Donald Trump Must End His Presidential Candidacy
Floor Speech
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Mr. Speaker, I rise today to call on Donald Trump to withdraw his candidacy for the White House. We face a security test in this Nation, a national security test. It is a real and audible threat.
I have been most critical of the President's foreign policy. It is an area that, respectfully, I have the greatest disagreement with this administration. I have begged him in correspondence, and I have used the word ``beg'' to do more to defeat the threat of terror.
I believe his Oval Office address Sunday night, frankly, was forgettable. He spent 5 minutes suggesting he was going to do nothing different to defeat ISIS. He spent 5 minutes lecturing Congress, and he spent 5 minutes lecturing the American people.
You see, we do face a security test that I believe the President's policies have underestimated. But we also face a test of our commitment to religious freedom, one of the basic freedoms upon which our Nation was founded. We are either going to defend that religious freedom or we are not.
It should be heartbreaking to every American that we have a frontrunner in the Presidential race that suggests there will be a religious test for anybody who wishes to come to our shores. It is an affront to the very principles upon which our Nation was founded.
We broke from a monarch that suggested all freedom and liberty was vested in the Crown and then the Crown would distribute freedom and liberty to the people. We founded a Nation based on what Jefferson called the natural rights of man, that we were, indeed, endowed by our Creator with very fundamental rights.
Mr. Speaker, I am a born-again Christian. I believe in the saving grace of the Jesus Christ that I call my God. The beautiful thing about this country is I can stand here on the House floor, among my peers and in front of the Nation, and declare that faith without fear of any reprisal.
But if Donald Trump has his way, we may not have the liberty to do that anymore. It is a freedom that has been fought for, from the Founders of our country, and generation upon generation of men and women who have worn the uniform of the Armed Forces and defended it, for the security of our Nation, and for the freedom of people.
We are a Nation worried about our security, rightfully so. It is why we are calling on the President to do so much more to defeat this terror. It is why we are begging the President for a stronger national security test.
We must always insist on a security test, but we must never require a religious test.
It is time that my side of the aisle has one less candidate in the race for the White House. It is time for Donald Trump to withdraw from the race.
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