Excerpt from the December 15, 2015 CNN main Republican debate in Las Vegas:
BLITZER: Mr. Trump, are Americans safer with dictators running the world in the Middle East?
TRUMP: In my opinion, we've spent $4 trillion trying to topple various people that frankly, if they were there and if we could've spent that $4 trillion in the United States to fix our roads, our bridges, and all of the other problems; our airports and all of the other problems we've had, we would've been a lot better off. I can tell you that right now.
We have done a tremendous disservice, not only to Middle East, we’ve done a tremendous disservice to humanity. The people that have been killed, the people that have wiped away, and for what? It’s not like we had victory.
It's a mess. The Middle East is totally destabilized. A total and complete mess. I wish we had the $4 trillion or $5 trillion. I wish it were spent right here in the United States, on our schools, hospitals, roads, airports, and everything else that are all falling apart.(APPLAUSE)
FIORINA: That is exactly what President Obama said. I'm amazed to hear that from a Republican presidential candidate. But let's just start with, who got it wrong? Who really got it wrong?
Hillary Clinton has gotten every foreign policy challenge wrong. Hitting the reset button with Vladimir Putin – recall that she called Bashar Al-Assad a positive reformer and then she opened an embassy and then later she said, over, and over, and over again, "Bashar Al-Assad must go." Although she wasn't prepared to do anything about it. Recall that Hillary Clinton was all for toppling Gadhafi then didn't listen to her own people on the ground. And then of course, when she lied about the terrorist attack in Benghazi, she invited more terrorist attacks.
BLITZER: Thank you.
Mr. Trump?
TRUMP: Well, there's nothing to respond to. Well, people feel differently. I mean, the fact is Benghazi was a disaster because of Libya, everything just fell into place. It could not have been worse.
What do we have now? We have nothing. We've spent $3 trillion and probably much more – I have no idea what we've spent. Thousands and thousands of lives, we have nothing. Wounded warriors all over the place who I love, we have nothing for it.
And by the way – and Ben said incorrectly – and I'm not saying this as a knock – he's one of finest men. You're not going to find a finer men.
But I've been talking about oil for three years. I've been saying,, "take the oil, take the oil." I didn't say, "just bomb it," I said," take it and use it and distribute it so that the wounded warriors -" People, I've been saying this now for many years.
BLITZER: All right.
TRUMP: Now, all of a sudden everybody's saying, "take the oil." It wasn't so fashionable to take the oil six months ago. I've been saying it for years.
BLITZER: Thank you.
FIORINA: We've mismanaged going into Iraq.
BLITZER: Dr. Carson, is the Middle East…
FIORINA: We've mismanaged going out of Iraq.
Source
The entire exchange has been included for context, but this is about the emphasized portion at the beginning of the excerpt.
Did Fiorina nail Trump on the Middle East question in the December 15 debate? In other words, does Trump sound more like a liberal than a conservative here?
What say you?
