Real estate magnate Donald Trump lamented that Republicans get meaner to their own as they get more conservative.
Trump opened Friday’s session of the Conservative Political Action Conference in National Harbor, Md., introduced by a former “Apprentice” candidate he’d fired.
“Especially as you get more and more conservative, they get nasty,” Trump said. “…The president is sadly given unprecedented media protection. With Republicans, especially as you get more and more conservative in your thinking and your thought it’s the exact opposite.”
Pointing out how the GOP is losing in the polls on entitlement reform and other issues, “we have to get the momentum back, we have to get it back quickly.”
Success for the party, Trump asserted, is building “a great economy.”
“We don’t have a great economy right now,” he said. “We have to make America strong again and make America great again.”
Trump threw out multiple, random thoughts about everything from Hamid Karzai and taking Iraq’s oil wealth to pay ourselves back for the war to musing “why are we letting people in from Europe?” — punctuated with notations about his personal wealth and business projects.
When talking about energy production, he mentioned OPEC before adding “they’re all friends of mine — I know them all.”
Mitt Romney’s error, he maintained, was “he didn’t talk enough about his success, because honestly people want success.”
“They were on the defensive instead of taking the offensive,” Trump said. “Our country is a total and complete mess and what we need is leadership.”
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