Donald Trump’s rhetoric on immigration is hurting the GOP, Lindsey Graham warned Sunday.
“Our leading contender, Mr. Trump, is going backward on immigration,” Graham said Sunday in an interview on CBS. “And I think he’s going to take all of us with him, if we don’t watch it.”
Graham, who represents South Carolina in the U.S. Senate, is Trump’s distant rival for the Republican nomination. While the billionaire businessman leads the polls, Graham is near the bottom.
Graham has been a consistent supporter of comprehensive immigration reform, including a path to citizenship for immigrants in the country without legal authorization.
That is an unpopular position in the conservative primaries. Trump, meanwhile, has engaged in strident rhetoric regarding illegal immigration, inviting controversy for some of his statements.
“It’s pretty hard for me to understand where this thing is going with the Donald,” Graham said Sunday.
“Our leading Republican is embracing self-deportation, that all of the 11 million have to walk back where they came from [and] maybe we will let some of them come back,” Graham said. “I just hope we don’t go down that road as a party.”
Graham is a vocal proponent of aggressive American military engagement overseas, and turned the conversation to his prescriptions for the Middle East.
“Nobody on our side seems to be willing to put a plan forward that truly would destroy ISIL,” he claimed, using an acronym for the militant group also known as the Islamic State. “And they need to be destroyed.”
“If I’m commander in chief, we’re going after these guys and go after them hard until they are destroyed,” Graham concluded.
