Washington: Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, who has previously vowed to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants if elected to the White House, today insisted he was not “flip-flopping” on immigration policy by reportedly thinking of moderating his harsh rhetoric.
“No, I’m not flip-flopping. We want to come up with a really fair, but firm answer. It has to be very firm. But we want something fair,” Trump told Fox News in an interview when asked about news reports that he was having a second thought on his tough posture on illegal immigrants.
“We’re dealing with people. We have to be very firm. We have to be very, very strong when people come in illegally. We have a lot of people that want to come in through the legal process and it’s not fair for them,” he said.
Trump, who has slid behind Democratic rival Hillary Clinton in several polls, said he was working with a lot of people in the Hispanic community to try and come up with an answer.
The 70-year-old billionaire tycoon intends to lay out specifics of his immigration plan over the next few weeks, according to Trump’s new campaign manager Kellyanne Conway.
He has often called for mass deportations of people living in the US illegally.
Asked about his debt, Trump said he has little debt relative to the assets he has.
“Compared to my assets, I think I have less than five per cent or so in debt, which is a very low debt. Now, the smart people that read that story thought it was a good story. Some people didn’t understand the story, but when you get to USD 300 million or USD 600 million but you have massive buildings and big assets, that’s a very small amount of money. I have very little debt,” he said.
The New York Times recently said Trump has a debt of USD 650 million.
“Well, if the value is USD 11 billion it’s a very small amount of debt. I have very little debt relative to the assets. I have massive assets,” he said.
“In fact, I guess they said the two assets they were talking about were — they went out and did an appraisal — I think they said USD 3.7 billion. That’s put down in a little line,” he said.
PTI