ROCHESTER, New Hampshire — Presidential candidate Donald Trump drew fire from Democrats and some Republicans on Friday after declining to rebuke a questioner at a town hall event who insulted Muslims and wrongly said President Barack Obama is a member of the faith. The question to Trump, the front-runner in the 2016 Republican campaign, came Thursday night at a town hall in Rochester, New Hampshire. The first person the billionaire real estate mogul called on said, “We have a problem in this country. It's called Muslims.” “We know our current president is one,” the man said of Obama, who is Christian. “You know he's not even an American.” Trump, a driver of the “birther” movement that falsely claimed Obama was born outside the US, first responded with feigned exasperation — “We need the question,” he said, to laughs — before letting the man continue. “We have training camps growing where they want to kill us. That's my question,” the man in the audience continued. “When can we get rid of it?“ Trump did not dispute the man's assertion that militants operate training camps on American soil and said he'd heard others raise the issue. “We're going to be looking at a lot of different things. And you know, a lot of people are saying that, and a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening out there,” said Trump. “We're going to be looking at that and plenty of other things.” Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton condemned Trump's response after a campaign event in New Hampshire. “He knew, or he should have known, that what that man was asking was not only way out of bounds, it was untrue,” said. “He should have from the beginning repudiated that kind of rhetoric, that level of hatefulness.” At the White House, press secretary Josh Earnest said Friday it was unfortunate that Trump “wasn't able to summon the same kind of patriotism” that Republican Sen. John McCain showed in 2008, when he took the microphone away from a woman who said she didn't trust Obama because he was Arab. — AP
