GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Sunday stuck by his statement that thousands of Arab people in New Jersey cheered as the World Trade Center buildings collapsed on 9/11.
Trump came under fire after telling a campaign rally in Birmingham, Alabama, on Saturday, "I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down, and I watched in Jersey City, New Jersey, where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down, thousands of people were cheering."
ABC's
"This Week" host George Stephanopoulos challenged Trump about the comment on Sunday, saying that police have denied it ever happened.
Video at the time showed people in the Middle East cheering the al-Qaida attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., but reports that the same had happened in Paterson, New Jersey, were denied by local police in 2001.
Still, the story continued to circulate on the Internet.
"I saw it," Trump insisted on Sunday. "It was on television … There were people who were cheering on the other side of New Jersey, where you have large Arab populations, they were cheering when the World Trade Center came down."
Trump said it might not be politically correct to talk about it now, but that it was "well-covered at the time.
"There were people over in New Jersey that were watching it. Heavy Arab population that were cheering as the buildings came down," he said. "Not good."
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