First Read: A Week of Overheated Rhetoric on the Campaign Trail

 

By Chuck Todd, Mark Murray and Carrie Dann

First Read is a morning briefing from Meet the Press and the NBC Political Unit on the day's most important political stories and why they matter.

 

A week of overheated -- if not shameful -- rhetoric on the 2016 campaign trail

A week has now passed since the tragic terrorist attacks in Paris, and let's just say that the week hasn't brought out the best in the 2016 field when it comes to rhetoric. Especially on the Republican side. Consider:

• Donald Trump: "I would certainly implement [a database system tracking Muslims]. Absolutely," he said in Iowa yesterday, per NBC's Vaughn Hillyard. "There should be a lot of systems, beyond databases," he added. "We should have a lot of systems."
• Ben Carson: "Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson on Thursday suggested that concerns about Syrian refugees in the United States are akin to a parent's concerns about 'mad dogs.' 'If there's a rabid dog running around in your neighborhood, you're probably not going to assume something good about that dog, and you're probably going to put your children out of the way.'"
• Ted Cruz: "If you want to insult me, you can do it overseas, you can do it in Turkey, you can do it in foreign countries, but I would encourage you, Mr. President, come back and insult me to my face," he said, per NBC's Frank Thorp.
• Marco Rubio: "[Not saying 'radical Islam'] would be like saying we weren't at war with Nazis, because we were afraid to offend some Germans who may have been members of the Nazi Party but weren't violent themselves. We are at war with radical Islam… This is a clash of civilizations."
• Jeb Bush: "I do think we have a responsibility to help with refugees after proper screening," he said on NBC's "Meet the Press" Sunday. "And I think our focus ought to be on the Christians who have no place in Syria anymore."
• John Kasich: "As part of a broad national security plan to defeat ISIS, Republican presidential candidate John Kasich proposed creating a new government agency to push Judeo-Christian values around the world," NBC's Leigh Ann Caldwell reported.

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Source: NBC News