Carly Fiorina Responds to Donald Trump's Comments About Her Time at Hewlett-Packard
Donald Trump said Fiorina did a "terrible job at Hewlett-Packard."
-- Republican presidential hopeful and former Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina responded today to comments Donald Trump made attacking her record at the company.
“Donald Trump’s gone after just about everybody. He’s entitled to, obviously,” Fiorina told ABC News in an interview today at the Iowa State Fair.
“But I guess what I would say is that Hewlett-Packard is a publicly traded company, so the results are there for everybody to see. You can’t hide them. You can’t fudge the numbers. And the results are clear," she said. "I led the business from about $44 billion to almost $90 billion. We quadrupled the top line revenue growth rate in the middle of the biggest technology recession in 25 years. We tripled innovation to more than 11 patents a day. We went from lagging behind to leading in every product category in every market segment.”
During a visit to the Iowa State Fair on Saturday, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump -- while repeatedly describing Fiorina as “nice woman” -- attacked her record in the private sector and her failed California Senate bid.
“She's a very nice woman, she got fired, she did a terrible job at Hewlett-Packard, she lost in a landslide -- other than that, she's a very nice woman," Trump, echoing recent comments, told ABC News Martha Raddatz when asked for his thoughts on his solo female GOP competitor for the nomination.
Fiorina also touched on Donald Trump’s immigration plan revealed Sunday, in which he called for an end to birthright citizenship, called for tripling the number of ICE officers and also pledged to end welfare support for immigrants.
“There are parts of it that make sense. It makes sense to deport illegals who have committed crimes, it makes sense to have an employer verification system that actually works and that is mandatory. It makes sense to hold sanctuary cities accountable,” Fiorina told ABC News. “I’ve been talking about all these things for a long time -- whether people have been paying attention to it or not. But here’s the thing we’ve been talking about immigration for 25 years. People have been talking about it for 25 years and yet the border remains insecure, the legal immigration system is broken so it’s not about what we need to do. We know what we need to do. It’s about somebody who can get it done.”
Fiorina, compared to the other candidates, took a very different approach to her soapbox piece today, taking questions from the crowd for nearly her entire 20 minutes on stage.
She then moved on to shucking corn and prepping a “corn in a cup,” one of the new foods featured at this year Iowa State Fair. "Corn in a cup" includes roasted sweet corn, mayo, lime sauce, mild sausage, cheddar cheese and green chili sour cream.
Fiorina spent the remainder of her day taking photos and selfies with voters, answering more questions and walking from tent to tent greeting everyone.
Fiorina's campaign released an infographic called "Highlights of Carly's Leadership Successes at HP."