Trump: 9/11 Would Not Have Happened if I Had Been President
RUSH TRANSCRIPT:
DOOCY: “Donald Trump joining us from the campaign trail down in South Carolina. Good morning to you.”
TRUMP: “Good morning.”
DOOCY: “What do you make of Rudy Giuliani just on the couch little while ago saying that regarding your comments about George W. Bush and September the 11th, Rudy doesn’t feel you’re right about it.”
TRUMP: “I don’t care about his comments, and Bush doesn’t want to use his last night. Jeb Bush said his brother got good security and — and he uses his brother, but excuse me, the world trade center came down during his reign let’s call it. During his term as president. The world trade center came down. And everybody said, oh, we never thought of that. Now everybody is saying, wow, we never thought of that. The fact is he got a free pass because after the world trade center came down, we didn’t have an attack. But the world trade center was the single biggest attack in the history of our country, bigger than pearl harbor. Because it was an attack on —“
KILMEADE: “How is he supposed to stop that? how is he supposed to find random people throughout the country, nine months into the job, who were going to be going and doing something we couldn’t possibly imagine that the CIA didn’t anticipate, nor did anyone brief him on?”
TRUMP: “Brian, if you read the documents and read the papers and the reports, you will see that the CIA had information and so did the NSA and so did other agencies and nobody was talking to each other. They all hated each other at the top. There was tremendous disorganization. And had they gotten together they would have been able to piece it together. Had we had a strong immigration policy, had my immigration policy been intact and I had been president because there’s nobody stronger on the borders than I am, had my immigration policy been put forth and if it was — you wouldn’t have had these people in the country.”
KOOIMAN: “Mr. Trump, you know, we have heard some pundits say that yes, the debate on the war in Iraq is not a bad thing to be doing. Not bad to have that conversation. But is it risky politically for you in South Carolina with the adoration for the family is so strong?”
TRUMP: “I don’t know, Anna.”
KOOIMAN: “The big military presence and population there —“
TRUMP: “I don’t know.”
KOOIMAN: “There’s a new poll out there.”
TRUMP: “I don’t do things for that. I tell the truth. The war in Iraq was a disaster. The war in Iraq when you talk about the migration, when you talk about all of the problems that you see today, the war in Iraq started it all. That was the beginning. Unfortunately, it was — you know, I was against the war in Iraq from the beginning. From 2003, I was — even before then, I was against the war in Iraq. The war in Iraq was one of the worst decisions —“
KILMEADE: “When did you — when was Beirut bombed? That was before the war in Iraq.”
TRUMP: “That’s right. But we went into — who bombed Beirut? Who bombed — where did that come from? And where were the weapons of mass destruction, brain?
KILMEADE: “I will say this, Madeleine Albright said they were there, Jacques Chirac said they were there. The Portuguese prime minister said they were there. Hosni Mubarak said they were there.”
TRUMP: “Well, they weren’t there, they found nothing. Who blew up the world trade center? And wasn’t it — it wasn’t the Iraqis, it was Saudi Arabia. Look at Saudi Arabia. Open up the documents. We ought to get Bush or somebody to open up the documents because if you open up the documents you’ll see that it was Saudi Arabia. It was Iraq.”
KILMEADE: “Saudi Arabia did what?”
TRUMP: “Well, the people came — most of the people came from Saudi Arabia. They didn’t come from Iraq. The world trade center was not —“ [crosstalk]
DOOCY: “Right. Right.”
TRUMP: “— was not knocked down by Iraqi.”
DOOCY: “Mr. Trump, when you made your comments about immigration, you know, indeed there were a number of people in this country illegally who had overstayed their policy — or their visas.”
TRUMP: “My policy has been put into effect, had I been president I would have had it, because I have the strongest immigration policy. People with —“
KILMEADE: “In nine months you would have swept up every person overstay their visa?”
TRUMP: “Those people would not have been in the country had my policy been attacked.”
