Donald Trump on national security criticism: I won the primaries by fighting insiders

Donald Trump says he had no interest in using the 50 national security officials from Republican administrations who saidMonday he’d put U.S. national security at risk, and that he won the GOP presidential primaries by fighting insiders.

“I wasn’t using any of them and they would have loved to have been involved with the campaign,” Mr. Trump said Tuesday on Fox Business Network. “But I wasn’t using, I had no interest in using - look where the country is now on national policy, look where we are on defense, look where we are.”

“Take a look at the Middle East, take a look at the problems that we have,” he said. “And the last people I want to use are the people that have been doing it for the last long period of time.”

Fifty national security officials who served in Republican administrations dating back to President Nixon released a letterMonday saying they will not vote for Mr. Trump and that he would be a “dangerous” president.

Mr. Trump said they don’t feel relevant, so they went out to try to get publicity and they hope he doesn’t win so they can get jobs.

“I won the primaries by fighting all of these insiders. And people are rejecting the insiders and you know I got 14 million votes,” he said.

“Frankly, people are fighting exactly what these people are doing,” he said.

Asked about his recent drop in the polls, Mr. Trump said he’s getting massive crowds, citing demand that kept increasing for his speech on the economy on Monday in Michigan.

“The crowds we’re getting are tremendous. So I don’t know what that indicates. But it’s got to indicate something good,” he said.

“Every arena is sold out. We’re having 15, 18 and 20,000 people, that’s not even big. So you know something’s going on out there. We’ll find out on November 8,” he said.

Asked about possible changes heading into the final three months of the election, he said his temperament is what got him this far.

“I certainly don’t think it’s appropriate to start changing all of [a] sudden when you’ve been winning,” he said. “I mean, I’ve beat many people and now we’re down to one. And we’ll see how it all works out. But I think it’s going to work out well.”