Donald Trump in Hot Water Over Man's Anti-Muslim Comments at Presidential Rally

Republican candidate in trouble because of supporter's bad statements during campaign event

By Samantha Schnurr Sep 18, 2015 1:27 PMTags
Donald TrumpMatthew Busch/Getty Images

This time, Donald Trump doesn't put his foot in his mouth—but one of his questioners does.

During a campaign rally in New Hampshire Thursday night, the presidential candidate began to take questions from a packed audience of nearly 3,000 people. But, when one man kicked off the session with remarks aimed at President Barack Obama and Muslims living in America, the real estate tycoon failed to address any of the man's accusations riddled with errors.

"We have a problem in this country. It's called Muslims," an unnamed man asked into the microphone as Trump nodded and said "Right." "We know our president is one. You know he's not even an American."

The familiar words triggered memories of similar statements made by the Republican front-runner himself, particularly during an appearance on Fox's The O'Reilly Factor in 2011. During the segment, the politician expressed his skepticism over the authenticity of President Obama's birth certificate, his nationality and his religious affiliations.

Trump answered the man with a laugh while posing a hypothetical question back to the sea of people.

"This is the question? This is the first question," he remarked.  

The man continued, saying, "We have training camps brewing where they want to kill us. That's my question: When can we get rid of them?"

"We are going to be looking at a lot of different things. And a lot of people are saying that and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening out there," Trump replied vaguely. "We are going to be looking at that and plenty of other things."

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Immediately, there was an outpouring of outrage from members of the public over Trumps response. Many posed a larger question—who or what was the man referring to when he said "them?" 

Trump thought the man was talking about the alleged training camps, according to members of Trump's campaign.

"Mr. Trump was referring to the need to protect Christians religious liberties as his previous statement says and nothing more," Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks told NBC News

"To be clear, Mr. Trump's response to the question regarding training camps in this country was, 'We will look into it," the camp further clarified.

(E! and NBC News are both members of the NBCUniversal family.)