US presidential candidate Donald J. Trump on Monday accused US President Barack Obama and his rival Hillary Clinton of failing to understand the nature of the terrorist threat facing the country, a day after the biggest massacre in the history of the country left 49 people dead.
Trump also appeared to suggest that Obama might be complicit in such attacks.
"We're led by a man that either is not tough, not smart, or he's got something else in mind," Trump said. "There is something going on," the New York Times quoted Trump as saying.
Trump also accused the president of coddling terrorists overseas and being overly concerned with collateral damage.
"Can you imagine General Patton saying 'Please get out of your trucks because we're going to start dropping bombs in one hour?'" said Trump. "This is the way we fight. We're led by a fool."
Taking on his rival Clinton, Trump suggested that she was "too weak to keep the country safe", while Clinton warned that Trump's demonisation of Muslims was inciting terrorists.
Trump called for increased bombing of Islamic State (IS) terrorists, accusing American Muslims of looking the other way as attacks unfolded.
He condemned Clinton for failing to use the phrase "radical Islamic terrorism". They were the first remarks by Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, since the massacre on Sunday in Orlando.
Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, initially offered a measured response and a call for unity before warning that Trump's policies were part of the problem. She also said that the threat of terrorism was not a matter of language and that she had no problem using the term "radical Islamism" in an interview on CNN.
The worst attack on American soil since Sept. 11, 2001 occurred on Sunday morning at a gay nightclub in Orlando, where a gunman identified as Omar Mateen, killed 49 people and wounded 53.
US PRESIDENT CALLS ORLANDO SHOOTING 'HOME-GROWN EXTREMISM'
US President Barack Obama on Monday said it appeared that the gunman in the Orlando massacre had been inspired by extremist information he found on the internet, but that there was no clear evidence he was part of a wider terrorist plot directed by the Islamic State (IS).
"As far as we can tell right now, this is certainly an example of the kind of home-grown extremism that all of us have been concerned about for a very long time," the New York Times quoted Obama as saying.
The mass shooting at an Orlando nightclub on early Sunday was the deadliest in United States' history. One out of every three people at the crowded Pulse nightclub was killed or injured.
Obama said the mass shooting by Omar Mateen, which killed 49 people and is being investigated as an act of terrorism, appeared to be "similar" to the one in San Bernardino, California, last year. The perpetrators of that attack claimed allegiance to the Islamic State (IS), but had no direct connection to the group before unleashing a blood bath.
Obama said the Orlando shooting, which appeared to have been carried out with guns obtained legally, should also prompt Americans to "think about the risks that we are willing to take by being so lax in how we make very powerful firearms available to people in this country."
"We make it very easy for individuals who are troubled, or disturbed, or want to engage in violent acts to obtain very powerful weapons very easily, and it's a problem," Obama said.
