White House rips Trump, Republicans over Muslim remark

President Barack Obama's spokesman slammed Donald Trump for failing to rebut a man who called the president a Muslim at a campaign event and blamed the entire Republican Party for courting such voters.

“Is anybody really surprised that this happened at a Donald Trump rally?”

White House press secretary Josh Earnest said Friday when asked about the exchange at a New Hampshire town hall event on Thursday night.

“The people who hold these offensive views are part of Mr. Trump's base.”

More broadly, Earnest faulted the Republican Party and those presidential candidates who haven’t reproached Trump over his previous statements about immigrants and women.

“We've seen a variety of leaders in the Republican Party countenance some offensive views just to try to win some votes,” he said. “That has consequences.”

After consecutive presidential elections won by Democrats with the help of majority support from women and minorities, Obama's party has used Trump's candidacy to paint Republicans as extreme and hostile to groups of voters with increasing political clout.

Answering questions at an event on Thursday in Rochester, New Hampshire, Trump called on a member of the audience who said, “We have a problem in this country. It's called Muslims,” the Associated Press reported.

“We know our current president is one. You know he’s not even an American.”

Trump didn't challenge the assertions and gave a general answer about “a lot of people are saying that bad things are happening out there,” according to the AP.

At least one Republican candidate did speak out.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie said he wouldn't have permitted the statement to go unchallenged.

“I'd say that the president’s a Christian and he was born in this country. Those two things are self-evident,” Christie said on Friday on NBC's Today program. “I think you have an obligation as a leader to do that.”

Earnest cited the example of Republican Sen. John McCain, who during the 2008 election campaign corrected an audience member at an event who suggested Obama was an Arab.

“It is too bad that he wasn't able to summon the same kind of patriotism that we saw from Sen. McCain,” Earnest said.

This story was originally published September 18, 2015 at 1:33 PM with the headline "White House rips Trump, Republicans over Muslim remark."