Billionaire presidential candidate Donald Trump said Sunday that his immigration policy could have prevented the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The comment is the latest in an ongoing spat between Trump and his GOP rival Jeb Bush over whether President George W. Bush kept the country safe.
“I’m extremely tough on people coming into this country,” Trump told Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday.
“I believe that If I were running things, I doubt that those people would have been in the country,” he added, referring to those who carried out the attacks.
The conflict between the two candidates on this issue has been ongoing since the second GOP presidential debate when Jeb Bush praised his brother for his leadership following the 2001 terrorist attacks. Trump has since responded by denigrating that leadership, saying George W. Bush didn’t keep America safe.
“I’m not blaming anyone,” Trump told Wallace. “But the World Trade Center came down. So, when he said, ‘We were safe’—that’s not safe. We lost 3,000 people.”
Also on Sunday, Bush took aim at Trump’s approach to foreign policy, saying the real estate developer talks about policy as if he’s on a reality show. “Across the spectrum of foreign policy, Mr. Trump talks about things as though he’s still on ‘The Apprentice,” he said.
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Write to Justin Worland at justin.worland@time.com