This story was updated at 10 a.m. ET to include tweets from Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton.

It's been less than 24 hours since Donald Trump maneuvered attacks from all sides at the most recent GOP debate but things didn't get any easier for the candidate as he fielded questions at a New Hampshire town hall.

The first question came from a man who declared: "We have a problem in this country, it's called Muslims. We know our current president is one."

See also: The most outrageous things Donald Trump said in the Republican debate

"Right," Trump says, then tries to gloss over it with his own remark: "We need this question." The man then continues, saying he's worried about "training camps where they want to kill us." He then asks "when can we get rid of them?"

The presidential candidate lets the statement about President Barack Obama and Muslims generally stand and breezes past the question with platitudes: "Bad things are happening out there. We're going to be looking at that."

After the debate, when asked about the questioner's statements, which seemed to indicate that Muslims are a problem to be "gotten rid of," Trump's campaign reportedly told NBC News that he was simply referring to the need to protect Christian religious liberties.

Trump camp: "Mr. Trump was referring to the need to protect Christians religious liberties as his previous statement says and nothing more." — Kailani Koenig (@kailanikm) September 18, 2015

Trump stmt to WaPo: "The media wants to make this issue about Obama. The bigger issue is that Obama is waging a war against Christians..." — Robert Costa (@costareports) September 18, 2015

Hillary Clinton quickly told Trump to "cut it out" in a tweet.

Donald Trump not denouncing false statements about POTUS & hateful rhetoric about Muslims is disturbing, & just plain wrong. Cut it out. -H — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) September 18, 2015

And on Friday, Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders tweeted that "Trump must apologize to the president and American people for continuing the lie that the president is not an American and not a Christian."

Trump must apologize to the president and American people for continuing the lie that the president is not an American and not a Christian. — Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) September 18, 2015

He added: "This nonsense has got to end. Let’s stop the racism. Let’s stop the xenophobia."

In 2008, John McCain fell into a similar pitfall at a campaign event. When a woman referred to Obama as an untrustworthy "Arab," McCain inelegantly said, "No ... he's a decent, family man," drawing ire for the statement's unspoken, if unintentional implication that Arabs can't be family men.

McCain, however, took responsibility for the question, immediately trying to dispel the notion that the president's identity was in question.

Trump, a longtime "birther" who has cast doubt about Obama's provenance took a different tactic at Thursday's town hall, letting the question stand. While Trump has been a bit quieter about it during this election cycle, he's still standing by his stance, as he noted to Anderson Cooper back in July.

An 'extremely credible source' has called my office and told me that @BarackObama's birth certificate is a fraud. — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 6, 2012

What remains to be seen is if this latest incident adversely affects Trump’s position in the race or if he can once again shake off controversy to remain its frontrunner.