Updated with video: Donald Trump talked “tunnel technology,” and deporting the “bad dudes” in an interview today with Anderson Cooper and flatly denied Cooper’s insinuation he’d just flip-flopped on his flip-flop on his position about undocumented immigrants.
And, Hillary Clinton?
“She is a bigot,” Trump says in the interview that aired tonight. It’s Trump’s first non-Fox News Channel interview since late July, when he got mocked for telling ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos he has sacrificed for his country by employing “thousands and thousands of people.”
Trump’s comments for Anderson Cooper 360 were his latest “punch back” at Dem candidate Hillary Clinton. This time he was punching back after Clinton spoke ominously in Reno, Nevada this afternoon of Trump’s ties to radical “alt-conservatives.” Trump’s platform of “prejudice ” and “paranoia” is taking “hate groups mainstream,” she said; Clinton also dismissed Trump’s “latest paranoid fever dream” about her health.
“Look at what’s happening to the inner cities…look at what’s happening to African Americans and Hispanics in this country where she talks all the time,” Trump told Cooper.
“Look at the vets, where she said the vets are being treated essentially just fine, that its over-exaggerated, what’s happening to the vets not so long ago.”
“But how is she bigoted? Bigotry is having hatred towards a particular group,” Cooper questioned, trying to get Trump back on-topic.
“Because she is selling them down the tubes, because she’s not doing anything for those communities. She talks a good game. But she doesn’t do anything,” Trump dug in.
“So you’re saying she has hatred or dislike of black people?” Cooper pushed.
“Her policies are bigoted because she knows they’re not going to work,” Trump shot back.
It went on like that for a while – Cooper repeating the definition of “bigot,” and Trump happily repeating his talking points.
“But you’re saying she’s personally bigoted?” Cooper asked.
“Oh she is. Of course she is. Her policies,” Trump responded. “She’s totally bigoted there’s no question about that.”
“But it does imply that she has antipathy that she has hatred toward, I guess in this case you’re talking about African Americans,” Cooper began.
“She has been extremely extremely bad for African Americans,” Trump interrupted. “I think she has been extremely bad for Hispanics…Look at the rise in poverty. Look at the rise in violence.”
“But hatred is at the core of that or dislike of African Americans?”
“Or maybe she’s lazy,” Trump suggested.
It’s Trump’s first non-FNC interview since late July, when the GOP nominee sat down with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos to respond to father of a Muslim soldier killed in Iraq. Khizr Khan, speaking at the DNC, said Trump has “sacrificed nothing” for his country. Trump’s sit-down with ABC did not go well for the candidate, who claimed he had sacrificed for his country by employing thousands of people, and suggested that the Khan’s wife, Ghazala Khan, had not spoken at the convention, rather standing silently by her husband’s side, because she was forbidden to as a Muslim.
In the walk-up to tonight’s CNN interview with Trump, some GOP candidates Trump had easily dispatched during primary season noted his new platform sounds suspiciously like theirs, which Trump had derided during debates.
“Well, I can only say that whatever his views are this morning, they might change this afternoon, and they were different than they were last night, and they’ll be different tomorrow,” Jeb Bush told WABC Radio’s Rita Cosby this morning.
And Ted Cruz’s former communications director, Amanda Carpenter told CNN this morning, “In the most polite way possible, we really really told you this was going to happen, everybody.”
“The idea you were going to have deportation forces go around the country, haul people out of their homes and send them back to Mexico was never feasible, and we never thought he would follow through with something like that,” she added. Trump’s new position on immigration is in such marked contrast to his primary posturing, “we have no idea what he really means or thinks and that’s been the whole problem through” the election cycle, she said.
Here is the second part of Cooper’s interview with Trump:
