AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee
CNN debate moderator Jake Tapper confronted Donald Trump on Thursday about his recent claim that "Islam hates us."
"Last night you told CNN, quote, 'Islam hates us.' Did you mean all 1.6 billion Muslims?" Tapper asked the Republican presidential frontrunner.
"I mean a lot of them. I mean a lot of them," Trump replied to applause.
"Do you want to clarify the comment at all?" Tapper inquired.
Trump said he wouldn't budge off his "Islam hates us" comment, which he gave during a Wednesday interview with CNN anchor Anderson Cooper.
"I will tell you there's something going on — that maybe you don't know about, and maybe a lot of people don't know about — but there's tremendous hatred. And I will stick with exactly what I said to Anderson Cooper," Trump told Tapper.
The mogul sparked a national firestorm in December when he proposed that the US bar all Muslims tourists and immigrants from entering the US until the "hatred" in the religion is figured out. Trump announced his plan after the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California.
Trump also appeared open in November to some kind of database for Muslim-Americans, but he later distanced himself from the idea.
"There's a tremendous hatred. And we have to be very vigilant," Trump told Cooper on Wednesday.
"We have to be very careful," he added. "And we can't allow people coming into this country who have this hatred of the United States and of people that are not Muslim."
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