- The Washington Times - Thursday, September 17, 2015

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump might have tangled with GOP rivals like former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush and Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky during Wednesday’s debate in California, but Mr. Trump said even he was surprised by the lack of tension during the breaks.

“The funny thing was we were tough on each other, and yet there wasn’t a lot of tension during the breaks,” Mr. Trump said Thursday via phone on “Fox and Friends. “I guess we just say, ’It’s politics.’ But I had a couple of people, including Rand Paul — you would have thought there would be, like, tremendous tension and there was very little tension.”

Mr. Trump had said Mr. Paul shouldn’t even be on the stage and hammered the legacy of Mr. Bush’s brother, former President George W. Bush. He also refused to apologize for comments alluding to Mr. Bush’s wife Columba, who is a Mexican-born U.S. citizen.

“I was a little bit surprised myself. You know, we had long breaks because they had lots of commercials. As you know, there were four, five-minute breaks,” Mr. Trump said. “And I was getting along great with Jeb and everybody else. I actually got along pretty well with everybody back there.”

“So, you know, [it] may have seemed bad and there was tension during the actual questioning, but there wasn’t a lot of tension during the break and I was a little surprised at that,” he said.

• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.

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