Businessweek

The Donald Trump Interview Transcript

TRUMP: Well, I think manufacturing is a big deal, and everybody that runs for office says you’ll never manufacture again.

We have currency problems, as you know. Currency. When I was president, I fought very strongly and hard with President Xi and with Shinzo Abe, who’s a fantastic man—actually, you know the story there.

So we have a big currency problem because the depth of the currency now in terms of strong dollar/weak yen, weak yuan, is massive. And I used to fight them, you know, they wanted it weak all the time. They would fight it and I said, if you weaken it any more, I’m going to have to put tariffs on you. They went as far as they could with me, but I was very tough with it. Nobody talks about it now. And that difference is, you know, we have the spread is the biggest and I think they said 38 years.¹ That’s a tremendous burden on our companies that try and sell tractors and other things to other places outside of this country. It’s a tremendous burden.

And I remember it’s one of the things I worked almost hardest on, to keep their currency up². Because we, you know, we didn’t have the kind of a discrepancy that you have right now. And I think you’re going to see some very bad things happen in a little while. I’ve been talking to manufacturers, they say we cannot get, nobody wants to buy our product because it’s too expensive. You look at Komatsu and these tractor companies. They make a good product but you know—what it does is it forces, it’s going to force Caterpillar and these other companies to build, they already have plenty outside but it’s going to force them to build in other nations, which is what the other nations want. And it’s what we should want also in a different way, we should want that, we have to have that but I think you’re gonna see some very bad numbers coming over the next period of a year. It takes a while to have that happen. But it is really the discrepancy as an example between the dollar and the yen and the dollar and the yuan is unbelievable. With the dollar being high and with them being very low. I would always notice they fought very hard to keep their currency low.

It doesn’t sound good, but from a standpoint of what they do and making products, that’s how Japan was built. That’s how China was built. I think we’re in a very bad position.

Look, I would love to. I would love to see him ... but I just feel that everything he’s doing is the opposite of what should be done. I have no objection to the electric vehicle—the EV. I think it’s great. Elon [Musk, the Tesla chief executive officer] is fantastic. I think it’s great. I’ve driven them often and they’re wonderful. But you can’t have 100% of your cars electric. We can’t electrify our cities. We’re so far behind on just, you know, the basics, but it’s not that. The cars don’t go far enough. They’re very, very expensive. They’re also heavy. You know, they’re much heavier. They want to go to electric trucks. If you did electric trucks about double, because I’ve met a lot with the trucking industry. They’re two-and-a-half times the weight of the same truck with diesel.¹ And who would think this? You would have to rebuild your bridges and your infrastructure, can’t hold the weight²—they’re massively heavier than not just a little bit, the batteries and all everything, the components are much heavier than diesel or gasoline. So I mean, these are problems that have big problems. You saw last week they announced that they opened up seven chargers for a course of $8 billion³. Seven. Seven chargers. It’s like, it’s like a pump at a gas station. They did seven chargers. They spent $8 billion doing it and that’s probably one hundred, one-thousandth of 1% of what you need. And I don’t even know—I’ve seen reports that if you were going to electrify the country, the country would have to go bankrupt. It would take $5 trillion⁴ to have the requisite number of chargers. These are things that are not complex to understand, and yet they don’t want to even talk about them, you know? They tell that the car companies—keep making the cars, we don’t care, they want to have 50% of the cars by the end of, by 2030 and substantially more than that—I think 75%—by 2032⁵. Seventy-five percent. Not doable. Not sustainable—and by the way, they’re also giving massive amounts of subsidy that nobody really even knows about. But you’re talking trillions of dollars⁶. We have hundreds of thousands of electric cars right now that aren’t selling, and yet you don’t hear any complaints from the car companies. Normally, if a car doesn’t sell, you know, it’s a front-page story on Businessweek. Right? But they are not selling and the car companies are happy. They’re getting subsidized at levels never seen before.

So inflation was caused by energy. And what he did is he started immediately cutting my energy. We had it down to a level—we had it down to, at some points, $1.50¹. That was a little bit artificial because we had pandemics, we had a lot of you know a lot of things changed with a pandemic. You have the pandemic period of time and then you have the rest. But we had it down to $1.87. We had it very, very low and doing well and and not in unusual times.

When he came in, he was really starting to cut it back. I mean, he got rid of Anwar. Reagan wanted it. It was his biggest dream to get Anwar. Because Anwar could be the size of Saudi Arabia², in terms of capacity in Alaska.

And he ended that which was just a terrible thing that he did that. But Anwar and he basically let it be known that the regulations, the rules, regulations, everything, so I cut regulations more than any president in history by far and I got the biggest tax cuts—more than any president including Ronald Reagan, which was second. We get tremendous tax cuts and incentives, you know, the one-year write-off. People, they were loving it. And we had it, pre-pandemic, and then we got it back to where the stock market was actually higher.

As I handed over, the stock market was substantially higher than it was previous to the pandemic or the China virus or Covid, or whatever you want to call it, many different names, but the stock market was higher than that period of time³, which was a rough period of time, and nobody knew, nobody knew anything. What was this? And I always say I did a great job in that but I never got credit. I got credit for a great economy. I got credit for what we did with the military, no wars, no. Russia took nothing from us, but they took a lot from everyone else. And that’s something you probably want to discuss later. But you know, the whole Ukraine thing was horrible—caused by oil too, because, you know, when oil gets up to $100 a barrel instead of $40 a barrel, he can prosecute a war. At $40 a barrel whether he listened to me and he does and he did, he would have never gotten in. I don’t care what it was about. And now we had the double incentive, a very expensive oil. He’s the only one that made money during the war, because he did. At those numbers that money was staggering. And to a large extent that war drove the prices up. So in one case, you want to have low energy prices, but in another case, you want to end a war but you can’t end a war at $100 because at $100, his incentives to end it is not great. So we have a whole set of macro issues that are also micro issues, they go into micro issues. And the end, the end of the result is the world is a mess. And we could end up—I gotta get that hat. [To an aide sitting in on the interview] Can you tell her to bring me that new hat? This hat says, “Trump was right about everything.”

Yes, I would.² There’s a lot of false information on that. I’ve had my own disputes with him. But no, I would, I would let him serve it out especially if I thought he was doing the right thing. Right now, you have to keep rates where they are until you bring the economy and it could drop. Inflation is a country buster. It’s interesting. You study inflation more than I do but I’ve studied inflation plenty. And you look back to old Germany, you look back to so many countries, it eventually breaks a country. And so you know, you can’t. They have a dream that they want to lower interest rates but they are very tough right now. Now, I would have a plan to lower costs. It doesn’t have to be interest rates. Costs. Because if you could lower costs, you could then lower interest rates.

But interest rates are very high now and it’s hard for them. I know they want to try and do it. Maybe they will do it prior to the election, prior to November 5, even though it’s something that they know they shouldn’t be doing.

Unless they cut other costs commensurate with interest, interest is a very big cost. So it’s hard. But yeah, there is: I have a plan to make up for that with energy cutting. Energy. We can cut energy way down. You know, I always say we have more liquid gold under our feet, which is true. We have more liquid gold than anybody. If we could get energy—energy is such a big cost and interest is such a big cost. But you know, the interest is sort of self-defeating because we have to pay bonds. The bonds are just, it’s eating us alive, the interest payments. I used to say when we had 1% bonds or things and less, I used to say: “Can you imagine if we were paying” and you know, at 1%, it sort of works.

Speaking of that, your gentleman on the cover [Trump is talking about a copy of the July 2024 issue of Businessweek, featuring on the cover Bernard Arnault, chairman and CEO of LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton SE, which is on a nearby coffee table], who’s an incredible guy, a friend of mine, I think, I don’t know if you asked him that question?

But he is a friend of mine. He is great. And his son is great, too. But he bought Tiffany. And I said, what interest rate? Oh, well, they actually paid me. So he was one of the few private individuals that was able to get—he bought Tiffany for whatever he paid. And then he renegotiated the price. But he was, he said, well, my deal was so good. I mean, they loaned me the money and they actually pay me for that.

I’m gonna get you guys a Coke. Would you please come in? Who wants something to drink? Anybody? A little Coke? Cokes and Diet Cokes. One thing I’ll say about a Diet Coke, I have never seen anyone thin have a Diet Coke. No, it’s always Diet Coke. And I say it sort of in a friendly way. But people drink a Diet Coke, I have never seen a thin person drink it. I’ve just never seen it. These guys come in and they order regular Cokes and they’re thin. So, I don’t know what’s going on with it? So go ahead.

Well, you have to get other costs down, you cannot suffer inflation. Inflation, and it really and it really and it truly is ... [An aide brings out a red MAGA hat] ... This is just, somebody just sent this.

I’m gonna start, somebody just gave it to me. Did you see that, Jason [Miller, a senior adviser]? So I gotta have to start wearing it. But you could do other things on the interest rates. Now, one of the things happening is that millions of people that are flowing in are costing the country a fortune, on top of all this. This is a new phenomenon. And I would say, you know, some people say it’s 16 million, 17 million, some people say it’s 9 million, 10 million. The 9 million, 10 million are way off¹. It could be much, it could be more than 17. It could be 20 million, but it certainly will be probably 20 million by the time this character, who’s the worst president in the history of our country. He’s destroying our country. And by the time he gets out, which hopefully he gets out. If he doesn’t get out, I think you can fold up Businessweek because I don’t think it’s gonna be worth a damn. I think the whole country will go down the tubes. And, you know, there is a theory out there, because we’ve been doing very well in the polls. And it seems that when we do well in the polls, the market goes up².

Scott, you have Scott [Bessent, CEO of Key Square Capital Management LLC] and they say the only reason the market’s doing well, it’s because I’m doing well in the polls and I’m gonna be president. But there are a lot of people out there with that, including some of the best, best and optimistic people, but nevertheless. I think that interest rates are very tough right now.

Getting money is very tough, you know, when, so we had it at 2.6% for a housing loan and people were buying a lot of houses. Now it’s really at 9 or 10³. But it’s really got to be much higher than that because you can’t get money. So if you can’t get money, it’s higher than 9 or 10. That’s a lot—9 or 10. That made a big difference because people, they are just—it’s called the American dream. They want to be able to buy a house. They can’t buy a house.

Well, first of all, he had something called the Inflation Reduction Act, which wasn’t the right name. It increased inflation and not decreased. And they actually admitted that after they got the money, they should have never been able to get that money. I wasn’t there. They should have never, they didn’t need the money. We needed the money that I got originally or we wouldn’t have had a country. We would have been in a depression the likes of which you have never seen before outside of 1929. It didn’t get a lot worse than that. But if you didn’t do that, so the Inflation Reduction Act was—they named it that to try and get it passed. And then after they got the money they, I think they actually renamed it¹ but it has nothing to do with inflation reduction. It has much more to do with the green new scam, which is what it really is.

No, we have to get down now to basics. We need energy at low prices. The advantage we have all over almost every country including the very large ones is that we have more energy than anybody. We have more of the real energy, the energy that works. Wind does not work. It’s too expensive. If you look at a kilowatt-hour, you can measure it different ways, you can measure it any different way but you look at the cost of wind compared to natural gas, which is clean, which we have so much—it escapes into the air. But if you look at the cost of wind, it’s so expensive. You look at the cost of solar. And you look at some of the solar and I’m a believer in solar but it takes so much room. It is totally inconsistent, you know, and it can only be used in certain areas where the sun shines nice and bright and consistently. I looked at a big solar area. It was miles up, you know, they talk about the environment. This thing is like miles square, it’s massive. And you say, is that like a good thing? And the windmills, you know what that is? I think they are so harmful. It always amazes me that people that consider themselves to be green, in terms of energy. They like wind and I think they like wind because it sounds good. But I see the windmills—you go out to places in California and others where they’ve been up for a while. They don’t last very long. You know people forget, you have to rebuild them all the time. It’s not like you have it and it’s good. They last for eight, nine years. And the ones in the ocean just get beat up by the saltwater especially. And they’re constantly replacing, you know, fixing them when you take them down. The blades are made out of a carbon material that they say environmentally they can’t bury them. They don’t know what to do with the blades. But you look at places in California where they’ve had these things up for a while and then they put the new ones next to the old ones at different colors and different shapes, it definitely looks like junkyards. It’s horrible, and if you face a windmill or anywhere near a windmill, your house is worth much less money than it would be worth. But it’s very inconsistent. And we’re gonna have to get back to basics, we’re gonna have to get back and you know, Germany tried this. Germany went and now they’re building just hundreds of coal plants and they’re building, I guess, they keep going back into the nuclear business². But we have to get back into sanity.

You mean, dismantle some of the things that were done? Like wind?

The problem with the wind is that it needs massive subsidy. And when I was president I was sitting next to a man, a very big man. We had the 40 biggest businesspeople in Europe. And I was sitting next to a gentleman whose sole function was energy and things like windmills. And he said, “No, we’re getting out of the business of windmills.” I never forgot. He said, “I’m getting out of the business of windmills because they need subsidies. You can’t build them without subsidies.” And you see that if you look at, if you look at New Jersey, where they were going to build, it is massive and they kept giving more and more subsidy and then ultimately they didn’t build them. The whole thing was canceled, which was a big, which made the people of New Jersey happy. It was a concerted effort. But wind is unbelievably expensive¹. It needs subsidy. And this gentleman said, “I never want to be in any form of energy which needs subsidy.” And he said wind needs great subsidy.

You know, I had it at 50% and I’ve never heard the 60¹ . And everyone always says, look at Smoot-Hawley and oh, look what happened. Well, Smoot-Hawley was after the Depression started. So if you go back, I told you to read about William McKinley. William McKinley made this country rich. He was the most underrated president. And those that followed him took the money. Roosevelt took the money and built, you know, the whole thing with the parks and the dams. But McKinley made the money and he was truly the tariff king. And I don’t do this based on my knowledge of him, although I’ve learned about him after the fact.

Tariffs do two things. Economically, they’re phenomenal. And a lot of people will say, Oh, that’s terrible. It’s very dangerous when you say that because you probably have your views and a lot. I can’t believe how many people are negative on tariffs that are actually smart people. It does two things: Economically, it’s great. And man, is it good for negotiation. I’ve had guys, I’ve had countries, that were potentially extremely hostile coming to me and say, ‘Sir, please stop with the tariffs. Stop.’ They would do anything. Nothing to do with economic, they would do—you know, we have more than economic, we have other things like let’s not go to war. Or I don’t want you to go into war in another place.

Yeah, well, I did it with Apple. You know, Apple would come in. I tell you what: Tim Cook, I found him to be a very good businessman. Other people would hire people, they’d pay them millions of dollars, lobbyists and all to speak to me. Tim Cook, I knew him just a little bit. He would call me up, you know he is the chairman of Apple, “Could I come in and see you?” He is the chairman of Apple. I would say that’s impressive. He came—at least I don’t know what it is now but it was the biggest company. And I said, “Yeah, come in.” And he said to me, “I need help,” You have tariffs on 25 and 50%, depending on the category. He said, “It would really hurt our business. It would destroy our business potentially.” I said, “Why is that?” Because if you built your plants here, you would have no tax. See, that’s the third thing that it does, it gets people to build here. And I could tell you, I could talk about this subject all day. We are so stupid, what we do. You know, I had no problems with China. I had no problems with Russia. I had no problems with anybody. Because we, at this moment, have a country that has a lot of economic power. We’re losing that power rapidly. Rapidly. We’re also losing our standard—you know, they’re going off the dollar. Look, you have Iran gone, you have Russia gone, you have Saudi Arabia now saying they’re gonna go both ways with China, and with us.

Look, a couple of things. No. 1, Taiwan. I know the people very well, respect them greatly. They did take about 100% of our chip business¹. I think, Taiwan should pay us for defense. You know, we’re no different than an insurance company. Taiwan doesn’t give us anything. Taiwan is 9,500 miles away. It’s 68 miles away from China. A slight advantage, and China’s a massive piece of land, they could just bombard it. They don’t even need to—I mean, they can literally just send shells. Now they don’t want to do that because they don’t want to lose all those chip plants. You know, all those plants and they don’t want to do that. But I will tell you, that’s the apple of President Xi’s eye, he was a very good friend of mine until Covid that I really, you know, I was, I didn’t feel the same way. Same thing with Putin.

Putin and I got along very well, with our relationship. We were never in danger of a war. He would have never gotten into Ukraine. I said, don’t ever, ever go into Ukraine.

The oil prices. It was so crazy. The oil price was so crazy and it was always the apple of his eye. Just like with China. It’s the apple of China’s eye. It was the apple. It’s the apple of his eye. But the day I left they sent 28 bombers right over the top² and they’ve been very aggressive ever since, they got ships all over the place. I wouldn’t feel so secure right now, if I was them, but remember this: Taiwan took our chip business from us, I mean, how stupid are we? They took all of our chip business. They’re immensely wealthy. And I don’t think we’re any different from an insurance policy. Why? Why are we doing this?

They took almost 100% of our chip industry, I give them credit. That’s because stupid people were running the country. We should have never let that happen. Now we’re giving them billions of dollars to build new chips in our country, and then they’re going to take that too, in other words, they’ll build it but then they’ll bring it back to their country.

[Interrupts] I just think we have to be smart, but remember 9,500 miles away. You have to do double loads on airplanes to get them over, by the time they get over here, they have to leave. But it’s a very, very difficult thing. And the problem is that in three-and-a-half years, China has aligned with Russia, Iran and North Korea. And North Korea has a lot of nuclear weapons. I can tell you that. I don’t think that’s confidential. They have a lot. And this is a different world than it was three-and-a-half years ago. Three-and-a-half years ago, we were, you know, the worst thing that happened is we’ve allowed, because Biden is a stupid person. He’s forced Russia and China to get married. They’re married. Then they took in their little cousin, Iran, and then they took in North Korea. They don’t need anybody else. They don’t need anybody else.

It’s a very, very dangerous world. And I actually worry about the five months that we have left. Right, I think you could end up in a, you could end up in a World War III. The man is grossly incompetent and his people, they’re fascists, but they have no idea what they’re doing, So remember this: I had no war, I had no peace, I had no problem. We had no war. No war other than ISIS. I finished them off in a very short period of time. I was told it would take five years, it took me almost no time, we knocked them out. We got [Quds Force commander Qassem] Soleimani, we got [Islamic State leader Abu Bakr] al-Baghdadi, Russia took no land. You know, that’s an interesting stat. They said with Obama they got this, with Bush they got this, and they could go back further than that. Every president gave a massive, meaning they were able to take, with me they took nothing.

Now people will write: Oh, Trump, Trump. But that’s the fact. You know, it’s funny. I laugh even as I talk about it, we did such a good job. Don’t get credit for it, but that’s all right, we did such a good job.

With all of these other presidents, they were just feasting on the world. With me, nobody feasted on the world. Iran was broke. You wouldn’t have had Israel. Iran had no money. They were down to $300 million. I think they were down to less than $300 million¹. They would have had to deal, if the election weren’t rigged, they would have had a deal within one week, I would have had a deal and the basic deal is no nuclear weapons. I would have made a great deal with them—no nuclear weapons.

But when I came in, I saw what was happening, they were on the path to a nuclear weapon. I ended the Iran nuclear deal, which was very important to do, It was the stupidest deal. The problem is Biden has done nothing with it. I ended it. He’s done nothing with it. But we would have had a deal. So they were broke. They didn’t have any money for Hamas. And they had no money for Hezbollah or any of the 28 they call them—organizations of terrors.

They were all starving. And there were stories around the time that I was leaving that this and, you know, I had no terror for four years. I couldn’t talk about it. Because I don’t want to say there have been no attacks and then there’s an attack, right? That doesn’t play well. But we had no terror attacks during my, during my time in office.

Yeah. So what we’re doing with sanctions is we’re forcing everyone away from us. So I don’t love sanctions. I found them very useful with Iran, but I didn’t even need sanctions with Iran so much. I told China, that and Russia is in a similar position. I told China... I made people aware and I don’t think China is bad. But I made people aware that China has been ripping off this country for 30 years, OK, under every president, and I’m the only one who took in massive amounts of money, hundreds of billions of dollars from China.

So much so that Biden, who got paid off by China, can’t even end the tariffs because the money is so big that’s coming in. And that was just the beginning. That was just the beginning. But I taught people that China’s hurting us. China built their military with the money they took out of the United States, right. So, I think Gordon Chang [conservative commentator and China hawk] said that the other day, said Trump’s the only one that understood China and he said a couple of things that are interesting. He said, when he started charging the tariffs, this massive amount of money that was cut, you know, we were taking in massive amounts of money. I gave the farmers $28 billion. They got $28 billion because China took advantage of our farmers. I gave it to them. Hence I won Iowa and every other place.

[Interrupts] It’s because I like, I like simplicity. I liked 20% better. I like 15% yet better, but I think that would be, you know, that’d be hard.

Fifteen would get us down to being about the lowest. Look, when I did those tax cuts, this place started to boom. And as you guys know better than I do, we took in more revenues with much, much lower rate than we did with a much higher rate. Nobody could believe it. Everyone thinks, oh, well. It didn’t work that way. We would, you know, we had the thing where you were able to bring your money back from offshore. Nobody could bring their money back. You had to hire 15 different accounting firms in order to get your money back, it was so complicated. And the rate was too high.

They’re not going to give up half of their money in order to bring it back here. Like Apple brought back billions and billions of dollars and they started building. I said, “I’m gonna do something for you guys, but you have to build in this country.” I want them to build here. That’s the other thing tariffs do. If you put tariffs on companies, they’re going to build here, because they’re not going to want to pay the tariff. You know, a bad things happening. A really bad thing is happening there in Mexico. China is building massive automobile plants. They’re gonna put the UAW out of work. They’re building them in Mexico to build cars to sell into the United States, what do we get out of it?

Now if they built those facilities here, but our people are so stupid, that wasn’t gonna happen in my day, you know why? Why I stopped all of that, they were all moving to Mexico. They were building in Mexico, they had no tax to pay, and they’re selling them in the United States. You wouldn’t have even had a car industry if I didn’t stop that.

Let me just say one thing first, so I had a meeting with them. First, I had a meeting with Congress, Republican Congress. It was like a lovefest, then I met with them and then I met with the US Senate, all Republicans, 49. And it was also a lovefest, but my best meeting of the three was with the executives. And Biden’s misinformation people put out a thing: Oh, he went on, he rambled. There was no rambling. This, you could say, this is rambling, but in order to get to the point, you have to, you know, this is a very complex subject, that a lot of people, most people don’t understand. But I just wanted to say, that that was the best meeting. They loved it. They were happy with. I mean, as an example, I brought the taxes down from 39% to 21%¹. What’s not to love? I then said, I’d like to round it off to 20 for simplicity reasons, I mean, it is, you know, believe it or not, it sort of makes sense and it’s still a lot of money.

But I would like to get it down to 15, if we could, because that would put us in the absolute lowest in terms of incentive. But that meeting and we had, I don’t know, 70—all CEOs, the top guys, that was a lovefest, and I will tell you when I’m not loved because I feel that better than anybody. But that was a lovefest. And it was reported by some people, so wrong. Actually, CNBC called and apologized to me, because they found out. But we had a great meeting, Jamie Dimon was there. I have a lot of respect for Jamie Dimon.

He is somebody that I would consider, sure. He was at the meeting. Tim Cook was right next to him. You know, we had everybody.

No, no, the only thing that again, for some reason, the word “tariff” is, I usually use the word ”tax” because it almost, the word ”tariff“ is a very complex word to some people. I started to tell you about William McKinley. So William McKinley was assassinated. As you probably know, they named Mount McKinley after him. Then they took the name off—that was not nice, because he made this country so rich. All he did was tariffs, we didn’t have an income tax. And they had, I guess, the Tariff Act of 18... You have to correct me if I, you know, whatever it is 1887 or ’86¹. And they had a great symposium, where they called all the business leaders together.

And the sole subject was what do we do with all the money? ... If you look at some of the statements, Steve [Trump is speaking to adviser Stephen Miller, who is in the room], if you could get some, I am going to start using them in my speeches. But first have to think about the debate. But he had statements that we will not allow other countries to steal our treasure, steal our jobs. If they want to come in here, they can. We will welcome them with open arms, but they must pay for the privilege of stealing our jobs and stealing our treasure. And he got them to pay and all of that money built up and Roosevelt spent it. And Roosevelt got all the credit. I know how that works.

It’s amazing. Do you know why? Because they don’t want to build plants in the United States. They’ve got plants in different countries. See, China was brilliant for years. This takes years but for years China got the stupid Americans to build over in China. And they did that by charging a massive 100%, 150-200% in tariffs¹. So do others. Just a quick story: When I was with Harley-Davidson, I said, “How are you doing?” They were in the White House. And I said, “How you doing with everything?” They said, “Well, it’s hard to do business at certain places.” I said, “You mean like India?” India’s an amazing abuser. One of the best. One of the best. Smart. I said, “Why? Let me guess: India’s tariffing you, right?” “Yes, sir—200%.” Because they said—how many motorcycles do you sell in India? He said essentially none. I said, “Oh I see, they tariff you, right? And how much are you tariffed? 200%². Oh, I see. And let me guess, they want you to build a big plant in India and you won’t have to pay the tariff?” “How did you know, sir?” I said, because I set it up. They end up building this massive plant in India³.” They make motorcycles all over the place. They end up closing in Milwaukee, you know, and they closed a lot of it. I’m not sure if they closed a lot of it, all of it. And I said isn’t that a shame? It’s just so stupid. You understand? They put a massive tax on. And I cannot get people to understand this. We had this idiot senator from Pennsylvania [Pat Toomey], it’s a very dumb person. He said, “So let me ask you.” He left because I wouldn’t give him an endorsement, because they can’t win If I don’t give them my endorsement, you do know that? You’ve seen that?

Even Bob Good is gone now. I mean, he had a 30-point lead⁴. I endorsed a guy that nobody ever heard of and he just won the race. But just to finish, incredible. You put the tariffs on and now they all come back to the United States and build. And it’s so easy. But what they’ve done is gotten rich by putting massive tariffs on and the US goes and they build plants in China. Now, they don’t like tariffs because they’ve already built their plants over there.

Hello, Mr. Lembcke. [Trump turns to his club manager, Bernd Lembcke, who is walking through the room]

Mr. Lembcke, these people from Bloomberg Businessweek. He’s been with me for over 20 years.

LEMBCKE: Very successful, he says about, about the revenue and then most importantly the profits.

TRUMP: It’s been a great club. You have two things. You have the best house and the best location, and we have the best managers, right?

LEMBCKE: Yeah, we have been together for 28-plus years.

TRUMP: He’s been the manager for 28 years, hard to believe, I opened it...

LEMBCKE: In two years it is our 30th anniversary of the club and the 100th anniversary of Mar-a-Lago. We have to celebrate about next year.

TRUMP: When I started, memberships were $25,000. And now what are they to join?

LEMBCKE: $700,000.

TRUMP: And what does it go to on October 1st? Or whatever.

LEMBCKE: In October we are going up to $1 million [per membership] because we have four memberships to sell, so we are not desperate.

TRUMP: But we have to talk big things. It’s still good, but we gotta go macro. Thanks, Bernd. Thank you.

Well, it’s a false article. No. 1, I don’t seek their support, And No. 2, they’re all calling and they all want to support me. And if you knew about politics, whoever’s leading gets all the support they want. I could have the personality of a shrimp, and everybody would come. And all of those people, of all of the people in the room. I have meetings set up ... In a way it’s tough. They all want to have a meeting. But I have many people supporting me. If you look at the list now, a lot of people they don’t know because they put it into a PAC where you don’t know.

I mean, you really don’t know. And it’s really hard to find out. People don’t find out, it’s amazing. But you know, they have a PAC where you can give somebody $100 million or $50 million. But we have tremendous support for business. But two things, I don’t seek it. I don’t care. And No. 1, if I seek it, it means you’re doing favors for them. And I don’t want that. Because I want to do ... I got pipelines approved and big, big facilities approved. LNG plants in Louisiana. I could have gone to those plants and say, hey, I’ll get it approved, la la la. I don’t do that. I get it approved. I didn’t know who owned it, I didn’t care. Guys would come see me two years later. “I own the company that built that pipeline, sir, that you approved.” It was so nice, and we were gonna go, you know. Remember the Dakota Access Pipeline, I approved it. I didn’t call the company and say, hey, I’m gonna do you the biggest. They had built everything except for, it couldn’t be connected by 100 yards because of the river, the Indian River. I approved it.

The point is nothing to do with me. Now I’m leading in the polls, if you’d looked at Rasmussen, I am leading by 10 points¹, that’s a lot. Best poll is Rasmussen, do you guys do polls? Yeah, a little bit, right?

How am I doing in your poll?

JASON MILLER: You like them right now.

TRUMP: I actually think it’s much more than even, the polls. The Rasmussen has us at 10. Nine, and I think 10 if you include Kennedy and these [others], I go up actually a little bit. It seemed more even, but we picked up a little bit if they all run. I think that should be right. You know, I’m not sure it’s right. It’s close with him. It’s not close with Cornel West—Cornel West and Jill Stein, I love them as politicians. They are among my favorite politicians.

I vowed it?

When was this?

I don’t know that I vowed it.

I actually vowed retribution—what I actually said is “success will be my retribution.”¹

I think the Washington Post is really unfair. And I attack the Washington Post constantly. And it’s obviously had an impact. They’ve lost half their readers.¹ But I think that, you know, I think he’s done a great disservice to himself. So I think having the Washington Post be unfair is, you know, bad. Now, he is a very rich guy, but nobody wants to lose $150 million a year, which is the real number². It’s a lot of money to lose to have, you know, to try and make a lot of enemies because you make—

I think it’s, I think the Washington Post had an opportunity to do something great, and they became just a political machine that’s not doing well and maybe will close. Even rich people aren’t going to spend that kind of money to keep it open. But no, I don’t have retribution against anybody.

You saw my little—I heard that podcast did phenomenally.

It’s sort of like a big deal. Did you guys listen to that?

GROUP: Yes.

I think they’re having a huge negative impact on especially young people. I think that they have become too big, too powerful. They control our elections. You saw what happened with the elections, they controlled our elections. We can’t have that. I respect them greatly. You know, if you take a look, TikTok is very powerful.

Well, I didn’t say it should be banned¹. What I did say is, I’ll give you the option. You guys let me know what you want to do—to Congress. Remember?

And they couldn’t get their act together.

I said, ‘I’ll do it either way.’ But now [that] I’m thinking about it, I’m for TikTok because you need competition. If you don’t have TikTok, you have Facebook and Instagram, and that’s, you know, that’s Zuckerberg—who would come to the White House all the time and be so nice to me. But then he took away my large—you know, he would come and say you have more [followers]. Congratulations, you’re No. 1. And I was. I was No. 1. And when, I guess, [with] Instagram, when you add it all up, all of a sudden I went from No. 1 to having nobody. And I actually did the old-fashioned press releases, and they were big. They were real press releases. And then I did Truth [Social, Trump’s social media company], which has really become very powerful. You know, I don’t use anything else.

It’s a very complex situation. At one point, you want strength because you don’t want other countries to have it. I’m all about this country. I’m America first. I’m all about this country. So I don’t want to hurt those companies. But I don’t want them destroying our youth, either. When you see what they’re doing. Including, even, suicides—and you know, so many bad things happen with it. But basically, there will be big companies [and] I want our companies to be the big, strong companies.

And if you go after them very violently, you can destroy them. I don’t want to destroy them. I want them to thrive. But I don’t want them to influence elections. I don’t want them to destroy children when children are, you know, committing suicide all over the country, which has been happening. So there’s, there’s a line. But, no, I want our tech companies to thrive.

My uncle was at MIT. I love tech. You know, my uncle was, I believe, the longest-serving professor in the history of MIT¹. Did you know that?

I think it was 41 years. Actually MIT came down and gave me a book on my uncle, Dr. John Trump. Yeah, he was quite a good student to put it mildly. My father used to complain. He’d say, “I gotta put your uncle through school!” My father was a little older. He said, “He keeps going and getting another degree!” But he was really smart, like the top of the line. And when he graduated from MIT—with a lot of degrees, many degrees—they said, “Why don’t you stay and be a professor?” And he was there, I believe it was 41 years. But they came down with a book about my uncle, legendary guy at MIT. So I like this stuff.

JASON MILLER: Brad, just so you know, we’re at about 50 minutes. So we’ve got time for one or two more questions.

TRUMP: No, give him a little more time.

TRUMP: And then when I get killed, which I’m sure I will, when I get killed, I’ll blame Jason.

MILLER: Perfect.

TRUMP: But he’s great.

I’ve been right.

Because it’s a very similar answer. If we don’t do it, China is going to pick it up and China’s going to have it—or somebody else, but most likely China. China’s very much into it. Also, it’s not going away. It’s amazing. I’ve gotten to know a lot of people—like even the meeting in San Francisco [Trump’s June 6 fundraiser]. I went to San Francisco, I met many people that—these are people that this is really becoming an industry [for].

Now, if I throw it aside, it’s going to be picked up in another country, most likely China—they’re pretty advanced in that sphere. So you have to look at it—what I want, again, is what is good for the country. If we don’t do it... The other thing is, I did things like NFTs and, you know, stuff. And I noticed that 80% of the money was paid in crypto. It was incredible. So, NFTs are, you know, I did the—very successful. We had one year to sell it out and it sold out in one day. The whole thing sold out: 45,000 of the cards. And I did it three times [and] I’m going to do another one, because the people want me to do another one. It’s unbelievable spirit. Beautiful. But the thing I really noticed was everything was paid in—I would say almost all of it was paid in crypto, in this new currency. And it opened my eyes.

So we have a good foundation. It’s a baby. It’s an infant right now. But I don’t want to be responsible for allowing another country to take over this sphere. And so I think we’re going to be good. Also, I’ve gotten to know people in the industry, they’re top-flight people. And you ask Jamie Dimon, Jamie Dimon was, you know, very negative and now all of a sudden he’s changed his tune a little bit.

They treat us very badly.

Are you talking about the 10% that they charge us?

Because they charge us much more than 10%¹.

Sure, so the European Union sounds so lovely. It’s a wonderful group. And many of us came from there. You know, we love Scotland and Germany. We love all these places. But once you get past that, they treat us violently. They don’t take our cars. We take their cars by the millions. They don’t take our farm product. Very little of it. We take their farm product. They take almost nothing. We have a deficit with them of way over $200 billion¹.

Now with China when I was there, when I first came in, it was close to $600 billion². I was getting—had Covid not come in, I would have been down to even by the time my first term ended. We would have been net neutral with China³. But Covid came in and we had to, we had to save the country. And we had to also buy things from China, which was because they were, you know, they were making all the stuff that we didn’t. Our cupboards were very bare. But no, I think that European Union is—and there are others, too—that are brutal. Japan was brutal. I made a new deal with [Shinzo] Abe. And if I didn’t like Abe so much—I thought he was so great. What happened to him was so sad. He was a very good friend of mine. But we renegotiated our trade deal with Abe. But Japan was rough on us and still it still is.

You know, we charge—so they send their cars in by the millions. How many cars you see going into Japan? I said, “Shinzo, I don’t see any Chevrolets down here. I’m not seeing the Chevrolets. Where are the Chevrolets?” But I see lots of Toyotas and every other make of car. Same thing with Germany. I said to Angela Merkel, “Angela, how many Fords or how many Chevrolets are there in the middle of Munich right now?”

[Trump mimics a German accent] “Oh, I do not believe many.”

How about none? And how many Mercedes-Benzes, BMWs and Volkswagens do we have?

No, they treat us very badly, But I was changing all of that and that culture, I was changing it.

But European Union—you know, nobody thinks this. It’s like China. When I first started going—I love China—and what they said is right. I made people aware. And I respect China greatly. I very much respect President Xi. I got to know him very well. And I liked him a lot. He’s a strong guy, but I liked him a lot. I hope he can write that, to be honest with you, because, you know, people don’t know it. He probably doesn’t know it. But I do. I respect him.

But nobody knew how badly they [Europe] took advantage of us. We built their military with the money they took out of us. And it was all changing. It was changing fast. And amazingly, this guy [Biden] who was against tariffs, came in and he’s essentially left most of the tariffs that I put on.

You know why? Because the money is so staggering, that they can’t figure out how it works without them.

The greatest initiative? OK, so I did criminal justice reform, which was good. They know it very well. I did opportunity zones, which is, I believe, the most successful economic development program ever for—largely for the Black population, but others also. It never gets written about. Nobody wants to talk about it because it was successful. “It was a failure,” [is how] they talk about it. That was with Tim Scott, great guy from South Carolina—senator from South Carolina.

I saved the historically Black colleges and universities¹. They were absolutely stone-cold broke. And I got them long-term financing², and they’re in great shape. Those guys love me³. Those guys—I did a lot for—and that’s economic development.

But what I’m going to be doing is the biggest thing of all. You can take those three elements and plenty of others. And criminal justice reform was a big deal, by the way. They were after that for 40 years. People are treated—and it works out there. You know, it’s incarceration. It’s 90% Black, the people that benefited from that⁴. And I think it’s one of the reasons I’m successful with that.

You know, when I was in Georgia, you saw the girl that—beautiful Black girl, we walk into a restaurant, and we’re not allowed, for security purpose, to say early that we’re going. In other words, nobody knew. And I opened the door, I walk in and they had 45 people working there, all Black in the place. It was a fast-food place. And this Black girl, smart, beautiful: “Donald Trump, I love you! I love you!”

She didn’t know I was coming. You saw her on television even. We now ask her, would you do—because she’s so real. She was incredible. “I love you. You saved me. My college was going to close”—she went to a college that I saved when I did the financing, because they were all out of business. The heads of all those colleges and universities, they were going to almost all be gone. And I saved them.

Anyway, she said, “You saved me! You saved me!” She loved that college. She went to a college in Atlanta that I hadn’t heard of. She loved it. I said, “Did you like it?” [She replied] “It’s the greatest college.” I mean, it was nice to see it actually, because I was a little surprised, frankly. It was very nice to see. But she had such a personality. And she hugged me and kissed me and everything. And I said, “I hope you’re getting this, camera!”

I did say that, in all fairness. But people see that. But I’m going to do the biggest of all, because the Black people are going to be decimated by the millions of people that are coming into the country. There will never be a decimation like this, and they’re already feeling it. Their wages have gone way down. Their jobs are being taken by the migrants coming in illegally into the country.

And I said: Black people, No. 1, Hispanic people, No. 2. And you know who else? Unions. The unions are getting decimated. They’re getting guys—you know, look. A guy could be loyal to a union, because I had unions in New York. Got along with them good. I dealt with the Teamsters, I got along with them good. But there’s a point at which, you know, you’re willing to pay more. Then all of a sudden, now you’re paying three, four times more, five, six times. You get people that, you know, run a building, and you can get them for 20%, 15%⁵. The unions don’t have a chance. And Biden’s done that. Biden has done that. But worse than anybody, the Black population in this country is going to die because of what’s happened, what’s going to happen to their jobs—their jobs, their housing, everything! They’re taking everything. Did you see where 100% of the people that Biden employed are Black—I mean, 100% are migrants and the Blacks are affected by far the most. Almost—not 100%, but almost, but by far the most. And I want to stop that. That’s the best thing⁶.

Somebody asked me that the other day. They said, “What do you do for the Black population? I said, “I’ll stop 20 million people from coming into the country that’ll work for one-third what they’re working for.” They’re all losing their jobs. It’s not a story yet, but it will be. Does that make sense to you?

It’s a terrible—it’s a terrible thing that’s happened, and they are affected more than anybody. And they know that I don’t want this to happen. They know because many of them lost jobs already. They know that I don’t want it to happen and Biden does want it to happen.

Because I want them to come in. I want a lot of people to come in, but they have to come in legally. I don’t want them from prisons. I don’t want them from mental institutions and insane asylums. You know, you’ve heard my speeches so I don’t think I have to—but Venezuela crime is down to a small fraction of what, in Venezuela they’ve taken—and this is true with almost all countries, unless they’re run by stupid people instead. If you look at Honduras and all these places, they take all of their criminals and they’re dumping them into this country. Criminal near you. And it’s a tremendous problem. Venezuela crime, I said to the business leaders, “Next year, we’re gonna go to Venezuela for the meeting if you don’t mind, the [Business] Roundtable.” Oh, why? Because there’s no crime there. Because they’ve put all their criminals into our country. So we’re gonna have—I would recommend strongly the Roundtable in Venezuela¹.

That’s a very good question. So 50% of the housing costs today and in certain areas like, you know, a lot of these crazy places is environmental, is bookkeeping, is all of those restrictions. Building permits. Tremendous [restriction]¹. Plus, they make you build houses that aren’t as good at a much greater sum. They make you use materials that are much less good than other materials. And the other materials are, I mean, you’re talking about cutting your [permits] down in half. Your permits, your permitting process. Your zoning, if—and I went through years of zoning. Zoning is like... it’s a killer. But we’ll be doing that, and we’ll be bringing the price of housing down.

The biggest problem with housing now is that you have interest rates that went from 2.5% interest to 10%. Can’t get the money. So, you know, I don’t know if you can stop at 10 because if you can’t get the money, that means it’s higher. But people, they can’t get financing to buy a house.

It’s been a while, but I have a very good relationship. You know, I did something that got no publicity, but it was a great thing. I went to Saudi Arabia as my first stop.

—which is different because in almost all instances, you [US presidents] go to the UK. And I was all set to go to the UK. And Mohammed called me, he said, “I’d love to have you come here.”

I said, “I’d be breaking a very long tradition,” if I did that. I’ll stop. He said, “No, we want you to be first.” Because I know him very well, he’s a great guy. I think he’s done a great job. And he said, “I want you to come.”

I said, “Look, here’s what I’ll do. I’ll come. But I want you to give $450 billion to American companies.” Do you remember this?

$450 billion. He said, “Hmm. Never thought of that.” And [I said] “I will come with those companies.” And I did. And he gave $450 billion. And I never saw anything like it, because I sat there as the money was going out¹.

They negotiated over a period of weeks, because I agreed to come, like, in three months. And I sat there and watched Raytheon and all these companies—and they called up the chairman of Raytheon. In all cases, they were the chairman or the president—whoever the boss was of the company—and they would sit in an incredible ballroom with ceilings that look like this [Trump points to the gilded ceiling]—actually, this looks nicer. Anyway. But this very big ballroom. I think you people covered it. I think you wrote about it.

I got very little out of it in terms of press, but it was an amazing event. Over a period of three hours, they gave out $450 billion worth of contracts, including Wall Street money. They gave it to, you know, different firms on Wall Street. It was a great event.

It should have gotten coverage. Don’t you think a thing like that? I mean, $450 billion. They went to Boeing, they bought aircraft, they bought hundreds of airplanes, they bought jet fighters, everything. Go ahead.

He likes me, I like him. They’re always going to need protection. They’re not gonna—they’re not naturally protected. They’re always going to need protection, and I’ll always protect them. I’ve had a great relationship with him.

Yeah. A little bit. I just have a good relationship. He came to the country.

His father’s brother was supposed to come. But he came, as the son—and young. I think he was 32 years old or something. And we hit it off, we got it very—I told the father, “You know, you know you have a great person here to run the kingdom here someday.” Made a great impression on us. Very, very strong, good-looking guy, loves his country, has very good feelings toward America. And I would call the king—

You know, when I flew to Saudi Arabia, the king greeted me, 120 degrees on the runway. And he said—so I can’t imagine he never greeted Obama, never greeted anybody. They took him, Obama over, said he shook his hand and that was the end of it. He stood waiting for me on the runway—it was 120 degrees—and they told me, “Sir, we don’t know this, but we can’t imagine he’ll be there because it’s so, you know, record hot, 120 degrees¹. That’s a lot even for Saudi Arabia. And he greeted me, and he was great. You couldn’t cast him in a movie. There’s nobody to play his role. Great guy.

And same thing with Mohammed, who’s now the crown prince, who’s now the prime minister, who’s now going to be the king. And he will be a great king. So I liked him a lot.

So they, they are living in a very tough neighborhood. But Obama, Obama hurt us and Biden really hurt us with them. They’re not with us anymore. They’re with China. But they don’t want to be with China. They want to be with us.

JASON MILLER: Awesome. Thank you.

TRUMP: And I protected them very much during my term. Many missiles were launched into their areas and we got every one of them down. We knock out everything.

So, I think it’s easy. No. 1, I did nothing wrong. The system in New York is crooked, 100% crooked. You see the trial going on down in Florida¹—this was all started by Biden. This was against his political opponent. That’s why I speak about him different than I would another president who was doing an equally bad job. He’s a criminal. His son is a convicted felon. I did nothing wrong, except we have a judge who is crooked, 100% crooked. Puts a gag order on me. Moved their people from, as you know, from the DOJ to the district attorney’s office, and also into the AG’s office, etc., etc. This was all run by them. This was called election interference. And I think they’re going to pay a very big price.

So we’ve taken in more money in the last two weeks than any campaign has ever taken in, hundreds of millions of dollars². Much of it small money [contributions]. To answer your question about the executives [about why Fortune 100 CEOs aren’t contributing money], I don’t need it. Because I’m getting money at $71. This was $71 average [meaning the size of the average donation to Trump’s campaign]. Hundreds of millions. Did you see, $58 million from the time this crooked decision was handed down?

It’s not a criminal—you know, there was nothing criminal. Every single scholar, including one that writes to you guys, said there’s no crime. The whole thing. There’s no crime. We took in, from the time that decision came down, to that evening $58 million in small money [donations]. And you know, we now lead him in fundraising. No Republican has ever led before. I lead him. And most, much of the money came in over the last couple of weeks.

No, I don’t need it. I could have pardoned myself before I left.

I wouldn’t consider it.

You don’t need it. We’ll win, unless the system is so corrupt—and we are winning. We are winning. You take a look at what’s going on now. You see what’s happening. We’re winning. And I think the appellate courts will take care of—or you’re not going to have a court system, because it was very crooked.

But remember this: He’s a felon at a very high level. But they said he’s incapable of defending himself. That’s what he said.

Talking about on the document that he [Biden] got [caught with]. Because I was protected by the Presidential Records Act. But he wasn’t. He was vice president and a senator. He took stuff out as a senator, 50 years of stuff!¹ And the special prosecutor, his special prosecutor from the DOJ, said that he is guilty. But he’s gonzo, he’s incompetent. Essentially, they said he’s incompetent, he cannot stand trial. So we won’t charge him officially.²

But then I said, oh, that’s interesting. So they’re not going to charge him. He’s incompetent. And you know, they said—when he said he wasn’t guilty, the prosecutor said, “I didn’t say he wasn’t guilty. He is guilty. But we don’t think we can charge him because he’s incompetent³.”

And then they said, “But he can be president.” Think of that. So he can’t stand trial because he’s incompetent. But the second—just to go forward with that—but he can be president. So that’ll come up. When they hit us with that, they know that’s a very dangerous subject—but he was essentially convicted, and his son has been convicted, his son is a felon. I did nothing wrong. And I give you an example, they talked to me about books and records. I paid a legal fee—and I called it a legal fee, I didn’t call it a fee for building a building or building—you know, I said legal expense, I write it down—the line is this big: legal. You don’t write a history of every, of your life. We put “legal expense” and it was a legal expense, paid to a lawyer.

You need great people. And when I came to Washington, I didn’t know people in Washington. I was here very little. I was here very little. I was here 17 times, according to the fake news. I was here 17 times, never stayed over. And most of the times it was building the hotel in Washington, which was very successful when I had it. Now it’s not so successful, I guess. But I sold that for a good price; it was a good transaction.

You know, most of the time it was coming down to see—but I never stayed overnight. So you got to have great people. I didn’t know anybody in Washington, so I relied on people. And they gave me some great ones. I mean, Bob Lighthizer [former US trade representative] I thought was very good. You like Lighthizer, I’ll bet, right? Most people like him. Did you like him?

He was in charge of trade. Did a good job. We have many great people. I rebuilt the military. Biggest tax cuts, biggest regula—you know, I had a lot of great people, got environmental things done at levels, like the LNG plants that were being held up for 14 years. I got ’em done almost immediately. We had great people, but I had some people that I would not have chosen a second time. Now, I know everybody. Now, I am truly experienced.

You mean, from my standpoint? No. I don’t think so. If somebody really believes what they’re saying. But most people don’t. Most people don’t. Nancy Pelosi admitted the other day it was her responsibility. That was a big thing, you know. It didn’t get the coverage it should have. But she admitted on tape to her daughter—I don’t know how they got that tape, it was a nice tape—she said, “This was my responsibility.” She said that the day of [the Capitol attack]¹.

They have to have a tape, you know that, right? What she said?

And the J-Sixth committee of thugs—I called the Unselect Committee. They call it the Select Committee, I call it the Unselect Committee, made up of all Democrats and two sick Republicans, Liz Cheney and Adam “Crying” Kinzinger. He cries every time you talk to him. He breaks down and cries. These two guys, they were worse than any Democrat, by the way. Defeated in Congress, she was defeated in Congress. Everybody that impeached me was defeated in Congress. One, I let stay because, you know, Democrat area².

So just to finish up: No, I think that what happened is terrible because the Unselect Committee destroyed and deleted every document because they found out that we were innocent, and they destroyed it. You know that they deleted everything. They put out a notice, “We’ve decided to delete it”—just because they found out all the stories, like me attacking the Secret Service guys in the front seat of the car³. The one guy is a black belt in judo, the other one’s a weightlifter that can lift like some ridiculous amount of weight, like you can. Actually, a friend of mine said, let that story stand, it’s the coolest story I’ve ever heard.

But, you know, it was all made up. It was all fiction. And they found out it was, you know the Secret Service testified—they’re great—the Secret Service testified, they said the story was bullshit. They deleted everything. I think they have problems. I think they have problems. But no, I wouldn’t. I don’t use that as a litmus. I’ve heard that before by the way, and I don’t.

Low interest rates and taxes, low taxes, tremendous incentive to get things done, and to bring business back to our country. And if you have to use tariffs and other economic means to do it, that’s fine.

We have to do to other countries what they’ve been doing to us for 50 years, for 100 years. We have to bring business back to our country.