State: ‘Virtually every foreign leader’ concerned with 2016 GOP

The State Department on Monday claimed that government leaders from around the world have expressed alarm to Secretary of State John Kerry in recent weeks over harsh comments from Republican presidential candidates.

“Virtually every foreign leader the secretary meets with expresses concerns about the campaign rhetoric here in the United States, and expresses a fair bit of angst about where things are going,” department spokesman John Kirby told reporters. 

{mosads}“The very stark rhetoric that continues to emerge from the campaign is not being ignored by foreign leaders and foreign governments and foreign populations,” he added.

Kirby’s comments came a day after Kerry said publicly that the rhetoric out of the GOP presidential race is an “embarrassment” to the U.S.

“Everywhere I go, every leader I meet, they ask about what is happening in America. They cannot believe it,” Kerry said on CBS’s “Face The Nation.”

“I think it is fair to say that they’re shocked.”

Kirby maintained that Kerry was not talking about one candidate in particular, but that “a wide swath of views” from the campaign trail “have caused concern.”

Donald Trump, the GOP front-runner, has been repeatedly scrutinized for his unconventional foreign policy positions, which include questioning of core U.S. alliances, tough new tariffs on overseas trading partners and a temporary ban on Muslim travelers to the U.S. The comments have unnerved fellow Republicans, and caused multiple prominent former GOP officials to claim that they would consider voting for Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton to keep Trump out of the White House.

GOP rival Ted Cruz, meanwhile, has been criticized for proposing that U.S. law enforcement agencies “patrol and secure” Muslim communities in the wake of last week’s terror attack in Brussels.

The campaign rhetoric was not yet having an impact on the U.S.’s engagement with other countries, Kirby said.