HABERMAN:...I’m just wondering what is the era when you think the United States last had the right balance, either in terms of defense footprint or in terms of trade?

TRUMP: Well sometime long before that. Because one of the presidents that I really liked was Ronald Reagan but I never felt on trade we did great. O.K.? So it was actually, it would be long before that.

SANGER: So was it Eisenhower, was it Truman, was it F.D.R.?

TRUMP: No if you really look at it, it was the turn of the century, 

[Which century, you non compos mentis BOOB.]

that’s when we were a great, when we were really starting to go robust. But if you look back, it really was, there was a period of time when we were developing at the turn of the century 

[Which turn is he talking about, the 19th to 20th?]

which was a pretty wild time for this country and pretty wild in terms of building that machine, that machine was really based on entrepreneurship etc, etc. And then I would say, yeah, prior to, I would say during the 1940s and the late ‘40s and ‘50s [?] we started getting, we were not pushed around, we were respected by everybody, we had just won a war, we were pretty much doing what we had to do, yeah around that period.

SANGER: So basically Truman, Eisenhower, the beginning of the 1947 national security reviews, that’s the period?

TRUMP: Yes, yes. Because as much as I liked Ronald Reagan, he started Nafta...

SANGER: But you think of that period time that you most admire: late ‘40s, early ‘50s, it was also the most terrifying time with the build up of the Cold War, it’s when the Russians got nuclear weapons, we got into an arms race, we were —

TRUMP: But David, a lot of that was just pure technology. The technology was really coming in at that time. And so a lot of that was just timing of technology.

[I don't know what his point is here. Does he? Seriously, he seems to be dissembling here, the confusing "turn of the century" and now "that was just pure technology," what?]

SANGER: It was also a period of time when we were threatening to use nuclear weapons against the North Koreans and the Chinese in the war. Was that approach you saw of Douglas MacArthur’s approach at that time, so forth, is that what you’re admiring?

TRUMP: Well I was a fan as you probably know, I was a fan of Douglas MacArthur. I was a fan of George Patton. 

[And of Japan, THE Ukraine, China. Big fan, BIG.]

If we had Douglas MacArthur today or if we had George Patton today and if we had a president that would let them do their thing you wouldn’t have ISIS, O.K.? You wouldn’t be talking about ISIS right now, we’d be talking about something else, but you wouldn’t be talking about ISIS right now. So I was a fan of Douglas MacArthur, I was a fan of — as generals — I was a fan of George Patton. We don’t have, we don’t have seemingly those people today, now I know they exist, I know we have some very, I know the Air Force Academy and West Point and Annapolis, I know that great people come out of those schools. A lot of times the people that get to the top aren’t necessarily those people anymore because they’re politically correct. George Patton was not a politically correct person.

SANGER: Yeah I think we can all agree on that.

lolOL