Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump wasted no time turning Sunday's mass shooting in Orlando, Florida, into a campaign issue, using the tragedy to push for a crackdown on Muslims both at home and abroad.
As part of that mission, Trump is working to portray gunman Omar Mateen as an immigrant, a refugee and a foreign menace. Mateen never would have been in the U.S., Trump argues, if we had listened to him and enacted a ban on all Muslims entering the country.
In a national security address on Monday, Trump even said, seemingly in error, that the shooter was born "in Afghan," a statement that makes such little sense that it wasn't technically a lie. But his intention is clear.
Our refugee screening process is extensive, but that's not really the point, is it?
Here's a quick reminder of where Mateen was born:
A scary, far-off land known as Long Island, New York.
In fact, there's another famous American who entered this world just a few miles from Mateen's New Hyde Park birthplace. His name is Donald Trump.
Trump is attempting to use this brutal act of terror -- which, let's not forget, specifically targeted the LGBT community -- to drum up the sort of anti-immigrant, anti-Islam sentiment that has fueled his campaign over the past year.
"The bottom line is that the only reason the killer was in America in the first place was because we allowed his family to come here," Trump said Monday. Mateen's parents are Afghan immigrants.
What Trump really seems to be suggesting is that we can't let Muslims into this nation because they -- and even the American children they give birth to -- are an inherent threat to national security. That, or he wants to go back in time a few decades and impose his Muslim ban.
People on both sides of the aisle have criticized Trump by pointing out that his rhetoric and proposals are dangerous and un-American. Telling people that they must turn on their Muslim neighbors only plays into the hands of Islamic extremists who are trying, with some success, to spread their toxic ideology among disaffected Americans.
If Trump's goal is to divide us, don’t let him achieve it by lying.
Editor's note: Donald Trump regularly incites political violence and is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist and birther who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims -- 1.6 billion members of an entire religion -- from entering the U.S.
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