POLITICO screengrab Trump camp defends business ventures: Look at Disney, Ford

Donald Trump’s campaign on Tuesday dismissed Hillary Clinton’s criticisms of the real estate mogul’s business record, pointing to Walt Disney and Henry Ford as success stories with similar records.

Clinton forcefully attacked Trump’s business record in a speech on Tuesday, questioning the billionaire’s wealth, ridiculing his failed business ventures and accusing him of intentionally running up companies’ debt and then defaulting. But Trump’s campaign argued that Clinton’s remarks show how little the former secretary of state knows about businesses.


“Taking a couple of entities and comparing that to the 500-plus that Donald Trump has been very successful in just goes to show you that Hillary Clinton has no idea what this country is about,” Trump campaign spokeswoman Katrina Pierson told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer.

What America is about, Pierson said, is people having ideas, fighting for their dreams and building things.

“Hillary Clinton has built absolutely nothing in this country,” Pierson said. “It’s Donald Trump that has created tens of thousands of jobs over the last few decades. This is exactly why he’s winning on the economy.”

In her remarks at a rally in Columbus, Ohio, Clinton noted that Trump has filed for bankruptcy four times and even joked that all of the real estate mogul’s books seem to end at Chapter 11. (This particular zinger was not true: Trump's "Art of the Deal," for instance, has 14 chapters.)

Katrina Pierson compares Trump to Henry Ford and Walt Disney An excerpt of Katrina Pierson's interview on Tuesday.

Pierson, however, countered that entrepreneurial geniuses like Walt Disney and Henry Ford didn’t have a 100 percent success rate in their business ventures, either.

“It's actually not a long list when you are looking at all of the businesses that Mr. Trump has been in,” Pierson said of Trump’s failures. “Look at Walt Disney. He wasn’t successful in all of his adventures. Look at Henry Ford. These are successful business people who tried things, who are entrepreneurs.”

“To sit there and criticize one or two companies that did or didn't make it just goes to show how Hillary Clinton has no idea what it’s going to take to make America great again,” Pierson said.