It seems President Barack Obama has failed to win the confidence of one prominent pop culture and media figure.
Donald Trump, the real estate tycoon and reality show star, offered Fox Business Network viewers on December 13 his views on the current political climate. He made it clear he didn’t want to see taxes go up under any circumstances in this economy.
“[I] must tell you that I really think that taxes should remain as low as possible,” said Trump, who has said he is considering a 2012 presidential run. “We have a very, very weak economy and raising taxes at this point would be very bad, I think.”
Trump’s criticism of Obama comes less than a week after he praised former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin on “Extra.”
“I like Sarah Palin. I respect Sarah Palin,” Trump said last Wednesday on the entertainment news show.
Prior to taking on Obama on the Fox Business Network Monday, Trump made it clear he wasn’t a fan of former President George W. Bush because of his decision to invade Iraq.
“[Bush] certainly wasn’t a very good president and he got us into a war that we shouldn’t have been in and frankly he attacked the wrong country,” Trump said. “I’m probably more of a hawk than he was, but he attacked a thing called the wrong country.”
But as for Obama – he accused him of being in over his head.
“Obviously the present occupant of the White House is not doing a very good job,” Trump continued. “It just seems he is totally over his head.”
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Part of that criticism stems from the divisiveness Trump suggested pervades Washington, D.C.
“Well I never seen the kind of infighting between Republicans and Democrats as I’m seeing right now,” Trump said. “The level of hatred — is no country spirit.”
He didn’t blame Obama for the “infighting,” but suggested a better president would bring people together.
“Perhaps the right guy would bring everybody together,” he said
Trump suggested Obama was trying harder in the post-midterm political environment to get people to get a long, but said he was disappointed in the direction of trade policy, specifically with OPEC and China.
“Maybe he is trying right now,” Trump said. “I think he is trying right now harder than he tried over past couple years. Certainly the country is doing very poorly. We’re just being absolutely whipped by China, absolutely whipped by OPEC. OPEC is having so much fun — they’re 12 guys sitting around the table and they are just having so much fun with us, because we have leaders that obviously aren’t doing the job. I mean they’re laughing at us and laughing behind our back. China is making all of our products. Everything, everything is just being made in China. We’re rebuilding China at our expense. And you know – how do you get the job numbers down when our jobs are all in China and other countries?”
His solution? An all-out trade war with the Chinese.
“One thing I would do I would tax Chinese products and I tax them very high,” Trump said. “What’s a trade war? There are so many billions and billions of dollars a month up on us. You dream of a trade war. You don’t want to do business with them. They are manipulating their currency. They’re playing an unfair game. I would tax their product and maybe all of sudden products coming all of sudden would make toys in Alabama, North Carolina, South Carolina, all over the place. I would do very, very strong numbers on China. They are manipulating their currency. We are rebuilding China. We, this country, we are rebuilding China with a kind of money they’re making off us because we don’t have the right people negotiating for us.”