Donald Trump escalated his demagogic rhetoric on Monday in the aftermath of the terrorist attack on a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, that killed 49.

Originally intended to be an attack on Bill and Hillary Clinton, Trump’s speech was refocused to be a discussion “of the serious threats facing all Americans and his solutions for making this country safe again”.

In his address, Trump expanded his call for a ban on Muslims entering the US, insisting that it could be done by executive order, and implied that all Muslims in the US bore responsibility for acts of domestic terrorism.

The speech represented a dramatic shift in traditional campaign rhetoric. Not only did the presumptive nominee politicize the terrorist attack in Orlando, but in targeting Muslim Americans, he also used language without modern precedent in mainstream American politics.

Here, the Guardian fact-checks five of the most outrageous statements from Trump’s speech on Monday:



1. ‘We have to stop the tremendous flow of Syrian refugees into the United States’

There is not “a tremendous flow” of Syrian refugees into the US. In fact, in the current fiscal year, only 2,805 refugees from Syria have been admitted to the US. This is well below the goal set by the Obama administration of admitting 10,000 refugees by September. Trump warned that these refugees, who are fleeing one of the worst conflicts of the 21st century, “could be a better, bigger, more horrible version of the legendary Trojan horse”.

2. ‘But the Muslims have to work with us. They have to work with us. They know what’s going on. They know that he was bad’

Trump seemed to claim that members of the American Muslim community knew of Omar Mateen’s plans to attack the Pulse nightclub, as well as plans for the San Bernardino shooting in 2015.

“They didn’t turn them in. And you know what? We had death, and destruction,” said Trump. This is untrue. Both Mateen and the San Bernardino shooters, Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, were self-radicalized. While Mateen had made some inflammatory comments which sparked an FBI investigation, there is no evidence that he discussed his plans with anyone besides his wife.

3. ‘Here is what she said, exact quote: “Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people, and have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism.” That is Hillary Clinton’

Trump attacked Hillary Clinton for stating that “Muslims are peaceful and tolerant people,” seemingly implying that the statement was false.

Aside from broadly categorizing a major world religion with more than a billion followers as inherently intolerant and pugilistic, Trump’s stance contravenes what many US public officials have said publicly about Islam, including members of his own party. In 2001, in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, George W Bush went to a mosque and said: “Islam is peace.”

4. ‘We’re not screening people’

Despite Trump’s claims that the US is not screening Syrian refugees or other refugees and migrants from the Middle East, the US has one of the most intensive vetting processes, which can take up to two years. There is a multi-step process that starts with the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR), which screens refugees and collects biometric data, including iris scans. The UNHCR then refers applicants to the US who may qualify for entry. Once they are referred, they are screened again by US security agencies, subjected to interviews by officials from the Department of Homeland Security, and given medical tests. They also have their fingerprints run through a number of government databases. If there are any red flags, the refugees are denied entry.

In contrast, Trump claimed yesterday that there are Syrian refugees who “we don’t know who they are, they have no documentation and we don’t know what they’re planning”.

5. ‘The bottom line is that the only reason the killer was in America in the first place was because we allowed his family to come here’

Trump tried to connect immigration policy with Mateen’s attack, even saying that the terrorist was “born to Afghan parents who emigrated to the United States”. Though Mateen spent most of his life in Florida, he was born in Queens, New York – just like Trump, who is also the son of an immigrant.