I have resisted the temptation for several months to follow-up on my post likening The Donald to a member of the Kardashian Klan, but his comments this week seeking to ban, even temporarily, the entry of all Muslims into the United States now compel me to write.

As his campaign for President has maintained loft in the period leading up to the Republican Party primaries, Trump has shown himself not just to be the divot-haired buffoon building a personal brand, but a truly dangerous racist demagogue seeking power. For months I have batted-off queries from amused or horrified foreign friends with a standard reply that I still, fortunately, believe to be true: “Don’t, worry, he is a clown and he won’t be elected.” However, they now rightly point out that the sheer number of my fellow Americans who are willing to tell pollsters that they support Trump is scary to educated global citizens who think highly of the United States.

Not only does Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric play right into the hands of IS in seeking to draw battle lines between all Christians and Muslims, but it also reminds me of early Nazi rabble-rousing against Jews which was dismissed by many ordinary Germans until it was too late.

At a dinner I attended last week, a former senior European statesman likened Trump to France’s Front National leader, Marine Le Pen, for her anti-immigrant rhetoric. I replied that the comparison was inapposite. The closer parallel was with her father and former FN leader, Jean-Marie Le Pen, whose racist and anti-Semitic pronouncements became so frequent and noxious that his own daughter maneuvered to have him thrown out of the political party he founded.

As readers of this blog know, I am often too fond of all things French, but I believe that here again in the “Affaire Le Pen” there is learning for us Americans. Republican Party leaders should follow Speaker Paul Ryan’s noble lead in condemning Trump’s racist comments as un-American and not just counter to the Republican Party platform, and The Donald’s otherwise successful and intelligent children should follow Marine Le Pen’s example and call for their father to pull out of the race for President.

The time to stand-up is now.