South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham has no patience for Donald Trump’s suggestion that the U.S. temporarily ban all Muslims from entering the country, and said those comments show Trump is the wrong pick to lead the country.
“You know how you make America great again?” Graham said on CNN Tuesday, borrowing from Trump’s campaign slogan. “Tell Donald Trump to go to hell.”
“I am disgusted,” Graham added.
“I want to talk to the Trump supporters for a minute… I don’t know who you are or why you like this guy. I think what you like about him, is he appears to be strong and the rest of us are weak. He’s a very successful businessman and he’s going to make everything great. He’s going to take all the problems of the world and put them in a box and make your life better,” Graham said.
“That’s what he’s selling,” Graham said. “Here’s what you’re buying: he’s a race-baiting, xenophobic, religious bigot.”
“[Trump] doesn’t represent my party [and] he doesn’t represent the values that the men and women in uniform are fighting for,” Graham asserted.
According to the senior South Carolina senator, who recently returned from a trip to the Middle East, U.S. military leaders and diplomats expressed concerns “about [Trump’s] rhetoric because the enemy will use it against us.”
“What was a concern last week has to be DefCon 4 this week because what Mr. Trump is doing is he’s putting our soldiers and diplomats at risk. He’s empowering the enemy,” Graham said.
“This ban, if enacted, would take people who’ve been interpreters, who came to our side in Iraq and Afghanistan, who were under siege in their own countries, and basically hand a death sentence to them,” he added.
Graham is in thirteenth place, and Trump is in first place in the Washington Examiner’s presidential power rankings.
