Below are the highlights from Reuters’ Oct. 25 exclusive interview with Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.
SYRIA
“(Hillary Clinton) has no plan for Syria. Look, with her you’ll end up in World War Three. She doesn’t know what she’s doing, just like with Libya, just like with everything else she’s done. So Syria now is no longer Syria. Syria is Russia and the new Iran that we built through the Iran deal, which is one of the worst negotiated deals I’ve ever seen. So you’re not fighting Syria anymore, you’re fighting Syria, Russia and Iran, alright. Russia is a nuclear country, but a country where the nukes work as opposed to other countries that talk.”
“I say the first thing we have to do is get rid of ISIS before we start thinking about Syria.”
“(Syrian President Bashar al-)Assad is secondary, to me, to ISIS.”
MOSUL
“If Hillary Clinton ended the war and left troops behind, we wouldn’t even be fighting for Mosul right now, OK. She gave them Mosul. She didn’t know what she was doing. The woman is incompetent.”
“One of the reasons we were going in was to get the ISIS leaders. But if that’s the case, why didn’t we go in as a surprise attack instead of – you know, with the element of surprise – instead of announcing three months ago that we’re going into Mosul?”
RUSSIA
“I would hope to have a good relationship with Russia. And I would hope to have a good relationship with Putin.
“I’m not friends or enemies with the Russians. I have nothing to do Russia.”
“(Clinton) always casts Putin as a bad guy and a bad light. If she won, how is she going to go back and negotiate with this man who she has made to be so evil. He’s not going to want to negotiate with her, number one. Number two, I don’t believe he has any respect for Hillary Clinton whatsoever.
PHILIPPINES
On Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte saying he was against the presence of any foreign troops in his country: “He probably made a deal with China… He’s dealing with China and Russia so he probably made a deal with China and Russia.”
“The Philippines are a very important strategic location. He has no respect or liking of Obama …”
“I think it’s a horrible thing that the United States is reduced to being thrown out of a country.”
“There’s a big group of people that are in that category (of world leaders who dislike Obama) because Obama wants to focus on his golf game. He doesn’t want to take the time necessary to get along with people. It’s too bad.”
CLINTON PRIVATE EMAIL SERVER
Wikileaks on Tuesday released a batch of hacked emails from the account of Clinton’s campaign manager, John Podesta, that shows her Democratic presidential campaign reacting after President Barack Obama said in a television interview that he learned of her private email server through news reports.
Trump’s response: “Well, I now see why the president stuck up for Hillary, because he didn’t want to be dragged into it… Because he knew all about her private server.”
“This is a big thing. This means that he has to be investigated.”
REPUBLICAN UNITY
“Thousands of people are standing there to vote. I think those people are very, very disappointed that the leaders (of the Republican Party) aren’t helping us win.”
“I know this: If the leaders were helping me, we couldn’t lose this election. It would be an impossibility.”
“RIGGING”
“The media’s rigging the system. It’s never been a pile on like this … I mean, they’re rigging the polls. The polls are ridiculous. Look at that one poll that came out, ABC/Washington Post. That was a Democratic poll. They’re rigging the system.”
An ABC News/Washington Post poll released on Sunday showed Clinton leading Trump by 12 percentage points among likely voters.
Source: Reuters
