‘He doesn’t get it or he gets it better than anybody understands,’ Trump said in regards to Obama and the Florida shooting, in an interview with Fox and Friends

Donald Trump on Monday appeared to accuse Barack Obama of harboring a nefarious secret agenda on national security, linking the president to the mass shooting early on Sunday at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida in which at least 49 people were killed.

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In an interview with the program Fox and Friends, the presumptive Republican nominee for president was asked about Obama’s unwillingness to use the phrase “Islamic terrorism” to describe the attack, and about the president’s call for new restrictions on gun purchases.

“He doesn’t get it or he gets it better than anybody understands,” Trump said. “It’s one or the other. And either one is unacceptable, number one, and number two, calling on another gun ban, I mean, this – this man has no clue.”

The gunman in Orlando claimed that he was acting on behalf of the Islamic State group. Obama said on Monday the attack was an act of “homegrown extremism” and that the gunman appeared to have been radicalized in part by internet sources.

Trump’s suggestion of hidden loyalties on the part of the president drew sharp rebukes from national security figures, including Republican officials who said that by dabbling in conspiracy theory, the presumptive presidential nominee had called into question his own judgment and raised questions about whether he could be trusted with classified material.

Later in the same interview, Trump said the president might have “something else in mind”.



“We’re led by a man who is not tough, not smart, or has something else in mind,” the presumptive Republican nominee said. “The something else in mind – people can’t believe it. They can’t believe he’s acting the way he acts and can’t even mention the words ‘radical Islamic terrorism’. There’s something going on.”

The Trump campaign did not reply to a request for clarification from the Guardian.

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Dan Senor, a national security aide to President George W Bush, said Trump’s words presented “a serious concern” about how the presumptive nominee would handle classified national security information.

Former state department official Bill Burns told NBC News: “Trump’s Orlando comments demonstrate he has neither the temperament nor sophistication to manage national security threats.”

On NBC, Trump was asked to explain the comments.

“Well there are a lot of people that think maybe [Obama] doesn’t want to get it,” Trump said. “A lot of people think maybe he doesn’t want to know about it. I happen to think that he just doesn’t know what he’s doing, but there are many people that think maybe he doesn’t want to get it. He doesn’t want to see what’s really happening. And that could be.”

Trump has floated conspiracy theories about Obama before, repeatedly questioning if the president is a Christian and taking a prominent public turn in 2011 as a skeptic about Obama’s US birth, calling on the president to release his birth certificate.