Billionaire businessman Donald Trump on Sunday shrugged off the use of his image in a recently released terrorist recruitment video, saying, “I have to say what I have to say.”
“They use other people, too. What am I going to do? I have to say what I have to say,” Mr. Trump said on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” “And you know what I have to say? There’s a problem. We have to find out what is the problem and we have to solve that problem.”
Mr. Trump also said he had been targeted because he remains the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination.
“We’re not supposed to speak about the enemy, because if we do, we’re going to be in a propaganda?” Mr. Trump said on “Fox & Friends.”
The video posted Friday by the Somalia-based terrorist group al-Shaab shows Mr. Trump calling for a shutdown on Muslim entry into the United States “until our country’s representatives can figure out what the [censored] is going on.”
The video then shows footage of radical Islamic cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who was killed in a 2001 U.S. drone strike, saying: “The West will eventually turn against its Muslim citizens.”
During the Dec. 19 Democratic presidential candidates debate, front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton accused Mr. Trump of being featured in Islamic State recruitment videos, a claim he later described as a “disgusting” lie.
Mr. Trump countered Sunday that the al-Shabab video appeared after her claim, that the video was issued by a group other than the Islamic State, and that Mrs. Clinton’s husband, former President Bill Clinton, was himself featured in an IS recruitment video released in November.
The English-language video purportedly released by the Islamic State says that U.S. soldiers fight on behalf of “fornicators” as it shows a photo of Mr. Clinton. The video also features President Obama and former President George W. Bush.
Asked Sunday if the West is on a collision course with radical Islam, Mr. Trump said: “I think radical Islam may be on a collision course with us. I mean, you could change it around a little bit. But it is a very, very deep-seated hatred that is going on.”
“I have to tell you it is so big, it is the biggest thing there is right now,” Mr. Trump said. “When I watch President Obama say global warming is our biggest problem, it’s just so sad to watch. And he doesn’t want to use the words radical Islam. He doesn’t want to use anything having to do with ’radical’ and ’Islam.’”
• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.
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