Donald Trump Slams Radio Host After Fumbling Foreign Policy Questions
— -- Donald Trump’s support is running higher than ever, but a radio interview Thursday night may have tripped up his stride.
The Republican frontrunner lashed out against conservative radio show host Hugh Hewitt this morning after fumbling multiple questions on foreign policy on Thursday night.
The real estate mogul did not identify the leaders of key terrorist networks or differentiate between Iran’s Quds Forces and the U.S. supported Kurdish Forces.
“Are you familiar with General Soleimani?” Hewitt asked. “Yes, but go ahead, give me a little, go ahead, tell me,” Trump responded.
“He runs the Quds Forces,” Hewitt told Trump.
“Do you expect his behavior ...” Hewitt started. “The Kurds, by the way, have been horribly mistreated by ...” Trump said.
“No, not the Kurds, the Quds Forces, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Quds Forces,” Hewitt said back. “Do you expect his behavior to change as a result."
“Oh, I thought you said Kurds, Kurds,” Trump replied, mistaking elite fighters from Iran with an ethnic group in the Middle East.
Trump, who towards the end of the fumbled interview called Hewitt’s questions “gotcha questions,” called Hewitt a “third rate radio announcer” on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” Friday, and also claimed he misheard the questions.
“And you know, by the way, when you said Quds versus Kurds, I thought he said Kurds, this third-rate radio announcer that I did the show - it was like got you, got you -- every question was do I know this one and that one?” Trump said on “Morning Joe” Friday. “It was like he worked hard on that. But I thought he said Kurds.”
Trump promised Hewitt he would soon learn all the leaders of the various military and terror groups in the Middle East.
"If they're still there," he said, "I will know them better than I know you." Trump told Hewitt if he gets to the White House, “I will be so good at the military your head will spin."
Trump also said he will know the difference between Islamic militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah when it’s “appropriate,” adding that he will “know far more” about the issue “within 24 hours” of winning the White House.
Hewitt had former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina on his show shortly after he aired the pre-recorded interview with Trump, asking the same questions in an attempt to test whether the questions were unfair, as Trump suggested.
Fiorina, who says she had not heard the Trump interview, was able to identify prominent Middle East figures, and explain the difference between Hamas and Hezbollah.
Fiorina told Hewitt she did not think the questions were “gotcha questions.”
“I don’t think they’re gotcha questions at all,” Fiorina told Hewitt. “It is critically important that we have a leader in the White House who understands the world and who’s in it and how it works.”
Trump’s blunder comes less than three weeks after Trump was asked who he gets his military advice from, responding “I watch the shows” on NBC’s Meet the Press.
Hewitt will co-moderate the upcoming GOP debate with CNN's Jake Tapper.
