It’s only been a few minutes since the Trump campaign called for an open, sweeping policy of institutional bigotry at the federal level, and already his Republican rivals are chiming in.

The strongest condemnation so far comes from Jeb Bush, who called Trump “unhinged” over his plan to bar all Muslims from entering the United States because they hate us so much:

Lindsey Graham came very close to saying the decent, right thing

but then fucked it all up by qualifying it:

But at least he called for his GOP peers to speak out as well:

Chris Christie, during an appearance on the Michael Medved radio show, was asked about Trump’s statement (emphasis added):

CHRIS CHRISTIE: Again, this is the kind of thing that people say when they have no experience and don’t know what they’re talking about. We do not need to endorse that type of activity, nor should we. What we need to do is to increase our intelligence capabilities and activity both around the world and in the homeland. We need to back up our law enforcement officers, who are out there fighting this fight everyday, give them the tools they need. We need to cooperate with peaceful Muslim-Americans, who want to give us intelligence against those who are radicalized. We did this after 9/11. And it was a very impressive approach. I can tell you in New Jersey that we frequently had sources inside mosques in New Jersey that were giving us information that helped us to bring cases and intervene on things that we otherwise wouldn’t have know about. This is just to me someone speaking from no experience.

MEDVED: You’ve also had experience in the court system. Don’t you think it’s likely that would be overturned as a violation of the First Amendment – prohibitions on religious tests?

CHRIS CHRISTIE: There’s no question in my mind, but there are folks in this race who don’t care about what the law says because they’re used to being able to just fire people indiscriminately on television. So, they don’t have to worry about laws say or not say. The fact is this, you can do this if you have a president who’s experienced, who’s prosecuted folks, operated under the law of the Constitution and has made the difficult decisions over the last thirteen years to keep New Jersey safe to help keep our country safe. And you do not need to be banning Muslims from the country. That’s, in my view, that’s a ridiculous position and one that won’t even be productive.

Stephanie Marshall from the Carson campaign provided this soothing, extra-mild rebuke of Trump:

Everyone visiting our country should register and be monitored during their stay as is done in many countries. We do not and would not advocate being selective on one’s religion.

John Kasich comes out swinging:

Ted Cruz says that a ban on Muslims is “not his policy”:

Carly Fiorina, a bad CEO and coward, declined to say bigotry is bad and instead used Trump’s policy proposal as an excuse to take a swat at President Obama:

I’ll be updating this post as comments from more GOP campaigns arrive.

Rand Paul bolsters is record as “guy who is right on the NSA and drones and wrong on literally everything else” with this mush:

Eventually, Marco Rubio weighed in, to say he disagrees with Trump’s proposal.

“Outlandish” is one word for it.

Photo: Getty

Contact the author at biddle@gawker.com.
Public PGP key
PGP fingerprint: E93A 40D1 FA38 4B2B 1477 C855 3DEA F030 F340 E2C7