Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump on Wednesday revealed to the hosts of MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that his primary consultant on foreign policy issues was himself.
Co-host Mika Brzezinski asked Trump how he was acquiring the foreign policy know-how to be “ready on day one.”
“I’m speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain and I said a lot of things,” Trump replied.
“I know what I’m doing and I listen to a lot of people, I talk to a lot of people,” he continued. “And at the appropriate time, I’ll tell you who the people are. But my primary consultant is myself and I have a good instinct for this stuff.”
Trump has been dangling the promise of releasing the names of people on his foreign policy team since February. On Feb. 9, he said the list of advisors would be released “in about two weeks,” which he then revised to “about a week” on Feb. 17. Trump then said on March 3 that the list would come out “very shortly” before admitting on “Morning Joe” on March 8 that “there’s no team” yet.
Without a foreign policy team, the New York real estate mogul has offered up a handful of controversial proposals thus far in the race, promising to construct a massive new wall on the U.S.-Mexico border and insisting that the United States must “take out” the Islamic State terror group. These aggressive proposals contrast with Trump’s calls to shift resources towards rebuilding America’s infrastructure and his stated opposition to the War in Iraq.
During his MSNBC interview, he rejected Brzezinski’s suggestion that his foreign policy was “neo-isolationist,” reiterating that he would intervene in the Middle East as president.
“We have to take ISIS out,” Trump said. “They’re cutting heads. They’re drowning people in cages and they’re looking to do serious damage. I mean, if they ever had—you know, the problem you have today is weaponry. If we had you know, if this was 50 years ago or 100 years ago when you fought by gun and by sword, I would never—I would have been out of there so fast, but the problem is you can’t allow somebody to get the big weaponry.”
Trump declined to name a single expert he has spoken to about international affairs, but repeated that he would “consult the best people.”
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