In an interview broadcast last month, real estate mogul Donald Trump said that he preferred to have the federal government — not state governments — control public hunting grounds in order “to keep the lands great.”
However, after GOP presidential hopeful Texas Sen. Ted Cruz ran an ad criticizing Trump’s stance, Trump told a roaring audience in Las Vegas that his opponent was “sick” and again claimed that Cruz was a “liar.” Republican presidential candidates are cranking up the attacks ahead of Tuesday's Nevada caucus.
The ad in question features Cruz saying, “Eighty-five percent of Nevada is owned and regulated by the federal government. Donald Trump wants to keep big government in charge. ... I will fight day and night to return Nevada’s lands to its rightful owners, its citizens.”
PolitiFact called the ad “mostly true,” but Trump denounced it in front of a riled-up audience Monday in Las Vegas.
“Ted Cruz, he’s got an ad, something to do with I want to take away your land and I want to keep it in the federal government. I don’t even know what the hell they’re talking about. It’s an ad. It’s a Cruz ad. It’s a Cruz scam. … I am backing the federal government to keep the land that’s owned by the federal government, and we should give that land to everybody and divvy it up or something. I’m saying to myself, well, it’s not a subject I know anything about. It’s a hell of an ad. This guy is sick. There’s something wrong with this guy.”
However, Trump seemed to know a little something about the subject when Field & Stream, an iconic hunting and fishing magazine, asked him about the federal government transferring the ownership of its lands to states.
“I don’t like the idea because I want to keep the lands great, and you don’t know what the state is going to do,” Trump said. “I mean, are they going to sell if they get into a little bit of trouble? And I don’t think it’s something that should be sold. We have to be great stewards of this land. This is magnificent land. And we have to be great stewards of this land.”
Trump went on in the interview to compare keeping public land in federal hands with protecting the right to bear arms.
“The hunters do such a great job — I mean, the hunters and the fishermen and all of the different people that use that land,” Trump continued. “So I’ve been hearing more and more about that and it’s just like the erosion of the Second Amendment. I mean, every day you hear Hillary Clinton wants to essentially wipe out the Second Amendment. We have to protect the Second Amendment, and we have to protect our lands.”
(H/T: The Right Scoop)
