If Donald Trump were president, he tells the New York Times editorial board, he'd solve the standoff at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in Oregon with a simple phone call.
"I think what I'd do, as president, is I would make a phone call to whoever, to the group," he said, adding later, "I'd talk to the leader. I would talk to him and I would say, 'You gotta get out — come see me, but you gotta get out.'"
"You cannot let people take over federal property," Mr. Trump said. "You can't, because once you do that, you don't have a government anymore. I think, frankly, they've been there too long."
Mr. Trump said he wasn't necessarily suggesting a large-scale military action, but that "at a certain point you have to do something and you have to be firm and you have to be strong, you have to be a government."
So, so simple to be President Trump. But here's what's happening in reality with Donald Trump, Republican candidate for president: he's got a campaign official who's one of the Bundy crowd, and who has rushed to Oregon to help them weed out a supposed federal informant in their midst, or something equally paranoid.
See, this New Hampshire Veterans for Trump co-chair, Jerry DeLumus, was the "security chief" during the Cliven Bundy debacle in Nevada in 2014 and now he's helping out the Bundy boys in Oregon. Trump can't even keep his campaign people out of Oregon. Maybe he should start with making a phone call to DeLumus to tell him to get out of there.