A day after pulling off one of the most talked-about political stunts of the 2016 campaign, Donald Trump assured voters there is a more presidential side to him.
In a new interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Wednesday, Trump suggested that he would change his rhetoric if elected.
“As president, you would change your tone?” Cooper asked.
“Oh, I’d think so,” Trump said. “I’ll change my tone.”
Speaking in front of hundreds at a rally in South Carolina on Tuesday, Trump read South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham’s private cellphone number on live television. This just one day after Graham called him a “jackass” for suggesting that Sen. John McCain was not a war hero because he was captured and spent time as a POW during the Vietnam War.
“I didn’t start it with Lindsey Graham. I couldn’t care less about Lindsey Graham. He’s registered at, I think, zero in the polls,” Trump told Cooper. “Lindsey Graham called me a jackass. So am I supposed to say, ‘Oh, it’s OK I’m called a jackass?’ You have to fight back.”
Trump said that he had been “unfairly” targeted by Graham, whom he claims hit him up for advice and money just a few years ago. “I was called names by somebody,” Trump said. “Somebody that’s hitting me saying what a bad guy I am, who was up in my office asking for money, and asking if I can get him on television.”
The former “Celebrity Apprentice” host has taken the lead among GOP candidates in national polls. But even though his unfavorable ratings are quite high, he said he wasn’t too worried.
“I turned a lot of [voters] around, and as you know in North Carolina, it was negative and now it’s like, tremendously positive,” he said. “Then people hear what I said about the vets, and how strong my commitment is to the vets that have been they’ve been treated so badly and to the border, which is just horrible, I mean every time people listen to me, all of a sudden it becomes very favorable.”
Watch a clip of Trump’s interview with “Anderson Cooper 360” here.