Donald Trump is comparing himself to another candidate considered by many to be on the outside of mainstream politics: Bernie Sanders.
"I think there's one aspect that's amazing, trade," Trump told
MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program Monday. "I was watching him and he talked about trade and how we're getting ripped off left and right on trade. I think I can take that paragraph and use it in my speech, [because it] is what I'm saying. It's one of my big things; we're getting killed by China."
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Sanders and Trump have another similarity — the ability to draw huge crowds. Saturday night, more than
15,000 people turned out to hear Sanders speak at a rally at the Alaska Airlines Arena in Seattle, marking his largest crowd to date and the largest gathering of any candidate, Democrat or Republican, so far.
The crowd came out after an earlier scheduled appearance was interrupted, and then canceled, when Black Lives Matter protesters took the stage and refused to let his rally continue.
Thousands have come out to hear Trump as well, but not at the same rate as for Sanders, the independent Vermont senator whose name was largely unknown around the country until he decided to mount a campaign for the Democratic nomination against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
On Monday, Trump also said there are differences between Sanders and himself.
"I negotiated," Trump said. "I will make great deals. He can't do that. He's incapable of doing that."
And while Sanders knows what the problems are with the nation's approach to trade, "he's not going to be able to do anything about it. He knows the problem at least."
Trump also said that like himself, Sanders "struck a nerve" among the "other side, and I struck an even bigger nerve on the Republican side and conservative side ... the response I've had is amazing. I guess they just announced a new poll that my numbers actually went up. That's good."