At Saturday’s Faith & Freedom Coalition event in Des Moines, IA, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump doubled down on what he had conveyed through media reports and his Twitter account about being obligated to defend President Barack Obama’s faith after fielding a loaded question from an attendee at a rally in New Hampshire regarding a “Muslim” problem in the United States and Obama being part of it.
Partial transcript as follows:
“Well, I had quite a couple of days as you noticed,” Trump said. “I did a very innocent town hall with about 3,000 people at least. And the first question I said — this can only happen to me. You all know what the first question was. And the press is going crazy. And they all wanted to see me. I said, you know, for the first time in my life, I got in trouble by not saying anything. I didn’t say anything. And I was in big trouble all over the place — CNN, Fox, CBS. Every newscast it was the biggest story. And I even beat out the Pope. Can you believe it? The only time I will ever beat out the Pope. But I tweeted some things this morning. I said, you know, we have to do this. Because i wanted to be with you. I didn’t want to worry about people just wanting to get comments. And a lot of you didn’t see it but I think they are pretty self-explanatory and descriptive.”
“The first one I said, am I morally — because you know they wanted me to speak up in favor of the president,” he continued. “Do you think he is going to speak up in favor of me? Why do I think he is not? So I started by saying, ‘Am I morally obligated to defend the president every time somebody says something bad or controversial about him? I don’t think so, right!’ Right. So that took care of one. Oh, it gets better. Then I said if somebody made nasty statements or controversial statements about me to the president, do you think he would come to my rescue? I say no chance. Then I put a third one. I actually did five. And I left it. That was the end of my tweeting for the day. This is the first time in my life that I’ve caused controversy by not saying something. I didn’t say anything. By not saying something, which was sort of amazing. It was some question that I was asked. Most of you know what I’m talking about. Then to me, I just think if i would have challenged the man, the media, who by the way in some cases they are good, they are really professional. In some cases, they are the worst. The political media are the worst. They are very dishonest, many of them, many of them.”
“I think I’m going to write a book,” Trump added. “Hopefully I’ll have more important things to do. Maybe I’ll only write the book only if it doesn’t work out. Because if it does work out, I’ll be fighting for you very, very hard. I’m not going to have enough time to write a book. This is if I would have challenged the man, the man who made the statement may be somewhat negative to the president to put it mildly, the media would have accused me of interfering with that man’s right of free speech. A no win situation. Do we agree? If I had stopped him and said, and you remember the famous thing where John McCain just ripped that microphone out of the woman’s hands. I don’t know. I thought it was a little bit harsh, to be honest with you. Does anybody agree with me? That was harsh, wasn’t it? They gave him so much credit, you know. Not me. I didn’t give him a lot of credit.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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