Chris Wallace To Trump: Is It Fair To Say Hillary Clinton Is The Hawk In This Race, And You Are The Dove?

GOP front-runner Donald Trump joins Chris Wallace for an exclusive interview to discuss his strategy to get to 1,237 delegates before the RNC Convention in Cleveland this summer, his major foreign policy address last week, and more.





WALLACE: All right. Let's talk about your big foreign policy speech this week, which I think it's fair to say got mixed reviews. One of the concerns, the biggest criticism is that there were contradictions. For instance, in how you would handle the Middle East. Here you are.



TRUMP: We're getting out of the nation-building business and instead focusing on creating stability in the world.



WALLACE: The question is if we're going to disengage from that part of the world, how do we promote stability? You talk about in your speech the futility of creating democracies. Do you -- would you like to see a return to strongmen in the Middle East, people like Mubarak and Saddam Hussein?



TRUMP: Isn't it true that we knocked them out in the first place? OK.



You know, if our presidents went to the beach for 365 days a year, we'd be a lot better in the Middle East than we are now. Now, you have a mess. You have a big fat mess and I called that a long time ago, in '04 and '03, I said, don't knock out -- when you knock out Iraq, you are just -- you’re going to ruin the balance, and the balance has been horrible.



Then you had Libya and Syria and everything. I mean, they couldn't have been worse. The people that advised our presidents or our presidents, whoever was the one that came up with this plan -- I mean, what we've done in the Middle East, we've spent $4 trillion and we're far worse than the first gunshot that was fired.



And what we’ve got to do is we've got to knock off ISIS and we've got to at some point get out of there, because we have to rebuild our country. Our country is becoming third world, our airports, our roadways, our train systems. You go to China and you go to other places, they have trains that travel 300 miles an hour. We have the Long Island railroad that can hardly -- it can hardly move. I mean, we are like a third world country.



But we have to get rid of ISIS and we have to get rid of them very decisively.



WALLACE: Let me --



TRUMP: And I’ve been saying for a long time, keep the oil. ISIS now has Libyan oil. You know, it’s among the finest oils in the world. ISIS now has the Libyan oil. We don't even do anything to --



WALLACE: Mr. Trump --



TRUMP: We don’t even do anything to stop it. They're making a fortune with Libyan oil.



WALLACE: Let me pick on this --



TRUMP: And if we would have left Gadhafi, you wouldn't have that.



Look, every move we made in the Middle East was wrong. And a lot of times, they want me to get these great foreign advisors and these great geniuses and they've been involved for 15 years. I don't want the people that have been involved for 15 years because those are the people that have absolutely -- what they've done to this country and our country and on top of it we owe $19 trillion in debt.



WALLACE: But let me pick up on this because when you talk about, you know, we need to stop spending money overseas and spend it at home, that sounds more like a liberal Democrat.



And the question I have is, you talk about the mess -- your words -- that Bush and Obama and Clinton have made in the Middle East, interventions in Iraq and Libya. It almost sounds like you would be -- as a general election candidate, you would be criticizing Hillary Clinton from the left, that we should be less intervening in the rest of the world.



TRUMP: I want to rebuild our country. I want to rebuild our military, make it bigger, better, stronger than ever before. I want to take care of our vets.



We have to handle education. We have to get rid of Obamacare. You know, our education system is a disaster and we've got to get rid of Common Core which is absolutely no good.



WALLACE: So, would it be fair to say that Hillary Clinton would be the hawk in this race?



TRUMP: But, Chris, we have so many things to do with our country, we can't have this anymore. We are spending all of our money in the Middle East. We’re spending numbers that are crazy.



WALLACE: So, Mr. Trump --



TRUMP: And on top of that, we're defending the world. We’re the policeman to the world.



WALLACE: Would it be fair to say --



TRUMP: And this country can't afford to do it.



WALLACE: Would it be fair to say that Hillary Clinton will be the hawk in this race, and you’ll be the dove?



TRUMP: No, I’ll tell you what? I’ll be much tougher than her, I will have much more respect than her from foreign countries. In fact, I read today where they're very concerned with me, they feel I’m very strong, very tough and they're very concerned.



So, that's a little opposite of what you're telling me. That's a psychological thing which frankly is good. Let them be a little concerned.



Look, we're defending Germany, we’re defending Japan, South Korea, we’re defending Saudi Arabia with all of that money and we’re not getting properly reimbursed.



We don’t have any more and we’re defending -- we're like the policeman to the world. What's going on is crazy.



We’re going to strength on our military big league -- by the way, it's the cheapest money you can spend -- and we've got it pulled back because that is just a big mess. That's a revolution, that's a civil war, that's a religious war going over there. We're in the middle of it.