Former Texas Gov. Rick Perry denied Wednesday that his presidential campaign is in trouble, despite his low poll numbers and the news that he has been making cuts in staff in the early voting state of Iowa.
"We'll continue to go to Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina," the GOP candidate told
Fox News' "America's Newsroom" program. "That's where the election will get decided."
Perry said in 2007, former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani was a "celebrity-rich candidate who led the polls for a year, until Florida came around."
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But the election is about "staying focused and disciplined, talking about the issues, talking about the record, not rhetoric," said Perry. "That's what Americans will be looking for, a record of leading and doing it in a successful way. Not rhetoric."
During a conference call on Monday with Perry's campaign aides, two officials said the workers were informed that a reorganization was underway and would finish by early next week or even late this week, reports
Politico, in a story that proclaimed that Perry's campaign is on "death watch."
Perry, though, said he has faith that the American voting public will recognized his experience and his fortunes will turn around.
"Nobody has dealt with it more than I have the last 14 years," said Perry. "I was the governor of the 12th-largest economy in the world with a 1,200-mile border."
Further, he refuted Donald Trump's slams on him when it comes to the nation's border, saying that "the idea that a candidate for the presidency would think it's a state's responsibility to secure the border is bizarre to me. That's the federal government's responsibility."
Trump's call to build a wall is "not reality," he said, and "governors have to deal with reality."
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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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