Presidential candidate Donald Trump touched on a wide range of issues in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday, including his continued support for traditional marriage, immigration issues with Mexico and his desire to bring outsourced jobs back to the U.S.
Trump, whose comments on undocumented immigrants from Mexico led to Univision deciding not to air the Miss Universe pageant, doubled down on his plan to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border. Trump has since said he intends to sue Univision.
“I like Mexico. I love the Mexican people. I do business with the Mexican people, but you have people coming through the border that are from all over. And they’re bad. They’re really bad,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper.
“You have people coming in, and I’m not just saying Mexicans, I’m talking about people that are from all over that are killers and rapists and they’re coming into this country,” he maintained.
The real estate mogul revisited his socially conservative views on abortion and marriage with awareness that they are difficult for many to understand given his personal history.
“I’m (for) traditional marriage,” he said.
When asked how Trump reconciles the notion of “traditional marriage” with his personal history of being married three times and divorced twice, Trump conceded the point.
“I have a good wife now,” Trump said. “My (first) two wives were very good. And I don’t blame them, but I was working … 22 hours a day.”
Trump, who in his presidential announcement said he’d be the “best jobs president that God ever created,” emphasized the need to get more Americans back to work.
“You have to bring in jobs, you have to take the jobs back from China, you have to take the jobs back from Mexico,” he said.
But he argued that producing his own brand’s clothing in China doesn’t make him hypocritical on outsourcing.
“They’ve manipulated their currency to such a point that it’s impossible for our companies to compete with them,” he said. “It’s very, very hard to have anything in apparel made in this country.”
Trump shared his plan to bomb the oil fields of Iraq to end ISIS’s funding source, and his lack of respect for the Iraqi government in part because of their relationship with Iran.
“I don’t care about the government of Iraq. They’re corrupt. The government of Iraq is totally corrupt,” he said.
But Trump maintains he’s a serious candidate.
“It’s something that I’ve looked at over the years, I looked at it very seriously, as you know, four years ago,” he said.
Trump has surprised some by polling second behind former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush in the most recent CNN poll of New Hampshire residents, home of the nation’s first primary.
