Billionaire Donald Trump, the 2016 GOP presidential frontrunner, told Breitbart News exclusively in a phone interview that he believes that former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is only “being nice to” President Barack Obama because she wants him to prevent the FBI from indicting her over her email scandal.
Trump’s comments came in response to a question about his thoughts on former President Bill Clinton, Hillary’s husband, calling President Obama’s administration an “awful legacy” in a Spokane, Washington, speech last week.
“If he said that, Hillary will be indicted,” Trump said of Bill Clinton’s remarks on Obama’s administration. “In all fairness, that’s incredible, because I think she’s being nice to Obama for only one reason: She wants to get protected. That’s the only reason she’s nice to him.”
These comments come as reports surfaced that Hillary Clinton is facing what amounts to an army of investigators from the FBI zoning in on her email scandal. The Washington Post reported on Monday morning that a whopping 147 FBI agents are investigating the Democratic frontrunner.
“One hundred forty-seven FBI agents have been deployed to run down leads, according to a lawmaker briefed by FBI Director James B. Comey,” the Washington Post reported. “The FBI has accelerated the investigation because officials want to avoid the possibility of announcing any action too close to the election.”
Trump added in his exclusive interview with Breitbart News that Bill Clinton’s statement in Spokane will deteriorate the relationship between Hillary Clinton and President Obama.
“If Bill Clinton made that statement, that is a disaster for Hillary’s election,” Trump said. “And it’s a disaster for the relationship between Hillary and Obama.”
Trump’s comments, made in a lengthy interview that lasted about a half an hour late last week, came in the wake of the Brussels terror attack. Trump argued that the attack proves the “terrorists are totally winning” their war on the West under the leadership of President Obama, much of which Hillary Clinton is responsible for given the fact she was Secretary of State at the time.
Trump noted that Clinton’s weakness on terror policy puts her at risk in the general election. Trump said in that part of the interview, which Breitbart News published last week:
The terrorists will cause Hillary Clinton to lose the election. She’s weak on borders. She’s weak on crime. She’s weak on anything having to do with controversy other than controversy with herself. She’s weak on the police. She’s weak on anything having to do with strength. Hillary is so weak on the borders, and so afraid to talk negatively about protecting our people, that it will end up costing her the election in my opinion.
In this interview, Trump also made the case that Hillary Clinton would further the globalist trade agenda that’s abjectly failed for American workers—causing massive job loss to foreign nations as companies throughout America’s heartland and rustbelt ship their operations overseas to places like Mexico, China, Canada, and other nations around the world, especially throughout the Pacific Rim.
Trump said when asked about the differences between him and Clinton on trade policy:
I want to bring jobs back. It’s very simple. We have been losing on trade, just like we have been losing on everything else. I want to bring jobs back to our country. I want to make trade smart for our country and if it’s not going to be smart, I don’t want to do it. We’re going to have a great trade policy. We’re going to get along with people but we’re either going to make good deals or we’re not going to make deals at all. I want to bring jobs back to the United States.
This interview comes after a series of great successes on the campaign trail for Trump, where he won Arizona’s winner-take-all primary after a week earlier winning five out of six contests—including Florida’s plum prize of 99 delegates, knocking Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) out of the race—but ahead of what appears to be a long protracted battle from here for the nomination.
As Trump moves to unite the GOP behind him ahead of the party’s nominating convention in Cleveland in July, his two remaining rivals, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, are working to attempt to deny him the necessary delegates to win the nomination outright on the first ballot. It is mathematically impossible at this time for Kasich to win the nomination, and Cruz would need to amass nearly 90 percent of outstanding delegates to get there—something that’s highly improbable—so the only realistic way to stop Trump at this point is through a contested convention.
A contested convention in Cleveland would be a bloody and devisive process for the party and may—in the words of Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker—produce a GOP presidential nominee who isn’t currently running for the nomination. There’s lots of talk that that the potential nominee may end up being House Speaker Paul Ryan, although Ryan—as he did before running for the Speakership—denies wanting the nomination.
Trump is trying right now to pivot towards the general election and pick a fight with Hillary Clinton, but he needs to win a few more decisive contests—like in Ryan’s Wisconsin or his home state of New York, both of which are coming up around the corner—to put the “Never Trump” crowd away once and for all.
Current general election polling between Trump and Clinton shows a big advantage for Clinton at this time–but that’s roughly the same advantage former President Jimmy Carter had over Ronald Reagan at about this point in the year 1980. A Washington Post comparison of three different maps of the electoral college results from the 2012 election shows that while Trump is a higher risk candidate in the general election for the GOP than Cruz, he has much more room to expand and grow on the map into states Republicans have traditionally stood no chance in–therefore making him a higher reward candidate.
Trump’s populist appeal across the rust belt states, and to ordinary American workers across the country, has the Clinton camp rethinking their entire strategy. A piece in Politico Magazine on Sunday from progressive pundit Bill Scher argues that Clinton should look especially at Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), or at Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH)–both populist progressives in the mold of Clinton primary foe Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont–as her potential vice president.
“Before Donald Trump, Franken wouldn’t possibly have merited serious consideration,” Scher wrote in the piece, which was highlighted by the massively influential Politico Playbook written by the publication’s keystone reporter Mike Allen.
Even though his seven-year record as a senator from Minnesota suggests he’s a genuinely committed legislator, the first rule of V.P. picks is ‘do no harm’—and pre-Trump, the trove of politically incorrect barbs from Franken’s past would have been far too much baggage for a presidential nominee to want to carry. The spotlight would have been on him instead of Clinton. Candidate Trump erases the old standards. Nothing that Franken said decades ago would be remotely as incendiary as the insults Trump spews as a matter of campaign strategy. And Trump’s presence demands new rhetorical weaponry. As Trump himself might say, Franken’s ‘classy’ and ‘elegant’ wit is just what the ticket needs to avoid the kind of brawl that drags everyone down to Trump’s level. Clinton will want to stay above the fray, and Franken can provide the buffer.
‘Scher’s piece was highlighted by the massively influential Politico Playbook written by the publication’s keystone reporter, Mike Allen.
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