't what’s important.

“Yes, she was shamed into it by me, and that’s because of the pressure I put on her,” Trump told Hannity, according to early excerpts of the show released to the media (Trump had called on Clinton to suspend her White House bid if she couldn’t say “radical Islam”).

Clinton, like Obama, also maintained that she will not declare war on a religion and argued that none of Trump’s comments Monday presented an effective plan to combat the Islamic State.

“And now that we are past the semantic debate, Donald’s going to have to come up with something better,” she said. “He's got one other idea: He wants to ban all Muslims from entering our country and now wants to go further and suspend all immigration from large parts of the world.”

“But in this instance, Donald’s words are especially nonsensical because the terrorist who carried out this attack wasn't born in Afghanistan, as Donald Trump said yesterday,” she continued. “He was born in Queens, New York, just like Donald was himself. So Muslim bans and immigration reforms would not have stopped him. It would not have saved a single life in Orlando. And those are the only two ideas Donald Trump put forward yesterday for how to fight ISIS.”

While the tandem attacks unfolded in near unison, the White House press secretary Josh Earnest demurred when asked about coordination.

“I’m not aware of any advance coordination or notification that was provided by the White House to the Clinton campaign of the president’s comments today," Earnest said. "That said, I don’t think you should be particularly surprised that the president’s comments and views on this topic are similar to the views and principles that are articulated by the woman who served as his secretary of state during his first term in office."

Likewise, a Clinton aide would not discuss any coordination but noted that the campaign and the White House “speak regularly.”

Clinton’s campaign, however, later suggested that the blitz was coordinated and that more would follow. “It was powerful today to have both @POUTS & @HillaryClinton standing up at the same time against Trump and in defense of our values #InSync,” Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon tweeted.

His post was followed by traveling press secretary Nick Merrill. “This will be a powerful force against the one trick pony, one man band of @realDonaldTrump,” Merrill wrote, while retweeting Fallon’s post. “It's just the beginning.”

Trump also fired back at Obama in a statement to the The Associated Press. “President Obama claims to know our enemy, and yet he continues to prioritize our enemy over our allies, and for that matter, the American people,” he said. “When I am president it will always be America first.”

Down ballot, Democrats were eager to link incumbent Republican senators to Trump, especially on the issue of gun control in wake of the Orlando tragedy. Florida Democratic Rep. Patrick Murphy’s campaign sent reporters an article noting comeback-mulling GOP Sen. Marco Rubio had “opposed all gun control as a senator.”

In the quintessential battleground state of Ohio, former Democratic Gov. Ted Strickland used an op-ed to try to shame Sen. Rob Portman into supporting legislation barring people on the terror watch list from purchasing guns.

“Can you look in the mirror today and say you have done everything possible to prevent the terrible tragedy that occurred in Orlando on Sunday?” Strickland wrote. “If your answer is yes, then that is between you and your conscience. Ohio voters will offer their own judgment at the ballot box.”

Even Republicans with a history of supporting some gun control legislation, including Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, are facing attacks. His November opponent, Democrat Katie McGinty, attacked him for the same vote on the terror watch list at a press conference Tuesday in Philadelphia.

“Pat Toomey talks a big game when it comes to gun safety but this week we’re going to find out whether he really means it,” she said, according to prepared remarks. “If he’s serious about gun safety - Pat Toomey should reverse his position and do the right thing.”

Toomey’s campaign tried to change the subject to more traditional national security terrain, attacking McGinty for supporting the Iran deal and the closure of Guantanamo Bay.

Kevin Robillard, Louis Nelson and Annie Karni contributed to this report.