TRUMP: As president, I could have prevented the 9/11 attacks
"I think I could certainly have maybe done a lot better," Trump said Monday morning on "Fox & Friends."
"If my immigration policies were in effect, I don't know that that would have happened. Because I have very, very strong immigration [policies]," he added.
Trump, the 2016 Republican presidential front-runner, also pointed to organizational dysfunction among national-security agencies at the time.
"The FBI, the NSC, and the CIA were not talking to each other," he added. "That was a really big problem. I mean, they weren't talking to each other. And now it's hard to remember back that far, but I have a very good memory. They were not talking to each other. It came out as a major problem."
The "Fox & Friends" hosts were incredulous that a President Trump could have prevented the World Trade Center attacks that day. They cited the fact that some of the plane hijackers were in the US on legal visas. But Trump held his ground.
"My standards are much higher for visas, No. 1," he said. "No. 2, we'd have a massive whistleblower system, which you have to have. I mean, it's hard to believe that you had these 18 or 19 people and nobody - nobody - knew what they were doing. I mean, they were all over the place. They were learning about airplanes. They were flying airplanes."
Trump also stressed that he opposed the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
"Then you go back just a little bit further and advance it: Why did we attack Iraq?" Trump said. "The whole Middle East is screwed up because we destroyed Iraq."
Trump's Monday interview was the latest in his back-and-forth with presidential rival and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R), the brother of former President George W. Bush. George W. Bush was in office at the time of the September 11 attacks.
The business mogul argued last Friday that Jeb Bush was incorrect to argue that his brother kept the US safe. Jeb Bush responded by calling Trump's comments "pathetic" and by releasing a hard-hitting ad questioning Trump's ability to lead the US military.
Trump responded with a series of tweets over the weekend: