Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation,” op-ed columnist for The Washington Post Michael Gerson said it’s time to “confront” GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump and his followers.

Host John Dickerson asked, “Let me ask Michael about this. Donald Trump has offended a lot of different groups and lot of controversy, this year he operated new ground. He appeared, we’re going to watch here for a second to make fun of disabled newspaper reporter,” he continued, “Trump denies that he was impersonating the reporter at the event, the reporter is with the “New York Times” he has a disability Trump says, he wasn’t referring to him. Picking up on David’s point, Donald Trump is wildly popular within the polling among Republicans. What is the state of things here?”

Gerson replied, “Well, I think it’s time, as some of the candidates seem to do, to confront not just Trump but his followers. There are people who buy this. It is fashionable in certain quarters to accept of reality TV, shock radio, social media version of reality which is fashionable to attack people and groups in this sort of way. This is exactly at odds with what the founders talked when they talked about civic virtue. Civic virtue in their view was restraint and civility all these things that undergird democracy are being undermined in this case.”
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