There’s writing personal checks and there’s writing checks for an organization you’re not supposed to be involved with as a public official, and then there’s the use of election funds.
REPORTER: How do you plan to disentangle yourself from your business? But first, I have to follow up on some of these Russia remarks. Based your comments here today, do you believe the hacking was justified? Does Russia have any leverage over you, financial or otherwise? And if not, will you release your tax returns to prove it?
TRUMP: So, I tweeted out that I have no dealings with Russia. I have no deals in Russia. I have no deals that could happen in Russia, because we've stayed away. And I have no loans with Russia. As a real estate developer, I have very, very little debt. I have assets that are — and now people have found out how big the company is —I have very little debt, but I have no loans with Russia at all. And I thought that was important to put out. I certified that.
So, I have no deals, I have no loans and I have no dealings. We could make deals in Russia very easily if we wanted to. I just don't want to because I think that would be a conflict. So I have no loans, no dealings and no current pending deals. Now, I have to say one other thing. Over the weekend, I was offered $2 billion to do a deal in DubaI with a very, very, very amazing man, a great, great developer from the Middle East, Hussein Dumak (sp), a friend of mine, great guy, and was offered $2 billion to do a deal in Dubai, a number of deals. And I turned it down. I didn't have to turn it down, because as you know, I have a no-conflict situation because I'm president, which is — I didn't know about that until about three months ago, but it's a nice thing to have, but I don't want to take advantage of something. I have something that others don't have. Vice President Pence also has it. I don't think he'll need it. I have a feeling he's not going to need it. But I have a no conflict of interest provision as president. It was many, many years old. This is for presidents because they don't want presidents getting — I understand, they don't want presidents getting tangled in minutiae. They want a president to run the country. So I could actually run my business. I could actually run my business and run government at the same time. I don't like the way that looks, but I would be able to do that, if I wanted to. I would be the only one that would be able to do that. You can't do that in any other capacity, but as a president, I could run the Trump Organization — great, great company — and I could run the country. I'd do a very good job. But I don't want to do that. Now, all of these papers that you see here — yes, go ahead.
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I want to thank everybody. So this is all — just so you understand, these papers, because I'm not sure that was explained properly. These papers are all just a piece of the many, many companies that are being put into trust to be run by my two sons and I hope at the end of eight years I'll come back and I'll say, "Oh, you did a good job." Otherwise, if they do a bad job, I'll say, you're fired. Goodbye, everybody. Goodbye.
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