Trump: Bush family used eminent domain to build a baseball park

Following attacks from primary rival Jeb Bush about his past use of eminent domain, Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump on Sunday accused the Bush family of using the practice to build a baseball stadium in Texas.

“Eminent domain is a very important thing,” Trump said on ABC’s “This Week.” “Jeb Bush doesn’t understand what it means, and if you look into the Bush family – I found this five minutes ago – they used eminent domain for the stadium in Texas, where they own, I guess, a piece of the Texas Rangers.”
When host George Stephanopoulos said that was Jeb’s brother, former President George W. Bush, Trump said his point still stands.

“That doesn’t matter,” he said. “It was the Bush family. They used private eminent domain. He didn’t tell anybody this. So, I mean, he should have told people.”

“Maybe – he probably doesn’t know because I don’t think he even knows what eminent domain is,” he added. “But I just found that out five minutes ago.”

The billionaire businessman also refused to recant his support for governmental seizures of private property.

“Eminent domain is important,” he said. “You wouldn’t have highways, you wouldn’t have roadways, you wouldn’t have bridges, you wouldn’t have hospitals. You wouldn’t have anything without it."

He also said the crowd at Saturday night’s GOP primary debate was firmly in his corner on the issue.

“The crowd was on my side, except that they were all friends of mine that were donors and special interests and lobbyists, some of whom worked for me in the past,” he said.

[link to thehill.com]