Donald Trump appeared in the video above discussing why he is bowing out of the Newsmax sponsored GOP debate on November 27:
“A terrible thing is happening. People can’t stand the Democrats and they can’t stand the Republicans,” says Trump in the video he released above this afternoon.
Trump continues explaining that he cancelled the debate because of the Federal Communication Commison’s equal time provisions.
“Now I have a debate coming up but only two people are showing up—Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich and I give them both a lot of credit, because they had the guts to come. But a lot of them aren’t coming, because they think I’m going to run for political office—something I can’t do now because of ‘equal time.’”
Mr. Trump talks about how “unfair it is that “Obama can go on all these shows and fly around on Airforce One and [he] can’t, because [he] happens to have this show called, ‘The Apprentice’ on television.” Mr. trump adds, “It could have been an interesting chat with Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum.”
The final kicker comes when Mr. Trump says he has no intention of abandoning the possibility of running as an independent.
“They (Republicans) want me to announce that I won’t announce as an independent candidate and I won’t do that, because if the Republicans pick the wrong person, I would, in fact, seriously consider running. In fact I already had my financial disclosure form made. I printed it in my book,” Trump says.
“If the wrong person is in there, that’s not going to beat Obama, or if the economy continues to be bad and we have the wrong person, I would seriously think about running.”
It appears Mr. Trump has given himself a deadline as to whether or not he will run by May or June of 2012. That deadline will be well past the time the season for his NBC show “The Apprentice” would be over.
“But around the middle of May, I’ll be able to do whatever I want, and I could run as an independent. The Republican Party does not want me running as an independent. So they made this debate pretty impossible,” he says.
Trump adds, “I don’t want to waste a lot of Newt’s time or Rick Santorum’s time or Donald Trump’s time. So I won’t give up the possibility of come around June running as an independent candidate. I just don’t think its fair to myself, the country, the millions of people that are following what I say, because they are tired of having this country ripped off by China, by OPEC, by South Korea, by Mexico, by every single country there is.”
“I want to thank Rick Santorum. I want to thank Newt Gingrich. You had guts. You had courage. There was never a doubt in your mind about coming to the debate.”
