Donald Trump said Sunday that the 9/11 attackers would not have gotten into the country under his watch because of his strong stance on illegal immigration.
“If I were running things, I doubt those people would have been in the country because I am very tough on illegal immigration and coming into the country,” Trump said during an interview on “Fox News Sunday.”
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Trump said that he didn’t blame President George W. Bush for the attacks that killed 3,000 people, but also pushed back on fellow 2016 candidate Jeb Bush’s comments that his brother kept the country safe.
“He said we were safe, well, the World Trade Center just fell down,” Trump said. “When he says we were safe, that’s not safe. We lost 3,000 people.”
In the free-ranging interview, Trump hit on several other issues facing the country, including cuts to the Education Department because of problems with Common Core, the need for eminent domain and his mean tweets as a “great way to get my word out.”
Asked how he would deal with raising America’s debt limit to prevent the country from defaulting on Nov. 3, Trump said he would be “unpredictable.”
“I would be very strong on debt limit. I would be asking for a very big pound of flesh if I were the Republicans,” he said.
On Hillary Clinton, Trump said her overall service as secretary of state is more problematic than the Benghazi attacks specifically, though he wants her to have a “totally fair hearing and trial.”
“I don’t think Benghazi is as big as problem as her past and what’s happened, the world blew up around her,” Trump said. “I think she is going to go down as the worst secretary of state in the history of this country.”
Trump will appear at the next GOP debate later this month on CNBC under revised rules he pushed for that limited the debate to only two hours after complaints from many candidates and viewers that the last debate on CNN was too long at three hours.
While he was a key person fighting for the shorter debate, Trump said he could debate for 12 hours or 20 hours, “but the people can’t take it.”
“Who wants to watch a debate for three hours? I couldn’t watch Hillary for an hour and a half.”
