Vice presidential nominee Mike Pence says President Obama and Hillary Clinton are missing the threat of terrorism after a series of weekend attacks.
“The truth is, they’ve just been in a narrative of denial,” he said during a campaign rally in Dubuque, Iowa, late Monday.
{mosads}“The reality is that men and women, the people of this country, know that weakness arouses evil,” Donald Trump’s running mate added.
“The truth is that seven and a half years of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s leadership has brought to the world stage has weakened America’s place in the world, and it’s emboldened our enemies.”
Pence said Obama and Clinton, the Democratic presidential nominee, seem equally lost on terrorism at home and abroad.
“In the wake of another round of terrorist attacks here on our own soil, I’m not sure Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama know we are at war,” he said. “It truly is extraordinary.
“If you look at a picture of the wider Middle East the day that Barack Obama became president and Hillary Clinton became his secretary of State, if you took a picture of the map of that area today you wouldn’t know you were looking at the same part of the world.”
A bomb exploded along a charity race route in Seaside Park, N.J., on Saturday before a similar incident in New York City.
The second explosion occurred in the city’s Chelsea neighborhood later that night, injuring 29 people with non-life threatening wounds.
Police on Monday took Ahmad Kahn Rahami, 28, into custody for questioning related to the string of events and charged him with attempted murder.
Rahami, who is a U.S. citizen born in Afghanistan, was apprehended following a shootout with authorities in Linden, N.J.
Two police officers were injured by gunfire in the confrontation, while Rahami was hospitalized after he “sustained shots” of his own.
And in an unrelated incident in Minnesota, a man stabbed nine people at a shopping mall before being shot and killed by an off-duty police officer.
Clinton on Monday accused Trump of inspiring extremism with his words.
“We know that a lot of rhetoric we’ve heard from Donald Trump has been seized on by terrorists, in particular ISIS, because they’re looking to make this into a war against Islam rather than a war against jihadists,” she said, referencing the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.
Pence said later that night Trump is addressing radical Islam with the tough talk such a danger to national security deserves.
“Hillary, I’ve got a message for you: Strength does not give comfort to the enemies of the United States. We cannot have four more years of apologizing to our enemies and abandoning our friends.”