Trump: Obama "was more angry at me than at the shooter"
Donald Trump went head-to-head with President Obama on Tuesday after the president derided the presumed GOP nominee's rhetoric on terrorism and Islam as divisive and dangerous.
"And I watched President Obama today, and he was more angry at me than he was at the shooter -- and many people said that," Trump said to loud applause from the Greensboro crowd on Tuesday night, referring to Omar Mateen, the gunman who shot and killed 49 people at a gay nightclub in Orlando.
"One of the folks on television said, 'Boy, has Trump gotten under his skin.' And a lot of people have said this, that's the kind of anger he should have for the shooter and these killers that shouldn't be here," he added, reading remarks off a piece of paper from his podium.
Trump also rattled off attacks on Hillary Clinton, the presumed Democratic nominee, who delivered similarly scathing attacks on Trump's response to the shooting earlier in the day -- accusing Clinton of accepting money from countries that treat women and gays "horrendously."
"I don't even think women like her," Trump added before calling on the former secretary of state to return $25 million back to "those" countries.
Trump delivered a speech on national security on Monday to address the Orlando massacre, filled with razor-sharp -- and at times inaccurate -- criticisms of President Obama and Clinton after a morning of making the rounds on morning shows where he made vague insinuations about Mr. Obama and the ISIS terror threat.
"He doesn't get it or he gets it better than anybody understands. It's one or the other," Trump said of the president on "Fox & Friends" Monday.
At Tuesday's Greensboro rally, several Trump supporters were suspicious of the president and believe false rumors about him -- like the idea that he is secretly a Muslim.
Nancy Fish of Kernersville said the president is "definitely" Muslim. "If he wasn't, he would be pro-American. He would say that they are terrorists. He would call it what it is," she said. "He never says anything that's against the Muslims."
Caryl O'Regan of Gibsonville agreed with Trump that Mr. Obama is "more sympathetic than I would like him to be to Omar [Mateen], the perpetrator of the crime."
Ronnie Rae Milligan of Morganton, another Trump supporter, criticized the president for harping on guns and not "the actual people who do the shooting," but admitted that he did not think Mr. Obama has been lying about his religion.
"I don't think he's a Muslim, to be honest with you but he's just not very good president," Milligan said.