Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, on Thursday branded President Barack Obama as "ignorant" and "incompetent," alleging that a rising China had reduced the United States to a "third-world country".
"The people we have now are incompetent. Our president is -- you know, he used a word the other day, not a nice word, but he's an ignorant president. He's an ignorant president. He doesn't know what's going on, in my opinion, OK, and the opinion of plenty of other people," Trump said.
Trump was responding to a question in an interview on the imbalance of US trade with China.
"We're going to put America first. On trade deals, it's like we make deals, they're so bad. They're so inconceivably bad. And I said, No, no, we want you all to do well. This is America first," he said.
"When China is ripping us to -- you know, you look at trade deficits of $500 billion a year, who's negotiating this deal?" Trump said asserting that he wants fair trade.
"You look at our trade deals, I will make those deals so good so fast. And you know what? We'll have great relationships with these countries. We don't have a good relationship with China. China's building a massive fortress in the middle of the South China Sea," Trump said.
"Yet they're ripping money from us left and right. We rebuilt China singlehandedly. What they've taken out of our country -- we have rebuilt China. They have railroads and trains that go 250 miles an hour. We have the Long Island Railroad that chugs out to Long Island, chug, chug, chug," said the real estate tycoon adding that the US had become a "third-world country".
"I'll tell you what. A lot of the technology is our technology. I mean, we're selling technology to the world, and we don't have it ourselves because we've spent $4 trillion plus in the Middle East. We're in worse shape now than we were 15 years ago," he said.
"Fifteen years ago, if we wouldn't have done anything, we would have been much better. You wouldn't have had the migration. You would have had a couple of dictators, killers. They call them strongmen. They can call them whatever they want. And they were good at one thing, killing terrorists," Trump said.
"And right now, you look at Iraq, that's like Harvard for terrorism," he alleged.
