Speaking with the aide of teleprompters, GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump gave a calculated foreign policy speech in Youngstown, Ohio, on Monday.
Trump, in an atypically slow cadence, began by rattling off a list of ISIS-credited terror attacks in Europe and the United States.
"We cannot let this evil continue," he added. "Nor can we let the hateful ideology of radical Islam ... be allowed to reside or spread within our own countries."
Trump walked back claims — which he stood by for the better part of last week — that President Obama was "the founder" of ISIS, offering a more diplomatic alternative: "The rise of ISIS is a direct result of policy decisions made by President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton."
The real estate billionaire re-upped his call to bar Muslims from immigrating to the United States, emphasizing thorougher "screening" measures — what he called "extreme vetting" — like those used during the Cold War.
"The common thread linking the major Islamic terrorist attacks that have recently occurred on our soil ... is that they have involved immigrants or the children of immigrants," Trump said. "Clearly new screening procedures are needed."
"We should only submit into this country those who share our values and respect our people," he suggested. "The time is overdue to develop a new screening test for the threats we face today."
Intentionality unknown, Trump contradicted himself in promising "only those who we expect to ... embrace a tolerant American society should be issued visas."
"To put these procedures into place," Trump said, "we will have to temporarily suspend immigration from some of the most dangerous and volatile regions of the world."
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