Donald Trump reveals just how seriously he was considering running for president months before officially launching his 2016 campaign.
During a conversation with Sean Hannity at CPAC 2015, Trump is asked to rate his likelihood of entering the presidential race on a scale from one to 100. His answer: “75 and 80.” Trump explains why he was considering leaving his business career behind and discusses his “Make America Great Again” message, American manufacturing, China, Mexico, jobs, and the economy.
CPAC hosts incredible guests and speakers including Ben Shapiro, Michael Knowles of the Daily Wire, the late Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA, Steve Bannon of War Room, Donald Trump Jr., Vivek Ramaswamy, Glenn Beck, Mark Levin, Dan Bongino, and many more leading voices in conservative media and politics.
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Video Summary
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Donald Trump discusses his concerns regarding the U.S. national debt, the loss of manufacturing jobs to countries like China and Mexico, and his strong inclination to run for president. He emphasizes the need for competent leadership to restore American greatness and revitalize the economy.
We're at $18 trillion in debt.
We're very soon going to be a lot more than that.
And we're going to reach $24 trillion.
When we do that, that's a sacred number,
because that's a number from which there's almost no recovery.
So we better get going, and we better get going fast.
I just want to leave this with you.
To be a winner, you have to think like a winner.
Our country hasn't been thinking like a winner.
We're totally on the defense.
We're being laughed at all over the world for our stupidity.
We're giving things away.
ISIS, you know where they have their military?
They take it from, we leave it for Iraq,
and ISIS comes in and takes it.
I see these trucks and these beautiful tanks.
They're all American tanks.
They have our, we have to use our head.
We need brilliant leadership.
We can make America great again.
There's tremendous potential in this country,
and my whole concept is make America great again.
We can do it.
Thank you.
Here I am
Give it up for Mr. Donald Trump.
You all doing okay?
Thank you.
They have chairs or you want to stand?
We'll stand.
Let's stand.
He likes to stand.
Okay, first question.
By the way, it's great to see you.
Nice to see you.
Don't read into this.
This is a Donald Trump tie.
Do not take that as an indication that I'm committed.
I still haven't made up my mind yet, Mr. Trump.
They do very well.
Macy's, that's right.
I'm going to get fired here in a minute.
All right, you know what?
The first question many of my friends ask,
okay, you've kind of flirted with running before.
Last time, primarily.
Yeah, a little bit.
And I thought Romney could do it, and he let us down.
I did.
I love what I'm doing.
I mean, look, I love building.
I'm building all over the world.
I love it.
More than anything else, I love it.
But I love this country.
My children now have grown, Ivanka, Don, Eric.
They're very, very ensconced in the company.
I have great executives.
I can now let them run things, and I have no problem.
But, you know, when you're building,
it's very hard for a person like me to run
because I have a lot of things happening.
A politician, they run.
What do they do?
They run, they run, they lose, they win, they run.
With me, I give up a lot when I do this.
I already told the Apprentice people, you know, NBC wanted to renew,
and I said, I'm doing something else.
It's very important to me. I'm doing something very important.
So I'm looking at it very seriously.
I don't want what happened to Mitt Romney to happen again
because that was a tremendous blow for this country.
Okay. If I had to ask you on a scale of 1 to 100,
where are you on this scale in terms
of where you think you are in deciding to run?
1 to 100, I would say 75 and 80.
I am really inclined. I want to do it so badly.
You know, I have the theme. It's my theme. It's
make America great again. That's what I want to do.
We can do that in this country if we had
people that know what they're doing,
if we had people that are competent. All right. Let's talk
about, I just had an opportunity to speak to this great crowd,
and I talked about the economic
problems we have. You're known for being a businessman.
Correct. 50 million Americans
in poverty, 50 million, close to it,
50 million Americans on food stamps, 92 million Americans
not working. We don't count them, but they're not working.
As I said, right. We don't count them. I
mean, we have, they say 5.3 and 5.6%.
I think it's over 20% during the speech. I said, how do we get
them? How would Donald Trump as president get
these people back to work? You have to take the
jobs back from China. You have to take the jobs back from Mexico.
Mexico, in Iowa, companies are
leaving from Mexico. You have to take,
they give an incentive to leave our country and go to places
like Mexico. And by the way, Mexico is the next China.
Mexico, folks, is not our friend. I hate
to tell you this, but Mexico,
and I'm not just talking about the border. Mexico is ripping off
the United States big, big league, and we better do something.
But jobs going to China, to Mexico,
to Brazil. They're going everywhere but here.
And we've lost our manufacturing and we've lost
our manufacturing base.
