Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are clashing again as they offer almost diametrically opposed perspectives on Sunday’s mass horror in Orlando and how America should respond to it.
While Mr Trump pressed on with demands for more intrusive monitoring and surveillance of the Islamic community in the US and of mosques, Ms Clinton warned against pitting one group of Americans against another and taking steps that might splinter the country along religious lines.
“We cannot demonise, demagogue and declare war on an entire religion. That is just dangerous,“ Ms Clinton said on the MSNBC network on Monday, while acknowledging nonetheless that she supported stronger measures to prevent so-called lone wolf attacks and more internet monitoring.
While there is ample evidence the shooter, Omar Mateen, a 29-year-old American citizen, may have been motivated as much by hatred of homosexuals as by faith or ideology, the political conversation in America has so far been mostly in the context of Isis and domestic terrorism.
Mr Trump, the likely Republican nominee, has been the far less cautious of the two presidential candidates, even saying on Twitter on Sunday that he was appreciating all “the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism,” a remark that drew strong rebukes from many of his critics.
The candidate, who in the past has advocated killing family members of terrorists, insisted on Monday that the US intelligence community should be doing more intense domestic surveillance.
“We have to look at the mosques ... and we have to look at the community,” he told CNN. “And believe me, the community knows the people that have the potential to blow up.”
The contrasting styles of the candidates will make for a stark choice for American voters at the November general election. While one emphasises caution and empathy, the other remains visceral and emphatic, accusing Mr Obama of pussy-footing where, in his view, a sledge-hammer is required. “We can’t afford to be politically correct anymore,” Mr Trump said on Sunday.
Mr Trump has been consistent in berating President Obama for failing roundly to utter the phrase “radical Islamic terrorism”. He even said on Sunday he should step down from the presidency for it. He pursued the point on Monday. “There are a lot of people that think that maybe (Obama) doesn't want to get“ the terror threat facing the country, he told the NBC Today Show.
The willingness of Mr Trump to seek political advantage from national tragedy also outstrips anything seen before. After the Paris attacks last November, he stunned his own party by calling for a ban on all Muslims entering the United States, but it was a shocking position that proved extremely popular with the primary Republican voters who eventually handed him the nomination.
“Whenever there's a tragedy, everything goes up, my numbers go way up because we have no strength in this country. We have weak, sad politicians,” Mr Trump averred at the time.
On the Democratic side, both Ms Clinton and President Obama, have already taken the Orlando shooting as another platform to plea for stronger gun control in America. Mr Trump, by contrast, has said of past tragedies, including the mass shooting in San Bernardino in California, that they woudn't have happened if more ordinary citizens carried arms.
The attacks on Mr Obama for declining to speak directly about radical Islamic terrorism, has been red meat on the campaign trail for Mr Trump’s supporters. Ms Clinton, however, sought to deflect the issue as essentially a distraction.
“From my perspective, it matters what we do more than what we say,” she told CNN. “It mattered we got bin Laden, not what name we called him. I have clearly said we - whether you call it radical jihadism or radical Islamism, I'm happy to say either. I think they mean the same thing.”
