Trump: "I would take the oil"

WSJ: You would keep troops in Iraq after the occupation?
Trump: I would take the oil.
WSJ: I don't understand, does that mean you keeping troops there or staying involved in Iraq?
Trump: You heard me, I would take the oil.
WSJ: You would guarantee that we will have a presence that we will spend money, send troops, do what ever it takes to-
Trump: It would make money.
WSJ: To secure access to oil.
Trump: No not spend money, we will make a fortune. We will make money. They have 15 trillion dollars worth of oil in Iraq. 15 trillion. We will make a lot of money. We will not lose that oil.
WSJ: So your Middle East policy is basically guided by our interest in oil?
Trump: My Middle East- which are problems- I've always heard that! I've always heard that when we went into Iraq, we went in for the oil. I said ehh, that sounds smart.

Trump: Why don't we just take over the oil? We should take it over.
Reporter: We should come in?
Trump: Well I don't want to give it to Iran!
Reporter: Should we be running Iraq right now?
Trump: We should be running the oil. You know, when they announced the war, and everyone smiles, though except the smart people. Except the smart people; they don't smile. You see when they announced the War with Iraq, a few smart people said "well that war is very smart, because we're going to take over the oil". Unfortunately Bush didn't have that in mind. You know in the old days you would have a war, and you'd win the war, and to the victor belonged the spoils. You know that.

Trump: Look at Iraq! Look at the mess we have after spending 2 trillion dollars, thousands of lives, and wounded warriors all over the place who I love, OK, all over, we have nothing! And I said keep the oil! And we should have kept the oil, believe me!

Trump: When I first heard that we were going into Iraq, some very smart people told me "well we're actually going for the oil". And I said "alright, I get that". There's nothing else. I get it. We didn't take the oil. 1.5 trillion we should take it and pay ourselves back. What are we doing? What are we doing?


And yeah, so we want the CEO of ExxonMobil who worked for them for 41 years and very close ties to Putin as our Secretary of State under this guy? He's going to let him run wild. It's like giving Jeffrey Dahmer a knife. He can't be the Secretary of State under this. If I were to tell you 4 years ago that Trump would be the President with the CEO of ExxonMobil as Secretary of State, you'd laugh me out of the room. There's no way we can allow Rex Tillerson to be the Secretary of State. Hopefully the Senate vetoes him.