Donald Trump suggested on Monday that profiling may be necessary to fight terrorist threats in the US.
In an interview with Fox News' Bill O'Reilly, the Republican presidential nominee criticized the response to domestic terrorism by President Obama and Hillary Clinton and stressed that the nation's antiterrorism efforts needed to be expanded.
"Our local police, they know who a lot of these people are," Trump said on "The O'Reilly Factor" on Monday. "They are afraid to do anything about it, because they don't want to be accused of profiling. And they don't want to be accused of all sorts of things."
"Do we really have a choice? We're trying to be so politically correct in our country," he added.
Trump offered few details about how tactics for profiling suspected terrorists would be employed without violating the rights of individuals, but he did point to Israel as an example.
"Well, we have no choice. Look, Israel does it and Israel does it very successfully," Trump said. "They don't like to do it. I don't like to do it, but we have to be — you have a woman who is 87 years old in a wheelchair who is from Sweden and we have to look at her if we're going to look at somebody else."
Trump's remarks came after the arrest Monday of Ahmad Khan Rahami, who was wanted in connection with the bombings in New York City and New Jersey over the weekend. A motive in the bombings is not clear, but officials have started to suggest terrorism, with Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York telling CNN on Monday morning that he "would not be surprised if we did have a foreign connection to the act."
Trump speculated that the counterterrorism officials failed to put Rahami on terrorism watch lists to avoid legal issues.
"They probably saw he was a litigious guy and they don't want to get sued so they left him alone," he said.
