Washington: Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump and Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly finally sat down one-on-one after months of build-up.
The billionaire businessman welcomed Kelly into Trump Tower for the interview. The interview had seemed impossible last fall, when Trump and his supporters came down heavily upon the Fox News anchor on Twitter for her questioning of Trump at a debate, but the interview which aired Tuesday night appeared pretty cordial.
During the interview, Trump remembered his older brother, Fred Jr., hailing him as “handsome” and “really smart,” but he died of alcoholism at the age of 43. Trump said that his brother’s death dissuaded him from ever drinking.
“That was the hardest thing for me to take,” he said of his brother’s death. “That was very tough, because it’s unnatural.”
Talking about his much controversial insults of his former Republican Primary opponents and others, Trump said these are acts of self-defence.
“When I’m wounded, I go after people hard. I try and un-wound myself,” Trump said, adding: “I’ve been saying during this whole campaign that I’m a counterpuncher – you understand that. I’m responding.”
“I then respond times maybe 10 – I don’t know. I respond pretty strongly. In just about all cases, I’ve been responding [to] what they do to me,” he said.
Trump also said that he needs to win to make real changes. “If I don’t go all the way, and if I don’t win, I will consider it to be a total and complete waste of time, energy, and money,” he told Kelly.