LF: Donald Trump tips his hand on a White House run by hinting at 'when' – not 'if'

Title: Donald Trump tips his hand on a White House run by hinting at 'when' – not 'if' – he will file papers
Source: Daily Mail
URL Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art ... ts-underway.html#ixzz3PlRi8Kc6
Published: Jan 24, 2015
Author: David Martosko
Post Date: 2015-01-24 15:26:16 by Hondo68
Keywords: 2016 Republican nom, conservative â€“ very conservati, Mitt ... he choked
Views: 1154
Comments: 5

Donald Trump tips his hand on a White House run by hinting at 'when' – not 'if' – he will file papers, and says he'll build a border fence 'nobody would be able to penetrate'

Real estate tycoon and 'Celebrity Apprentice' star Donald Trump pledged on Saturday in Iowa that if he were to win a presidential election, one of the first things he would do is build a fence alone all of America's southern border.

'The fence would be done at a very reasonable cost, relative to the value, Trump told Daily Mail Online in an interview after he spoke to the Iowa Freedom Summit in Des Moines.

America has to build it if it wants to preserve its national security, he told a crowd estimated at 1,500 but which was peppered with empty seats all day.

'It has to be a beauty,' he said onstage, to hoots and applause. 'Who can build better than Trump? I've built lots of buildings. Fences are easy – believe me.'

'If I run and if I win, I would certainly start by building a very, very powerful one.'

He warned that the flood of illegal immigrants that 'walks acrodd the border – just walks! – every year bring national security risks with them.

'We don't have the best coming in' from Mexico, he said. 'We have criminals ... you can certainly have Islamic terrorists.'

The potential White House candidate, better-known for his hair than his politics, tipped his hand after days of hedging on whether he'll run.

In mid-boast about his legendary business acumen with land and building deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars, he announced that 'almost all of them have been very successful.'

Trump told Daily Mail Online that 'frankly I love the idea of filing my papers.'

He recalled that he released a $7 billion financial statement in his 2011 book 'Time to Get Tough.

'I did it four years ago,' he said backstage after his applause subsided. 'I filed my papers and everyone was shocked at how good they were. But now they're even much better.'

He created enough presidential buzz that his supporters in Texas met a deadline for him to get on the ballot there, if he wanted, as a third-party candidate.

He said at the time that he had his 'ducks in a row,' but the Make America Great Again Party fizzled.

But this time, he predicts, 'I think I'm going to surprise a lot of people ... I could make America great again.'

The 68-year-old New Yorker believes he should already be living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue – despite the pay cut and smaller accommodations 0 and would have if he had stuck around in 2012.

'I was leading in every poll,' he told theDes Moines Register on Thursday. 'I regret that I didn't stay in.'

'I would've won the race against [President Barack] Obama. He would've been easy. Hillary [Clinton] is tougher to beat than Obama, but Hillary is very beatable.'

If he announces a run for 2016, it's unclear whether or not he would come back into the Republcian fold.

'I'm a conservative – very conservative,' he said in his speech. But he had harsh words for the GOP leadership in Washington.

'I'm very disappointed by with our Republcian politicians,' Trump said, 'because they let the president get away with absolute murder.'

'Everything about Obamacare was a lie. It was a filthy lie. ... What are the Republican politicians doing about it?'

In the space of a 20-minute speech, a 5-minute interview and a 15-minute press confernce, he conjugated most of the big issues that will drive the 2016 Republican nomination process.

On ISIS, he told Daily Mail Online that 'you need the attitude' to destroy the terror army.

'We don't have the attitude. We don't want to beat anybody/ We don't know how to defeat anybody.'

'This country, now, with this leadership,' he said, 'doesn't know how to defeat anybody. And that's Obama.'

On America's unprecedented health insurance experiment, he warned onstage that 'somebody has to repeal and replace Obamacare. And they have to do it fast – and not just talk about it.'

On the nation's chronic underemployment, he charged that the Bureau of Labor Statistics is under-reporting the numbers.

'It's probably 21 per cent, the real number. Unemployment is through the roof,' Trump said.

The Department of Labor reported this month that in December, the rate stood at 5.6 per cent.

But the nation's labor participation rate, a number that takes into account millions who have given up looking for work or accepted part-time work they don't want, hasn't been lower since 1978.

'I know what has to be done on immigration,' he added. 'I know what has to be done on the military. I know how to deal with foreign governments – I've been dealing with them for 25 years and making lots of money doing it in the private sector.'

If Trump decides to sit out the 2016 race and return to television, he's not saying who he might support – only that it won't be former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush or the Republicans' 2012 nominee Mitt Romney.

'I just don't think they can win,' he told reporters. 'Mitt had his chance. ... And he choked.'

'You don't want to give a person like that a second chance. ... they'll absolutely lose to the Democrats.'

And Bush, the former Florida governor who would be an unprecedented third man from the same family to work in the Oval Office if he were to win, has the same legacy problem as Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton, he said.

'We've had enough of the Bushes. We're bushed out.'

Some observers in Iowa, an important early state in the nominee selection process, think Trump is just posing.

'President Trump is a great commercial, but not likely,' said Bob Johnson, an attendee at the Freedom Summit. 'I just don't know if he's serious.'

JUST AN ORDINARY PRESBYTERIAN: The Trump picture postcards also inluded this view of his church confirmation class in 1959

BUSHED OUT? Trump says the US doesn't need Jeb Bush – who would be the third man from the same family to be president – in the White House; Bush is pictured at the National Auto Dealers Association annual conference in Sanf Francisco on Friday

Trump and a cavalcade of other GOP luminaries spoke on Saturday.

His spokesman Sam Nunberg passed out picture postcards featuring photos of a youg Trump with Ronald Reagan – a move designed to position him as a political conservative – and posed regally with his extended family.

'The Key to success is happiness through family,' the card says.

That message seems carefully chosen to appeal to the Dees Moines audience of family-values right wingers who applaud any mention of rubbishing the Roe v. Wade abortion decision and bristle at the mention of gay marriage.

Trump is independently wealthy – to understate the obvious – so he wouldn't have to raise money to run for president.

'If I do it, I'll be self-funding so that solves that problem. Which is nice,' he told the Register.

But that also means he has less incentive to speak on the rubber-chicken circuit that other candidates have to tread in order to build their campaign coffers. So it may not be clear for months whether or not he's serious.

'It's too early for me to say,' he cautioned. 'I'll may make a decision to run before June. But I'm strongly inclined to do so.'

Trump first floated his name as a candidate in 1988 when he was a rising symbol of Reagan-era rampant capitalism. He was also briefly in the picture in 2008 but never made it as far as the Republican National Conventions.

Last time around he had already signed a contract to keep hosting 'Celebrity Apprentice.' He was also working on real-estate development projects including hotels and a country club.

But this year he hasn't inked another television season. At least not yet.

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