Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s supposed knack for negotiating business deals ensures he’d make a pretty good president, according to MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough.
The cable host’s remarks came Tuesday morning as he complained that journalists and other East Coast media types don’t give Trump the respect and credit he supposedly deserves.
“I get Trump’s success,” he said, adding, “I don’t get [2016 presidential candidate Ben Carson’s] success. I don’t know. Is that just me?”
“Because with Donald Trump, I do know this, and I’m going to offend a lot of people here. If Donald Trump somehow happened to be president of the United States and get elected, he would know what to do,” he added. “He would put really good people around him and you know what? We talk, ‘how would he negotiate against Vladimir Putin?’ Figure that out. Donald Trump has been in a lot of really tough situations before as far as negotiations.”
Carson, a retired neurosurgeon, leads the GOP pack with Trump, according to RealClearPolitics’ polling average, as both continue to fashion themselves as political outsiders.
In one survey released this week by CBS News/New York Times, Carson has overtaken Trump by a few points.
Scarborough explained that Trump’s past experience in business has likely prepared him for dealing with such issues as an insurgent Russia, and China’s continued global expansion.
“I had somebody tell me the other day that had negotiated with Trump said most of the people I negotiate with they go into it and it’s, ‘How I negotiate? How I do win? How do you win? Let’s all win.’ Donald Trump doesn’t do that. Donald Trump goes into negotiations and it’s a zero sum game,” the MSNBC host said.
“He sets himself up so he wins and you lose. He is a tough, mean incredibly successful negotiator,” he added. “Ben Carson is a doctor who I’m sorry, I have a lot of doctor friends and one of my best friends is a doctor who says I wake up in the morning, I go to my practice, I am basically given whatever I want and treated like a king. I live a pretty isolated life and then I go home. I’m not saying all doctors are that way, but one person has been in the rough and tumble in a very ugly, ugly real estate market. The biggest and toughest.”
(h/t RCP)
