Like everyone else, I have been amused by the rantings and ravings of the Republican presidential frontrunner, Donald J. Trump. Watching the GOP establishment try to figure out what has hit their party has been nothing but pure pleasure.
It doesn’t say much for your brand when a narcissistic, racist, xenophobic, loudmouth carnival barker is running rings around your experienced, career politicians. This is truly beyond embarrassing.
But even an entertaining buffoon can cross the line.
In his most outrageous proposal to date, Trump has called for a “a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”
Of course this idea is patently absurd and has been soundly criticized by both Democrats and Republicans. Perhaps no one summed up the situation better than fellow Republican presidential nominee, Lindsey Graham, when he urged his party to rebuke Trump by telling him to “go to hell.”
Trump’s fanning the flames of Islamophobia plays right into the hands of ISIS and all other radical groups who want to perpetuate the narrative that the West is at war against the religion of Islam. Trump’s remarks are nothing short of a national security risk.
On the domestic front, USA Today reported that attacks against Muslims are on the rise in the United States. Since the Paris massacre, nearly two dozen attacks have ranged from a cab driver in Pittsburgh being shot, to a pig’s head thrown at a mosque in Philadelphia yesterday and vandalism across the country.
In a country awash with guns in the hands of the unstable, Muslim Americans are rightfully afraid for their lives.
Donald Trump will not be president. You can rest assured of that. But that is beside the point. His hateful rhetoric needs to be called out in as strong a manner a possible.
In the unequivocal words of Lindsey Graham, the GOP establishment needs to grow a pair and tell candidate Trump to “go to hell.”
Photo| Jeff Malet/Salon.com
Every day Trump reminds me more and more of hurler and the rhetoric he spewed before and during his reign of terror. Let’s hope America figures out very soon that what Trump is saying and doing is very decisive and un American, let alone treasonous.
It is my belief that Trump does not WANT to be president. Too tough a job as compared to another reality show. No, he is doing all he can to sabotage his campaign in favor of a Cruz nomination.