The popularity of US presidential candidate Donald Trump has revealed the ignorant base of the Republican Party, according to a former US senator and presidential candidate.
Mike Gravel, a former Democratic senator from Alaska, made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV while commenting on a latest poll which shows Trump continues to lead the race for the White House in the Republican Party.
According to the latest CNN/ORC Poll, 36 percent of registered voters that are Republican or Republican-leaning support Trump, while his nearest competitor is 20 points behind.
Texas Senator Ted Cruz has jumped to second place with 16 percent support, while former neurosurgeon Ben Carson has dropped to third place at 14 percent.
Gravel said “Donald Trump is a negative phenomenon. It really is a revelation about the Republican base which he has captured.”
“But if you take the votes - the percentages that he gets - along with the percentages that Dr. Ben Carson gets, you are talking about 50 percent of the base of the Republican Party. That says a great deal about the bankruptcy of the party system,” he added.
He stated that the 2016 race is once again revealing the ignorance of the US electorate and those who seek their approval.
“I would have no further comment to make on Donald Trump other than he is an idiotic phenomenon that demonstrates the basic negative aspects of the American electorate. There’s no question that he’s racist and bigoted and he proves it every time he articulates a point of view,” the former Democratic senator said.
Trump has drawn strong criticism for saying last month that he would require American Muslims to register in a database in response to the Paris terrorist attacks.
Trump’s increasingly provocative remarks are causing party rivals to step up attacks against him and some conservatives to label him a "fascist."
“He is not going to win but what he does is he does show up the unfortunate negative aspect of a portion of the American electorate,” Gravel stressed.
“But now if you add his votes, he represents six percent of the base electorate of the United States, and so does Carson. So we’re talking about a little more than ten/twelve percent of the American electorate. So there’s a lot of other people,” he pointed out.
“But the polls pick this up, and as a result of it, it makes for a lot of interest. And, you know, we love to laugh at ourselves, we love to ridicule ourselves, and we do it best through public figures,” he concluded.
This makes it easy to access the Press TV website