Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s call to block Muslims from entering the United States is being met with a chorus of near-universal condemnation from across the country and around the globe.
British Prime Minister David Cameron, breaking the custom of British leaders not commenting on U.S. presidential contenders, slammed it as “divisive, unhelpful and quite simply wrong.” U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon denounced “any kind of rhetoric that relies on Islamophobia, xenophobia, any other appeal to hate any groups.” Even Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling weighed in, decrying Trump on Twitter as worse than her fictional villain Lord Voldemort.
“This is not conservatism,” Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan told reporters after a closed-door GOP caucus meeting. “What was proposed yesterday is not what this party stands for, and more importantly it’s not what this country stands for.”
“I think this whole notion that somehow we can just say no more Muslims, just ban a whole religion, goes against everything we stand for and believe in,” former Vice President Dick Cheney said on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show.
Republican Sen. Cory Gardner of Colorado told Bloomberg News that Trump was a “buffoon.”
