Free Republic

You can't build a real estate empire unless government helps you snatch private property, or so says Donald Trump, who routinely defends eminent domain as an inevitable business reality. Maybe he needs broader business experience. In Saturday's Republican debate, Mr. Trump fielded a question about eminent domain and had a ready answer. "You need eminent domain," Mr. Trump said. "A lot of the big conservatives that tell me how conservative they are," they "all want the Keystone Pipeline. The Keystone Pipeline, without eminent domain, it wouldn't go 10 feet, OK?" Not OK, or accurate. In the decade since TransCanada proposed...

Even though it's a stance not especially popular with some Republicans, Donald Trump continued to support eminent domain in an interview on Tuesday, calling it "a wonderful thing" that has unfairly received a bad rap.Trump, a billionaire known for his major real estate development projects, described eminent domain as a useful tool that local governments can use to prevent greedy homeowners from derailing major projects that could create thousands of jobs or provide a public good. Trump said that some conservatives don't fully understand how eminent domain works and don't realize that homeowners are usually paid "four, five, six, ten...