Trump defends call for banning Muslims from US

Las Vegas: Republican front-runner Donald Trump defended his provocative call for banning Muslims from the United States in Tuesday night’s presidential debate, but his plan was brushed aside as unserious by his rivals as they outlined their own approaches for preventing attacks in the United States.

“Donald is great at the one-liners, but he’s a chaos candidate and he’d be a chaos president,” former Florida Governor Jeb Bush said as the fifth Republican presidential debate opened in Las Vegas.

Mr. Trump



insisted he wasn’t seeking to discriminate against Muslims.

“We are not talking about isolation, we’re talking about security,” he said. “We are not talking about religion, we are talking about security.”

Tuesday’s debate was the first for Republicans since the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, that increased concerns about terrorism in the United States. Hours before the debate was to begin, officials in Los Angeles closed all schools after an email threat that was later deemed a hoax.