Footage of Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump is reportedly featured in a terrorist recruiting video for Al-Shabab, a Somali group affiliated with al Qaeda. The video released Friday, which The New York Times reports jihadist propaganda experts have confirmed as authentic, characterizes the U.S. as harboring a "malignant hatred" of Islam.
"So remember this, so listen, Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what the hell is going on," Trump says in the clip used.
In the video, old footage features Anwar al-Awlaki, an al Qaeda-affiliated American who died in 2011, encouraged Muslims in the U.S. to "either leave or fight," because "the West will eventually turn against its Muslim citizens."
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The idea that Trump's anti-Islam messaging could be used as a terrorist recruiting tool surfaced at the Dec. 19 Democratic debate. Frontrunner Hillary Clinton had incorrectly claimed another major terrorist group, the Islamic State, has used Trump's rhetoric to recruit militants.
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