There's no love lost between Lindsey Graham and Donald Trump in the GOP presidential race — and the senator from South Carolina indicated Thursday he's not burying the hatchet with the billionaire developer now, referring to the Republican front-runner as "a complete idiot."
Appearing on
Newsmax TV, Graham was asked about Trump's idea about monitoring — and possibly shutting down — mosques throughout the United States in a bid to stop the rising reign of terror by the Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL).
"Donald Trump is a complete idiot!" Graham told Ed Berliner, host of "The Hard Line."
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"All I can say is that we're in a religious war [and] the goal is to win the war. Most people in the [Muslim] faith do not buy what ISIL's selling. I've been to Iraq and Afghanistan 35 times in the last decade. You'll never convince me they're all the same."
"I've done 140 days on the ground as an Air Force reservist working with people in Iraq and Afghanistan and other places on the rule of law. Very few people want to turn their daughters over to ISIL."
And that's where Trump is all wet, according to Graham.
"The solution is to hit them over there and not create a country like Donald Trump is indicating," he told Berliner.
"Radical Islam must be destroyed and the way you destroy it is you align yourself with people in the region who are willing to take the fight to radical Islam but they'll only do that with American leadership."
Graham also suggested that Trump's ideas are infecting other politicians, as he lashed out at Roanoke, Va., Mayor David Bowers for citing the incarceration of Japanese and Japanese Americans during World War II as a reason to suspend Syrian refugees from entering the country.
"They're dumber than dirt. Just shut the hell up if you don't know what you're talking about! … You know that [Muslim] people don't want to live under the ISIL flag. Thousands of Muslims have died as victims of ISIL. I have lost friends in this war in Iraq and Afghanistan who stand up to these bastards," Graham said.
"So when people like that and Donald Trump speak, they make the problem worse. If you're looking for a guy to tell you that all Muslims are the same, I am not that guy."
"Here's what I believe: radical Islam is a cancer on the world and the entire world needs to fight it, not just the United States. And people in the faith will be part of the team if I'm president. They will go in on the ground with us because ISIL is going to cut their heads off too. The people who are the biggest victims of ISIL are fellow Muslims who reject what they're selling."
Graham and Trump have been at each other's throats for months. Earlier this year, Trump called Graham an "idiot" and gave out his cell phone number. Graham referred to Trump as a "jackass."
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