Will Cain Country - EXCLUSIVE: Full interview With Former President Donald Trump

Episode Date: June 3, 2024

Just days after former President Donald Trump was convicted of 34 felony counts in a New York Court, he sat down the co-Hosts of FOX & Friends Weekend Will Cain, Pete Hegseth, and Rachel Campos-Duffy. In this 75-minute exclusive interview, former President Trump gives unique insight on everything from how he is feeling about the trial, how the campaign will carry on, and the specifics of what he will do in office if elected to a second term.  Tell Will what you thought about this podcast by emailing [e-mail] Subscribe to The Will Cain Show on YouTube here: Watch The Will Cain Show! Follow Will on Twitter: @WillCain Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

48 hours after his conviction in the first televised interview after his conviction. After his conviction in New York, former president Donald Trump on the Will Kane show. It is the Will Kane Show streaming live at Fox News.com on the Fox News YouTube channel, the Fox News Facebook page, and always on demand, wherever you get your audio entertainment. Just subscribe at Apple or on Spotify. Make sure you hit subscribe on YouTube, and you can always watch episodes of the Will Kane show, including interviews with Tony Robbins, Jordan Peterson, or Dwayne the Rock Johnson. Today, an interview, an exclusive interview, the first interview after his conviction in New York with former president, Donald Trump. On Saturday, my co-host and friends on Fox and Friends weekend, Rachel Campos Duffy, Pete

Hegseth, and myself traveled out to Bedminster, New Jersey, to sit down with the former president, to sit down with Donald Trump. Portions of that interview have aired over the weekend on Fox and Friends, as is the nature of TV. What was an hour and 20-something-odd minute interview has to be reduced into 10-minute segments. From the beginning, I said, but I want the whole thing. I want the whole thing for the Will Kane show. In the middle of that interview, Donald Trump said, more time. Let's give them more time.

in that interview he said let it run I know you can't I know you're not in charge of it but let it run from start to finish and I agree with him you deserve context you deserve to hear the entirety of the conversation so we have the opportunity today here uniquely exclusively to hear the entire interview with Donald Trump

and I think it is the fullest context you will get you know that I pride myself you know that I love interviewing people I'm very curious I want to dig. I want to get deeper. And I will have some limitations in this interview. Again, setting out the conditions and the dynamics up front. I have nothing if I don't have my honesty with you. I went into this knowing. It's not a regular interview with Will Kane. That's because I'm sitting with two other individuals, two individuals that I trust, that I respect in Rachel Campos Duffy and Pete Heggseth. But as is the nature of a three-person interview, you have to take turns. You have limited

ability to follow up. We all don't have different directions in different directions we're trying to pull, but we all have our own unique minds. And so that changes an interview. What more, again, if we're being honest, interviewing Donald Trump is wrestling a bear. I mean, he will go where he wants to go. I think there's one point in this interview where he's asked about the trial in New York, and we end up talking about how many cars are parked in Afghanistan.

I mean, he goes where he wants to go. but I did notice something through the course of an hour and a half. He does come back. He does come back to the original question. And I don't think he filibusters in the way so many politicians do in order to avoid the question. He just indulges every parenthetical in every direction that he wants to go in an interview while still coming back to the original question.

So it's a ride. It's wrestling a bear. And all that adds up to being a bit different of an interview. for the Will Kane show, but a unique opportunity to be the first people to talk to him after his conviction in New York City. So I hope you today, we'll enjoy, we'll share with your friends, we'll subscribe on Apple and Spotify and on YouTube, this conversation with the former president. Here is Donald Trump. From the Fox News Podcasts Network. Hey there, it's me, Kennedy. Make sure to check out my

podcast. Kennedy saves the world. It is five days a week, every week. Download and listen at foxnewspodcast.com or wherever you listen to your favorite podcast. I'm Janice Dean. Join me every Sunday as I focus on stories of hope and people who are truly rays of sunshine in their community and across the world. Listen and follow now at Fox Newspodcast.com. It is time to take the quiz. It's five questions in less than five minutes. We ask people on the streets of New York City to play along. Let's see how you do. Take the quiz every day at thequiz.com.

Then come back here to see how you did. Thank you for taking the quiz. Well, Mr. President, welcome to Fox and Friends weekend. Thank you. Thanks for being here. This is your first interview since the verdict. It's been 48 hours. Where's your head at?

Well, look, you know, I'm fighting for the Constitution. I'm fighting for the same thing that you three. I watch you all the time. And same thing that you do, you fight for freedom. You fight for your country. These people are sick. They're sick. They're deranged.

You know, I talk about the enemy on the outside and the enemy from within. See, you have Russia, you have China. But if you have a smart president, you always handle him. Quite easily, actually. We have a lot of advantages. But the enemy from within, they are doing damage to this country. They want open borders. They want high interest rates.

They now want to quadruple your taxes. Quadruple. You know, all my life I watched politics, and it was always like politicians want to lower taxes. It's not quadrupleum. There's a whole sickness going on right now. So we're doing really well. It's very interesting. Jury came in.

It was a tough venue. We tried to get out of the venue. We tried to get out of the judge. But we tried to get out of both. Wouldn't even think about it. So we had probably maybe the worst area in the whole country for me, you know, in terms of vote. I'm sure if I sat down and explained it to that section of the world,

we could probably make progress. But one of the worst sections. And they always bring them in these sections, you know, D.C., there, places where Republicans, not just me, Republicans get, like, virtually no votes. But the good news is that I think we've set a record beyond all records for fundraising. That's like a poll. And another one just came out just before I got in that were six points higher than we were before. So I don't know if that hauls up.

I mean, I'm just not sure. But people get it. It's a scam. And the Republican Party is really, they've stuck. They stick together in this. They see what's, it's weaponization of the Justice Department, of the FBI. And, you know, that's all coming out of Washington. You may think it's, you may think it's brag.

Take a look at who opened the case. I'm not allowed to talk about it because I have a gag order. I'm probably, I guess, the first presidential nominee and the leader, the leading Crooked Joe by a lot, that's not allowed to talk. maybe they're doing me a big favor who knows but I'm not allowed to talk I'm gagged

nobody's ever heard of it guys would say to me that aren't as well-versed but they know about freedom and the Constitution they say they can't gag you it's all coming out it's weaponization

and it's a very dangerous thing we've never had that in this country they do have it in other countries in South American countries you know a little bit about it right well that actually leads me to my question I think for a lot of Americans

what's happened to you feels formed like this has never happened here before. But for Hispanic Americans, people coming from Latin America, this feels very familiar. And in those countries, people are imprisoned. You know, instead of going to the ballot box and fighting there, they're on house arrest, they're told they can't run for office. What is your message? And by the way, I think a lot of Hispanic Americans, I hear from them, they're scared about what they see. What's your message to them about what happened to you and about how scared they are that our country is turning into the countries that they left behind,

the corrupt dysfunctional countries they left behind. And they are scared. And they're great people, very entrepreneurial, great energy. And as you know, I'm doing very well with them. I mean, beyond anybody, I don't think anybody's ever had polling. Do you think this is why a little bit? I think a little bit. I think we just, well, even before people understood what was going on, I was doing well with the, you call them Hispanics. You know, there's about 15 different names. Latin Americans, South America, they say Latin American, South Americans, Hispanics, a lot of different words. But we all know what we're talking about. And they've always liked me, and I've always liked them.

You know, I've done well from the beginning. In 2016, I won the entire border along Texas, and they're all like 85%. And it's been great from the beginning. And now I'm leading. I think I'm leading over this guy, this guy that can't put two sentences together that's destroying our country. Look, he's the worst president in the history of this country. and he's a danger to the country. And you know, they have misinformation.

Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. It's just words. He doesn't even know what it means, but it's like their slogan, I'm a threat to democracy. I'm the opposite. They're the threat to democracy. And now I hear they're starting to go over the lines

with Russia, and Russia's getting a little bit nasty. Like, you know, maybe we'll start using nuclear weapons. These people are really not a threat to democracy, a threat to the country, to the country, just to this country surviving, beyond democracy, beyond anything. So now they have, they tell Ukraine it's okay to start going and popping off Russia, you know.

How did we get in this mess? If I were president, there would have been no Ukraine. Not one Ukrainian would have been killed. Not one city would be knocked down. I mean, the place is a disaster right now. Most of the cities are knocked down. I guess they're saving Kiev for, you know, they probably want to use it a little bit.

So they're waiting, but not one. They're just lobbing missiles in. Not much they can do about it. But now they want to get aggressive and they want to fight back and, you know, it's okay. But boy, that's a big, that's a big statement. And the N-word is being mentioned. Right.

And the N-word is the nuclear word. And, you know, we're giving, we're probably in real numbers, 250 billion, and Europe's in for about 70. And I say, why isn't Europe, why aren't the European nations, which would be NATO, which I kept together, which I was able to keep together by getting them to pay. They weren't paying. We were paying for the whole thing practically. There were only

eight nations that were paid up, including us. And I got hundreds of billions of dollars from them. I said, look, if you don't pay, we're going to leave. We're not going to defend you if you don't pay. And they paid. That's where they have the money now because of what I did, because Obama didn't do anything. He'd go and make a speech. Bush didn't do anything. Nobody did anything. And I looked at the statement. I'm good at statements. I look at a statement. I said, But nobody's paying. We're paying. We were paying for, I'll bet you, 90%, could even be more than that.

And then they take advantage of us on trade, very badly, almost as badly as China. You know, nobody would believe that. But the European nations take tremendous. They don't buy our cars. They don't buy our farm products. They don't buy anything. And then we're supposed to defend them. So I said, no, you've got to pay up.

You've got to pay up. You're supposed to. One of the leaders said to me, does that mean that if we're attacked by Russia, That means you're not going to pay us. You're not going to defend us? I said, are you telling me you're delinquent? That's a real estate term. Are you delinquent?

Like delinquent on your rent. Are you delinquent? Yes, if we don't pay. I said, no, no, we're not going to protect you. The next day, billions of dollars started pouring, and it was sort of amazing. If you said the other, why would they do it? And that's what they've done for years. But now they're talking about a different level of war.

Now they're talking about getting aggressive. But they have to be careful because they're being beaten pretty badly, you know. They're being beaten pretty badly. And what a mess. To think it would have never happened, Israel would have never happened, Ukraine would have never happened, and Israel would have never been attacked. And you wouldn't have had inflation, and you would have had a great military, you would have had a lot of things right now that you don't have, and you wouldn't have an electric

car mandate, which is going to be, which is one of the great jokes of all time. And I think everybody should have an electric car if they want one, but they should be able to by other forms of propulsion. Mr. President, I want to return to the verdict, and I want to explore something you've said several times already in the conversation. You've referenced these people. I'm sure you've seen the video of Joe Biden

when he was asked about the verdict, and he gave sort of a smirk to the camera. Terrible. Remember, Bragg didn't want to do the case. He came out. He said, there's no case, and how can you have a witness like so-and-so? I'm not allowed to mention the name.

Can you believe this? This guy's allowed to have shows, television shows. I'm not allowed to mention the name. It's so unfair. But regardless, you know, you have to really play the hand that you're dealt. And then you had a jury that was, you know, from a certain persuasion.

Would have been hard to do no matter what. But I did absolutely nothing wrong. I mean, absolutely think of it. You know, I hate what they say, a bookkeeping, this and that, it's not. It's called, think of it, expense. I use the word expense, legal expense. I pay a lawyer.

He wasn't a fixer. He was a lawyer at the time. I pay a lawyer, and he's a lawyer. It's called legal expense. A bookkeeper, without ever speaking to me, because she did the right thing, who's been with me for years, marks it down as legal expense. In other words, I paid a legal expense.

It's marked down as a legal expense. And they say, that's a fraud. What am I going to call it? Did you ever see a ledger? Do you have a study accounting? The line's like about an inch long and an eighth of an inch wide. You can't write the story.

But there is no story. If you pay a legal expense and you write it down as a legal expense, and then they indict you and they go to a grand jury, and they don't use Bob Casella's testimony, you know, they use almost none of it. They didn't want him before the grand jury because he's very persuasive. This judge didn't want him to talk.

They shouldn't have allowed certain people to testify. It was totally wrong that they did that. So everyone tells me this is the easiest case they've ever seen to overturn, but they don't care, because they want to last to left to the election. Now, the only problem they have is that so far my poll numbers have gone up. You explain this to me because I don't.

Pete maybe can explain it. Maybe we'll. I don't know. Maybe we'll get. They're smart in Texas, right? But the poll numbers have gone up substantially. I don't know if that's going to remain that way. They're tired of it, to weaponization.

They call it law fair. You changed your tone at some point during the trial. I would say maybe a bit more hopeful in the beginning. And then towards the end, you said something to the effect of even Mother Teresa couldn't be acquitted in this venue. Was there a moment in the trial that you felt like it turned or you saw that it was headed in a certain direction? Well, when you object to something, your lawyers object, good lawyers,

professional lawyers, good records, nice people. You know, I've had a lot of lawyers that weren't nice, and sometimes you're better off that way. These are really fine people. They object, not accepted, not accepted, not accepted. When the government, meaning the DA, brag, when he said something, all right, good, that's fine. Go ahead, more, more, more. But the main thing is this is that this was turned down by the Southern District.

This is over years. This could have been brought seven years ago. You know, they tried to rush it because they wanted it before the election. But this could have been brought seven years ago, but they didn't have any attention. A case like this has never been brought before, and there's never been a case where a state has gone after a federal election. In other words, that's for a federal. That's for like the Southern District to go. Southern District turned it down.

We got clearance from the FEC, Federal Election Commission. Clearance. They're suing. Say we violated a thing, but they gave us clearance. But the charge was written. I mean, it was like a weird charge. You'd have a little of this, a little of that, do a little of this, throw a little, mix it up. Given all of that, you know, we're watching this trial.

Everyone's watching it on TV. You're living it. You're in the middle of it. And regardless of all of that, still. When that verdict is being read, what's going through your head? Well, it was weird because we go in and the judge, it looked like it was a hung jury for a while. And it's sort of the most you could hope for because in the area, it's almost impossible. I mean, I've seen it.

I've seen people that no matter how, the three of you, we're all sort of similar in terms of we'd like to see strong borders and low taxes and strong military and lots of good things, right? You know, all common sense. I call it the party of common sense and where people have common sense. Who wants to have an open border where millions of people are coming into our country, right? Millions and millions, and not just from South America. They're coming in from Africa, from the Middle East, from Europe, from all over the world they're coming in. And they're coming in from jails, and they're coming in from mental institutions in St. Asylum, some of the sickest people, mentally ill people, are being dropped into our country.

We're going to be paying for this for a long time. Now, I'm going to do the big deportation, the biggest ever. Eisenhower did the biggest. This will be bigger. But it's a very tough thing. What they've done to our country is unthinkable that they could do this. And so many other things, I mean, like you go into New York, the kids can't have Little League games anymore. It sounds so trivial, right?

Why? Because the migrants are living in the fields. They have all tents, unless you want to play around the tents. It's a little bit tough. It's a little bit tough to play. No, I mean, but when you think of common sense, who really thinks that men should be playing in women's sports, right? It's, you know, something I mention all the time gets one of the biggest applause, but who, you know, where does the mind come from? A man playing, look at the weightlifting records.

I mean, these weightlifting, guys that never lifted anything before, they're breaking the records by numbers that are like unthinkable against women that are the top. women they're the strongest that they're getting blown away who would think the swimming records the track records it's crazy it's just crazy i actually when i first heard about it you know what was it like six seven eight years ago right when i first heard about it i actually thought they were kidding i thought you know this was just a funny joke but they're actually serious about it they're actually committed to it and who would want that who would want open borders who would want this stuff. Who would not want to have taxes be low and expenses be reasonable and good schools and all of the things? I mean, who would want to have our army tanks? We make the greatest

army tanks in the world. I saved that factory in Ohio. I saved it. Lima. I saved it in Ohio. They were going to close it. I saved it as actually the president-elect. I heard about, a friend of mine called up. He said, they're going to close down our army tank factory, and we're not going to be able to make army tanks. I said, that doesn't sound good. that when I visited it, it was unbelievable. The people there were unbelievable. They want to make them now an electric. But they don't go far, and they have to pull a wagon because the wagon, you know, the battery is so big

that the army tanks will have a wagon like a child. It's pulling a wagon. It's a heavy wagon, too, very heavy. The whole thing is crazy. These people are crazy. Mr. President, you've been through a lot. Yeah. In your presidency, what they've done to you, you've got the verdict that just came through.

A lot of Democrats have expressed concerns. that if you're elected, you're going to want revenge. And some of your supporters have said, well, you know, mutually, you know, we're just talking about the weaponization of the justice system against political opponents. Some of your supporters have said, well, the only way to stop this is mutually assured destruction, right? If you do it to us, we're going to do it to you. You've said, no, my revenge is going to be success for America.

You've just had this verdict. Yeah. Do you still feel the same? What's your thoughts on that? It's a really tough question in one way, because these are bad people. These people are sick, and they do things that are so destructive. I mean, look what they did from the day I got there. And I don't know, you know, a lot of people said,

we have no choice but to elect Trump, Republicans, because he's the only one that can withstand this. Don't forget, if it weren't me, they'd be going after somebody else. And I know a lot of the competition, they wouldn't do so well. They wouldn't be doing so well right now. They'd be saying, mom, you take me here. home, I want to go home. This is brutal. But these are sick people. And for instance, the 51 intelligence agents, who thinks of these? And they think about it, just like they say, I'm guilty

of, and you know, all this information was from so many years before the election. You know, it's before the election. So it wasn't like, oh, gee, I won an elect. You know, the election just started coming out during the trial. They said, oh, I have an idea. Remember John Lovitz, the liar? Yeah, yeah. I went to Harvard. Yeah, yeah. They do that during the trial. They did. trial. Yeah, yeah, uh, yeah, that's right. It affected the election. This stuff never even came. I never even heard about affecting the election. They're talking about the election of 2016. They're going back. You know, the interesting, somebody brought it up today. It was very interesting on your network. Somebody brought it up and they said, you know, the funny thing is that

they're deniers because they're now saying that Trump change the election. So, so, but that's great point because, so you're, you're talking about the intel agencies. Obviously, you know, Remember what Chuck Schumer said? He said, you know, if you tick off the Intel agencies, they'll find a way to get you six ways or nothing. If you're elected, are you going to reform the Intel community? What exactly are you going to do to make sure they don't target Americans like this? Well, first of all, if you remember, when I took over, we had a guy named Comey.

He was there. I didn't put him there. I didn't want him there. I thought he was terrible, actually. And he tried to get me, and I reversed it on him. You know, some people said he cost him to the election and he didn't want to. but he was a bad guy, not a capable guy, evil, an evil guy. They were doing things that, I mean, I won't mention here because it's so conspirator.

I don't want to be conspiratorial. It's too nice a show. But bad guy, I fired him. Then I fired Stroke and Page and this one or that. Well, I got rid of that whole group of people, and we were doing great. We were really, and in other places too. Pete knows better than anybody. The Veterans Administration, you know, at the end of my term,

we had a 92% approval rating. It was at 40 when we took it over. Pete used to call up, just as somebody that we knew each other a little bit through this stuff. And he'd complain about things. He'd also complain about soldiers being treated unfairly. A soldier is trained to be a soldier. And some of these guys are tough.

And if we didn't have them, we wouldn't have a country, Frank. And then they get into a fight, and it's nasty, and they win. And then they want to lock them up for 30 years. And we took care of a lot of people, a lot. And it was just unfair. They trained them to be killers. And then they do their job against some very bad people. I'm not saying good people.

I'm saying they beat some very bad people. If you didn't have guys like the ones that we know, they wouldn't last very long. And then they want to lock them up for 30 years. You know, it's sort of, they train them to do their job, they do their job, and then they say, let's lock them up. Look, it's a very interesting question, and I say it, and it sounds like, And I say it, and it sounds beautiful, right?

You know, my revenge will be success. And I mean that. But it's awfully hard when you see what they've done. These people are so evil. And at the same time, the country can come together. You know, I'm saying this, but the country can come together. You know, during my term, prior to COVID, we had the most successful country we've ever had. Everybody's, you're Hispanic, black, Asian, women, men without a diploma, men with MIT,

Wharton and Harvard diplomas, all of them put together. Everybody was making more money, doing better than they've ever done before. And radical left people, I would call them radical left, were coming up to me and say, could we meet? It was coming together. And then we had COVID, our gift from China, came out of Wuhan. Like I said, right, remember I told you that a long time ago? I never changed.

It was the Wuhan lab. They made a mistake. And by the way, it was incompetence. I walked out to have lunch with his girlfriend. and the scene was set. It was a disaster. Okay, what happened. But we did a great job.

Never got credit for that. Always got credit for a good economy, for taking out Soleimani, taking out al-Baghdadi. You know, I defeated ISIS. ISIS was going to take five years at least, and they don't think Mattis said, sure will take at least five years.

I got it done in like three months. I defeated ISIS. Our military is so great. The real generals, the guys that know how to fight. One of the things that I hated to see, and I think one of the lowest points in the history of our country was Afghanistan, the way that happened. And, you know, I dealt with Abdul, the leader of the Taliban, and I had conversations with them on the phone, and frankly, the media went crazy. Why is she speaking to? You know, it's like I always say, Jesse James, why do you rob the banks?

That's where the money is. That's where the killing was. That's where the snipers were, with Abdul. And I had some nice conversations. We didn't lose one person in 18 months. And then they took over, and they were killing us like, like Abdul was a very happy man when I was out. And then they had that disaster, the leaving of Afghanistan, the way they left. You know, we were going to leave, but we were going to keep Bagram, which is one of the biggest airbases in the world.

It costs billions and billions of dollars to build many years ago. But we were going to leave because of China, because it's one hour away from Iraq. where China makes it, forget about Afghanistan, it's exactly right next to China, it's exactly one hour away from where they made their nuclear, make their nuclear weapons. Isn't that a great thing now? We're going to keep it. It'll leave 4,000 people and keep it, and keep it strong, right? They gave it up. They gave up everything. And they moved the military out first. You move the military out last.

I always say, I give a child a five years old. I say, okay, now those are the facts. Would you move the military out first, or would you move? First, we would have taken our people out. Then we would have taken some people that helped us. It shouldn't be too many. I mean, how many people can you take? But nevertheless, it were people that helped us, take them out. But we have Americans left behind.

We have 13 dead soldiers, incredible. The parents, largely, they came here shortly after that, and we're going to have them back, too. We said, they said, well, we won't see President Trump. He'll come maybe for a couple of minutes. I stayed with them for four hours. We listened to music up in the deck. It's beautiful.

It was just nice. You know, they're great people, they're devastated. That would have never happened. We would have left with dignity and strength. And then you take out your equipment. They left $85 billion worth of equipment. I rebuilt the entire military. 85 billion of it was left in Afghanistan.

And they're one of the biggest, the Taliban. They're one of the biggest sellers of military equipment now, well, in the whole world, I think they're number two. Because they're selling, because they don't need 730,000 rifles. They have 730,000. I mean, I don't know what, we go to fight a war. What did they do, what are 37 rifles for every soldier we have? It's crazy.

But we had 730-some-odd-thousand rifles, and then we had 72,000 vehicles, many of them armor-plated. You know how expensive with 4-inch armor, 4-inch like this on the bottom. And they sell all that stuff. They're one of the largest, because they don't need all of it. You know, they can keep instead of, think of what 70,000, 72,000 vehicles is. If you take the biggest used parking lot, used car lot in Texas, big Texas. They're big. They probably have, what, 500 cars there?

We have 70,000. 70,000. And many are armor-plated. They have the, you know, they had to make the armor where it goes like this. Because the bombs are so powerful. Salomeini, taken out. They're so powerful. But what that was doing was killing everybody on the side of it.

Right. because it was going like that. So, you know, it's a tough thing. But some of these things cost millions of dollars and we left it all behind. I want to follow up on what Rachel asked you, though, because I hear you struggling with it. I hear you say it's a tough question, a bit unsure.

You famously said, regarding Hillary Clinton, lock her up. You declined to do that as president. And purposely, because after I won, you know, it's different when you win. I see it tonight, I'm going to UFC with Dana White. And I see fighters, they come in with hatred, like you wouldn't believe it. It's amazing.

It's a little metaphor in life, right? The hatred, they hate each. Then after the fight, somebody wins, somebody loses. Sometimes they get knocked out. Sometimes it's... But they hug and they kiss each other. It's like crazy. I beat her.

It's easier when you win. And they all said luck up. And I felt... And I could have done it, but I felt it would have been a terrible thing. And then this happened to me. And so I may feel differently about it. I can't tell you, I'm not sure I can answer the question.

Hillary Clinton, I didn't say lock her up, but the people would all say lock her up, lock her up, okay. Then we won. And I'd say, and I said pretty openly, I say, all right, come on, just relax. Let's go. We're going to make our country grade. Yeah. And it would have been, think of it, you lock up the wife of a president of the United States. But they want to lock you up over $130,000 of an accounting thing. And she actually. And a perfectly stated accounting thing. Success will bring the country together. because I had it together.

Before the China virus came in, I had it together. We really had it together. And it would have stayed. I think it would have stayed. Everybody was doing better. The country was doing better than it had ever done. And we're going back to those same policies and then some. And then some.

One of the bigger differences, I know, you know, before I won, I was in Washington, the press says about 17 times. I never stayed over. So I wasn't a Washington person, and I relied on people for recommendations. And I got, you know, a lot of great ones. Look, we had great the economics, Bob Lighthizer, so many people. We had great people, but we also had some that I wouldn't have put. I don't have to use their names, but that I wouldn't have put.

Now I know, I know them all. I know the tough ones and the weak ones and the smart ones and the dumb ones. And, you know, we know the strong ones. And so I think it's going to be very good, and we're ready to go. But the country is really going bad. When you look at all these people, millions of people coming into this country, I really think other than nuclear weapons, which I think are the single biggest threat, not global warming,

when they say that the seas will rise over the next 400 years, one-eighth of an inch, you know, which means basically you have a little more beachfront property, okay? Think of it. The seas are going to rise. Who knows? But this is the big threat. I watched Biden the other night.

it's the greatest existential he loves that word because it's a big word and he thinks you know he thinks he doesn't even know what the hell the word means he goes it's the greatest existential threat to our country global warming in the meantime you get these maniacs with nuclear weapons that can do damage which i won't even talk to you about but i know the damage it's the greatest there has never been anything like it the power of weaponry today it will be obliteration and that's your real threat. But in terms of our country, a real threat are the people that are coming in, that are being allowed to come in. We're going to move on to some other topics too, but just moving forward, they've set the arraignment date for four days before the RNC. Well, that's part of the game.

It is. Some have suggested you could appeal straight to the Supreme Court because of the special nature of this case when it comes to the legal maze that you're still facing. And they could The judge could decide to say, hey, house arrest, or even jail. One of my lawyers the other day on television saying, oh, no, you don't want to do that to the press. I said, you don't beg for anything. Just the way it is. Think of it.

They have all my books. You know, they went to, for five years they sued me getting my tax returns. At the end of five years, they got them. The Supreme Court actually gave it to them. That was the end of it. That was it. They never found anything. They hired the best accounting firms.

I had a pure gold firm. They call it a gold-rated firm. I don't know. It's supposed to be. Who knows? But with all that, for years, you heard about my tax. And no one looked into the Clinton Foundation. And they never found it.

They never went all the way with the Clinton Foundation. They never went all the way with the Clinton Foundation, which is sort of interesting, isn't it? But so that could happen. I don't know that the public would stand it, you know? I'm not sure the public would stand it. for it, with a... You're saying if they tried house arrest or...

I think it would be tough for the public to take. You know, at a certain point, there's a breaking point. It's very funny. I watched the radical left and I watched the right and everyone's always talking about the right. You know, this side, the right, the right is not the problem. When you look at Portland, when you look at

what happened in Minneapolis, if I didn't call out the National Guard, which I wasn't even supposed to because the governors are supposed to call him. I'm not, you wouldn't even have Minneapolis right now. Minneapolis would be wiped off. Remember the CNN anchor? I think it was Welchie.

He's standing there. This is a friendly protest. This is very friendly. And then somebody had him on the knee. Mostly peaceful. Is that what he said? Yeah, mostly peaceful. This is friendly.

This is a mostly peaceful. And you look behind him, the entire city's burned. It was like the Second World War. The whole city is burning, the fire behind him. And he's talking about this is friendly. This is a friendly protest. That's exactly. No, it's crazy. What's going on is crazy. Don't forget, I got millions of more votes the second time than I got the first time.

Very rare. Obama got millions less, you know, than he won. I got millions where I was told, I got 63 million the first time. I got millions more, close to 12 million more, that we know about. That's there. That's those. They said, if you get 63, this is McLaughlin, Fabrizio, the big pollsters, good pollsters. They said, if you could get the same number you win. I got. Millions more. Very rarely does a president get more. They win or they lose, but they don't get, you know, very rarely get more. Obama got a lot less. He got a lot less the second time. And he won. It's so bad for our country. And I wouldn't have done this. And then I had good Republicans running. And, you know, we took, it was the fastest nomination in history. I got it very fast. You know, in theory, it just ends like this weekend. Right. You'd find out a normal thing. You'd find out this weekend, who would win. And I got it. you know, I won it months ago against, you know, the competition.

You wrapped it up pretty quick. So this interview is going really fast, and I know we have, like, a bunch of other questions. Okay. Can we kind of go that and we'll kind of keep our answers short so we can get to it? Okay, so I'm going to start with this one. Americans have lost a lot of trust in institutions, and I think there's been a lot of discussion, especially online and especially with young people. How do we rebuild that trust in institutions, the CIA, the FBI, all those institutions?

You're right. Some people think that one way to build trust is to declassify things that everyone's talking about. I know you just talked earlier about it. I don't want to be a conspiracy theorist. So if you were president, would you declassify, you can answer yes or no to this. Would you declassify the 9-11 files? Yeah. Would you declassify JFK files?

Yeah. I did a lot of it. Would you declassify the Epstein files? Yeah, yeah, I would. All right. I guess I would. I think that less so because, you know, you don't know. You don't want to affect people's lives

if it's phony stuff in there because it's a lot of phony stuff with that whole world. But I think I would or at least... Do you think that would restore trust? Help restore trust? Yeah, I don't know about Epstein

so much as I do the other. Certainly about the way he died, it would be interesting to find out what happened there because that was a weird situation and the cameras didn't happen to be working, et cetera, et cetera. But yeah, I'd go a long way toward that one. The other stuff I would.

I would definitely do the January 6th because... Yeah. Oh, beyond all. of them because what happened. How about the unselect committee? They had meetings, you know, they had all Democrats and two failed Republicans, right, Cheney and Crian Adam Kinsinger. See, Biden couldn't do this interview. Do you think he'd remember a crying, Adam Kinsinger? Do you think he'd remember all these different names, these different folks? And I didn't know you were going

to be talking about this. But, you know, when, can you imagine, the whole thing is crazy what We're doing. What we're going in, I got to know that leaders of all the countries, and they're at the top of their game. They're very sharp. They're vicious. That's why they're doing so well. Anduras, all of them. I know every one of them. And they're very streetwise people. You know that better than anybody. They're streetwise, and they're smart. And they love their country, or they want to do a good job for their country, or themselves. Doesn't matter, because whatever it is. And they're moving all of them. their bad people into our country. And Venezuela just reported to 72% that their crime is down 72% in a year. You know why? Because they moved all their criminals into the United States. And the next time we do an interview, we'll do it in Venezuela because it'll be much safer than being in our country. Well, you've brought up deportations in this interview. How can you, how can you implement deportations and do you think the public will have the appetite, the stomach for watching deportations on their television screen.

Well, the second part of that question is so great and so tough. Because, you know, the radical left is going to start saying, oh, look, so you'll get rid of ten really bad ones. And one, you know, beautiful mother who they think is guilty of something, and maybe she is, maybe. And it'll become a story or a family that's a good family and came in wrong and, you know, they're going to show it. Then it's going to always be tough. It's not going to be easy.

And we have to use a lot of good judgment. But the way you get rid of them is the local police. You know, the local police know these people by their first name, their middle name, and their last name. The local police are great. They're just not allowed to do their job. They're afraid of losing their pension. They're afraid of losing their wife or a husband. They're going to lose their house.

They're losing everything. And one of the things I'm doing is giving local police immunity from prosecution. They get prosecuted. When they do their job, they get like your soldiers. When they do their job, when they watch department stores being rated by 500 people, well, guys are walking out with television sets, and they're told to stand back, okay? They're told to stand back, do not do anything. And they go into these stores, these big stores that have, you know, opened two years ago,

and they spent $25 million to build a store. And the stores are empty down to the shelves. They even take the shelves out. They take everything. And the cops just didn't. They don't want to be. standing there. They want to do their job. You know who's great? The Border Patrol, I know I'm so well. They endorsed me. They always endorsed me. They said when Trump comes back, it'll all be

better. And Biden, by the way, he doesn't need any legislation. He could say the word, close the border. That's what I did. I said, close the border. And it was so bad that it took a little while. I fixed the border originally. That's how I got elected in a way. But now the border is, and I fixed it. And I couldn't even use it in 2020. In 2016, In 2016, it was a big factor of my win. I fixed it very quickly, and then in 2020 it was so good. I said, let me talk about the border. My people over here, all these geniuses said,

please, sir, don't talk about the border. It's fixed. I said, let's talk about it, but nobody wanted to hear about it. But now the border is a hundred times worse than it was in 2016. And you mentioned those, Will asked about deportations, and you mentioned local authorities having more power. What are you doing sanctuary? Look out, because so much of that is, they can't even talk to ICE, let alone work with ICE.

If you're going to deport five, seven, ten million illegals, it's going to require a lot of the people. And even the politicians don't want sanctuary cities. They really don't. I've spoken to many people in California, and they're fed up. They're fed up. They can't take it anymore. They don't want it. Even liberal Democrats, they don't want it anymore.

You have to end sanctuary cities. I mean, they're guarding criminals. They're guarding people that are killing people, and you can't get to them. And guys like Gavin Newscombe is a disaster. He's running it so badly. It's so badly run. And I watched him on John Hannity Show with that debate, and he'll talk like everything's wonderful. It's great.

Go California. It's doing terribly. It's doing terribly, but somebody has to call him out. They have to call him out. But the job of sanctuary cities is so, it's just so horrible for a country. I have another question on the border. Yeah. So in just this fiscal year 2024, there's been 74,000 unaccompanied children that have come across the border.

In 2023, 137, 275. You know you've seen the images of these children, five, seven years old, nine years old, 12 years old. And the Joe Biden administration has lost 80,000 of them. No one can track. No one knows where they're at. At least. Yeah, much more. At least. There's probably more, but at least. Will you commit, will the Trump administration commit to finding these children, to finding them, and returning them to their families, to their countries? Because many of them have been lost into sex trafficking.

Many of them are dead. It's heartbreaking. No, it's heartbreaking. It's amazing. Will you commit to that? Will you commit to finding those children in their investigation? I haven't been asked that question, but the answer is yes, it's a simple answer. Many of them are dead.

They have done such a bad job. They have done such a bad job. And, you know, they go into the guys that they're doing this wonderful job of letting people come in. You know, it's also really bad. The caravans, I think I came up with that name a long time. But where you form 25, 30, 40,000 people coming up. The level of abuse and just anger and craziness toward women. I mean, the caravans, you know, the mothers put their daughters in those caravans.

knowing in many cases the daughter's not coming back, knowing for almost certainty that the daughter is going to be raped. Yes. Do you know? They give them large, like, bottles of birth control pills to mothers because they know they're going to be raped on the way up all the time. It's unconscionable. No, the whole thing is incredible.

And Biden thinks he's doing a favor by allowing. And the only reason they have the caravans is because I ended it all. People weren't getting in. We had the lowest number ever, the final week that I, that I, the lowest number that we've ever had, recorded number, of illegal immigration. I had it down. Caravans anymore. You had them when I came in.

You didn't have them anymore. It was really good. All he had to do is go to the beach and let my people do the job, just let them stay, and keep remain in Mexico. I had a policy remit. Do you think that was easy to get? Will, getting, remain in Mexico from the president, who's a great guy. He's actually a great guy, but he likes Mexico. He doesn't like us.

Okay? Tijuana was a mess. Tijuana had to be the fastest grocery. They had hundreds of thousands of... They couldn't come into our country until we approved them. And we didn't approve too many of them. Very seldom did we approve anyone. But they gave up all that stuff that I had.

Catch and release. I called it catch and release in Mexico. We catch and release in this country. We'd catch a killer. Know that he's a killer and release him in our country. I mean, who would do this? Who would allow this? So we ran a great thing.

If he went to the beach, because somebody convinced him that he looks good in a bathing suit, you know. And at 81 or 82, typically you don't look too great. And he didn't have the power to lift those chairs. You know, the shares weigh about six ounces. They're meant for children and old people to carry it. And he can't carry it. Anyway. Let's talk about Vice President.

Pete and I've gone off the wall. We've talked about historically presidents pick vice presidents based upon what states they can deliver. We've talked about the fact that you're looking for. It seems to be. that you might be looking for a fighter. Let's just ask you directly, what are you looking for in a vice president? So you always have to say, and I mean it, is if something should happen to the president,

you have to get somebody can be a good president, okay? And I think you have to say that. Then the second thing, I want somebody that can selfishly help me to get elected. But typically, if you look over the years, look back 100 years, it's almost never that a vice president helps. I mean, you're out there all by yourself. You really are. There's a day or two of, you know, hoopla, you picked a vice president, and then it goes back.

But it's almost never, it's almost never helped. Actually, the one person that helped, I guess you could say, is Lyndon Johnson, because he was a political, real political animal. And he sort of helped a little bit politically with Daley, et cetera, et cetera, I guess. But, you know, that's a theory anyway. But typically a vice president doesn't help. So I would say somebody that you can get along with, somebody that can help you get elected, somebody that can be, and first is somebody that can be a very good president. Did you learn any lessons from the last person you picked that will help you

either pick or not pick somebody in the next time? I feel badly for Mike because he was a very nice person. I got along with him for, I'd say, three years and 11 months. Debates coming up on June 27th. How do you prepare for that? I mean, you've stated it. Joe Biden's in a different place. How do you, what's your strategy coming into it?

So, debates are interesting because I had never debated before. And then I debated a lot on the first, you know, in 2016. I had like 14 debates or something. And it's been good. I mean, it's been good for me. It's been worked. I think I won every debate. But I never had, you know, it was very interesting.

In 2016, I said, who are these people I'm debating? Half of them I never heard of because, you know, they're governors from someplace or their senators. I said, start with Ted Cruz, and they say, well, he's the national debate champion. He's the this, he's the that. And I said, that's not good news, you know, that's not good. I mean, I could have done with a little bit less. Maybe I should have started with somebody else. But they were all, you know, they're talented politicians.

That's what, I mean, for the most part, they're politician. Very interesting. In running for president, 92% were politicians and 8% were generals. Not admirals, right, generals. And that's it. So all of a sudden, I'm going in as a business guy and a different kind of a guy. But we had great four years. We were very successful, very, I mean, the things, the largest tax cuts in history,

we had the largest regulation cuts in history, we had the best economy in history. We rebuilt our military. We had no wars. I defeated ISIS. But since you've been out of office, things have deteriorated. And we've talked a little bit about that. At a level that's not even believing. And I think most people agree with you on that.

One of the areas I want to talk about, and it's related to the border, but it's much bigger than that. And that's the problem of China taking over the Western Hemisphere. So we've had an 8,000 percent increase coming over the border of Chinese military men. I'd like to know your thoughts on what you think they're doing here. They're buying up farmland. But then in Latin America, they're making deals with governments. We're not doing the deals. They're buying up infrastructure.

They're buying up, you know, resources. they're taking over the Western Hemisphere. They're taking over the Panama Canal. How about the Panama Canal? It's crazy. And we built and lost 36,000 people to the mosquitoes. You know, 36,000 people died. So what will you do?

Because there's a lot of people worried about the entire hemisphere now. I mean, we used to worry about things over, you know, far away. This is in our hemisphere. What will you do to stop all the things that are happening from the farmland to all the ways that they're winning in the Western and our backyard? So, if you remember with China, I turned it around. First of all, I exposed China, because everyone was giving everything, oh, it's a developing nation. I said, this is not a, we're a developing nation.

They're a very rich nation, they're doing very well. But I turned things. I also got along very well with President Xi, but I did something that nobody did. I charge him hundreds of billions of dollars of tariffs. We would have lost our steel industry. We would have lost every, I mean, they had to pay hundreds, like close to 500 billion. million dollars in tariffs. And that was all turning around. And we have tremendous power with respect to China, but we don't have people that know anything about using it. I had a great

relationship, but had the election been different, we wouldn't have had fentanyl coming in. I was with Xi, and we just had a very good relationship. He was at Marilago for three days. It was amazing. You know, we had a good buy. Now, I don't want to act naive. Oh, I had it. You know, these characters out there, they'll say, oh, look, he loves China or likes it, or at least wants to run it very strongly, right? And it was very interesting. I said, no, he's a smart guy. Is he a smart guy?

Of course he's a smart guy. He's a brilliant guy. The press said, he called Xi Brilliant. Look, he runs 1.4 billion people with an iron head. No, he's not brilliant. Okay, they want me to say he's not a brilliant man. He's a very tough guy. He's a fierce person.

He's a fierce person. When he sees Biden, he can't believe it. Okay, I can't believe it. He says, what the hell? I think he thinks that they're playing a joke on him. But what's happening is we have tremendous power over China. China has made, right now we have the largest deficit we've ever had with China, like over a trillion dollars.

That means they're taking in more than a trillion. Think of how bad that is. Too much. You can't sustain that. But we have tremendous power over China. China built their military because of us. They built all this. They took so much money out of our country.

We have great power over China. We can get along with China. I will get along with China. But they respected your president. They really did. He respected me. And they don't respect this guy at all. Nobody does.

Nobody does. I mean, you take a look at what's going on in Ukraine. You take a look at what's going on with Israel. You take a look at all this stuff. It's just the whole world is out of control. So Victor Orban, Prime Minister of... Hungary, is a very tough guy. You know, he's known as a strong man.

They say, oh, he likes strong men. I don't like strong men, a weak man. I don't care. He's just a smart guy and tough. He didn't take illegal immigrants. He said, and I want Hungarians in my country. I don't need to have my shopping center's blown up. You know, make little statements like that.

But the European Union wasn't exactly thrilled with him. And they asked him recently. They said, what has to be done to straighten out the world? The whole world is blowing up. He said, one simple thing. elect Donald Trump as president. When he was president, China behaved, Russia behaved, everybody behaved. Don't forget, I stopped.

You probably never even, even you guys. Nord Stream 2 was a pipeline being built. Nobody ever heard of it except me. When I got in, I stopped it. Russia couldn't have their pipeline serving Germany. I said to Germany, so we're taking care of you with NATO, and then you're giving them the people that we're defending you against. You're paying billions of dollars a month for,

oil, oil and gas. I said, this doesn't sound right. The whole thing is crazy. And I terminated the pipeline. It was dead. And this guy came in and let him build it. But the Russian pipeline was dead. And yet I got along very well with Putin.

But you've got to be careful with Putin because Putin, I'm watching him. And he's doing things now that aren't good. That aren't good. And he's dealing with somebody that has no clue. how to play the game. This guy has no clue. It's a very serious problem. Very serious problem. It's dangerous world. Let's talk about that in reference to Ukraine then. You've said often, we wouldn't be in this situation if I were present.

But we are now in this situation. If you were present again, how do you deal with Ukraine? How do you deal with Putin? I think I deal very well with him. We're in a much weaker position because he's winning. I mean, look, we can be nice. I asked Orban. I said, who's winning?

You know, if you watch the fake news, you think, although even they aren't saying it now because the spring offensive never had. The spring offensive was the opposite, okay? But I said, who's winning? He said, they are. He said, they're a warring nation. They've fought Napoleon.

They fought Hitler. Ukraine is a very small country by comparison with far fewer people. They're running out of soldiers, you know. And I would get together, I get along very well with Zelensky, because don't forget, he was very honorable with impeachment hoax number one, hoax, they're all hoaxes. Everything they do is a hoax. I have impeachment hoax number one, impeachment hoax number two. I won both of them very easily.

But unlike Richard Nixon, who didn't get impeached, he left before the impeachment. His greatest regret, by the way, is that he didn't stay in fight. You know that? His greatest regret. You know, he never fought. wasn't impeached. He was told he was going to be impeached and he never stayed. But the Republicans liked me more than they liked him. But what happens is we have to get, Zelensky was great because Zelensky, they called him and they said, when you had that phone, the big magic phone

conversation, think of the phone conversations in Washington. And here I am, I got a call from one of my secretaries, could you call him and congratulate him on his victory, meaning he just got elected president and I didn't do it I didn't do it I didn't do it after like 10 times I said I'll call him thanks I got impeached I'm saying you know that was Rick Perry another genius greatest debater ever right Rick Perry and his debating skills he calls me up he says could you call him now he meant it well because he liked you know the energy I think it was the energy and so I call him up and uh when they called him and they asked him, were you threatened by Trump? He could have done a grand stand

and said, yes, I felt it was very threatening. Now, fortunately, the call was taped. If the call wasn't taped, I might not be talking to you right now unless we were talking about a real estate project somewhere. Somehow you don't cover them very big on your show. But the call was taped, and it was a perfect call. In fact, when the Democrats heard it was taped, they had already started the impeachment. They died. When they heard, Nancy Pelosi heard that call, she said, he didn't do anything wrong. They got into but that call fortunately was taped, meaning they had

stenographers, two military stenographers who were incredible and they had every word of it down and it was a lie. The whole thing was a lie. But when they called Zelensky he could have said yes I was threatened and he didn't say that. He said no that was a very nice call. He said nothing wrong. That was very nice. So I have a

warm spot. Have we given him too much money? Yes, we give him too much. Well, you're just a lame. You're just mad about it. You said you could end it on day one. I said I could end it before I get to the White House. I expect to end it. I think I can end it very quickly.

I get along very well with Putin and I get along with Zelensky. And I would get them in a room and I will get it ended. I'll get it ended. And I have an exact plan as to how, but I can't tell you that. You know, I can't tell you about, like, let me tell you exactly, let me lay out my cards. No, I will get it ended. Rachel mentioned the amount of money, which turns to the economy. We're $34 trillion in debt.

We've printed money we don't have that's led to massive inflation. How do you change that and turn that around to average Americans out there who are struggling every single day, worse and worse, under Joe Biden's economy? So we were doing great. We were energy independent. We were soon going to be energy dominant. I didn't want the Russian pipeline to be built because of the fact. Very simple.

I wanted to supply them with the energy. The whole thing was all of we're going to make a fortune. We have more liquid gold than any country in the world, including Saudi Arabia and including, And then I do Anwar in Alaska, which is the biggest find. It's as big as Saudi Arabia. Some people say it's bigger. And Biden closes it up in his first week. The first Department of Interior, the woman, the person in charge, closed it in her first day in office.

Ronald Reagan tried to get it. He couldn't get it. Everybody tried to get it, Bush. I got it. And they close it up. But I'm going to reinstitute it very quickly. It'll happen very fast. But think of it.

So we were rocking and rolling. We were energy independent. We were soon going to be double the size. We were in third place, and even beyond that, when I took over, we were leading. You have to see a graph. Russia, Saudi Arabia above them, Russia second, we're third. And then we go like this. I mean, we were going to be energy dominant.

We were doing things. The way you have to solve it is through growth. But also cutting, right, Mr. President? Yes, growth and cutting. The problem I had is we were starting to really rock and roll. We had the greatest economy ever. Then we got hit with COVID. And if I didn't throw money at COVID, we would have had a depression like in 1929.

And if I don't win, you're going to have a depression like in 1929. You know, one of the, I'll just say Scott, one of the greatest analysts on Wall Street considered maybe the best. He said the only reason the stock market is because they think Trump is going to win. Listen, I think that one of your strongest points is that your business, man, and people love that you ran this country like a business. And I believe that if you got in office, you will get the oil pipes going again, we'll get energy going. And I believe that we will grow. But it's really hard when you're a politician to cut. Your friend Miele in Argentina, he cut, he kept whole agencies. And now they went from 25% growth per month in inflation down to

8% per month. So it works. Are you willing to me? Now, you know he's mega. You know that. I know he is. He's a friend. That's why I brought it up with heart. No, he's my biggest fan. He's a great guy. Make Argentina great again. It works out perfectly, right? No, that's what he calls. He says his hats, make Argentina a great again. But he has, but he's cut agencies.

Are you willing to make those kinds of dramatic cuts? Because I really think, we have young kids, all of us. I think their futures are on the line. I mean, as he said, $34 trillion in debt, I think that means we're paying almost a trillion dollars in interest. I'll give you an example. Is it every month? Every year, every year, every year. You mentioned the kids. So we're going to cut the Department of Education, let it be run locally.

We have this mess. End it. End it. Other than to have a little tiny coordination. You know, it would be nice to make sure that everybody's teaching English. You know, let them learn English, okay? I love this. But, no, no, we're cutting the Department of Education. I was ready to do it before. And then, again, the COVID really, if we didn't throw money at that, you would have had a depression. We would have been under depression. And when I got out, the stock market was. higher than when just before COVID came in. So that would be the first, that will be doing, that's going to happen, that's going to happen immediately. We're going to do like Department of Interior. There's so many things you can do.

One of the things that's so bad for us is the environmental agencies, they make it impossible to do anything. And so in Louisiana, they had these massive refineries that LNG plants, but massive, essentially refineries. 14, 15 years they've been trying to get permits. I got it done in one day. One day I got the permit. Don't tell anybody, please.

I didn't know who the hell was doing it. In one case, Japan was putting... And by the way, they're like $20 billion. It's a massive... These are like the Empire State Building laid down times two on its side. All pipes. I mean, it's unbelievable, on the coast.

In Louisiana. And I got those things. The first one I got done in like 24 hours. They worked on it for 14. years. And it was terrible. I mean, what they were doing, the environmental agencies have stopped doing, they stop you from doing business in this country. And we did a great job. So Warren, we asked viewers at Fox and Friends Weekend to submit some questions to ask you. We'd love to ask you a few of these questions on their behalf. I'll start with Lisa in Florida. She says, which Democrat

dinner alive would you sit down for dinner with to discuss ways to unify our country? So he's not a Democrat anymore, but I used to get along really well with Joe Manchin. I got along with him, and he would meet a lot. He said, you're doing a great job, you're a great president. And when this impeachment hoax started happening, he said, I'll never vote against you're a great president. And then he voted against me. I never spoke to him again. So that was one, but that was one that was one that I sat down. I'd sit down with anybody, frankly. I want to unify the country. Laura from Nebraska said, I'm the mother of two army officers. What are you going to do to rebuild our military?

And I would add to that, rip out the woke stuff that's happening, with all the vets and the service member see is embedded in our Pentagon right now. You know the military better than anybody. I'd put him in charge. I really would. I often think of it. I'd do a great job. I talked to him about it a little bit.

We wouldn't let him easily. We ended up doing good. The show has to do worse. If the show does worse, if I see the wrong, ratings go down. I'm going to steal them. I'll steal all of you, frankly. But no, he would be unbelievable at defense. He would be unbelievable at defense or at the VA. The VA was, they did a good job, though. They ended up doing a good job. You know, at the beginning. They're trying to undo a lot of that stuff. They were undoing it. Yes, they are. We did two things. Number one,

I got the right to fire people. We fired 9,000 sadists and, you know, horrible people. They were beating up. These people are sick. The other thing I got where you could go out, if you couldn't get good service, you go out. And this is, Pete was driving me crazy. about this. You know, we know each other a little bit, but we know each other only in a positive way. He would call up and say, soldiers are waiting for three and four months to see a doctor. They couldn't say it. And I got it actually approved through Congress. And now what they're doing is they're ending that. Where if you, if it took more, think if going to the hospital or the doctor with your kids, your husband was great, by the way, he's great. He'd fit into this panel very well.

Where is he? Oh, look at it. Oh, I saw a guy with a doctor. The pink shirt, I didn't look up. And I knew he would never wear a pink shirt, so I didn't. Wow. Good. I'm glad I said the right thing. He is. He's a great, you know, he's a great champion.

He climbs his streets for years. I want to ask you what Rina and Liberty, Maine, asks. By the way, your sleep schedule, your diet, these are things of legend. So she asks, President Trump, what is the very first thing you do every morning? So I don't sleep a lot. I don't say that as a badge of courage. You know, a lot of people who don't slip it, and they maybe do. I rarely eat breakfast.

It's funny, I love food, but I don't necessarily. I'm too anxious. I really enjoy life. It's crazy. I shouldn't enjoy life. I get indicted. I get impeached. Somebody said, how do you live?

You know the most often question? I get two questions. Number one, I get, will they do it again? You know what that means? Very ominous. I said, they're going to try. Because they can't help themselves. They're bad.

But we hope we're going to have them blocked, okay? The other question is, how do you do it? How do you stand up and you get impeached, you get indicted, you get this, you get convicted of bullshit. And they say, how do you do it? I get that question from very big, like you see the cars out here, you see the biggest people all over. The biggest people on Wall Street, they say, how do you do it? How do you do it? They get a letter from the SEC that's a friendly civil letter, and they can't sleep for two weeks.

They say, how do you do it? And that's one I've never been able to answer. I don't know. The reason I think I can do that is because I know how great this country can be. And it's so big. It's such an important thing that I'm doing. I enjoy doing it. I have obstacles.

These obstacles, it would be so nice not to have a phony Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia hooks. Look at the Russia, Russia, Russia scam. It was just a scam. For two years it went on, and you want to do business with Russia, make a lot of money, you know, get, it's good. They forced, and now the worst thing happened, Russia has been forced into the arms of China. This is something that if you're 10 years old studying history, you learn, never let Russia and China get together. Well, between Obama and Biden, they forced Russia. I had it opposite.

The problem I had, though, I had the hoax. I had the hoax going on. It was harder for me. I'd say to Putin, you know, he would actually say to me. He said, we could make wonderful deals for our countries, but it's very tough. I said, it's very tough for me. Because if I made a deal, they'd say, oh, the Russia deal, the Russia hoax. You know, he loves Putin and all that stuff.

So we understood it. But we got along very well. We had a very good relationship. And Ukraine and the Ukraine war has obviously brought Russia and China together closer, right? It's brought a tremendous, it's an accent. It's a new access. It's also brought Iran into the picture, and it's brought a little bit North Korea back into the picture. You know, I got a long great with him. Kim Jong-un, and when I went to meet him, remember the famous couple of meetings? I got a long great with him. I know him quite well, and he's a very smart guy. They hate when I say that. But we had it going so good. And now all these people that are against us have become like, it's become like a partnership. And a lot of bad things are happening. The Taiwan situation is. Yeah, you can give them a couple of more minutes, fellas. That's all right.

Okay, somebody's saying to end it. We'll give him a couple of more minutes, okay? Thank you. For Sean, in honor of show with his, please. When you look at what's happening now, the whole world is lining up against us, and our allies are getting very weak for us. They're no longer for us.

But watch what's happening with China and Taiwan. That's a big deal. That's a big deal. You can may I follow up? Please. Talk to us about. You just love life and you care about this country. People ask you, why do you do this?

How can you do this? I mean, not to mention the rally after rally, the energy. But maybe the question isn't how do you do this over and over, but how does your family do this? All the obstacles, you know, these are things you care about, your ambitions for the country. What about everybody around you? So I think in many ways it's tougher on them that is in me.

They're good people, all of them, everyone, everyone. I have a wonderful wife who has to listen to this stuff all the time. They do that for this reason. They do that, all these salacious names that they put in, of these people. And I'm not even allowed to defend myself because of a gag order. Think of it. But they put this stuff in to create havoc. These are bad people.

I know everything they're doing. I know every move they make. I get it. But a lot of people don't. But it's tougher. I think it's probably, in many ways, it's tougher of my family that is in me. You know, my sons, I mean, they're great, and they work hard, and Don's become pretty right. He's become, and, you know, they went after this young guy, Don, all he wanted to do is help the country.

And he's been in federal grand juries and things at the beginning for hours and hours about Russia. Think of it. I'll never forget. Adam Schiff was a real sleazbag. Probably will become a senator. It's hard to believe. but a real sleaze-bag. He comes out of a meeting, an intelligence meeting,

and he says, now think of how bad you are. You make up with Hillary and the others. He knew it was a hoax, rush, rush, Russia, Russia. So he knew it was a hoax. He comes out, and he looks very solemn. You know, watermelon head, with the thinnest neck I've ever seen, he's not going to be a football player. His neck is holding up this massive watermelon.

But he comes in, this is one of the more unattractive people. I know you're not supposed to say that, so that's okay. I'll be out of politics. But he comes out, and he says with, you know, no stupid guy, and he says with, you know, such dignity, Donald Trump Jr. will go to jail because of what he's done with Russia.

There is no Russia, Russia, Russia deal. And he's saying that my son, who's a young guy, is going to go to jail, and I call my son, and I'm watching this, it's a big headline. Schiff predicts, remember when he said he has all this information, he had nothing, because the kid didn't know anything. about Russia. He knew less about Russia than your husband knows, okay? Unless they had any trees in Russia that you climbed. So, so Donald Trump Jr. will go to jail because of what he's done

with Russia. And he knows it's a hoax. He's talking about a young man going to jail about something that he knows is a hoax. How bad do you have to be? And I call him up. I say, Don, are you okay? Yeah, I don't know what they're saying. He didn't even know. You know, he didn't have to be. He didn't have any idea what was going? It's a shame. And he became tougher. I mean, you almost, two things happen. You either become tougher or you go into a corner and you put your thumb in your mouth and you say, mommy, take me home. And he chose not to do that. Well, I'm glad that that's the case. And by the way, as a, having come from a political family and my husband, having run for office, what's happened to your family in particular, it just breaks

my heart. How's Malia doing with that? She's fine, but I think it's very hard for her. I mean, she's fine. But it's, you know, she has to read all this crap. Stuff that shouldn't even be put in the trial. The judge should have never allowed it to be in the trial. And she has to read all this stuff. What about Barron? People started to focus on Barron recently. He's amazing, actually, in a certain way. He's tall, good-looking guy. He's a very good student. And he's applied to colleges and gets into everywhere he goes. You know, he's very sought after from the standpoint. He's a very smart guy. He's a very tall guy. And he's a great kid.

He's cool. He's pretty cool. I'll tell you. You know, it's very interesting. The college is, you know, six months ago, you look at a college and you sort of want a certain college. And then you see all of these colleges are rioting. Yeah, yeah. And maybe you want to go to a different kind of a college because there's plenty of colleges that we also like that are different, and they don't riot.

This is Sharon from Alabama. And I think her question actually ties into what we were just talking about, how do you do this? And I know that you've said before that you've been sustained by the prayers of lots of Americans. I've seen pictures of people praying over you. It's incredible, actually. Her question is, she says, you've been faced with so much adversity and persecution for years. What's your relationship with God like, and how do you pray? That's Sharon from Alabama.

Okay, so I think it's good. I do very well with the evangelicals. I love the evangelicals. And I have more people saying they pray for me. I can't even believe it. And they are so committed and they're so believing, they say, sir, you're gonna be okay. I pray for you every night.

I mean, everybody, almost, I can't say everybody, but almost everybody that sees me, they say it. It's such a beautiful thing. You know what's a beautiful thing too? When you look at all of this bad stuff going on, they have nothing to look up. up to. They have no God. They have no anything. They kill people. They beat people. They push people into subways. There's just nothing there. Religion is such a great thing.

It keeps you, you know, there's something to be good about. You want to be good. You want to, it's so important. And I don't know if it's explained right. I don't know if I'm explaining it right now. But when you have something like that, you want to be good. You want to go to heaven, okay? You want to go to heaven. If you don't have heaven, you almost say, what's the reason? Why do I have to be good? Let's not be good. What difference is it back? Or they try to create heaven here.

Ask a question real quick. Well, end where we started. Attorney General, what are you? I mean, we talked about how you fix the DOJ, how you bring justice back to this country. When we talk to people, people's faith in the system is shattered. I mean, absolutely shattered. We've seen it in your fundraising numbers. It should be.

So who do you choose? Do you have a name that you're top on your list? I do. I do have a couple, and one in particular. But I made a lot of good choices. I got that one wrong. I was very loyal to one because he was the first senator to endorse me. As soon as conflict came up, he ran for the hills. And actually the second one, he ran for the hills. When he heard that he was going to be impeached, we're going to impeach him. And he was like a different person. I had to get rid of him. And I would say that that was the one thing. One of the truly important, positions as Attorney General. And I was very disappointed at both of those Attorney Generals. Jeff Sessions was, you know, I don't blame myself too much. He was a, some position in Alabama, and he wanted to be so bad. And he was the first senator to endorse me. And again, I was sort of a civilian. I didn't have a lot of people. I didn't know that many senators. And he went to a rally in Mobile. The fact is that we had 72,000 people. So it was a

bigger shot, but he came to me and he said, I'd love to be Attorney General. I didn't see it. And then he came three, four times, and I said, you know, just out of loyalty, I did it. And he ran for the hills because it's nasty. This is a nasty business. This is a nasty world. How do you find these? And Barr, I know, Barr was threatened.

In all fairness to him. He didn't want to, you know, he was Attorney General. He was a respected guy. And they said they were going to impeach him. I understand that. I said, I get impeached twice and my numbers went up, which is unusual. I said, it's not so bad to be impeached. What are they going to impeach you? He had no idea what they were going to impeach.

But he was going to be impeached. They didn't know what. They didn't know why. It's like they took me to trial. There's no crime. They were trying to devise the crime during the trial. That's how bad it was. But with Barr, and he, you know, he let me down.

He let me down, he let down our country. He endorsed me the other day, as you saw. But he let down our country. It takes a brave person to do it. People don't want to be impeached. They don't want to be indicted by these scoundrels who are much more evil than people. I'm telling you, China and Russia,

we have a problem from within that's really bad. So he let us down. The key to really good government where we had like Lighthizer and some of these people that were really good, It's the person that's at the top. If you get the right person, it's like magic. It's like in real estate, you know, you put a good super in a building, the building runs well.

You put a bad one in it doesn't, it's the same thing in a little bit, slightly larger scale. But we had great people, you know, I rebuilt the military. We did things that were amazing. One of the things that the people that watch your show should know, we defeated ISIS quickly. I was told it would take five years. I did it in a matter of weeks, right? fast. And they did it fantastically, and I got to know the real fighting generals. There's not woke in the military. There's woke at the top. They want there to be woke.

But these guys aren't meant for woke. I really don't. I really think. You know, they're like you. They're like this guy. He's doing a great job, by the way. I don't know him. I don't know him like you. But the whole combination, it works. Are you going to fire those generals? The woke generals at the top? Because people have been talking about it? Yes. I would get rid of them, yeah. But see, now I know him. I didn't know him before. You know, I came in. What do I know? I was a New York. real estate person, but no, I'd fire them. I would fire them. You can't have woke military. You said it's so great, you know, you need people that want to win. They want to

win wars. That's what their purpose is, to win wars, not to be woke. And, but we do have great military. You look at what we did. Look at the, I was the only one in 78 years or something. I didn't start any wars. I finished wars. I got out of Syria. I took our soldiers home. I would have moved a lot of them out of Germany. You know, I was going to move them out of Germany. Not all of them, but I would have moved. We have 45,000. That's like, you know what we do? By doing that, we're giving Germany this massive shot in the arm, and then they don't treat us well in trade. But we have a great military, and there's nothing woke about it other than those top guys. I used to watch Millie sit there in Congress and talk about, you know,

he's trying to understand this and that mind. I won't get into it, but certain minds, I say, is this guy crazy? But it's one of those things. I've gotten to know a lot of the generals because of the things we did. And we had some unbelievable wins, as you know. We had some wins with terrorists, the biggest terrorists. The two biggest terrorists in the world ever I took out. So we have some great things planned. It's very important the people that run the agencies,

if you get the good ones, and I think I have great ones, slated. But if you get the good ones, it's like magic. And we had mostly good ones. You think more about the bad ones. We had some bad ones, too. Mr. President, you've had an eventful week. We appreciate you doing your first interview with us here at Fox & Friends Weekend after New York.

Thank you so much. I think your show is great. Your chemistry is amazing on television. And congratulations. I don't know what they're paying you, but I think it should be more. Great. Take forward to that one in the back, Mr. President. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. There you go. An hour and 18 minutes with former President Donald Trump in the first exclusive interview he's given after his conviction in New York City.

If you think it so deserves, I hope you go give us five stars or leave a comment. We're going to bring you into the program. Coming up this week, we're going to break down that interview. The highlights, the criticisms, the criticisms of me in this interview. We're going to break down the reaction to that conversation with Donald Trump. So make sure you subscribe. So you'll know when that's up at Apple, Spotify, or on YouTube. And until then, I'll see you again next time.

on music app. Hey, I'm Trey Gowdy host of the Trey Gatti podcast. I hope you will join me every Tuesday and Thursday as we navigate life together and hopefully find ourselves a little bit better on the other side. Listen and follow now at Fox Newspodcast.com.