Donald Trump Refuses to Say Whether He Thinks President Obama Was Born in US

The GOP frontrunner was interviewed on "This Week."

ByABC News
September 20, 2015, 10:37 AM

— -- Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump refused to say whether he believes President Obama was born in the U.S. only a day after he defended himself for appearing to allow an audience member at a town hall last week get away with saying the president was born elsewhere and is a Muslim.

"I talk about jobs, I'm talking about the military -- I don't get into it,” Trump said on ABC's “This Week” Sunday. “They ask that question and I just want to talk about the things because it's of no longer interest to me. We're beyond that and it's just something I don't talk about.”

Long before the real estate mogul’s official presidential aspirations, he was a leading voice among the “birther” movement, which not only questioned the president’s nationality and religion, but also called upon him to present his birth certificate to prove he was American. Obama released his long-form birth certificate in 2011 in response to the uproar.

Trump added that he partly agreed with the same audience member who also said he believed Muslims were a problem in the U.S.

“We can say no and you can be politically correct and say everything's wonderful, but I haven't seen people from Sweden going back and leaving after the bombing of the World Trade Center,” he said. “So certainly it's a problem and there is a problem.”

Trump later added, “Certainly what's happening with some Muslims and the terrorism and everything else seems to be pretty much confined there, so it is a problem and we can say no, but it is.”

Asked what he would do specifically as president to combat the problem, Trump didn’t have a definitive answer.

“Only that there seems to be to a certain extent -- and this is not all, most are fabulous -- and I say that number one point: most are fabulous and I have friends that are Muslims and, by the way, they say there is a problem with certain militants that obviously you report on every night on your newscast,” said Trump. “But there is a problem with militancy and it's something that is going to have to be solved. And I don't mean a problem here. I mean this is a world-wide problem.”