Talk radio host Laura Ingraham suggested Tuesday that the Republican Party would rather “rip itself apart” than nominate its front-runner, Donald Trump.
Her remarks, which came during a Tuesday interview on Fox News’ “Fox and Friends,” referred to Trump’s new proposal to halt all Muslims from entering the United States.
Many critics, including much of the GOP presidential field, responded angrily to the proposal, arguing that it’s unconstitutional and immoral.
“There are a couple of different things going on in the hysterical response to what he said, people are missing,” Ingraham said. She then pivoted to discussing the shooting spree in San Bernardino, Calif., which prompted Trump’s proposal.
Two radicalized Islamic terrorists, Syed Rizwan Farook, 28, and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, 27, shot and killed 14 people at a state-run facility for people with mental disabilities. They injured dozens more. Malik came to the United States in July 2014 on a K-1 visa, which allowed her to travel freely and marry Farook within 90 days of her arrival.
“We found out in San Bernardino that authorities missed a lot of obvious signs, terror red flags, they missed the fact that Malik did not have a legitimate address on her documents to come into the country, they missed the fact she had family ties to radical Islam, apparently there were lots of guns and ammo being delivered to this one house, but a neighbor was too scared to speak out for political correctness concerns, it went unreported,” Ingraham said.
“There are so many inputs, so much information coming at them at one time, it is hard to sift through it and find out who is a threat,” she added, suggesting that criticism for Trump’s “No Muslims” ban is missing the bigger picture.
She suggested that Trump’s rise in the polls, coupled with his controversial statements, will force GOP leaders to take drastic, possibly harmful, measures to ensure he doesn’t receive the party’s nomination.
“This could ultimately lead to a crisis at the [Republican National Convention], the Republican Party basically rips itself apart to prevent him from becoming the nominee,” she said, adding that members of the GOP establishment likely fear that he would be bad for trade.
On Monday, Ingraham was among the first in media to suggest that Trump should back off his Muslim ban proposal.
“I think Trump is going to have to walk this back,” she said. “Most people watching this are really scared; a lot of people are scared.
“People are worried. They want a serious person, and a serious hand on the tiller,” she added.
“I think in the end, [Trump] is going to have to change his formulation, the way he said it,” she said. “We can’t stop a Muslim from Toronto who’s a surgeon coming into the country if he otherwise would meet the requirements — and that is what [Trump’s] statement would do.”
(h/t RCP)
