Billionaire businessman and 2016 GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump tells Breitbart News Daily that he has created tens of thousands of jobs over the years.
“I’m trying to figure it out, but it’s tens of thousands over the years,” Trump replied when host and Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon asked him how many jobs he’s created over the years. “I have thousands right now, but it’s tens of thousands over the years.”
That’s why Trump thinks “it is really sad” that the head of the Club For Growth, David McIntosh, (who Trump called a “nasty guy”) is abandoning the group’s supposed support for growth-based policies to attack him.
The Club For Growth, after running attack ads against Trump to which Trump responded with a cease and desist letter, is going to a new level against the billionaire-turned-presidential candidate: publishing a white paper going after his widely-praised-by-the-right tax plan.
“As a presidential candidate, Donald Trump issued a tax reform proposal that is a far cry from the positions he’s historically taken on taxes. While his latest plan would significantly lower tax rates for individuals and businesses, questions remain about his lack of specificity on ‘…the deductions and loopholes’ that he claims would be reduced or eliminated,” the donor-funded Club For Growth wrote in the white paper.
Everyone from Larry Kudlow to Americans for Tax Reform have praised Trump’s tax plan as massively pro-growth and one that would create jobs.
Trump dismissed the Club For Growth’s attacks on him as petty, and noted he wouldn’t agree to donate $1 million to the group, as McIntosh requested in a letter after a private meeting with him just before he announced his presidential campaign.
“I had never even heard of the Club For Growth—which is fine, it doesn’t make it bad—and what happened is he [McIntosh] came up to my office, asked me for a million dollars and he came through somebody that I know,” Trump told Bannon. “I said, ‘a million dollars for what? What am I doing? We could be rich, but don’t have to be stupid.’ And he said, ‘well, we’re the Club For Growth.’”
Bannon interjected at that point to note that McIntosh “clearly hadn’t been prepped” before the meeting. “To go in and ask Donald Trump for a million bucks, you have got to be spring loaded,” Bannon said.
“Well, at least give me a good answer, right?” Trump joked about McIntosh’s failure in response. “So I said, ‘Why?’ And he gave me something—and then I said ‘well, write me a letter.’ So he wrote me a letter asking for a million dollars.”
Trump added that “we politely turned him down, we said ‘no.’”
Later, Trump noted that it was “immediately thereafter” that McIntosh “had a press conference to announce what a terrible person I am, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and he brings up this thing about eminent domain.”
Trump explained, though, that while he doesn’t like eminent domain for the government to build highways and things like the Keystone XL pipeline, the government is going to need to use eminent domain.
“I don’t like eminent domain but if you’re going to have a government, and you’re going to build a highway and you’re going to build a road and you’re going to build a sewer line and you’re going to build anything in order to function you need eminent domain,” Trump said.
And in fact the Keystone pipeline which they are in favor of, and probably you are and so am I by the way, is all eminent domain. They have hundreds of miles, thousands of miles, whatever—and you’re going through farms and you’re going through areas where you’re not to get that [land without eminent domain]. So I assume they’re in favor of that, most conservatives are in favor of the Keystone pipeline. But let’s assume they are. They have a whole chapter, a whole great big section when you read about the Keystone pipeline that the Keystone pipeline people put out about eminent domain and what a wonderful thing it is et cetera, et cetera.
But, the Club’s attacks on Trump haven’t worked. “I’m number one in the polls again in Iowa again, so with all the money they spent I’m still number one in Iowa. I’m doing really well there—and we have rallies that are incredible,” Trump said.
The “bottom line” with the Club, Trump said, is that they begged him for campaign cash—and when he turned them down, they turned on him.
You know what I find: The liberals attack me, but I find that the conservatives attack me much more viciously,” Trump said. “I don’t understand it, but I’ve heard it all of my life. If you’re a conservative, if you’re a Republican, you’ll get attacked more viciously by certain conservative groups. I won’t even mention the names, and I don’t understand it because most of my views are their views.
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