In response to CNN debate moderator Wolf Blitzer’s opening question about national security that put forward the premise that he was an isolationist, GOP frontrunner Donald Trump responded, “We are not talking about isolation – we’re talking about security. We are not talking about religion – we’re talking about security.”

Blitzer asked Trump:

Part of your strategy is to focus in on America’s borders. To keep the country safe, you say you want to temporarily ban non-American Muslims from coming to the U.S., ban refugees fleeing ISIS from coming here, deport 11 million people, and wall off America’s southern border. Is the best way to make America great again to isolate it from much of the rest of the world?

Trump’s answer:

Our country is out of control. People are pouring across the southern border. I will build a wall – it will be a great wall. People will not come in unless they come in legally. Drugs will not pour through that wall. As far as other people – like in the migration – where they’re going tens of thousands of people having cell phones with ISIS flags on them – I don’t think so, Wolf, they’re not coming to this country, and if I’m president, and if Obama has brought some to this country, they are leaving – they’re going. They’re gone.

Trump said about President Obama in his opening statement in this debate on national security that he “would never have made that horrible, disgusting, absolutely incompetent deal with Iran where they get $150 billion dollars – they’re a terrorist nation!”

“I began this journey six months ago,” Trump continued. “My total focus was on building up our military, building up our strength, building up our borders, making sure that China, Japan, Mexico – both at the border and in trade – no longer take advantage of our country.”

“I began it by talking about other things, and those things are things I’m very good at – maybe that’s why I’m center-stage,” he added. “People saw it, people liked it, people respected it. A month ago things changed. Radical Islamic terrorism came into effect more so than it has been in the past. People like what I say, people respect what I say. And we’ve opened up a very big discussion that needed to be opened up.”