Responds to Orlando massacre by congratulating himself for being “right on radical Islamic terrorism”

In the immediate aftermath of the June 12, 2016 massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando—the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history—Trump fired off tweets thanking people for congratulating him on being “right on radical Islamic terrorism” and using the attack to demand that President Obama use that phrase. Rather than focusing on victims or the LGBT community that had been targeted, he treated the slaughter as vindication for his own rhetoric and as leverage to revive his Muslim ban proposal. Coverage from the time notes how jarring it was to see a presidential candidate effectively say “I told you so” while bodies were still being counted, showing his willingness to turn mass casualty events into proof of his own infallibility and to fold grief into a campaign of fearmongering and religious vilification (see 2015-12-07_to_2015-12-13 for the original Muslim ban call and 2016-05-09_to_2016-05-15 for his “just a suggestion” walk-back).

"Appreciate the congrats for being right on radical Islamic terrorism, I don’t want congrats, I want toughness & vigilance. We must be smart!" — Tweet on June 12, 2016, hours after the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, where Trump framed the massacre as confirmation that he had been “right” about radical Islamic terrorism and called for tougher policies rather than focusing on the victims