Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush ripped Republican frontrunner Donald Trump as a "chaos candidate" at Tuesday's CNN debate, saying his proposal to ban all Muslims was unserious and counterproductive to the goal of destroying the Islamic State.
Bush initially called Trump's plan to ban Muslims from entering the U.S. "unhinged," and the proposal was a topic at the outset of questioning by CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer.
Bush said the top objective was to destroy ISIS in Syria and that Trump's idea would work against that.
"If we're going to ban all Muslims, how are we going to get them to be part of a coalition to destroy ISIS?" he asked. "The Kurds are the greatest fighting force and our strongest ally. They're Muslim! Look, this is not a serious proposal. In fact, it will push the Muslim world, the Arab world away from us at a time when we need to re-engage with them to be able to create a strategy to destroy ISIS.
"So Donald, you know, is great at the one-liners. But he's a chaos candidate and he'd be a chaos president. He would not be the commander-in-chief we need to keep our country safe."
Trump opened his mouth in mockery while Bush criticized him, but the crowd gave Bush one of the most emphatic ovations he's gotten during any debate to date.