Koch brother rips Trump's Muslim ban idea

Billionaire industrialist and political megadonor Charles Koch in a new interview slams Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump's idea to ban Muslims from the U.S..

Koch said in a story published Friday that such a proposal would "destroy our free society."

"Who is it that said, ‘If you want to defend your liberty, the first thing you’ve got to do is defend the liberty of people you like the least’?” Koch told The Financial Times.

Koch also reportedly distinguished his anti-terrorism views from that of another GOP candidate, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), who has vowed to "carpet bomb" Islamic State in Iraq and Syria strongholds.

“I’ve studied revolutionaries a lot,” Koch said. “Mao said that the people are the sea in which the revolutionary swims. Not that we don’t need to defend ourselves and have better intelligence and all that, but how do we create an unfriendly sea for the terrorists in the Muslim communities? We haven’t done a good job of that."

Koch noted that there are about 1.6 billion Muslims worldwide, stating, "[A]re we going to ... go bomb each one of them?”

“We have been doing this for a dozen years. We invaded Afghanistan. We invaded Iraq. Has that made us safer? Has that made the world safer?" Koch asked the Times.

"It seems like we’re more worried about it now than we were then, so we need to examine these strategies," he added.

Neither Charles Koch nor his brother David have endorsed a candidate in the 2016 presidential cycle. Their allied network of groups plans to raise $900 million from right-leaning supporters. 

They have reportedly been known to like candidates such as former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who are all lagging in polls.

Charles Koch told the Times "it is hard for me to get a high level of enthusiasm" about the current GOP field "because the things I’m passionate about and I think this country urgently needs aren’t being addressed." - Read More at thehill

Koch brother rips Trump's Muslim ban idea