Clinton: Trump's 'reckless' proposals would not have stopped Orlando attack

Donald Trump’s policy proposals would not have prevented a single fatality in the terrorist attack in Orlando, Florida, Hillary Clinton said Wednesday.

In her introductory remarks to an audience of military families and service members in Hampton, Virginia, Clinton addressed the flurry of national security and immigration policies Trump has pushed since a gunman who pledged his allegiance to the Islamic State opened fire Sunday in an LGBT nightclub. The presumptive Republican presidential nominee tied what he has called “incompetent” immigration policies from the Obama administration to terrorist attacks like the one in Orlando or the shooting last December in San Bernardino, California.


But Clinton pointed to two of Trump’s loudest proposals — his plans to build a border wall and to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the U.S. — as policies that would have done nothing to stop the lone-wolf terrorist who killed 49 people before he died in a shootout with police.

“And as has been pointed out, the terrorist in Orlando was not born in Afghanistan, as Trump claims,” Clinton said. “He was born in Queens, New York, only miles away from where Donald Trump himself was born. A ban on Muslims would not have stopped this attack. Neither would a wall. I don’t know how one builds a wall to keep the Internet out. So not one of Donald Trump’s reckless ideas would have saved a single life in Orlando. It’s just more evidence that he is temperamentally unfit and totally unqualified to be commander in chief.”

Rather than preventing attacks, the former secretary of state said, Trump’s policies would make the country less safe. His insistence on framing America’s enemies as “radical Islamic” terrorists and his proposal to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. would be especially dangerous, said Clinton, the presumptive Democratic nominee.

“His comments have become even more inflammatory in recent days. This approach isn’t just wrong, it is dangerous. And I want to emphasize and underline this,” she said. “Of course we want to keep our country safe. Of course we want to work together in order to do that. That should go without saying. But I want to underscore: We rely on partners in majority-Muslim countries to help us fight terrorists. We need to build trust in Muslim communities here at home to counter radicalization in the lone-wolf phenomenon.”

