In a MSNBC town hall meeting in South Carolina, moderated by “Morning Joe” hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough, Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump said getting a peace deal going between Israel and the Palestinians would be “very, very tough.” Trump said an Israeli source had told him that “the other side has been trained from the time they’re children to hate Jewish people,” which would make reaching an agreement quite a challenge. “You have one side in particular growing up and learning that [the Jews] are the worst people,” Trump said.
Trump added in a more hopeful note, “I would say if you can do that deal you can do any deal. That’s probably the toughest deal in the world right now to make and it’s possible, it’s not makeable.”
At some point, Brzezinski (whose father served as Jimmy Carter’s adviser) asked Trump to consider a political outsider who is tapping into voter anger, delivering a populist message and drawing raucous thousands to rallies, wants the hedge fund managers to pay more taxes and argues that there should be healthcare for everyone. — “Who am I describing?” she asked.
“You’re describing Donald Trump,” Trump answered without hesitation, only to be rebuffed by the host who told him, “Actually, I was describing Bernie Sanders. Is it insulting? Because there are some similarities.”
“I’ll tell you, there’s one thing that we’re very similar in,” Trump recovered quickly. “He knows that our country is being ripped off big league, big league, on trade. The problem is, he can’t do anything about it, he’s not going to be able to do, whereas I’m going to do things … He doesn’t understand it.”
As of Wednesday, Donald Trump is leading the second place Republican hopeful Ted Cruz by a wide berth in North Carolina and Nevada, and in all the national polls save one. A USA Today/Suffolk poll shows him beating Hillary Clinton by 2 points, but the same poll shows Bernie Sanders beating Trump by 2 as well.