Billionaire real estate developer Donald Trump granted his first post-presidential announcement interview to
Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly, where he bashed his competitors and said he could work with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
"Well I don’t have a lot of respect for many of them, but yes I do a couple," Trump said of his rivals in both the Republican and Democratic parties. "But I will tell you I’ve been dealing with politicians all my life. They are all talk, no action."
Mediaite, which obtained advance excerpts of the interview airing at 8 p.m. EDT, reported that Trump was an equal opportunity critic.
"I’m not a big fan of Jeb Bush. The last thing we need is another Bush," he said.
As for Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton's talk on income inequality, Trump said, "That can be beaten. That can be beaten. All you have to do is take a look at her donor list."
Putin, Trump said, "has no respect for our president whatsoever. He’s got a tremendous popularity in Russia, they love what he’s doing, they love what he represents. I was over in Moscow two years ago and I will tell you — you can get along with those people and get along with them well. You can make deals with those people. Obama can’t."
Trump said he's willing to bet he would have a "great relationship with Putin."
Trump has hinted in the past
he has a secret plan that could defeat the Islamic State (ISIS.) He told O'Reilly, "I say that you can defeat ISIS by taking their wealth. Take back the oil. Once you go over and take back that oil they have nothing. You bomb the hell out of them and then you encircle it, and then you go in. And you let Mobil go in, and you let our great oil companies go in. Once you take that oil they have nothing left."
Militarily, he said he would find a good general like Patton or MacArthur and " I would hit them so hard your head would spin. There’s nobody bigger or better at the military than I am."
In a clip played on Fox News Channel, O'Reilly told Trump, "I actually laughed when you said you're going to build this giant wall from San Diego to Brownsville, and the Mexicans are going to pay for it. The Mexicans aren't going to pay for the wall."
"You have to let me handle that, OK?" Trump insisted. "I'll start charging for their product coming into this country. Mexico is living off the United States."
"So you try to strangle them economically unless they pay for the wall?" O'Reilly said.
"They will pay for the wall, and the wall will go up. And Mexico will start behaving," Trump said.
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