Americans are "fed up with the politics of division," former New York Gov. George Pataki said Thursday, and someone like Donald Trump, who has never held public office and who has "diminished an entire ethnic group" should not become president of the United States.
"I think ultimately Americans are going to want someone who brings us together," the three-term governor and current GOP presidential candidate told
MSNBC's "Morning Joe" program. "We have a president today who has deliberately divide us to gain political advantage. We have a candidate in Hillary Clinton who is going to say we're anti-woman or anti-black or anti-immigrant or anti-the middle class. We want to bring people together."
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And while initially Pataki commented that he doesn't think someone who has not held political office should become president, he modified those words, some, saying that he thinks it's "extremely unlikely" that someone will be elected who has not held public office.
But Pataki said of the Trump effect on the primary that he plans to "continue to make the case to the American people, that I have the ability to win this race if I'm nominated."
Pataki also stood firm on his stance against the Iranian nuclear program, saying that the country can't be allowed to have a nuclear weapon, period.
"If the only way to do that was military action whether it was by Israelis or others, I would not stand in the way of that happening," said Pataki.
He noted that in Nazi Germany people didn't believe Hitler when he said he would destroy the Jews, and "now you have Iran, saying we're going to destroy Israel. We're going to burn it to a crisp. And we're in the process of giving them a path to a nuclear weapon."
Pataki commented that "we can never forget that lesson of the Holocaust," and he will not forget the lessons of the Sept. 11 attacks.
"Whatever it takes to prevent Israel, [keep] Iran from having a nuclear weapon, I will support that action," he promised.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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