Donald Trump has clarified his response to an incident in which two men cited him as inspiration for beating a homeless Latino man.
Trump, the businessman and Republican presidential frontrunner, tweeted Friday:
This comes after he flubbed his initial response to the Boston Globe Wednesday, when the paper told him that one of the men had said, “Donald Trump was right, all these illegals need to be deported,” when speaking about the crime.
Trump told the Globe at the time, “It would be a shame . . . I will say that people who are following me are very passionate. They love this country and they want this country to be great again. They are passionate.”
Trump’s language on immigration has been controversial, with many in the Latino community objecting to his claim during his campaign launch that many undocumented immigrants from Mexico are rapists.
Read Next: The Republican 2016 Field Takes a Hard Right on Immigration
More Must-Reads from TIME
- Introducing the 2024 TIME100 Next
- The Reinvention of J.D. Vance
- How to Survive Election Season Without Losing Your Mind
- Welcome to the Golden Age of Scams
- Did the Pandemic Break Our Brains?
- The Many Lives of Jack Antonoff
- 33 True Crime Documentaries That Shaped the Genre
- Why Gut Health Issues Are More Common in Women
Write to Tessa Berenson Rogers at tessa.Rogers@time.com