Billionaire Donald Trump says his business background sets him apart from a growing field of presidential hopefuls, telling
the Daily Mail Online, "I create jobs. They don't create jobs. They're politicians."
"I can make the country great again, and they can't," Trump said last weekend in New Hampshire at a packed political forum where Republican hopefuls met with voters and took turns criticizing Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton.
Trump flirted with running in 2011 but never officially joined the 2012 race.
This time, the luxury property developer and reality TV show star has
turned down another season of "Celebrity Apprentice" and formed an exploratory committee, hiring staff in the early presidential battleground states of Iowa and New Hampshire.
He also said his business operations would be fine with his adult
children at the helm if he stepped away from doing real estate mega-deals to run for president.
Sizing up likely opponents in a 2016 GOP primary, Trump immediately wrote off the party's early prohibitive favorite, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush, saying that a third Bush administration is "the last thing that we need."
He said he would make a better president than another Floridian, Sen. Marco Rubio, because Rubio has no business experience — "He's never created a job" — and is "weak on immigration and borders."
Trump also questioned the political strategy of the Democratic front-runner, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who tooled across the Midwest in a van last week, popping into a restaurant along the way, as part of her reintroduction to the "everyday Americans" she is promising to represent.
"I don't think she can continue to do the kind of campaigning that she started doing," said Trump.
He said he'd never go the man-in-a-van route in an attempt to connect with ordinary voters.
"It's not me, and people wouldn't expect it to be," he said. "I think it looks foolish — for me to do that would look foolish."
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