Donald Trump struck a bellicose posture on terrorism and immigration Thursday in the aftermath of the truck attack that killed scores of people in France, saying he would take extreme measures to keep Islamic jihadists out of the country.
Asked by Fox News host Bill O'Reilly whether he agreed that "we are in a world war scenario," Trump said: "I certainly do, and I have been saying it for a long time, and it's out of control."
The Republican presidential hopeful, who has called for a ban on Muslims entering the U.S., vowed to make it "very, very hard for people to come into our country from terrorist areas."
"I would do extreme vetting," he said in one of two phone interviews with Fox from his house in Beverly Hills, Calif., before leaving for a campaign fundraiser in Los Angeles. "I would call it extreme vetting, too."
Trump said he would ask Congress to declare war on the Islamic State terrorist group. He attacked President Barack Obama for letting Syrian war refugees into the United States and criticized Hillary Clinton, the former secretary of State, for supporting the policy.
"We're weak, and we're weakly led and ineffective," he said. Trump also accused Clinton of creating the Islamic State terrorist group "with her stupid policies."
In a CNN phone interview, Clinton said the U.S. was "at war with these terrorist groups and what they represent."
"It's a different kind of war and we have to be smart about how we wage it and win it," she said.
She called for focusing on intelligence, partnering with other nations and cracking down on the Islamic State's ability to recruit members online. But she urged caution at the prospect of waging a traditional boots-on-the-ground effort to defeat them.
"They would love to draw the United States into a ground war in Syria," she said. "They actually think the end times could be hastened if we had some great confrontation in the region."
Clinton largely avoided engaging Trump, except when asked about his remarks on Syrian refugees.
"Trump has said this repeatedly and has been called out for his blatant lies about it," she said, adding that refugees would only be admitted after they were thoroughly screened.
Both candidates spoke as French authorities were still clearing dead bodies from the streets of Nice, where a truck loaded with weaponry plowed over revelers at a Bastille Day fireworks celebration on the waterfront.
