Dr. Phil Interview with Donald Trump on 08/27/24

Prime time.

This is the most important election in the history of our country. I’m not a threat to democracy at all.

It’s been seven or eight weeks since a would-be assassin fired eight rounds.

How can you say it’s luck when it’s 20 million to one where that bullet could have missed?

And has it changed you?

Being president’s a dangerous job. I never realized how dangerous.

RFK Jr. has offered his support to you and your campaign. Will he have a role in your administration? You are catching up with me in Las Vegas, Nevada, where I am catching up with former President Donald Trump and Republican nominee for president 10 weeks from the actual election. We’re going to sit down and talk about a lot of things as we close in on the day. We’re going to talk about where he stands after having an attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania. We’re going to talk about how he feels about now Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris. We’re going to talk about what he thinks the challenges are leading into this election and what has to happen to get Independents to hear his message and come down on his side of the fence. We’re going to ask him some hard questions and get some clear answers today, 10 weeks from the election. Mr. President, thank you for sitting down with me again.

Thank you.

Very proud to be talking to you. You’ve been really busy and I have to ask you, it’s been seven or eight weeks since would-be assassin, Thomas Matthew Crooks, climbed on top of a roof on a shockingly close building right in front of you and fired eight rounds from an AR-style assault rifle, shooting you in the ear.

Take a look at what happened-

Get down, get down, get down, get down.

Experts said, frankly, you shouldn’t be here right now. Experts said a kill shot was almost a certainty. But yet here you sit. You had to have asked yourself, you had to have reflected on this, “How am I here and why am I here?” How do you answer that question?

It’s a very hard one to answer. When it happened, it was a whack. I said, “Something’s going on there.” It was a real whack to the year, but you’re not thinking about that. And I was lucky I went down quickly because if I didn’t go down quickly, bullets were coming right over my head when I was down. I heard them. They were moving along. They moved pretty fast. I said, “How fast does a bullet go?”

(03:14)
They said, “About 3000 miles an hour.” That’s a lot.

(03:18)
They gave it to me in feet and then they gave it to me. I said, “No, no, I want to know in miles per hour,” and it’s more than 3000 miles an hour. And you hear it. You hear the whipping sound. So I was lucky in that regard, because that’s something you can control, you go down quickly. If you don’t go down quickly, you have a problem. But the big thing was the turn. And it wasn’t only the turn. It had to be a perfect 90 degree turn or I wouldn’t be with you today. And I had to be looking at something to the right.

(03:48)
And the people, we had massive crowds and they were in front. So there was no reason to be looking to the right. You had no people right or left. And you know the graph, my all-time favorite graph, showing my great numbers on immigration, stopping immigration virtually at the border, which is a big subject. And I was very proud of that crap. But I only use it about 20% of the time. It’s always on my left and it’s always at the end of my speeches. Always. And this was the very beginning of the speech. I mean, the very beginning. It was on my right.

(04:22)
So if you add it all up, it’s like millions to one. Millions, the odds. But I made that perfect turn. I just see it on television. Again, today, just before I came in, it’s up big on the screen again today. And I have the endorsement of the NRA, but I have no knowledge of guns. As an example, I have two sons that have extreme knowledge. They’re great shooters. And Don and Eric both told me separately that that’s a guaranteed shot for a bad shooter from that distance. 130 yards sounded like a long way away. As a shooter, that’s a very close target. They relayed it to me, they said it would be like sinking a one-foot put. And I said, “That’s not good.”

So why were you spared? You’ve had to reflect on this alone in the middle of the night, in the golf cart riding down the way thinking about it. How do you answer that? Why were you spared?

So there had to be some great power because you just can’t say millions to one. Millions to one. I used to say a million to one. It’s much more than that because again, you have to pull down the sign. It has to be a reason to go right. And I never go right. There’s no reason. And not only go right, it’s for about an eighth of a second. It’s not just right, it’s out of all the time that we’re on this planet, it’s one eighth of a second, right? So I shouldn’t be with you.

Is there a purpose? Is there a reason you think you were spared?

The only thing I can think is that God loves our country and He thinks we’re going to bring our country back. He wants to bring it back. It’s so bad right now. What’s happening when you look at the crime, the horrible things that are happening inside our country, and it could be solved. It could be solved fairly quickly. It has to be God.

Has to be the hand of God.

How can you say it’s luck when it’s 20 million to one? Okay? It’s just not possible that I was in that position. It’s the only position where that bullet could have missed.

And you believe in God?

I do. I do.

You believe God’s hand was in this that day?

I believe so. Yeah, I do.

And you talk about the country, you believe you have more to do. You weren’t done. You were spared for a reason.

Well, God believes that, I guess. We’ll have to see. Number one, I’m in an election with a very vicious group of people. I won the election against Biden. I was up by 17 or 18 points after the debate. And they said, “You know what? He’s going to lose.” They went and told him he’s going to lose and, “We’re going to change you out.”

(07:13)
And he said, “No, I’m not going to do it.” In fact, he said, “Only God will change me.” So who knows what happened there. But he said, “I’m not leaving.” He got 14 million votes and Kamala got none. Zero. She ran against him. She got zero. She never made it to Iowa, which is the first state. And here she is. She’s on the other side. But it’s like nobody ever had this before. In politics, you have an opponent and you win or you lose, but you don’t have an opponent, and then you’re doing well against the opponent, they take him out, they give you a new opponent, they give you a nice, fresh opponent. And so I have to win that.

(07:53)
And if I win that, that would really serve to say that there’s some incredible power up there that wanted me to be involved in saving… And maybe it’s more than saving the nation. Maybe it’s saving the world. I get along with all those tough guys. And Russia wouldn’t have gone into Ukraine. You’d have a million people living right now. You’d have cities all over Ukraine. These magnificent cities with the domes and the golden domes and towers, they’d all be up. They’re right now demolished. Those cities, the country is just demolished. Israel wouldn’t have happened. October 7th would’ve never happened. Iran was broke with me. And I don’t want them to be broke, but I don’t want them to have a nuclear weapon.

So you think you’re meant to take those challenges on? You’re meant to serve in that way?

I don’t know. I don’t know. In thinking about it, it’s beyond any of us, I guess, to really know that. But I can say that for that bullet to have gone along this path right here, and for that bullet to have gone along that path and hit the top of my ear as opposed to any other place would’ve been no good. And it traveled that path for a long way, relatively speaking. That path was traveled for a long way.

It killed a man behind you.

It did. It killed a man and it-

Corey Comperatore.

… that’s right.

And it critically injured two others

Who thought they weren’t going to make it. The doctors said they will not make it. And they did. The doctors were incredible, I have to tell you.

You’ve been very attentive and involved with those families, and I understand a lot of support and help for those families has taken place.

Well, a friend of mine who’s a pretty rich guy, was very moved by what happened. And he said, “Do you mind if I give Corey,” he called him Corey. Everyone calls him Corey now. Firefighter, great firefighter. Fire chief of a small town.

Volunteer, right?

Volunteer. No substantial money, obviously. They live comfortably. They love each other. They have a great family, beautiful family actually, but not money. And I said, “Good, what do you want to give?”

(10:20)
He said, “A million dollars.” He wrote out a check right in front of me for a million dollars and we presented it to the wife. That’s more money than they have ever even thought about. But on top of that, we raised close to $6 million in GoFundMe, and that’s going to be split up. We’re doing it now. Obviously with Corey’s family getting more. The other two made it, and they’re going to be in good shape. I can’t stress how good those doctors were. It was going to be three dead and it turned out to be one, but they were hit hard.

Well, it was terrible.

They just made it. They were very close also. And so they’re going to be getting probably close to a million and a half dollars each.

How’d you feel about the Secret Service and the job they did?

Look, they were very brave because when those bullets were coming at me and you saw it, I was down because I went down quickly fortunately because the bulls were going right over my head. So that was another thing. But see, I don’t talk about that. That was a question of going down. The other was a question of you had to be in an exact perfect position and it’s almost impossible to have achieved that position. You have to be right, you have to have used the graph. The whole thing is just so crazy. You never use it at the beginning of this speech. Never. I’ve never used it at the beginning. I just said, “Pull down the graph,” and I look over at the graph and I get whacked. Sort of like a bolting deer.

(11:54)
My son Don said, it’s like a bolting deer. Great shots can miss a bolting deer. They shoot simultaneously with a deer bolting and it bolts for some reason. I guess that was my bolt. But it was absolutely amazing. But the Secret Service, obviously somebody should have been on the roof. The roof was empty and there was a lack of communication between local law enforcement and Secret Service, it seems to be coming out. So they’re going to have to work that out. I can say this, on stage, we had great bravery because bullets were coming at me and they were coming right on top of me, and within about three or four seconds, I was covered with bodies.

(12:44)
Had the Secret Service sniper, and it may have been somebody else, in addition, may have been a local police shot also, I don’t know, but had that shot not been made from a long distance, much longer, and hit its target, one bullet, then they would’ve been dead probably because there would’ve been a pile and he would’ve been shooting into the pile. And in addition, you would’ve had a lot of people killed. This could have been like that Las Vegas disaster where that horrible human being killed a lot of people at a concert.

Has this changed you? Has it changed your appreciation for life? Has it changed anything about you? Did you hug your kids extra hard? I mean, has it changed you?

A lot of people ask me, and a lot of people say, “Have you developed any fear of doing this?” Look, being president’s a dangerous job. It’s much more dangerous than a race car driver, than anything. It’s probably the most dangerous profession if you think about it. Just go up and down the list. So you have 46 and numerous left early or got hit. It’s a very dangerous job. I never realized how dangerous, but I was at the border yesterday and it’s a dangerous place. He allowed it. He and her allowed it to become dangerous. It’s a very, very dangerous place.

(14:23)
I was doing an interview and Secret Service said, “Sir, please, no more standing up.” They don’t want me to stand up. People, especially with the kind of weapons they have today, people have shots. But it’s a great job. It’s an interesting job. You can do so much good, but it’s a dangerous job.

You say that you may have been spared to serve and to do that as President of the United States, you have to defeat Kamala Harris on November 5th. First, what do you think of her as

As a person, what do you think of Kamala Harris, as a person, just personally?

Well, I don’t know her. You get to know people when you watch them on television or when you see them and read them and all. But…

So you don’t know her personally?

She’s a Marxist. Well, I can see by action, she’s person that wanted to defund the police very strongly, bailed out a lot of people in Minnesota from jails who did some really bad things. I saw that very loud and clear. Then when that took place, a lot of bad things. She’s done a lot of bad things. There will be no fracking. There’ll be no drillings, she doesn’t want to drill, which will mean our country is going to shrivel up and die. You can’t run the country without fossil fuel, at least not for quite a while because you don’t have the power. They don’t have the power. You have all sorts of nice contraptions, but they don’t have… Wind is fine, but it kills the birds. It destroys the fields. Destroys the fields.

(16:04)
What it does, you know how economists and various, they go over it, wind is the most expensive energy in the world and the environmentalists love it. Why do they love it? It kills all the birds. Walk to the bottom of a windmill and take a look. It looks like a bird cemetery, but you need the fossil fuel. She’s totally against it. Politicians, when they’re against something early, that’s that’s where they’re going to be. If she got in, she would not allow fracking in Pennsylvania. She will not allow drilling all over the place. The only reason she’s allowing it now is they were ending everything and all of a sudden prices started to go up through the roof and they say, “Go back to the Trump policy for a little while,” but if she won this election, she’d go to things that won’t work. The green new scam I call it, and it’ll be very bad. I think she’d be worse than Biden.

(16:59)
Biden was the worst president in the history of our country. She’s gone down as the worst vice president. She was known… Five weeks ago, she was known as a joke. She was known as a terrible vice president. Laughed at, scoffed at, they wanted him out, but they didn’t want her. They would’ve done anything to get anybody on the list. They had a list of 10 people and they put her on the list and she came in 11th. She was the last on the list, actually, in terms of professionalism, in terms of everything else. Then all of a sudden they realized that’s not going to be politically acceptable. They didn’t want to do it. They didn’t have the guts to make that move and they ended up with her. Then the fake news media, of course, got right behind her and at this moment she can do no wrong, but if you follow politics and if you see what she said, she’ll destroy this country with her tax increases and everything else.

You don’t have anything against her personally?

No.

You’re just talking about her values and her beliefs, you don’t know her?

No, I don’t. I don’t know her. I don’t know.

But these are things that she said then, but is she saying different things now about fracking and that sort of thing? Because the things you’re saying, she said, I’ve heard her say those things in the past, but is she saying different things now?

Well, a lot of things, I would say 95 maybe almost a hundred percent is totally different. She’s like my policy, she’s like energy and this. We were energy independent four years ago. Today, it’s a whole different story, but everything’s changed. She’s gone from no fracking under any circumstances. We’re not talking a long time ago. We’re talking about three years ago and we’re talking about when she was running. When she was running against Biden, and I guess they had close to 22 people. She was the first one to leave. She was out. She did very badly. That’s why it’s so crazy. She was last out of 22 and now she’s the one that is running and she’s getting a free press. Her speech, when you examine it was very bad for our country. She’s going to raise taxes tremendously. She’s going to force companies out of our country.

(19:27)
These are great international companies. They don’t have to be here. They can be in other countries. You know that better than anybody. If other countries, maybe in Europe or other places are going to say, “We’re going to charge you 10% tax,” and the US is going to be at 54% when you add local and state taxes, they get paid for how much money they make. It’s a simple business, very simple business. How much money is the company making? If you’re going to have to pay 54% here, you’re gone. You’re going to move to another country. They have some very nice countries to live in and they’re very loyal to their shareholders. They almost have an obligation to do it, so she’s going to chase a lot of companies out of our country with what she’s talking about.

You’ve been commander in chief. She’s been commander in chief on the border. As commander in chief, how would you grade her paper on the border?

Well, I would say an F. In terms of badness, if you’re going to look for how to run a border badly, it’s a market study in what you shouldn’t be doing. It’s the worst border in history. I believe we have 20 million people that came in, and you’ve heard this before, they come in from jails and prisons. They’ve come in from mental institutions. If you know that, that’s your world a little bit, isn’t it? They’re terrorists and they come in from… But they’re allowing, other countries are allowing their jail population to pour into our country. They’re bringing them here and they’re saying, “If you come back, we will kill you. If you come back, we will give you the death penalty.” They’re dropping murderers, and drug dealers and human traffickers into our country by the hundreds of thousands.

Who’s doing that?

The countries are doing it.

What countries?

Some are coming, but the countries are doing it.

Venezuela?

A lot of South American countries, probably all of them. Hey, you’d do it, so would I, If I’m the president of some country in South America, but anywhere in the world, it’s happening now all over the world. They’re coming from Africa, the Congo. We had the border patrol yesterday. I was there. Border patrol told me they have, as of this moment, 158 countries represented. Most people don’t even know there are that many countries. 158 countries over the last year are represented crossing the border illegally. They’re coming in from Mexico, they’re coming in from all over the world. They’re going through Mexico and Mexico shouldn’t be allowing it, but they are. They didn’t allow it when I was there. I was very strong with it. We had to remain in Mexico policy, and if they didn’t adhere to it, they paid a price.

What are you going to do day one with these countries that have gotten into our country illegally between ports of entry? What are you going to do with those people?

We are going to have a mass deportation of criminals, immediately of criminals. Our border patrol, ICE and local police, every one of them. They know their middle names. They know them like I know you, okay? They know them very well. They know the bad ones and they know the ones that aren’t so bad, but the local police have to be given their authority back because we’re in a crime-ridden nation now. We have, if you take the top 25 cities, interestingly, they’re almost all run by Democrats, cashless. Bail, you don’t have to put up any cash. You’re a murderer and you get caught and you leave. You don’t have to put up cash. There’s no bond, no nothing. It’s crazy what’s happening. It’s almost as though they hate our country and they want it to fail.

If these people are rounded up and deported, then this will be a massive process because we’re talking a lot of people.

What they’ll do is they’ll pick out of the hundred thousand people that will have to go quickly because they’re murderers, prisoners from tough places, and these are tough people. These are not like babies. These make our criminals look like nice people, nice guys, but MS-13 gang members, they love cutting people. They love cutting up people, cutting people. They did it on Long Island, a lot of them are on Long Island. I got thousands of them taken out during my administration, thousands, thousands of them. They didn’t come back and the countries knew you send them back, no more money. We give so much money so stupidly to everybody. I said, “You do that…” I sent them Honduras, El, Salvador, Guatemala, Mexico, to an extent, Mexico bad, but it’s a little bit different, a little bit different, but Mexico’s bad in that they let them come in.

(24:43)
They didn’t let them come in. They were stopping them. I was charging Mexico. I was doing things to Mexico that you wouldn’t believe. I said, “You stop them and you have to stop them on your southern border, meaning on the other side before they get into your country, not after they make that trek. You have to stop them before they get in.” It was working. We had the best border in the history of our country. Biden could have gone to the beach. All he had to do was let them continue to work and we had the best border we’ve ever. That was the chart. That was a famous chart that I said I fell in love with. I love that chart.

(25:17)
I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for that chart, but we had the best border at any time in recorded history, and now we have the worst border in the history of the world. 20 million people, but I think it’s much more than that. 20 million. They say it was only 15 million, whether it was 15, it’s over 20 million, and many of those people are vicious killers and they’re living in our country. They’re coming in and you know nothing good is going to happen. We have massive numbers of terrorists. We used to watch that so closely. We had one year where border patrol said… It was 2019, border patrol said, I had none, zero, terrorists come into the country. Now, I don’t even believe that. It’s almost impossible to-

Well, there’s got aways, you can’t know who got away.

You don’t know, but they actually had it down as zero. Now, we have thousands of terrorists in our country, and from a man of great common sense, I know you well, you know that that’s not going to end well. It’s going to end really badly for our country. We have to get them out.

I know there are things that you are not in favor of this ballot harvesting, this mail-in ballots.

It’s all terrible.

All of this, but those are the rules of the game right now.

That’s right.

Is the Republican Party going to play that game better than the Democrats or are they going to be complaining about it and get beat at the game with the rules that are in play right now?

It shouldn’t be allowed. It’s a whole different mindset.

But it is.

You’re right. Republicans like to go there on Tuesday and vote in person, and that’s been for a long time, many years, decades. It’s a custom almost. It’s a family custom. It’s a beautiful thing. The Democrats play a different game and you have ballot harvesting, but you also have people getting ballots. In California, you have people getting seven ballots, Democrats. For instance, I look at California, I gave a speech here. I had a crowd so big. I said, there’s no way I could lose California, but automatically they market down. If you’re a Republican as a loss, that you lose by 5 million votes. I said, “5 million votes? I guarantee…” If Jesus came down and was the vote counter, I would win California. In other words, if we had an honest vote counter, a really honest vote counter, I’d do great with the Hispanics, great. At a level that no Republican has ever done, but if we had an honest vote counter, I would win California.

You think so?

Oh, I think so. I do. I see it. I go around California. They have Trump signs all over the place. It’s a very dishonest, everything is mail-in. They send out 38 million ballots, I think it is, around 36, 38 million ballots They send them. When you go into a good place, because we have a lot of very honest places too. You go out to the Midwest, you go to Iowa and Idaho and places that they when you even think about it, it’s a very honest system, but think of it, 38 million. They don’t have a voting booth.

(28:37)
But when you go in, even in Florida, I went in to vote in Palm Beach. They know who I am, but still, “Sir, may I see your this. May I see your that? May I see your card?” They look at you, they everything. I said, “It would be really very tough to cheat.” In California, they don’t do anything. All they do is you get a card and you’re supposed to send it back. That has to go through a mailman. It has to go through all these different things, and many people, and I’m sure you’ve heard this, many people get many more than one ballot, and they vote them. They vote them. They’ll send in seven ballots.

But if those are the rules-

You have to win.

Then should the Republicans play hard under those rules?

The Republicans should have played much harder over the years, and this is 10, 12 years ago it started… Look, France had mail-in ballots. They went away from them because people were cheating. Anytime you have a mail-in ballot, there’s going to be massive fraud. Jimmy Carter, who’s the happiest man alive today, because his administration is brilliant by comparison to Harris and Biden. I put her now first because I think Biden is gone. I don’t even know where he is. He’s at a beach someplace

… Is in California, but Jimmy Carter was put in charge of a study commission with some very dignified people, very highly regarded people, senators, retired senators, and their primary conclusion was you can’t have mail-in ballots. If you have mail-in ballots, there will be cheating. This is Jimmy Carter and he’s right, 100%.

(30:24)
What we have to do is get control and then we have to change it, and it’s a very simple change. Same-day voting, everybody votes. Remember the old days? Everybody would go, it was a Tuesday, you’d go, you’d vote. Even if you declare a holiday, a voting holiday, which would be fine, but same-day voting, but importantly, paper ballots, no machines that go up to space and whatever happens, happens. Voter ID, the Democrats don’t want voter ID and proof of citizenship, you have to be a citizen.

(30:59)
We won a very important Supreme Court case where essentially you have to be a citizen to register to vote. It’s a big win because they’re trying to register people that just came into our country from the border, from the open border. You can’t have open borders and you have to have great elections. In other words, you need borders to have a country that’s a great country. You need borders and you need fair elections.

You ran against Biden for a while, then you switched and are now running against Kamala Harris. Was there a cover-up about Biden not being competent?

(31:42)
RFK Junior has offered his support to you and your campaign.

He’s a very smart guy, a different kind of a guy, but very smart.

Will he have a role in your administration?

(31:57)
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(32:59)
You ran against Biden for a while, then you switched and are now running against Kamala Harris. Was there a cover-up about Biden not being competent?

Oh, sure.

How wide was this cover-up? How wide did this have to be? Was the media involved? We saw people going on television and others say, “I meet with him every day. He’s sharp, he’s a bull, he’s doing this.” I think everybody determined, and it’s not his fault for aging, that’s just part of the problem. It’s not his fault for aging.

(33:34)
I’m wondering was there a cover-up? How many people were involved? Was there a conspiracy here? I don’t want to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but was there a conspiracy and who was involved in it? If there was that kind of conspiracy, how do you trust those people going forward?

Just to make people feel better that are a certain age, I know many people that are 90, that are 93, 94, 95. A good example is somebody like Bernie Marcus, he’s 95 years, old founder of Home Depot. I was with him not so long ago. Look, it’s a certain point, but he’s sharp. He’s so sharp mentally. I know many people in their 90s that are sharp. I know many, many people in their late 80s that are really sharp. He’s 81. He’s just not old in terms of what we’re talking about.

People are different. They age differently, their brains are different.

He also had operations, in all fairness, which I understand makes a difference. There was absolutely a conspiracy, but it was really manifested during the debate. We had debate, the debate was the highest rated debate ever, so I think people were really maybe looking to see if there’s any truth to that. The ratings on that debate were through the roof. I think I performed very well, but he didn’t perform well, and that was the beginning of the end. Then he tried to go on various shows to show his mental acuity, so to speak, and he didn’t do very well. They were all setups, George Slopidopoulos, they were all setups. In other words, easy questions like what’s your favorite dessert, do you like vanilla ice cream, and stuff. They were easy and he didn’t do great. Got by, got by, but it really started with the debate.

(35:40)
And then a poll came out. The Democrats had a poll that showed I was up 17 points after the debate and they went to them and they said you’re going to lose. You saw that where they said, “You’re going to lose. You can’t win anymore, you’re going to lose and we want you out.” Nancy Pelosi went… I know the whole thing because I know people on the other side. You know, I have some very good friends on the other side. Hard to believe, isn’t it? They went to him and they said, “We want you out and we can do it the nice way or the hard way. We can use the 25th Amendment, we can use the 24th Amendment, we can use all sorts of amendments and get you the hell out.”

(36:20)
It was nasty. It was very nasty. He was very angry, but ultimately, he said he’s going to have to leave. They gave him his nicer way out, but he was very angry about it. You know what? If you go back 25 years, he was not the sharpest person, but he did win the primaries. Say what you want, he got 14 million votes. She got no votes. She never even made it to Iowa. She didn’t get one vote. He got 14 million votes.

Have you talked to him since he stepped down?

No, I really don’t talk to him. I’ve always been angry. We talk about Secret Service, he always made it very tough for us to have the proper number of Secret Service people. I don’t know whose fault it is, but I will tell you, I’d have these massive rallies with 50, 60,000 people, more, and our people were always fighting to get more security, more Secret Service, and he knew that we didn’t have enough and he’d have a rally of three or four people.

(37:31)
Nobody would go. If he had a rally, if he got 20 people, it was a lot. Nobody would go. They’d stand on a road and look for people to try and be there, like he had somebody behind him, and yet he had a massive contingent of Secret Service. I know that they wanted to have his people come over to these big rallies that I was having, and I know that it was a very tough situation.

(37:57)
When this happened, people would ask, “Whose fault is it?” I think to a certain extent, it’s Biden’s fault and Harris’s fault. I’m the opponent. Look, they were weaponizing government against me. They brought in the whole DOJ to try and get me. They weren’t too interested in my health and safety. I would be, if I were in their position, but they weren’t very interested. They were always making it, from what I understood… And I could feel it, they were making it very difficult to have proper staffing in terms of Secret Service.

I’m not saying that they wanted you to get shot, but do you think it was okay with them if you did?

I don’t know. I don’t know. There’s a lot of hatred. I don’t know why. I had a great presidency. We had the best economy we’ve ever had, we had job numbers that were unbelievable, and then you had bounce-back jobs, the jobs after a pandemic. They call it bounce-back, all pandemics. Whenever you have something like that, an event, you have a bounce-back. As it gets better, you bounce back.

(39:13)
They like to try and claim those jobs, but those are our jobs. We had a tremendous presence. We rebuilt the military, we knocked out ISIS, I had no wars. So many things we did. Largest tax cuts ever, which is what gave us the great economy, by the way. Largest regulation cuts. We were choking with regulation. But when you do things like that, the other side that disagrees with that, or for whatever reason, doesn’t want to do it, there’s a lot of hatred is generated.

If they’ve got-

I’ll give you an example. They’re saying I’m a threat to democracy. No, they’re a threat. They’ve weaponized government. They’re a threat. But that turned to be one of their lines that Trump is a threat. I’m not a threat to democracy at all. They are a threat to democracy, but they would say that that was standard line. Just keep saying it.

(40:10)
That can get assassins or potential assassins going, that’s a terrible thing. I used to say… You fight it, but everybody in the… It was a standard line for them. Donald Trump is a threat to democracy. I’m just the opposite. I’m the one that fixed our military, I’m the one that knocked out ISIS. I’m the one… I did so much. I also took a bullet, but maybe that bullet is because of their rhetoric. It was really nasty rhetoric in the Democrat Convention. My name was mentioned hundreds of times.

The consequences of putting Donald Trump back in the White House are extremely serious.

The border was mentioned once, inflation wasn’t mentioned at all, they barely talked about the economy, they didn’t talk about crime at all, they didn’t talk about the invasion of our country. We’re being invaded by millions of people. This is worse than an army. At least an army, you know how you can fight. We’re being invaded. These people are invading. It’s an invasion of our country. They didn’t talk about that, and yet my name is mentioned like 300 times. She mentioned my name, I guess 19 times in her speech alone. 19 times.

They demonize you a lot. They make a big deal out of the fact that you said you’re only going to have to vote one time. You elect me, you’re only going to have to vote one time ever, or whatever your quote was.

You won’t have to vote anymore, my beautiful Christians. I love you, Christians. I’m not Christian. I love you. Get out. You got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good you’re not going to have to vote.

(41:57)
You know what that was? I said, and with a smile, Christians for whatever reason, don’t vote very much, proportionately. NRA people and people that feel very strongly about the Second Amendment, they’re not voters. I don’t know why. Maybe it’s a rebellious streak. I said to the Christians we got to win this election. If we win this election, I’ll straighten everything out in less than four years by a lot. Then you don’t have to… It doesn’t matter.

(42:29)
In other words, I’m saying you don’t have to vote. It doesn’t mean we’re not going to have elections. You’re going to have elections, but you have to vote this time because we have to win. This is the most important election in the history of our country. But you’re right, they took that you only have to vote… I say vote this time. Get us in. Once we’re in, we’re going to fix the country and it’s not going to be important for you to come and we’re not going to need you voting, but we need the votes now. Christians have to get out and vote. Gun owners don’t vote, relatively. They don’t vote. Gun owners have to get out and vote.

You didn’t mean vote me in once because I ain’t ever leaving, you’re meaning this is an important one. Vote this time.

Of course that’s what I meant. I said it, and everybody knows I said it that way, and everybody agrees that I said it that way. I don’t know if they have… I hope they have it on tape, but if they don’t… I’ve heard they use that a little bit. But what they use a lot was I’ll be a dictator.

Day one, you said, “I’ll be a dictator for one day.”

But they leave that out and sometimes when they do add it, they don’t say why. I said jokingly on… Sean Hannity is a great guy. I said, “No, Sean, I want to be a dictator for one day because I’m going to get going with drill, baby, drill and I’m going to strengthen the borders to a level you’ve never seen and after that, I’ll never be a dictator.”

(43:58)
I said it nicely. I said one day, because I want to do the energy and I want to strengthen the border. One day. It was said with the chuckle. The audience laughed, I laughed, we all laughed. But they take it and they cut it, and then they cut it and it says, “I want be a dictator.” These are very dishonest people that we’re dealing with. Very dishonest people, bad people.

So you say that was taken out of context?

All you have to do is watch it. So many things are. Charlottesville was taken out of context.

(44:33)
You also had people that were very fine people on both sides.

(44:40)
Joe Biden says, “I ran because of Charlottesville. I saw the veins bulging out of their neck,” and they have my statement, which was fine, but if they let the next sentence run, it was perfect. They know that. They know that. When she spoke, she said I was going to raise taxes. No, I’m lowering taxes. She said

… all sorts of things that were false. Everything was false. I think we counted 21 lies. “I’m going to save Social Security.” They’re going to destroy Social Security because the millions of people that are pouring in are going on Social Security. Social Security cannot stand it. Whereas I’m leaving Social Security just the way it is. I’m not raising age limits. I’m not doing anything. They’re going to destroy it. They’re going to destroy Medicare.

(45:25)
I mean, more importantly, they’re going to destroy our country. If she wins, I don’t believe our country has a chance, because it’s a Marxist ideology. If you go back three or four years and you look at her statements, even running for office, she was raising her hand for every bed. You can’t have any personal insurance, personal life insurance, or any form of insurance. You have to be in a big government pool. That’s Marxism.

(45:54)
In other words, if you want to have insurance, you worked hard, you want to pay more, and have a great insurance plan, health insurance. She doesn’t want you to have that. This was only a few years ago. That’s where she’s at. Her father is a Marxist professor, and that’s where she’s at. Our country will never be ready for that. Our country won’t be able to have that.

Some people say that this election is going to be determined by 15 counties in 11 states, 11 of them in just 7 states. One of them here in Nevada where we are right now, one of them in Arizona, Maricopa County, two of them in Texas, Tarrant County where Fort Worth is, where Merit Street Media is. One of them Fort Bend, Cobb County, so a county in Georgia, a county in Pennsylvania, one in Michigan, because of independents there. If there are independents watching this right now and trying to decide which way to jump off the fence, to the Harris side of the fence or to the Trump side of the fence, what do you say to them to make it clear why they should vote for Donald J. Trump for president in November?

Well, first of all, I’m now leading with independents. You saw that this morning, and by a lot, by nine points. That’s considered a lot. For whatever reason, it’s harder for a Republican to lead with independents. The Republican route is a harder route. You have to win that whole east coast. They start off with a certain number, whether you like it or not. That’s the way it is. The welfare, the civil service, the unions.

(47:41)
Now I actually think the unions are coming with me. When I say the unions, the workers, the people within those unions. I could say that the United Auto Workers has done a terrible job at the top, and I’m going to get far more votes than she’s going to get. I think a lot of the unions are voting for me. They did last time. They did both times.

(48:04)
What I say is this. We need a safe country. We need a wealthy country. We need a country that’s going to take care of its people. We need great schooling. We need great military. We need everything. Everything is broken now. I rebuilt the military. They left $85 billion of it in Afghanistan, in the most embarrassing day. I mean, as an example, they didn’t talk about Afghanistan last night. Why didn’t they talk about it? It’s the single most embarrassing day in the history of our country.

(48:34)
We’re going to have a country that’s run with strong borders and pure, beautiful elections. We’re going to be energy-dominant, not just independent. We’re going to dominate in energy. We have more liquid gold under our feet than any other country, including Saudi Arabia and Russia. We’ll be doubling and tripling them up, and we’re going to start paying down debt.

(48:57)
We owe $35 trillion, which she also didn’t mention. We’ll be paying down debt. We’re going to make America great again. I created the greatest economy in the history of our country. Just prior to COVID, we had the greatest economy in the history. Then we had to go back and we had to watch, be careful, because we would’ve ended up in 1929.

(49:19)
Then they came in and they spent money like a bunch of really foolish people, and it created tremendous inflation. I had no inflation. I had almost just about perfect, but almost no inflation during the entire term. Then inflation went to record numbers. They say 21%, but it’s much more than that. They don’t include numbers.

(49:43)
Yesterday you saw something else, Phil. They created 818,000 jobs that were fake jobs. They did that because they thought they’d have that before the election. They turned out to be fake. They had a whistleblower, a leaker that said, “No, it’s wrong,” in Department of Labor. 818, almost a million jobs are fake that they created. Then they created crimes, too.

(50:09)
They said the crime stats were so good by the FBI. And you know what happened? They didn’t include certain areas, little areas like Chicago, like other cities that are crime-ridden. That was done by the FBI in order to make the crime numbers look better.

(50:28)
So we’re going to turn this country around. The country’s very sick right now. It’s very sick. We’re going to turn it around. We’re going to make America great again, and we’re going to do it rather rapidly. But we also … we’re stuck with a problem now that’s a big problem. We have millions of criminals that have been allowed into our country.

When I talked to voters … And I’ve looked at polls that said this. Rasmussen looks at these. He’s on Merit Street. They say they’re concerned about affordability. They need to be able to afford tennis shoes for their kids. Mom that has three boys in school and she says their feet grow during the night. “I need to buy tennis shoes-

That’s right.

… for the kids every couple of weeks.”

Inflation has killed them.

They’re saying, “They’re printing money so fast that the dollars I have buy less, because they’re printing money so fast.” They say, second, they’re worried about safety and security, primarily the border.

Yup.

That’s an important thing for them. They talk about that. They say they’re concerned about abortion. That’s a distant third, but it’s third, and-

On that one, I’ve done a great favor. I don’t want to go over the whole thing because you don’t have enough time, but I’ve brought that into a land where everybody can finally, after 52 years, get along with … They’re taking votes in various states right now, and some are coming out in a very liberal way, much different, like Ohio and Kansas. But we’ve done an amazing thing there. That’s a much softer issue than it was a little while ago.

(52:04)
But this has been an issue. Abortion’s been an issue. Roe v. Wade, for 52 years, they’ve tried to get it back into the states, and I got it back into the states. That means Democrats, Republicans, Liberals, Conservatives, and all legal scholars. It was always wrong being in the federal government. I got it out back in the states and now there’s voting taking place.

(52:28)
I believe in exceptions like Ronald Reagan believed in exceptions, very important, for life of the mother, rape, incest. But I will tell you that’s something that … It’s very interesting how it’s working out. It had to be done because it was ripping our country apart.

So RFK Jr. has offered his support to you and your campaign.

It’s with a sense of victory and not defeat that I’m suspending my campaign activities. I met again with President Trump and his family members. I was surprised to discover that we are aligned on many key issues. In those meetings, he suggested that we join forces as a unity party.

How do you feel about that?

I’m very honored by it. He’s a very smart guy. A different kind of a guy, but very smart. Loves our country. Has some, I think, very good views on a lot of different things. I’ve known him for a long time. We’ve been somewhat friendly actually, and I think he’s going to be a great asset.

(53:37)
I think he adds a lot to the election. He’s got a good following, tremendous following. I think he adds a lot to the election and I think he adds a lot to … If we win. I mean he’s got some very interesting ideas and good ideas. I think he’ll be a fantastic and influential person in terms of getting this country back on track. If we win, I think he can be very valuable to the country, and I think he can also help us build up the margins.

(54:10)
You were talking about votes. Some people say this could be a landslide, too. They could say it would be a landslide. It’s not going to be a landslide on their side. It could be a landslide on our side. It won’t be a landslide on their side. It should be a landslide because she will destroy the country. She’s going to destroy the country. Look at the job she did at the border. She was a border czar. Just look at the job.

(54:32)
In history, there’s never been a mess like that. Now they have their standard line. They’re great for misinformation. She’s got a standard line, “We did a wonderful job at the border,” and she’ll say it a hundred times, a thousand times. A lot of people, they’re driving cabs, they’re accountants, they’re doctors. They’re not into politics like you are. I know how much you are. The fact is they’ll say it a hundred times and they think that maybe people will start to believe. What she’s done to this country … This is beyond Biden because she was in charge of the border-

Of course.

… and that’s the way she’ll run the country.

Will he have a role in your administration? He’s a very experienced trial lawyer.

He is.

He’s tried a lot of large cases, and a lot of it environmental. So he might play a role environmentally.

Could be.

He might play a role as attorney general. There’s a lot of things he could offer to the administration.

That’s true. That’s true. No, he’s a very smart guy and-

But you welcome him.

I do. I’ve known him-

You welcome his support.

Well, number one, I’ve known him a long time, and I’ve always had a good relationship. I mean we’re on opposite sides of some issues, but I’ve always had a good relationship with him, and I’m very honored by his support.

Well, I’ve spoken to him about you in the past and he’s always spoken of you with a great deal of respect. Even though you guys have been campaigning against each other, he’s always spoken of you with a great deal of respect. So it’s not surprising to me that he supports you. So that wasn’t a surprise to me.

Well, one thing he said to me, and he said the same thing that I say to everybody, November 5th is going to be the most important day in the history of our country. I believe that.

Yeah. I think there hasn’t been an election like this for generations to be sure.

Yup.

Mr. President, thank you for sitting down and talking to me.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much.

We’ll be seeing you on the trail.

Yup, you will.

[inaudible 00:56:22]. I want to thank former President Donald Trump for sitting down today because I know, with 10 weeks to go, time is precious, and for him to spend it with us here on Merit Street Media means a lot. I also have a request to Democrat nominee Kamala Harris. I’ve asked to do a sit down with her and hear what she has to say to all of our viewers here at Merit Street Media. I hope she will agree to have that sit-down. I’m now going to leave here, jump on a plane and fly to Phoenix, Arizona where I’m sitting down with RFK Jr. We’ll be bringing that to you tomorrow night right here on Merit Street Media.