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Over the last week, in two interviews with The New York Times – one before his remarks about Senator John McCain’s time as a prisoner of war and one after – Donald J. Trump laid out his approach to the 2016 presidential campaign.

Much of what Mr. Trump, a Republican presidential candidate, described about his view of the race and his candidacy involves the word “huge” – huge crowds, huge poll numbers, a huge message and a huge business acumen and brand that fuels his approach.

The following are some of the unfiltered thoughts of Mr. Trump about policy, campaigning and his opponents:

On his initial comments about illegal immigration: “For one week nobody mentioned anything. I have now been apologized to by so many people. I have brought illegal immigration to the forefront. You have the jail break and all this stuff happened.”

On criticisms from his rivals: “The candidates who I’m creaming in the polls” have stirred up outrage, citing former Gov. Rick Perry of Texas and others. “You get guys like Perry, he’s not registering, Bobby Jindal was very vehement – oh, bah bah. I think he’s at zero.” George Pataki hitting him on immigration: “You know what that got him? Nothing.”

On NBC severing ties with him: “They were begging me to do the show. That’s why NBC’s angry at me. They’re angry at me because of that. So NBC’s angry at me because I ran for president.”

On hiring pollsters: “I don’t want a pollster. Because if a pollster’s so good, why aren’t they running? I don’t need a pollster, I don’t want a pollster.”

On Mr. McCain: “When I was in Phoenix last week, it was so crowded they had to turn thousands of people away and he called them crazies, and I was very offended he called them crazies.”

On Mr. McCain’s military service: “I said, hey, what about the people that weren’t captured? And the truth is, nobody talks about them. What about the people that weren’t captured? Nobody talks about him.”

On apologizing: “I always believe in apologizing if you’ve done something wrong but if you read my statement you’ll see I said nothing wrong. And I got the biggest ovation.”

On the virtues of spontaneous speaking: “Speeches are much easier if you read them. I just find when I do that, it’s harder to fire up the crowd. I find that when I don’t have eye contact with the crowd it’s not as good. You can’t make as good a speech when you are reading it as when you don’t have to.”

On the political press corps: “There’s great dishonesty in politics. I’ve always been covered by a press that’s mostly financial press.”

On his self-reliant approach: “I rely on myself very much,” he said. “I just think that you have an instinct and you go with it. Especially when it comes to deal-making and buying things.”

On the Republican pollster Frank Luntz: “He’s crazy,” he said about Mr. Luntz, who said Mr. Trump was booed after his remarks on Mr. McCain in Iowa. “He’s a promoter. I got no boos. At least he admits I got a standing ovation. You don’t get a standing ovation and get boos, by the way. They don’t go hand in hand.”