Here’s what Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump had to say about issues including fracking, marijuana and his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton during an interview with 9NEWS Friday.
BRANDON RITTIMAN: So, I want to start by asking. Hillary Clinton did make history. I know she’s not your favorite person, but she made history by becoming the first female presidential nominee from a major party in American history.
Do you acknowledge that? Is that a positive step for the country?
TRUMP: She’s got bad judgment. Everything she’s touched has turned bad. Whether it’s Syria, or Libya, or the migration, or the beginning of the Iran deal. She’s got horrible judgment. She voted for the war in Iraq. Another mistake. She was in favor of NAFTA. Another mistake. She’s got bad judgment.
We’re going to have a woman president, but it shouldn’t be her. She would be catastrophic for our country.
RITTIMAN: Some other election, some other day, you think there should be a female president.
TRUMP: No, it’s going to happen, absolutely. Probably won’t be very long, but it should not be her.
RITTIMAN: Clinton said of you last night, “a man you can bait with a tweet is not a man we can trust with nuclear weapons.” What do you say back to her?
TRUMP: Well, that was just a soundbite written up by her people. And it’s inappropriate that she says it because she knows it’s not so. And you know my Twitter following is, I guess, between Facebook, Twitter, etc we have 22 million people. And she doesn’t like that because it’s pretty dominate.
But she also said that I was not doing well in the campaign, and I beat everybody in the campaign. It was just a soundbite. I’m beating her now as you saw the new polls just came out, and I’m beating her.
So, look, she lies.
She’s dominated by professionals that write her these questions and wrote the speech for her. And she made a lot of false statements in the speech.
RITTIMAN: So we’ve talked a lot about Hillary Clinton’s judgment. She’s taken questions from the press. She’s taken, you know, a beating from you at times over her judgment. I’m curious about your judgment. You made this statement about Russia the other day and saying, oh, it would be nice if they put her emails out there.
TRUMP: Well, I’ll tell you what. Let me just tell you first of all that was said sarcastically, and everybody knew that.
RITTIMAN: Sure.
TRUMP: It was a sarcastic statement. The reason it was sarcastic is because she deleted 33,000, or got rid of somehow, uh 33,000 emails. And how you can do that is something that people should think of.
So when I make a statement like that, I’m making it sarcastic because I’m comparing it to the 33,000 illegally probably illegally deleted emails.
Now, the head of the FBI said she lied. The head of the FBI says she negligent. This person’s going to be president? She’s negligent.
RITTIMAN: So I understand you’re saying you meant it sarcastically, but you’re running for president and you get a megaphone unlike anybody’s megaphone if you become president. Words matter so much.
TRUMP: Sure. But everybody knew that was sarcastic. You do too. But everybody knew that was sarcasm. And frankly, it really related to the fact the she deleted 33,000 emails. What a terrible thing to do. Wouldn’t you love to know what was on those emails?
RITTIMAN: So you’ve talked before about switching tones to being more presidential as this campaign goes on. To someone who is in the middle because there are people who have strong opinions about you either way. But to somebody who’s in the middle and doesn’t know whether to like the fact that you shoot from the hip sometimes or is scared that you shoot from the hip because these are words that could come out of the president’s mouth, the leader of the free world. What do you say to them?
TRUMP: Well, I think we’re doing very well. I mean we’re leading in the polls. They’re tired of this stupidity when you look at our country, the way we are being run. They’re tired of the stupidity, and that’s all it is.
Whether you look at ISIS, and the way we are fighting ISIS, or our borders, or trade deals that are so horrible, by the way, horrible for Colorado and every other state in the union. You look at the way our country is run. You look at how horribly our veterans are being taken care of.
You look at how high our taxes are. Our taxes are through the roof. One of the highest nations anywhere in the world. I’m going to cut taxes, by the way, big league. We’re going to cut regulations, taxes. You look at the assault on our Second Amendment by Hillary Clinton. You look at the fact that she wants to double taxes.
She’s going to double your taxes.
I think that people are tired of it. And I think they want change, and she’s not change. She’s trying to now say she’s change, but she’s not change. She’s been there for 30 years. She’s been doing this for 30 years. There’s no change. You’re going to have the same policies. It’s going to be four more years of Obama, which is no good.
RITTIMAN: I want to drill down on a couple of Colorado issues.
Chris Christie was one of the first sort of establishment guys to really jump in with both feet for you. He gets talked about as a possible AG pick, but he was also the only presidential candidate who was campaigning saying he would use federal authority to shut down sales of recreational marijuana in states like Colorado.
TRUMP: Yeah, I wouldn’t do it, no.
RITTIMAN: You wouldn’t let him?
TRUMP: No.
RITTIMAN: Even if you picked him as AG?
TRUMP: Well you’re asking me. I wouldn’t do that, no.
RITTIMAN: You think Colorado should be able to do what it’s doing.
TRUMP: I think it’s up to the states, yeah. I’m a states person. I think it should be up to the states, absolutely.
RITTIMAN: And while we are on the top of state, local control, fracking is a big issue in Colorado. We actually had a couple of cities here where the voters said they wanted to ban or put a pause on fracking in their city limits. They weren’t allowed to do it by the courts. However you feel about fracking, should voters be able to vote?
TRUMP: Well, I’m in favor of fracking, but voters should have a big say in it. Some areas maybe they don’t want to have fracking. And I think if the voters are voting for it, that’s up to them.
RITTIMAN: Should they be able to ban it in their town if they vote for it?
TRUMP: It could be. It could very well be. I’d have to see the specific instance, but it could very well be. But fracking is something that we need. Fracking is something that’s here whether we like it or not, but if a municipality or a state wants to ban fracking, I can understand that.
RITTIMAN: How would you characterize your relationship with Vladimir Putin?
TRUMP: I have no relationship with Putin other than I think to say that he has said very good things about me over the years.
RITTIMAN: You’ve said before that you had a relationship with him.
TRUMP: No, well, I have no relationship with Vladimir Putin. I did?
RITTIMAN: You did? What was it like?
TRUMP: What did I say? You said I said.
RITTIMAN: You were quoted in an interview, I believe it was 2012. I would have to go back and look at it.
TRUMP: You’d have to show me the interview. No, I don’t know Vladimir Putin.
RITTIMAN: OK. Hillary Clinton pulled down ads in Colorado, suggesting she feels pretty comfortable here, pretty confident that she might beat you. Do that give you pause?
TRUMP: I think we’re going to win Colorado. I think we should win the state. We polled very well here, and I think, you know, we’re going upward. We’re on a nice trend. We’re leading overall now, as you know. We’re leading in Pennsylvania, Ohio. We’re leading in Florida. I think we’re going to do well in Colorado. I think we’re going to be here a lot.
You know I have a lot of friends in Colorado, and we’re doing I think great in Colorado. So we’ll see, but I’ll be back a lot.
RITTIMAN: So out west the federal government owns 47 percent of the land. Is that too much?
TRUMP: Well, I’m going to look into that. It’s a question I get asked an awful lot out here, and I am going to take a very serious look at that. And we will get back to you on that one because a lot of people are wanting to really have policy on that. I’m going to come up with it, and I’m in the process of doing it right now. And I have some pretty strong opinions, but I won’t talk about it right now.
RITTIMAN: You must have seen anger on it. You had the whole Cliven Bundy episode. What do you make of that? What do make of the hold up at the refuge?
TRUMP: It was a tough period of time. It was very tough.
RITTIMAN: Did they go too far?
TRUMP: There was a lot of emotion. And well, I’m not going to comment on who went too far, but I will tell you there’s a lot of emotion on that issue.
RITTIMAN: So, I want to tell you a story. This guy who drove me to the airport last night going to become a citizen, he’s from India, going to become a citizen in a month or two and he says he’s leaning towards voting for you. It’ll be his first election. You’ll like that. Because you talk tough on illegal immigration. He wants people to do it above board. But you know he told me he thought it was more practical to punish these people with extra taxes or do something like that rather than deport 11 million people.
TRUMP: No, I understand. And then there are some people who think you should do that. Again, I have said that we are going to have very strong borders, but people are going to come in, tremendous numbers of people are going to come in, but they are going to come in legally. They have to come in legally.
If we don’t have strong borders, and they don’t come in legally, we don’t have a country.
RITTIMAN: He wants to know how you’re going to pay to get rid of 11 million people who are here.
TRUMP: Well, he’s going to have to watch. If you look Obama’s taken 2.5 million people out. You know, the laws are already on the books, just so you understand. Right now he took 2.5 million people.
RITTIMAN: I understand. You want to enforce the laws.
TRUMP: I want to enforce the laws.
RITTIMAN: More stringent.
TRUMP: I don’t want new laws. I don’t want old laws. We’re just going to keep the laws just the way we have it right now. Obama, people don’t know this, he’s taken out 2.5 million people. Nobody knows that. Nobody ever mentions that. So, we’re going to enforce the laws.
RITTIMAN: You made a big point in the primary about self-funding your campaign and how that made you independent and not beholden to people. What do you say now that you’re fundraising?
TRUMP: Well, I am self-funding my campaign. If you
RITTIMAN: Well, I understand you’re putting money in.
TRUMP: Let me explain. I put in about close to $60 million for the primaries. Now, uh, since then I’ve put in a lot of money toward the general. I’m also raising money and helping the Republicans raise money for the Republican National Committee and for the Republican Party. So I’m raising a lot of money for the Republican National Committee and for the Republican Party. But I’m also putting in a lot of my own money. Spending a lot of money.
RITTIMAN: The tone we heard out of the Republican convention was very much centered around this theme that the country’s in trouble, on the wrong track. Democrats sort of the opposite. They want to continue the legacy of President Obama. They feel like we are heading in a positive direction. Make the case to me if I’m on the fence. Why is the country in trouble?
TRUMP: I think that first of the Republican Party is very unified other than a few people, for the most part is very unified. You saw that in the convention. You see that in the polls. I mean, you know, I had a tremendous jump. I had one of the biggest jumps that people, anybody can remember coming out of the polls. Somebody said I had as much as 10 points.
I’m leading Hillary Clinton, and I think that’s because we had a great convention. We really had a great convention.
People want to see borders. They want to see lower taxes. They want to see less regulation. They want to see a strong military, hopefully not to be used, but they want to see a strong military. They want to have common core ended. They want education to be local. They want Obamacare terminated. They want it terminated, and they want a much better alternative, which we’re going to do. I mean we’re going to have a much better alternative and a much less expensive alternative.
Second Amendment has to be protected. Second amendment, so important, has to be protected. Hillary Clinton is essentially going to abolish the Second Amendment.
RITTIMAN: One of the first words I heard out of a lot of people’s mouth when I talk to them about you is: angry. You an angry guy?
TRUMP: No, I’m a happy guy, and I’m a content person when things are going great too. Things are going very badly for the country. The country is angry, and I think that’s one of the reasons I’m doing so well because we have people that are incompetent running our country. Whether it’s borders, or taxes, or regulations, or military. You look at what they’ve done to our military. The depletion of our military. The way they take care of our vets is horrible.
So, I think I can tell you there’s a great anger from very good people and very smart people out there toward the way the country is run.
RITTIMAN: Ted Cruz outperformed you in the primary in Colorado. The delegate count was 33 to 4 for you.
TRUMP: He didn’t … Excuse me, he didn’t outperform me. If it would have been a vote, I would have won the vote. Every poll had me winning big in Colorado.
I learned a lot from Colorado because in Colorado they took, it was like an inside job. And I said what happened in Colorado? Where’s the vote? The people didn’t vote. And that’s why you had people marching in the streets because the polls showed that I would have won.
So, I won almost all the states. I won by almost, we had almost 14 million votes overall. The highest vote in the history of the Republican primaries. And had they had a people’s vote in Colorado, we would have won then easily.
RITTIMAN: You still got a problem with the Republican Party in Colorado?
TRUMP: Well, I was unhappy with what they did because they basically gave it to the bosses instead of the people. And the people were very unhappy too. Had they had a vote, I would have won the Republican Party nomination in Colorado.
One more question.
RITTIMAN: One more question. What is the tone we should expect from Donald Trump going forward between now and November? Will it be different than what we’ve seen so far?
TRUMP: No, I think it will be similar. I mean I want to keep it similar. It’s worked very well. I mean it’s a strong tone. It’s a fair tone. It’s a tone that we mean business. We want law and order. We want strong military. We want our borders. All of the things I’ve been telling you. We want lower taxes. Our taxes are being dissipated. We’re one of the highest taxed nations in the world. We want less regulation. We need to protect the Second Amendment. All of the things I’ve been telling you, and the tone is going to be a firm tone, but it’s going to be a tone to win.
You know, I’ve been winning all my life. That’s what I do is I win. Hillary Clinton’s a loser. I mean she’s somebody that makes bad decisions. She’s got horrible judgment. Bernie Sanders said she’s got bad judgment. And that’s exactly what she’s got. Look at the decisions she’s made over her 30 years. And she’s certainly not for change because if you look and you take a look at what’s gone on she’s been there for 30 years and now she’s saying she’s going to change. She’s not going to change.
And besides that, she’s totally controlled by Wall Street and her special interests.
RITTIMAN: Got to follow up because you brought up Bernie. He said his people aren’t going to go for you. That’s just not going to happen. What do you say back to him?
TRUMP: Well, Bernie made a big mistake because Bernie made a deal, and I think he’s got buyer’s remorse. I think his people are going to go for me because of trade. He was right about only one thing, he was right about trade. I mean, he uh, he said that we’re being ripped off on trade, and we are.
So, I think his people, I think he’s lost control of his people. He made a terrible mistake. He sold out to devil, and his people are very upset about it and you saw that last night. And you even saw it with him. He’s sitting there when they’re talking about him, and he looks like he’s in a state of major depression.
So, Bernie Sanders he made a bad deal. He ruined his legacy. Had he not made that deal, his legacy would have been terrific. But he sold out to the devil.
