Hillary Clinton condemned Donald Trump for reiterating his support for a temporary ban on Muslim immigrants, saying, “We cannot demonize Muslim people.”
“Inflammatory anti-Muslim rhetoric hurts the vast majority of Muslims who love freedom and hate terror,” Clinton wrote in an email to supporters, entitled “Orlando,” on Monday afternoon just minutes after Trump’s speech to supporters in New Hampshire.
She added, “It’s no coincidence that hate crimes against American Muslims and mosques tripled after Paris and San Bernardino. Islamophobia goes against everything we stand for as a nation founded on freedom of religion, and it plays right into the terrorists’ hands.”
During his speech on Monday, Trump described his Muslim ban as a necessary “act of defense,” after 50 people were killed in Orlando over the weekend. The Islamic State took credit for the attack.
The presumptive GOP nominee also said that Clinton can’t “claim to be a friend of the gay community” if she backs immigration polices that “bring Islamic extremists to the United States.” The former secretary of state did not call out Trump by name, but her criticisms of his speech were evident in both the email to supporters and during a campaign speech earlier in the day.
“We’re a big-hearted, fair-minded country,” Clinton wrote. “We teach our children that this is one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all — not just for people who look a certain way, or love a certain way, or worship a certain way.”
