Only One GOP Candidate Seized On Anger With Corporate America

No candidate but Trump mentioned the high-profile Carrier layoffs that are sending hundreds of jobs to Mexico.

As the Republican presidential hopefuls took turns verbally clawing at one another during Saturday night's debate, front-runner Donald Trump made sure he took a swipe at corporate America, too.

The billionaire real estate mogul was the only candidate to invoke the recent and widely publicized layoffs at the Carrier air conditioner plant in Indianapolis. A Carrier employee captured video of the announcement where workers were told 1,400 jobs were being cut and moved to Mexico.

Trump pledged to heavily tax products from any business that, like Carrier, took American jobs to other countries.

"Stay where you are, or build in the United States," Trump said.

Both Trump and Democratic presidential hopeful Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) have tapped into the anger felt by many middle-class Americans who have only grown poorer while the corporate class grows staggeringly richer.

The candidates differ on who's to blame -- Sanders indicts corporate billionaires and Wall Street while Trump lays blame on immigrants and foreigners -- but both seem to agree that decades of American trade policies have only hurt the poor and middle class.

Trump said he would sidestep using executive orders, but would instead work hard and "cajole" Congress to come to his way of thinking.

"We are killing ourselves with trade pacts that are no good for us and no good for our workers," Trump said.

Editor's note: Donald Trump is a serial liar, rampant xenophobe, racist, misogynist, birther and bully who has repeatedly pledged to ban all Muslims -- 1.6 billion members of an entire religion -- from entering the U.S.

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