Trump declines to dispute supporter’s birther remarks

by Jonathan Easley - 09/17/15 7:48 PM ET

Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Thursday declined to address claims by supporters that President Obama is a Muslim who was born abroad.

Speaking at a campaign rally in New Hampshire, Trump told the crowd he’d field their toughest questions.

“Make them vicious, violent, terrible questions,” Trump said.

{mosads}The first man stood and declared:

“We have a problem in this country, it’s called Muslims. We know our current president is one — you know he’s not even an American. But anyway, we have training camps growing where they want to kill us. That’s my question, when can we get rid of them?”

Trump responded: “We’re going to be looking at a lot of different things, a lot of people are saying bad things are happening, we’re going to be looking at that and plenty of other things.”

A second man stood and made the same claim.

“I applaud the gentleman who stood and said Obama is a Muslim born abroad and about the military camps, everyone knows that,” he said.

“Right,” Trump responded, before quickly moving to the next questioner.

President Obama is a Christian and was born in Hawaii in 1961.

Trump spent years questioning whether President Obama was born in the U.S. When Obama publicly released his long-form birth certificate in 2011, Trump took credit, saying he had pressured the president into doing so.

Still, Trump has signaled that he remains unconvinced that Obama was born here.

In 2012, Trump said he’d pony up $5 million to the charity of Obama’s choice if the president would release his college transcripts and passport history. As recently as July, Trump has said he doesn’t know where the president was born.

“I don’t know. I really don’t know,” he told CNN. “I don’t know why he wouldn’t release his records.”

Trump on Thursday also fielded a question from a conspiracy theorist who told him that there is a “new holocaust” in New Hampshire and that people are being loaded into boxcars and beheaded by members of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.

“I just wanted you to know that,” the woman said.

Trump moved on without addressing the woman’s claim.

The campaign rally in Rochester drew about 3,000 people and was Trump’s first public event since the GOP presidential debate in Simi Valley, Calif., on Wednesday night.

Trump opened the rally, which lasted for only about 45 minutes, by boasting about a series of online polls that found him the winner of the debate and of his endorsements from football greats Tom Brady and Mike Ditka.

He hewed closely to his stump speech, saying that under his leadership, the U.S. military would be as powerful as ever, that he’d build a great wall to keep illegal immigrants out and that he’d deport illegal immigrants that are violent criminals “so fast your head will spin.”

Trump responded to a question from a man upset about raises for federal workers by saying that he wouldn’t accept a salary as president.

And a day after locking horns with businesswoman Carly Fiorina at the GOP debate over her record as CEO of Hewlett-Packard, Trump continued to bash her record as an executive.

“She did a terrible, terrible job,” Trump said.

— Updated at 8:33 p.m.

Tags Donald Trump