Carly Fiorina has never held political office before, but says she's no neophyte when it comes to politics.
The former Hewlett-Packard CEO has run for office only once before: a loss to longtime incumbent California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer. But she said Sunday on
"Meet the Press" that she has advised other campaigns including Mitt Romney in 2012 and "helped a lot of others win."
She also pointed to policy work and working as an adviser to a secretaries of defense, heads of the CIA and NSA and secretaries of state and Homeland Security.
"I'm not a neophyte, but I do come to this run with some qualifications others don't have," she said. "I understand how the economy works. I understand how the world works. I know more world leaders on the stage than anyone running with the possible exception of Hillary Clinton."
Fiorina also pointed to her executive experience, "which is making a tough call in a tough time for which you are prepared to be held accountable."
One critic has made an issue of her time at H-P, where she laid of 30,000 employees following a merger, by buying the website carlyfiorina.org and filling it with 30,000 frowning emoticons.
Fiorina said it was tough to lay people off, but with the entire tech industry in trouble at the time, she was actually able to save some jobs rather than shut down completely as others did.
Critics fail to mention that she doubled the size of the company and its growth rate from 2 percent to 9 percent, she said. "We tripled the rate of innovation to 11 patents a day and went from lagging behind to leading in every product category. We grew jobs here in the U.S. and all over the world. You can't just leave those facts out."
Fiorina said she hasn't changed her position on free trade from 2004, when she said America can't build walls around itself. Still, she said she disagrees with Republicans in Congress who want to give President Barack Obama so-called "fast-track authority" on the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
Her opposition, Fiorina explained, comes from her lack of trust that the administration will not add China to the deal within two years.
"This administration, unfortunately, has a track record of burying things in fine print, whether it's the Iran nuclear deal or Obamacare," she said. "Or maybe this agreement turns out to be very different from their selling points."
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