Donald Trump has a target on his back with a lot of people aiming at it since he became a candidate for US president.
A very calm, businesslike Trump can be seen in a video testifying under oath in connection to a lawsuit about controversial remarks he made about illegal immigrants crossing the southern border.
“When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best… They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us,” the GOP presidential nominee said in June 2015. “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”
Trump gave the deposition at a Washington law office in June as part of two lawsuits the real estate tycoon filed after tenants planning to open restaurants at Trump’s new D.C. hotel terminated the lease, Politico reported.
The tenants, celebrity chefs Geoffrey Zakarian and Jose Andres, cited Trump’s remarks in their decision to back out on the planned restaurants. Trump countered that the chefs were “grandstanding” in an effort to be “politically correct.”
The candidate acknowledged that his remarks were off the cuff and that he did not give a lot of thought to how polarizing they may be. He stressed that he was referring to illegal immigrants and stood by the comment.
“I am running for office. I obviously have credibility because I now, as it turns out, became the Republican nominee,” Trump said in the deposition. “So it’s not like I’ve said anything that could be so bad because if I said something that was so bad they wouldn’t have had me go through all these people and win all of these primary races.”
He also was quick to slam the media for taking his remarks out of context.
“I think the media is very dishonest,” Trump said. “But all I’m doing is bringing up a situation which is very real, about illegal immigration. And I think, you know, most people think I’m right.”
Two weeks after the controversial comment, he appeared on Fox News’ “The O’Reilly Factor” to explain his reference to “rapists.”
“In terms of rape – this is an amazing statistic – 80 percent of Central American women and girls are raped crossing into the U.S.,” Trump said.
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The longest-tenured writer at BizPac Review, Tom grew up in Maryland before moving to Central Florida as a young teen. It is in the Sunshine State that he honed both his passion for politics and his writing skills.
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