Trump On 'Face The Nation:' U.S. Should 'Start Thinking About' Profiling After Orlando Attack
WASHINGTON (CBSNewYork/CBS News) -- Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump appeared on "Face the Nation" by phone Sunday, and said the U.S. might need to start looking at racial profiling as a preventative tactic in the wake of the Orlando nightclub massacre.
"Well I think profiling is something that we're going to have to start thinking about as a country," Trump said. "Other countries do it, you look at Israel and you look at others, they do it and they do it successfully. And I hate the concept of profiling but we have to start using common sense and we have to use our heads."
"It's not the worst thing to do," he added.
A total of 49 people were killed, and 53 were injured, when Mateen opened fire at the Pulse gay nightclub in Orlando a week ago Sunday. Mateen was ultimately killed in a shootout with police.
Since the massacre, Trump has renewed his call for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the U.S., saying it would have prevented the attack despite the fact that shooter Omar Mateen was born in the U.S.
Trump also said Sunday that attacks like Orlando would stop if those in the Muslim community would "report" suspicious things.
"When you look at, when you look at people within the Muslim community and where people are living and they don't report, and a good example of that would be San Bernardino," he said. "I mean, they had bombs all over their apartment floor and people saw it and nobody reported them, and 14 people were killed, many injured."
Mateen, Trump added, had definite "red flags" before the attack. "You look at his past, I mean? I've never seen a past quite like that," he said of Mateen. "You look at his record in school, you look at a lot of other things. There were a lot of red flags, this was not a very good young man."
Trump said he is working with the National Rifle Association on the details of a policy that would ban people on the no-fly list from purchasing guns.
"We understand there are problems with that because some people are on the terror watch list that shouldn't be on," he said. "So I'm working with the NRA, we're discussing it and again the NRA has the best interests of our country, it just has the absolute best interests of our country."
Asked about GOP leaders' criticism of him in recent days, especially over his renewed focus on the Muslim ban, Trump said those Republicans should stop "talking so much" and just "do their job." The issue is compounded, he added, when the media focuses more on his detractors in the GOP than his supporters.
"I think that honestly they should go about their business and they should do a wonderful job and work on budgets and get the budgets down and get the military the kind of money they need and lots of other things, and they shouldn't be talking so much," he said. "They should go out and do their job, let me do my job."
Contributing: Emily Schultheis/Face The Nation
