During Friday morning’s interview with Donald Trump on Breitbart News Daily, SirusXM host Stephen K. Bannon suggested House Speaker Paul Ryan withheld his endorsement to pressure Trump into dropping his positions on trade, the border wall with Mexico, bringing jobs back from China, and temporarily restricting Muslim immigration.
“I’ll tell you what: when you look at what’s happened to our party, and you look at the fact that I’ve won every election with landslides…I mean, there was a reason all these people got out,” Trump replied, adding:
They got out because every time we went to a primary, whether it was New York, or Pennsylvania, or Connecticut, or Maryland, you see what’s been happening. I’m winning by 30 or 40 points, and nobody’s ever seen anything like it; it’s landslides. So every single primary that I’ve had, every single state, has now been won in massive numbers.
“They know what I’m saying, and they know what the party’s saying,” he continued. “And the reason they’re voting for me is because they agree with what I’m saying.”
Bannon recalled Trump drawing great interest for his positions on trade, immigration, and fighting the war against terrorism at a Tea Party event in Nashua three years ago, which should have clued the media into his appeal–but, of course, the media never paid much attention to Tea Party events.
“Who knew this was going to happen, Steve? You did, but there weren’t too many people that got it,” Trump said of his successful primary campaign. “I must say to your listeners, you got it earlier than just about anybody.”
Trump said his confidence in his positions on trade and the U.S. economy was reinforced by his travels across the country during the Republican primary, as he learned that “our country’s in trouble.”
“You go to upstate New York, and you go to Pennsylvania, and you go to Connecticut, and all these different places, and you see empty factories all over the place,” he said. He added:
You see empty factories like you wouldn’t believe. I’ve never seen anything like it. As a real-estate person, I said, “Wow, I could probably buy that building for three dollars.” As a real-estate person, as a person that gets it from a business standpoint, it’s so sad to see.
“What did it was NAFTA,” he charged, referring to the North American Free Trade Agreement from the Nineties. “And other things, and bad, you know, very stupid trade policies. NAFTA’s a disaster. And who signed NAFTA? Bill Clinton. NAFTA is a disaster.”
He said he was not going to compromise his core positions to win Ryan’s support in the name of party unity because those are the positions he presented to the voters who chose him.
“Look, I ran on strong borders. I ran on really great trade deals,” said Trump. “By the way, I’m for free trade. If he likes free trade, that’s fine. But we can’t make good free trade deals. We’re getting killed at every level.”
Breitbart News Daily airs on SiriusXM Patriot 125 weekdays from 6:00 a.m. to 9:00 a.m. EST.
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