Foreign Leaders Fear ‘Xenophobic’ Trump

Officials from countries in Europe, the Middle East, Asia, and Latin America have been expressing concern about comments by presidential contender and reality-television star Donald Trump in private conversations with U.S. authorities. Reuters reports that most of the leaders have expressed worries over the xenophobic nature of Trump’s stump speeches and debate points. “As the [Trump] rhetoric has continued, and in some cases amped up, so, too, have concerns by certain leaders around the world,” one of the U.S. officials told Reuters. They added that it is very unusual for foreign diplomats to communicate those kind of feelings in the midst of a presidential campaign. Foreign officials have been particularly disturbed by the anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim themes that the contentious Republican frontrunner has pushed. In January, British Prime Minister David Cameron said: “What Donald Trump says is, in my view, not only wrong, but actually it makes the work we need to do to confront and defeat the extremists more difficult.”