Pres. Obama Slams Trump As "Dangerous"
COOPER: Of course, this terror attack struck Orlando in the heat of a contentious presidential election. And tonight the sparks continue to fly. Here's what Donald Trump said a short time ago in Greensboro, North Carolina.</s>DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: And I watched President Obama today, and he was more angry at me than he was at the shooter. And many people said that. One of the folks on television said, boy, has Trump gotten under his skin, but he was more angry, and a lot of people have said this, the level of anger, that's the kind of anger he should have for the shooter and these killers that shouldn't be here.</s>COOPER: Donald Trump was referring to President Obama's fiery takedown today of Donald Trump, who has been slamming President Obama's national security policies and criticizing him for not using the afraid radical Islam. Trump has also suggested President Obama is somehow sympathetic to terrorists. Here's how the commander in-chief hit back.</s>BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: If the implication is that those of us up here and the thousands of people around the country and around the world are working to defeat ISIL aren't taking the fight seriously, that would come as a surprise to those who spent these last seven and a half years dismantling Al-Qaeda and the Fatah. They know full well who the enemy is. So do the intelligence and law enforcement officers who spent countless hours disrupting plots and protecting all Americans, including politicians who tweet and appear on cable news shows. They know who the nature of the enemy is. So there's no magic to the phrase radical Islam. It's a political talking point. It's not a strategy.</s>COOPER: President Obama did not stop there. He had a lot more to say about Donald Trump without ever actually mentioning the candidate by name. Dana Bash tonight reports.</s>OBAMA: We are now seeing how dangerous this kind of mindset and this kind of thinking can be.</s>DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF CONGRESSIONAL CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A rhetorical explosion rare for any president, especially one who prides himself on keeping calm.</s>OBAMA: We now have proposals from the presumptive Republican nominee for president of the United States to bar all Muslims from immigrating to America. We hear language that singles out immigrants and suggests entire religious communities are complicit in violence. Where does this stop?</s>BASH: Tearing into Donald Trump with visible anger and disgust.</s>OBAMA: That's not the America we want. It doesn't reflect our Democratic ideals. It won't make us more safe. It will make us less safe.</s>BASH: The power of his words amplified by the stage craft, a commander in chief, coming out of a counter terrorism briefing standing with his top military officer, a four-star general.</s>OBAMA: We have gone through moments in our history before when we acted out of fear and we came to regret it. We don't have religious tests here. Our founders, our constitution, our bill of rights are clear about that. And if we ever abandon those values, we would not only make it a lot easier to radicalize people here and around the world, but we would have betrayed the very things we are trying to protect.</s>BASH: And what really got him going, the GOP refrain that he is weak on terrorism because he refuses to use the term radical Islam.</s>OBAMA: There has not been a moment in my seven and a half years as president where we have not been able to pursue a strategy because we didn't use the label radical Islam. Not once has an adviser of mine said, man, if we really used that phrase, we're going to turn this whole thing around, not once. So someone seriously thinks that we don't know who we're fighting?</s>BASH: All that as the candidate Obama endorsed delivered a more measured version of the same message.</s>HILLARY CLINTON, (D) PRESUMPTIVE PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE: He is fixated on the words radical Islam. Now, I must say, I find this strange. Is Donald Trump suggesting that there are magic words that once uttered will stop terrorists from coming after us?</s>BASH: Hillary Clinton continues to use Trump's response to the Orlando massacre to define him as too volatile for the White House.</s>CLINTON: Yesterday morning, just one day after the massacre, he went on TV and suggested that President Obama is on the side of the terrorists. Now just think about that for a second. Even in a time of divided politics, this is way beyond anything that should be said by someone running for president of the United States.</s>COOPER: And Dana Bash joins me now along with CNN senior political analyst David Gergen. David, how unprecedented is it for a seating president not up for reelection to be so forcibly engaged with the presumptive nominee of the opposing party at this stage and where does this go from here?</s>DAVID GERGEN, CNN SENIOR POLITICAL ANALYST: Anderson, when we've broken yet another precedent in this campaign season, you know, remember after 9/11 essentially there was unity in the country for seven or eight weeks, we pull together, we are politicians weren't attacking each other, we're pulling together and trying to fight an enemy. Here it's just the opposite, I think a lot of Americans are dismayed by this. But it's going to be -- it's suggest we're going to have -- and I think we're going to have a savage campaign. On the merits, I must tell you, I think that President Obama has the upper hand and enjoys the support of most Americans as he oppose this ban on all Muslims entering the country and very important Anderson, the top leadership of the Republican Party and Congress is again the ban. Paul Ryan has spoken out against it repeatedly. On that issue I think the president is in a strong position. On the issue of radical -- calling it radical Islam, I think it runs the other way. A great number of Americans think we're tiptoeing around our leadership is tiptoeing around but not calling what it is what it is. Right, great story back in the early 1980, President Reagan I was working for it, tried to decide whether to call it Soviet Union, the evil empire. I though it shouldn't, but he did and in the other I think he was right. Because it clarified what we are against. And what we are fighting. And in this case when you were facing evil, you shouldn't be afraid to call it what it is, and I think it would be more unified, Hillary Clinton yesterday said look, if we want to use the phrase radical Islam, that's OK with me. It seems to me we could -- we could be -- we might -- I think Donald Trump actually has a point, an argument on that, even though he does it excessively.</s>COOPER: Right. I mean, I guess -- and again, I'm not arguing one way or another, but to play devil's advocate David, I guess what President Obama is saying, is that, it's not a question of calling ISIS or ISIL evil, it's a question of using -- or linking it to Islam. His point I guess is that he doesn't believe or he doesn't want to paint it with the same brush as Islam for strategic reasons I'm assuming.</s>GERGEN: Well, I can't tell why, because he started saying we can't, you know, we can't be against -- we can't declare war against Islam. That's not a declaration of war against Islam. It is to say which is ...</s>COOPER: Right.</s>GERGEN: ... the reality, that there are sick people ...</s>COOPER: They're radical.</s>GERGEN: ... who seem to be in the radical. And why are we tiptoeing around.</s>BASH: And Anderson, the president explicitly said today -- that -- is the president explicitly -- forgive me, said today that it is part of the strategy to not allow people to use that term to their benefit and to continue to foment and stoke the, you know, sort of the anti- American sentiment that is already out there.</s>COOPER: You know, Dana, on another issue Donald Trump continues to say he's a much bigger supporter, a much better friend of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual Transgender Community than Hillary Clinton. It's interesting though, because means Donald Trump though he has attended I think a gay wedding of Elton John I think he went, he does not support a marriage, prior early he says publicly he doesn't support it, he said he disagrees with the Supreme Court. And it's not just him. Suddenly there are -- are number of politicians who have had a very strong anti-gay positions against equal rights for gay and lesbians citizens to marry. Who now seem to be very front and center talking about their concern for the well being of gay people under the thumb of Islamic radicals?</s>BASH: You know, when Donald Trump gave the speech yesterday, there was so much in there that was, you know, intense and that was aggressive and that was of course much like the kind of tone and tenor he took during the campaign. But one thing that did really make me almost fall off my chair was for the first time to hear a Republican candidate for president, never mind the potential -- the presumptive nominee, saying that people should love who they want to love, and live how they want to live. It's just the rhetoric alone is new. But when it comes to the policy, you're dead right. You know, it doesn't look like he is going to support any time soon policies that would be in line with allowing for gay rights, just the opposite. In terms of his personal life and his personal beliefs, as you said, he's attended gay weddings. He is known to have many gay friends. So, I think if you kind of gave him a lie detector test and said what do you really think about gay rights, he would probably say I think it's just fine but now he happens to be a Republican running as a Republican, a nominee for president so policy-wise he's not there.</s>COOPER: Which is interesting, David, I mean again, voters will have to make up their minds whether they want a politician who really does -- if they are opposed to equal rights for gays and lesbians in terms of marriage, whether they want a politician who maybe secretly does support or attend on gay weddings, Republican said they don't support it or they really, you know, live what they said.</s>GERGEN: Well, in fairness of course, Donald Trump also supported gays with regard to the transgender issue surrounding bathroom access and the sort of thing and that surprised a lot of people. But there's no question, Anderson, the LGBT Community is very suspicious of Donald Trump. And when he gets up and says I'm the friend of women here, women by 70 percent say, no, you're not, Hillary is a better friend. So that, you know, he's got a long, long hill and maybe you'll get it they had listen, we shouldn't discourage him from embracing gay rights and embracing those rights.</s>COOPER: Well, he's also defied -- defied all the -- all defied the operation thus far.</s>GERGEN: Yes, exactly.</s>COOPER: I think we have to leave it there. Dana Bash, David Gergen thank you very much. Breaking political news to tell you about, CNN will project that Hillary Clinton has won the Washington D.C. primary, that projection just came in. Democratic voters casting their ballots in D.C. today with the last contest of the primary season. Clinton is about to meet with Bernie Sanders this evening. Just ahead my interview with Florida attorney general Pam Bondi, I asked her how she says she supports the LGBT Community when frankly her record here in the states says otherwise. Plus two young men who were deeply in love, planning on getting married, they instead died together in the Pulse Nightclub shooting. Tonight, a family member has new details to share, we want to learn as much as we can about these two young men who died together.