Donald Trump upped the ante in the contest to see which Republican can appear tougher on immigration and terrorism on Thursday night when he said that he “would certainly implement” a database that would track Muslims in the U.S.
“There should be a lot of systems, beyond databases … we should have a lot of systems,” Trump said of his efforts to keep the U.S. safe from radical Islamic terrorism, during an interview with NBC News.
When the reporter pressed Trump on how he would get American or foreign-national Muslims into the database, the presidential candiadate said they would be signed up at “different places.”
The NBC News reporter—Vaughn Hillard—then asked what would be different about this program and pre-war Nazi Germany’s efforts to register Jewish citizens, and Trump responded, “You tell me.”
Trump: "Would certainly implement" Muslim databases. And "you tell me" diff from Jews/Germa: https://t.co/2FM6wReY6e pic.twitter.com/l3UgsMvjlE
— Vaughn Hillyard (@VaughnHillyard) November 20, 2015
Fortune has contacted the Trump campaign for comment and will update this story if they respond.
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush criticized Trump’s remarks Friday morning, saying in an interview with CNBC:
“You talk about internment, you talk about closing mosques, you talk about registering people. That’s just wrong. I don’t care about campaigns … It’s not a question of toughness. It’s to manipulate people’s angst and their fears. That’s not strength, that’s weakness.”
Trump’s remarks to NBC follow an interview with Yahoo News, where he pushed for closer scrutiny of U.S. mosques and said he’d deport all Syrian refugees if he becomes President.