Brooks: Trump’s Muslim Proposal, ‘Bigotry,’ ‘Offense Against Religious Liberty’ Has Damaged U.S. Reputation

New York Times columnist David Brooks stated that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s Muslim travel proposal has “done enormous damage to America’s reputation abroad” and is “bigotry of a naked sort” and “an offense against religious liberty” on Friday’s “PBS NewsHour.”

Brooks said, “The man is a genius for attention, an addict of attention, and therefore a genius of getting it. And so, this I think is a different level for a couple of reasons. First, it is bigotry of a naked sort. I mean, the Mexican stuff was bigotry, too, but this strikes me as a higher level. Second, an offense against religious liberty. And, third, because of the way Trump has now risen to prominence, it has reverberations around the globe, in the way the stuff even he said earlier about Latin Americans did not. And so it’s done enormous damage to America’s reputation abroad. And so I do it’s something different. Politically, it’s a total winner. I mean, let’s be clear. The polls show it, and for a number of reasons. People, as we heard earlier in the program, are scared about terrorism. Secondly, there has been a pent-up, silent frustration about political correctness. So anybody who says something politically completely incorrect, and properly incorrect, for some people, that’s like a liberation. It’s, finally, somebody’s saying the truth. And so he’s benefiting from that. And so it’s right now a total winner on the Republican primary.”

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