Donald Trump thinks asking Bill Gates to close the internet will defeat Isis

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has called on Bill Gates and other technology figureheads to "close up" the internet. Trump believes this would help prevent Islamic State (Isis) from recruiting Americans.

Speaking at a campaign rally at the USS Yorktown aircraft carrier in South Carolina on 7 December, Trump said he believed that "closing that internet up in some ways" would prevent acts of domestic terrorism in the US. During the same speech, Trump demanded that the US shut its borders to all Muslims.

Trump said: "We're losing a lot of people because of the internet. We have to see Bill Gates and a lot of different people that really understand what's happening. We have to talk to them about, maybe in certain cases, closing that internet up in some ways. Somebody will say, 'Oh freedom of speech, freedom of speech.' These are foolish people."

It is not clear if Trump wants to censor the internet, clamp down on websites and communication networks run by IS (Daesh), or if he lacks a basic understanding of how the internet works. Trump's vision for a closed internet went down well with the crowd of 500 supporters, who cheered him on.

Later in the day, Amazon chief executive Jeff Bezos tweeted to suggest that he send Trump into space on the company's Blue Origin rocket, presumably with a one-way ticket. Trump had earlier criticised Bezos's ownership of the Washington Post newspaper, claiming he bought it "for purposes of keeping taxes down at his no profit company, Amazon".