GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump "is going backward on immigration" and may take the entire party with him, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said Sunday on
"Face the Nation."
Graham is hoping for the Republican presidential nomination as well, but is way at the back of the 17-person field.
"Our leading Republican is embracing self-deportation, that all of the 11 million have to walk back where they came from and maybe we'll let some of them come back," Graham said of
Trump's words to "Meet the Press" moderator Chuck Todd.
"I hope we don't go down that road as a party," Graham, who has favored amnesty legislation in the past, said on Sunday.
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Graham may be near the bottom of the polls, but he touted one thing he says he has more of than any of his competitors: experience.
"I think I've got more experience than anybody running," Graham said. "For the last decade I have been Iraq and Afghanistan 35 times, 140 days on the ground in Iraq and Afghanistan as a reservist."
His competitors, with the possible exception of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, don't have the right policy for defeating the Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL), Graham said.
But Rubio is a first-term U.S. senator, just as Obama was when he won in 2008, and Graham has said America doesn't need another "novice" as president.
When asked who the novices were among his competitors, Graham wouldn't single anybody out, instead saying it is up to every candidate to explain why he or she is not a novice. He said he has done that already.
"I don't see anybody on our side coming up with a robust plan that truly would destroy ISIL, and if we don't hit them there, they're coming here, according to the FBI director and director of national security," he said.
"Jeb Bush is a fine man, but his plan to destroy ISIL doesn't have a ground component," Graham said, adding that's "not a whole lot different than that of President Obama."
Turning to Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton, he said the investigation into possible classified material sent on her private email server is now in the hands of professionals at the FBI and Justice Department.
Still, he said, he questions why there are no emails related to the Benghazi attack contained on it.
"If there's no emails about Benghazi to her or from her that doesn't sound right to me," he said. "And I want to see the Benghazi emails."
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