GOP frontrunner Donald Trump said an attack-ad about eminent domain from his competitor Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) is “false advertising.”
“I have to tell you his ad is wrong, because I never knocked down that house,” Trump said during an interview with NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday.
“I wanted to get that house to build a major building that would have employed tremendous numbers of people, but the woman didn’t want to sell, ultimately I just said, ‘Forget about it,’” Trump said. “So he’s got me bulldozing a house – I never bulldozed it down. It’s false advertising.”
“In New York, ‘Forget about it’ must have a very different meaning,” responded Rick Tyler, a Cruz press secretary.
Mr. Trump only said “forget about it” after he lost the eminent domain case. But a judge forcing him to “Forget about it” doesn’t change what Mr. Trump attempted to do, take the home Vera Coking lived in for three decades because he thought the land would be better used as a park, a parking lot, and a waiting area for limousines. She had to defend herself from a lawsuit in order to keep her house. Fortunately, she prevailed.
The fact is, Mr. Trump attempted to have her home taken from her because it was in the way of his plans for his Casino, which then went bankrupt after mismanaging it.
The 30-second ad alleges Trump plotted to bulldoze a widow’s home in order to build a parking lot for a casino.
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On Saturday, Jan. 23, Trump’s spokesperson Katrina Pierson told Breitbart that “the ad is very misleading… it outright lies about a widow’s home being bulldozed.”
Trump explained during his Jan. 24 interview that large projects would be difficult to complete without eminent domain.
“But, you know, the way to eminent domain, if you didn’t have eminent domain, you wouldn’t have highways, you wouldn’t have the Keystone pipeline, because they need their [routes] desperately if it’s ever going to get built,” Trump explained.
“You wouldn’t have roads, you wouldn’t have schools, hospitals,” he defended. “I mean, I don’t love eminent domain, but you need eminent domain or you don’t have a country.”