We’re at the tail end of another embarrassing display of foreign policy gaffes at CNN’s Republican Presidential Debate this week, and Trump’s comments about Muslims are being dragged back to the news as a result.
It all started when Jeb Bush was asked why he called Trump “unhinged” after he proposed to ban all Muslims from America.
The former Florida governor said such a suggestion was "not a serious proposal."
"Donald is great at the one-liners," he went on. "But he is a chaos candidate and he would be a chaos president.”
That's the line everyone is latching onto now—it even prompted the hashtag #ChaosCandidate on Twitter. But what's more important what Bush said about why Trump's comments were so disastrous last week. Before the chaos comment, he said this:
"If we're going to ban all Muslims, how are we going to get them to be part of a coalition to destroy ISIS?" Bush asked. "This will push the Arab world away from us at a time when we need to re-engage with them."
Bush did not go on to spell it out, but his comments alluded to an argument we’ve heard before—talking about "banning" Muslims from America is exactly the kind of hateful rhetoric that sends fresh recruits to Daesh.
And while that notion's probably obvious to anyone paying attention, hearing a Republican candidate say it is a refreshing moment of clarity from a pack who've spent a lot of time in the dark.
So rather than talking any more about the "chaos candidate," maybe this is the Bush moment we should be praising.
Watch the moment from the debate below, via YouTube.
