Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump cited his overseas business operations on Thursday night to defend his donations to Hillary Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign.
“We’re doing many, many deals outside of the United States,” Trump said during Thursday night’s Fox News debate. “I support politicians. In 2008, I supported Hillary Clinton, I supported many other people, by the way, and that was because of the fact that I’m in business.”
Trump made the comment in response to an extended assault from Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who offered a litany of Trump’s donations to losing Democrats in order to undermine the real estate mogul’s claims that he contributed to those politicians by necessity.
Cruz used Trump’s history of campaign donations to pivot away from a question about whether immigration hawks should take Alabama Sen. Jeff Sessions’ advice and vote for Trump. “On immigration, if you don’t like amnesty, if you don’t like the Gang of Eight, Donald Trump funded five of the eight members of the Gang of Eight — $50,000,” Cruz said.
That was just one piece of a broader attempt by Cruz to portray Trump as a liberal even more than a crony capitalist.
“We could all understand if you write a check to a city commission because you’re looking for a zoning waiver on building a building; that may be corrupt, but you could understand real estate developers doing that,” he said. “Donald Trump in 2008 wrote four checks to elect Hillary Clinton as president. So I’d like to ask Donald why did you write checks to Hillary Clinton to be president in 2008? It wasn’t for business. And how can you stand on a debate stage now with her and say you don’t think she should be president?”
Trump offered his business explanation, a potential allusion to the list of companies and foreign governments that made donations to the Clinton Foundation while Hillary Clinton led the State Department. “It was for business,” he said.
But Trump didn’t answer Cruz’s second question about what he would say in a debate with Clinton, given those past donations. “The last person that Hillary Clinton wants to face is Donald Trump, that I can tell you,” Trump said when pressed.
