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Trump: I just finished watching the "Today" show and I thought that Meredith Viera and the "Today" show really gave me a very fair interview.  It very much states my opinion on things; I hope you can all watch it or you'll get it.  But it just aired.  I really thought they were fair.  Our country is in trouble; I explained that our country is in trouble and I a little bit explained how to get out of that trouble.  Frankly we can get out, we can be great again.  But the fairness of the interview was actually somewhat unusual.

Someone tweeted in this question.  What would I about creating more jobs and bringing the ones that we've lost back to the United States.  Well the first thing I'd do is start talking with other countries because they're taking our jobs, whether it's India, China, Mexico.  You look at what happened with NAFTA, it's a total disaster.  They've cleaned out New England.  New England has empty factories all over the place that used to be thriving.  So I'd make a lot of changes.  I would bring back jobs.  We would have jobs, jobs, jobs all over the place.  We would have so many jobs they'd be coming out of our ear.  They wouldn't be going to China, they wouldn't be going to India; they'd be right here in the United States.   

Another tweet is what was a hard lesson for me to learn in the business world.  Well there have been many hard lessons.  I mean you have to learn from failure; it's not always going to be perfect.

Hopefully they're not wars, they're just little skirmishes, because frankly you're always going to have some losses.  The big key from losses is you have to learn from your losses.  Don't let it happen again.  So don't lose the war, lose little battles at worst, but ideally just little skirmishes before you go on to victory.  But the hardest lessons to really learn for me—I hate defeat; I cannot stand defeat.  And every once in a while, if you do hundreds of things, you're going to have moments where things aren't going so well.  You have to just keep going forward, forget about it, learn from it, go forward, and don't ever, ever stop.

A lot of people ask me, what is a great book to read.

Being a little bit self-centered, I always say go out and get Donald J. Trump's The Art of the Deal.  It was the biggest selling business book, as I understand it, of all time.  It sold millions of copies; it's been an amazing book, and people still read it.  So I'd like you to go out, get The Art of the Deal.  I wrote it.  I think it's good; it expresses a lot of my attitudes, and you know business is funny.  If you were good twenty years ago, ten years ago or if you're good in twenty years from now, it never really is going to change that much.  The basic principles will always stay the same.

So many people are tweeting about what do I have for breakfast?  Now, sometimes I'll skip breakfast.  I actually like skipping breakfast because like everyone else, you always fight the weight.  You fight and fight and fight.  So sometimes I'll skip breakfast.  But usually when I have breakfast, I may be on that all protein where you have bacon and eggs.  I'm not sure if that's a good diet, but for me it works a little bit.  But I really love cereal.  I would love to have cereal.  The other thing I love, more than just about anything are waffles when they're done properly with butter and syrup.  There's nothing better than properly done waffles with butter and syrup all over them.

A few people, but not too many in this case, wrote that they were concerned about my statement that I'd take the Iraqi oil.  The fact is Iran is going to take over Iraq as soon as we leave.  Sure as you're sitting there Iran will take over Iraq.  And when they take over Iraq, they're taking over the second largest oil fields in the world.  And we will have made it easy for them to take over because we have de-nuded the Iraqi armies; we've just de-nuded their military so they can't defend themselves.  Plus, even worse, Iran is getting along very well with the people that are running Iraq.  So their might not even be a shot fired.  My attitude is this.  We've lost trillions of dollars, 1.5 trillion to be exact.  We've lost great, great men and women, soldiers; great, great people.  And we have wounded all over.  All over New York you see them, all over the country you see them, with no arms, no legs.  Horrible where they've just been—just horrible what's happened to them.  So these brave men and women will have suffered or died in vain, because we've de-nuded this country and now all of the sudden Iran, our enemy, goes in and takes over the oil.  So my attitude is, if Iran's going to take it over—and they will, 100-percent sure—we stay there and we take over the oil.  We won the war.  In the old days when you won the war, you stay in the country and you have it.  To the victor belong the spoils.  We take over the oil.  We take care of Iraq, we give them some of the profit(s?), some of the money.  We keep some of the money.  We paid Britain back.  We paid the people that have helped us back, the countries that have helped us back.  But we take over the oil.  Don't let it go to Iran.

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Notes: In this most extensive video from the desk of Donald Trump to date, the billionaire addresses six topics: his recent appearance on the "Today" show, jobs, lessons learned in the business world, a great book to read, what does he have for breakfast, and Iraq, oil and Iran.

Copyright © 2011 Eric M. Appleman/Democracy in Action.