Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump argued that some of the Republican governors running for president “got a little bit lucky with the fracking” while laying out his positions on illegal immigration and the Middle East among other issues in an interview broadcast on Wednesday’s “Hannity” on the Fox News Channel.
Trump began by re-iterating themes from his speech about politicians being all talk and no action, and the US’ declining standing in the world, saying the US was “becoming like a third world country.” Hannity then asked him if any of the other candidates in the GOP field that impressed him, he answered, “Well, a couple of the governors, and a couple got a little bit lucky with the fracking, you know, all of a sudden they have oil, which they didn’t have. So, that’s sort of a little bit of a artificial inducement. I don’t want to be nasty to people in my own party. I don’t want to really get into that. There are a lot of people that are running that should not be running. You know that, and I know that. I know this, I built an unbelievable company, international all over the world, released my financials yesterday. And I’m not bragging about financials, the last person that actually wants to do that is me. But I released about $9 billion of the finest real estate in the world, with very little, almost no debt. A great, great company. Again, all over the world. I deal with people all over the world. I beat China in so many different things. I beat people, I win,” adding that this was the “mindset” the country needed and slamming President Obama as “impossibly incompetent.”
In an another part of the interview, Trump said he thinks Jeb Bush doesn’t look like he wants to run for president. He added that “Wisconsin is having a lot of problems, I mean they’re doing not well. And there’s a tremendous amount of debt being piled up, and they’re having a lot of difficulties” when asked about that state’s governor, Scott Walker. And that Carly Fiorina was fired “viciously” from Hewlett-Packard.
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Later, Trump turned to illegal immigration, arguing, “We’re not going to have a country. You take a look at the southern border. We have guards standing there, we have Border Patrol. People are walking in front of them into the country. And believe me — and I’m all — I love Mexican people, I have great friends from Mexico. They can’t even believe what is going on and what they get away with.” And “if I were there in Mexico, I’d be sending the killers, the drug dealers, the rapists, I’d send them here, why not? Why do they want them? You know, it’s not only coming from Mexico, by the way, it’s coming from all over South America, Latin America, probably coming from the Middle East. Who knows? I mean, why don’t they just come right through the border. We do nothing. So, I meet some Border Patrol people about two weeks ago. And I say, ‘How bad is it?’ They say, ‘Mr. Trump, you have no idea the kind of people that are coming.'”
Trump also stated, with regards to the Middle East, “I predicted the Iraq War better than anybody. I said in 2004, check it out, Reuters, ‘don’t do it, you’ll destabilize the Middle East, and the bad guys will take over the oil including, Iran.'” Trump added that while the Iraq war was a “terrible thing,” “Once we did it, however, we should have stayed there at least. I mean, the mistake that Obama made was really just getting out. But, I will say this, we are a whipping post, we are a laughing stock as a country. We’re not respected anymore. And that’s why I decided to run for president.”
Trump concluded by stating that the New York Daily News, which mocked his announcement was a “failing newspaper” and a “bad newspaper.”
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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