Businessman and possible 2016 presidential candidate Donald Trump says he has a “foolproof” plan for winning against the Islamic State terrorist group, but declined to share it during a Wednesday television appearance, saying he doesn’t want the enemy to know what he has in store for them.
“ISIS is truly bad — ISIS is far worse than Iraq was ever going to be, and we have to go in there very, very powerfully and strongly,” Mr. Trump said by phone during an appearance on Fox News’ “On the Record with Greta Van Susteren.”
“First of all, they have no respect for our president, that’s one thing for sure,” he said. “I do know what to do, and I would know how to bring ISIS to the table or, beyond that, defeat ISIS very quickly, and I’m not [going to] tell you what it is tonight.”
Ms. Van Susteren asked why he would not tell.
“I don’t want the enemy to know what I’m doing,” he said. “Unfortunately, I’ll probably have to tell at some point. But there is a method of defeating them quickly and effectively and having total victory. I don’t want to be Obama where he goes on television to explain exactly when we’re going to attack a certain city, what we’re going to do, what hour we’re going to be using for the attack, how many men are going in — I don’t want to do that.”
“Because, you know, the late, great General Douglas MacArthur and General Patton, they’re [spinning] in their grave when they hear what we do, how we announce exactly what we’re going to do and how we’re [going to] do it,” he continued. “If I run and if I win, I don’t want the enemy to know what I’m [going to] do.”
“All I can tell you is that it is a foolproof way of winning, and I’m not talking about what some people would say, but it is a foolproof way of winning the war with ISIS, and it will be absolutely, a hundred percent they’ll at a minimum come to the table and actually they’ll be defeated very quickly,” he said. “Very, very quickly.”
He said he plans to make a decision on a presidential run in June and predicted he’s going to “surprise a lot of people.”
“Every time people think I’m going to run, I do great in the polls,” he said. “I do great in the polls without — nobody thinks I’m running, which is an amazing thing. So they don’t put me in polls, which is interesting.”
• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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