Real estate mogul Donald Trump said Monday that Republicans have "got to get tougher" in order to prevail this November, saying he thought their handling of President Obama was "unbelievable."
“The one thing I have to tell the Republicans, they’ve got to get tougher," Trump said during an interview with Fox News. "If they don’t get tough, they’re not going to win this election.”
Trump went on to say that Republicans were "pandering" to the president, and compared their current strategy to that of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in his 2008 presidential campaign.
“Well, I think there are a lot of ways of getting tough," Trump said. "I think they’re pandering to Obama. I think they’re being so nice to Obama. It’s unbelievable. And John McCain made that mistake. He absolutely made that mistake and you know they’re just afraid to attack this man and he should be attacked.”
The reality television star conceded that he thought Democrats might have run a better convention — and benefited from not sharing headlines with the landfall of Hurricane Isaac.
“Let’s face it, I think the Republican convention first of all was hurt by the hurricane, or lack of hurricane, you know the hurricane never really hit heavy in Tampa but I guess they probably had to do what they did," Trump said. "But the fact is that the Democrats gave a great convention, there’s no question about it.”
Trump added that he felt that the Republicans did not include the right mixture of voices at their party convention — mentioning Sarah Palin by name, but also possibly referring to himself. A Trump "surprise event" planned for Monday at the Republican convention was canceled because of the storm.
"I think frankly I would have liked to have seen Sarah Palin speak," Trump said. "I would have liked to have seen some people speak that weren’t invited to speak and you know I think the Republicans did not have the right speakers. They had a lot of people that people say, ‘who are they, where did they come from?’ "
