Exclusive: Donald Trump Explains Foreign Policy Doctrine to Brody File: 'I'm a very militaristic person'

In an exclusive interview with The Brody File, Donald Trump lays out his overall foreign policy strategy saying he wants the ‘strongest military.” He said, “I’m a very militaristic person.”

I conducted this interview with Donald Trump in New York City at Trump Tower.

Video and transcription below.

David Brody: What would be the Trump Doctrine? What is your over-arching foreign policy strategy?

Donald Trump: My over-arching is number one, strong, strong military, stronger than ever before. I don't even know if I'd be cutting military. They talk about cutting, cutting, and cutting. I don't know that I'd be cutting. Everyone wants to cut military and I'm saying well, wait a minute. I want the strongest military.

I'm a very militaristic person, believe me. I would want total safety for this nation and the only way you're going to have that is with an unbelievably strong and technologically advanced, because the world is different today, military but it's all about this country.

I want to take for this country. I'm tired of building schools in Afghanistan and having them blown up and then build another one and yet we can’t build a school in Alabama. We can’t build a school in New Orleans. We can’t build a school in New York. We're always fighting for school money in New York. We can’t build them in Los Angeles but we're building them all over in places, by the way, where the people don't even like us. They don't want us there. They don't like us. They don't. It's terrible.

So we're spending for example, in Iraq, $1.5 trillion thus far, and more importantly we've lost thousands of lives and thousands of wounded and it's just a horrible situation. I've said it and it's been controversial but people are starting to say, 'you know, he's right.'

We go into Iraq, we de-neuter Iraq, and we wipe out their army essentially. For hundreds of years they were fighting with Iran back and forth, back and forth but they were basically equals. So you'd pick up two feet, you'd lose two feet. For years and years this was going on. Now, we've weakened them. We've de-neutered them. We've weakened them.

Iran, within 15 minutes after we leave Iraq, Iran is going to go over and take over, not only Iraq, but more importantly the great oil fields or Iraq, because you know they're second to Saudi Arabia in terms of reserves. They have $15 trillion worth of oil. Now, if Iran is going to take over the fields, and we've lost thousands of lives, and wounded and everything else, and spent $1.5 trillion, and Iran is going to take it over.

I'm saying we take over the oil fields. We won the war. We take over the oil fields. We use the oil. Give money to Iraq, keep them going better than they're going right now, but we take over the oil because, I'll tell you what, there's no way. And I wasn't a big fan of Iraq to start with because, frankly, they are not the people that knocked down the World Trade Center. It was not Saddam Hussein and when they put people on the planes, when the terrorists attacked the trade center, their families.

They all went back to Saudi Arabia. They didn't go back to Iraq but we spent $1.5 trillion. It's now a breeding ground for terrorism, and Saddam Hussein used to kill terrorists immediately, there were no trials like we have in this country. Twenty-five years later you get a trial. He used to kill terrorists.

Now I call it the Harvard University of terrorism is Iraq. There's no way on my watch that we leave those oil fields and let Iran take them over. That ain't going to happen.

Brody: There's no politician in America that will say what you're saying about those oil fields.

Trump: They won't say it. In fact, somebody asked me today. Meredith Vieira on the Today Show, she said what would you do with Libya? And Libya was very interesting because he (President Obama) was so late.

First you're going to talk about human rights. Well thousands, thousands, probably hundreds of thousands of lives were destroyed and people were killed. Nobody knows how many people because he was late.

But the rebels, they may not be the greatest people. I hear they're Iranian backed, and they're al-Qaeda. They're making them like they're ‘Gone with the Wind’, these glamorous figures, so they don't know what's going on, and now it looks like Gaddafi could even survive and it's a real mess over there.

So they say how would you be involved in Libya? I said one way. There's only one way. For the oil. We either keep the oil, take over the oil, or don't even go in. In the old days you'd have a war, and you'd win and you'd keep the country. Today, we have a war, like in Iraq. We spend all of that money, we lose all of those lives, those great people, men and women, we lose all of those great lives, our people and their people, too, by the way, but we lose all of those lives.

Then we leave, and we hand the country over to whom? To people who don't even like us and, by the way, the one that will end up running Iraq will be the one that hates the United States the most.