Is Obama as bad as Trump? Passionate presidential speech met with criticism

'There was ire in his eyes and sarcasm in the way he went after Trump.'

Tuesday evening U.S. President Barack Obama released a statement in which he claimed presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump was betraying American values.

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - Following a National Security Council meeting on Tuesday, President Obama delivered a speech about the Orlando shooting, Trump's Muslim ban and the fight against ISIS.

The President first offered his condolences to the victims of the Orlando shooting, their families, their loved ones and to the LGBT community.

Obama acknowledged ISIS' call for its followers around the world to attack the innocent and spread terror. When individuals attack, they are more difficult to detect and prevent but the government has been hard at work to prevent such attacks from occurring and will continue to do so.

After reporting the Islamic States continued loss of territory in both Iraq and Syria, Obama spoke of tighter gun laws and more freedom for the Bureau of Alcohol tobacco and Firearms to flex their authority and properly enforce gun laws already in place.

He called for "common sense steps" to reduce gun violence, such as keeping anyone who is not allowed on a plane from legally purchasing guns.

Obama criticized those who call for ISIS to be termed "radical Islam," and asked "What exactly would using this label ... accomplish? What exactly would it change? Would it make ISIL less committed to try to kill Americans? Would it bring in more allies? Is there a military strategy that is served by this?"

The President asked these questions and continues to refuse to call ISIS "radical Islam," primarily because he doesn't like how the term takes a step closer to comparing the peaceful Muslims to extremists.

In fact, he brought up presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his fear-inducing campaign strategies.

"...[W]e are now seeing how dangerous this kind of mind set and this kind of thinking can be," Obama explained. "We are starting to see where this kind of rhetoric and loose talk and sloppiness about who exactly we are fighting, where this can lead us.

"We now have proposals form the presumptive Republican nominee for president of the United States to bar all Muslims from immigrating into America. And you hear language that singles out immigrants and suggests entire religious communities are complacent in violence.

"Where does this stop? The Orlando killer, one of the San Bernardino killers, the Fort Hood killer - they were all U.S. citizens. Are we going to start treating all Muslim-Americans differently? Are we going to start subjecting them to special surveillance? Are we going to start [to] discriminate [against] them, because of their faith?

"We heard these suggestions during the course of this campaign. Do Republican officials actually agree with this? Because that's not the America we want. ...It won't make us more safe, it will make us less safe, fueling ISIL's notion that the West hates Muslims, making Muslims in this country and around the world feel like, no matter what they do, they're going to be under suspicion and under attack.

"It makes Muslim-Americans feel like their government is betraying them. It betrays the very values America stands for. We have gone through moments in our history before when we acted out of fear, and we came to regret it. We have seen our government mistreat our fellow citizens, and it has been a shameful part of our history."

To see the full transcript, click here.

In his usual manner, Trump immediately responded to the rebuff by saying the President "was more angry at me than he was at the shooter. The level of anger, that's the kind of anger that he should have for the shooter and these killers that shouldn't be here," adding Obama was a "lousy president" has has done a "terrible job."

Presidential historian Douglas Brinkley told CNN's Anderson Cooper: "I think the key for President Obama -- is he is talking to the world. Donald Trump isn't just a candidate who a few months back was talking about banning Muslims from the United States. He has got a lot of momentum.

"President Obama wanted to make clear that the United States government, the federal government says no to what Donald Trump is suggesting, that it is hateful bigotry. There was ire in his eyes and sarcasm in the way he went after Trump."

Mike Rogers, the former head of the House Intelligence Committee, claimed Obama's remarks were just as bad as Trump's: "This was the chance for the President to try to bring us together. I think he is so focused on this presidential campaign he let himself go. I just don't think it looks presidential."

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