Real estate mogul and 2016 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump chalked up past contributions to and associations with former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton and the Clinton Foundation as strictly business and indicative of a larger problem with the system, using the topic to attack former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
“I will tell you — from Hillary’s standpoint, the one person she doesn’t want running against her is Donald Trump,” Mr. Trump said Wednesday via phone on “Fox and Friends.”
“Now, with that being said … I’m a businessman. I was a businessman, now I’ve taken a little time off to do something else, as you know,” he said. “I’m a businessman — I contribute to everybody. That’s part of the problem of the system.”
“I contribute to everybody — when I need Hillary, she was there; if I say, ’Go to my wedding,’ they go to my wedding,” he said. “I contribute to everybody and you know what? That’s part of the problem with our system. Because they’re going to do for me and all their donors things that aren’t necessarily good for the country, but they’re good for their donors.”
As an example, Mr. Trump said, “Jeb Bush will never produce a job in his life. Forget it. You’re kidding yourself if you think he will. Can you imagine him negotiating with China? I can’t.”
“So listen to this — he raised a hundred million dollars,” Mr. Trump continued. “Everybody that’s given him money expects something. There’s not one person that gave him money that isn’t expecting something, and a lot of those things may not be good for the country — they’re only good for the donor, for the lobbyist, for the special interest. So when I hear he raised a hundred million, [because] I think differently than other people, when I hear he raised a hundred million, that means to me lots of things are going to be done for lots of people. And that’s very bad; that’s not a good thing for the country.”
For his part, Mr. Bush has criticized Mr. Trump’s recent comments on Mexico and illegal immigrants, linking his “rhetoric of divisiveness” to that of President Obama during a stop in Iowa this week.
Republicans are never going to win, Mr. Bush said, “if we’re a grievance party.”
“Mr. Trump has every right to have every belief he has — he’s [going to] run, that’s fine,” Mr. Bush told reporters. “But I don’t want to be associated with the kind of vitriol that he’s spewing out these days.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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