Trump: it's not political, it's business

Donald Trump may or may not run for president, and he may or may not be electable, but I sure enjoyed many of his scripted remarks and off-script asides at last week's Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington, D.C. The government is not a business, but who better than Donald Trump to bring a battle-tested, commonsense approach to running the largest enterprise in the world?

America today is missing quality leadership, and foreign countries have quickly realized this. It is for this reason that the United States is becoming the laughing stock of the world. Whether we like it or don’t like it, that’s what’s happening. I deal with people from China, I deal with people from Mexico; they cannot believe what they are getting away with.

I have said on numerous occasions that countries like China, like India, South Korea, Mexico, and the OPEC nations view our leaders as weak and ineffective and have repeatedly taken advantage of them to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars a year. When they talk about raising your taxes, I think: raise the taxes on some of these countries that are taking advantage of the United States.

I’ve said on numerous occasions that we should watch China, and OPEC, because -- by the way, worse than China, worse than everyone: OPEC; they are truly ripping us...Coming over here today one of the people in the car said, “Oh my gosh, look at that, four dollars and fifty-four cents a gallon for gas.” It’s going to go much higher, folks, get used to it, because we have nobody that calls up OPEC -- and they’re only there because of us; we protect them! -- and says, “That price better get lower, and it better get lower fast.”

I can tell you this: if I run, and if I win, this country will be respected again...Just very briefly, I am pro-life, I am against gun control, and I will fight to end Obamacare and replace it with something that makes sense for people in business and not bankrupt the country. If I decide to run, I will not be raising taxes. We’ll be taking in hundreds of millions of dollars from other countries that are screwing us. We’ll be creating vast numbers of productive jobs, and we’ll rebuild our country so that we can be proud. Our country will be great again.