Elon Musk and Donald Trump Interview

As this massive attack illustrates, there’s a lot of opposition to people just hearing what President Trump has to say. But I’m honored to have this conversation. I want to emphasize it’s a conversation. And it’s really intended to just get a feel for what Donald Trump is just like in a conversation. It’s hard to catch a vibe about someone if you just don’t hear them talk in a normal way. And when there’s an adversarial interview, no one’s themselves in an adversarial interview. And this is really aimed at open-minded independent voters who are just trying to make up their mind. So you can understand what is it just like to have a conversation. So Donald, great to speak. We had a great conversation yesterday. As you mentioned yesterday, if we could just record that conversation and post it would’ve been excellent. And I hope we can have something like that today.

Well, I think we will. I’m pretty sure we will. And congratulations, because I see you broke every record in the book with so many millions of people. And it’s an honor. We view that as an honor. And then you do want silencing of certain voices. Usually those are voices that have something to say that are constructive, oftentimes constructive.

Yeah.

And so we have to consider it an honor. But congratulations on breaking every record in the book tonight. That’s great.

Well, thank you. Well, maybe we could start off with, I mean, the assassination attempt, which was an incredible thing. And I have to say that your actions at that assassination attempt were inspiring. Instead of shying away from things, instead of ducking down, you were pumping your fist in the air and saying, “Fight, fight, fight.” I think the President of the United States represents America. And I think that is America. That is strength under fire. And so that’s part of the reason why I was excited to endorse you as the President of the United States for having another term here, is that was just incredibly inspiring. But what was it like for you?

Not pleasant, I have to be honest.

Not Pleasant.

I said there was blood. I had more blood. I didn’t know I had that much blood. The doctors later told me that the ear is a place that is a very bloody place if you’re going to get hit. But in this case, it was probably the best alternative you could even think about, because it went at the right angle, and it was a hard hit. It was very, I guess you say surreal, but it wasn’t surreal. I was telling somebody, you have instances like this or a lot less than this, where you feel it’s a surreal situation. And I never felt that way. I knew immediately that it was a bullet. I knew immediately that it was at the ear, and because it hit very hard, but it hit the ear.

(03:21)
And I also heard people shout, “Bullets, bullets. Get down, get down.” Because I moved down pretty nicely, pretty quickly, and we had bullets flying right over my head after I went down. So I’m glad I went down. The bigger miracle was that I was looking in the exact direction of the shooter, and so it hit me at an angle that was far less destructive than any other angle. So that was the miracle.

Yeah.

For those people that don’t believe in God, I think we got to all start thinking about that. You have to. I’m a believer now. I’m more of a believer, I think. And a lot of people have said that to me. A lot of great people have said that to me, actually. But it was amazing that I happened to be turned just at that perfect angle. And all because I put down a chart on immigration that showed that the numbers was so great. I love that chart even more now.

I mean, maybe it’s a sign. Maybe that’s a sign.

It’s an immigration sign.

You highlighted a serious issue, and at that moment, the bullet hit your ear, but missed your head. I mean-

Well, the amazing thing is that the sign, I said, “Bring down that sign on immigration.” And it was literally about an eighth of a second where it would be good. And after that, it was going to be a disaster no matter which way you were facing. But it just had that perfect angle, which was exactly at this shooter. Very sad situation. Such a sad situation. As you know, we lost somebody that was great. Cory, a firefighter, a great gentleman, a great Trumper. He was just a fantastic family and a fantastic man. And a friend of mine came up, Elon, and said, “I’d like to give the family some kind of help.” And I said, “That’s great.” He said, “Do you mind?” I said, “I don’t mind at all.” And he wrote out a check for a million dollars. Gave it to the wife, and she said, “This is really nice, but I’d rather have my husband back.” Which is a nice thing for somebody to say, to be honest. She’s great. The family is great.

Yeah.

And we raised a lot of money for them and for two other gentlemen are unbelievable people also. They were hit really badly. They thought they were not going to make it, and they did. The doctors in the Butler area, I tell you, they were incredible. They saved the two, and they were really hit tough, both of them equally.

Yeah.

And my first question was, because I heard bullets flying over me and I said, “How many people were killed?” Because we had a massive crowd there, a tremendous, thousands and thousands of people. And there was no land. It was all people. So I said, “How many people have been killed?” Because I knew there were other shots being fired. And they said, “We don’t know yet, but some people have been badly hurt.” I have to give the Secret Service sniper, they call him or sharpshooter, but sniper.

Yeah.

Because he didn’t know there was a problem. He’s an extraordinary shot, obviously. And he didn’t know there was a problem, and he was able to pick it all out within five seconds. And he used one bullet from very far away, I guess probably about 400 yards. The shooter was 130, but he was on the opposite side of the field and the podium. And he saw the smoke and the flame from the gun, immediately recognized it, and immediately took a shot. And it was one perfect shot from very far away. And if he didn’t do that, Elon, I mean, a lot more people could have been badly hurt and killed.

Sure. Absolutely.

So I have to take my hat off to him, because that’s also a surreal. He’d been with them for 23 years, and he’s never had anything like this. And all of a sudden he has to act. And it’s a very tough thing to act and to be shooting somebody. But he saw the gun, saw the smoke, saw the flame from the gun very far away, obviously has very good eyes. He’s got very good vision, which I assume you have to have in that particular work.

Yeah. Absolutely.

But he took aim very quickly, and they say it was approximately five seconds from long range, one bullet. If that didn’t happen, because the shooter had a lot of bullets, he had a lot of cartridges up there with him. So would’ve been very [inaudible 00:07:40].

I mean, that’s clearly, he was very competent in taking that shot to stop the attempted assassination. But I mean, there does seem to be, I mean, some pretty significant failings elsewhere in the system. There’s just no way that, how on earth does a shooter get on a roof 130 yards away? That seems crazy. I think most people are wondering how on earth could such a thing happen?

Well, I view it as two ways. There should have been nobody in the roof. There were people, because there were so many tens of thousands of people there. There were people that were seeing him. And there was one woman with a red shirt and Trump all over it. I saw the video and she’s screaming, “That guy’s got a gun.” You saw it probably.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I saw the videos.

There’s a guy out there with a gun.

I guess from my part, and I think probably many members of the public are wondering how the heck are basically people wondering why, pointing out there’s a guy on the roof with a gun.

Yeah.

And they’re seeing it, but somehow it’s not being addressed. That does seem crazy.

Yeah. Well, they’re going to learn from this. The communication between the local police who sort of had an idea. And then ultimately a man lifted himself up to the roof, could barely do it, because he was pulling himself up. And he saw the man with the gun. The man with the gun pointed the gun at him. He thought he was probably going to get shot. But he was pulling himself up. And because of that, he couldn’t get to his gun. And he fell down actually very badly, hurt his leg, his ankle, I hear very badly.

Okay.

But he fell down. And he did, from what I understand, he did say, ” There’s a guy up there with a gun.” And the shooting started very quickly after that. I think it forced the shooter to go maybe quicker. You’re supposed to be a very good shot.

Yeah.

My sons Don and Eric, they can’t believe what happened. But they said from 130 yards, a bad shot would hit that target almost every time. They said, it’s like in golf, sinking a two-foot putt.

Yeah, it’s not a tough shot.

No, it’s not a long shot. The Secret Service person had the long shot. He had triple the distance, actually.

Yeah.

So it was a terrible thing. Look, it’s hard. I have to say this about the Secret Service. When I went down, and I went down based on I think their screaming, but other people also, because people saw this happen. You had so many people. One of the miracles was that nobody ran. I mean, if a gun goes off, the crowd control people showed us this. When guns go off, and it does happen in stadiums and at a soccer match, or some kind of a match, everybody flees, they call it a stampede like cattle. And a lot of people get killed with those stampedes. We had more people than you’d have at some of these matches or these games. And nobody left. You had a small group behind us in the grandstand, and that was full. And you look at it as it was taking place.

(10:56)
And normally they’d be running. They didn’t leave. They saw that I was hurt. They saw a lot of blood, and they saw that I went down. And it’s almost like they wanted to be with me. Well, out front you had thousands, tens of thousands of people, as far as the eye could see you had people in Butler, as far as the eye could see.

Yeah.

And a lot of press too, many cameras on watching this. It’s what makes it so different, because normally things happen that aren’t good, but you never have a picture of it. Here we have all these cameras shooting it, so sort of amazing. But one of the interesting things was that you didn’t have anybody flee. You didn’t have anybody stampede, nobody.

Sure.

And there were some people behind me. They stood up, and they’re looking like, I mean, I’ll tell you, you want to have them in a fox hole with you. I want to meet some of those people. Because it’s so different from what you heard. So I was down. But the Secret Service guys, there were bullets flying right over my head. You could hear them go whizzing. And these guys came jumping on top of me, and a young lady, Kate, they moved so fast. And let me tell you, that took tremendous courage. Now, there was a lack of coordination. Obviously everybody understands that somebody, that building should have been covered. And that was a big thing.

I mean, looking at the aerial views, that building would be the number one spot for a sniper. It’s like if you were to pick what is the favorite… So if the goal is to assassinate, what’s your favorite spot? That building.

You’re right.

That building would be number one.

That would’ve been this spot.

It’s like you couldn’t ask for a better location. It’s like number one.

No, that would’ve been the spot.

Yeah.

People think is when the local policeman, who, by the way, he did what he was supposed to do. He couldn’t hold on any longer. And then when he got his head just peeking above this guy standing there with a gun at his head. And when he fell down, again, hurt his ankle very badly, but he was making the calls. But what happened is the firing took place very soon. So what they think is that this guy ran to his site, which he had all planned out with a gun. He ran to the site, and he started shooting fast. And maybe that’s why he, well, he sort of missed. He got me, but it could have been a much bigger problem.

Yeah. But he totally would’ve hit if you hadn’t turned your head. So it was a very near thing.

It was a miracle. If I hadn’t turned my head, I would not be talking to you right now, as much as I like you.

Exactly.

I would not be talking to you.

You’d be talking to me from another realm perhaps.

Yeah, that’s right. We’d be talking from a different place. But it was a very terrible experience. The Butler Hospital, they did such a great job. The doctors were so good, everybody was so good. There was a mistake if somebody knew, because people were hearing, there was just a bad feeling that there was somebody was around. You know that story now.

Yeah.

And if somebody could have said, because oftentimes said there’d be a lightning storm or something, because I’ve done, I think over 300. I think I did a lot more than that, but we did a lot. And oftentimes they’ll say, “Sir, could you wait 10 minutes, please. Sir, could you wait 20 minutes, there’s a storm overhead.” Or lightning or something, right? That happens often. And this would’ve been a perfect time for that to have happened. But it didn’t get coordinated. That was the problem.

Well, I think your actions in the heat of fire, what I find admirable there was that you can’t fake bravery under such circumstances. The courage is instinctual, or it is not. It’s not a rehearsed action. And so I just want to say that I think a lot of people admire your courage under fire there. Yeah.

Thank you very much. I appreciate it. I didn’t think of it. I just wanted to get up, and I wanted to stand up. I wanted to let people know. I felt I was good when they were on top of me covering me, actually, very much covering me and very bravely. But I wanted to get up. I said, “I want to get up.” And they have everything there. They wanted a stretcher. I didn’t like the stretcher. And I knew I was hit in the year, but I knew I wasn’t hit anywhere else. They felt I was hit someplace else, because it was such a lot of blood. And they were sure that I was hit someplace else. And they were saying, “Sir, you were hitting more than the ear.” I said, “Nope. I was hit in the ear. I want to get up. Let me get up.” And so I got up, and the crowd didn’t know what to think.

(15:35)
I mean, this was so, so many people. And you could see they were confused. They didn’t know what to think. And I wanted to let them know I was okay. It was very important for me to let them know that.

Yeah.

And they went wild. You’ve seen the after. They didn’t go wild when I got up, because they didn’t know was I alive? You really couldn’t tell. When I stood up before the hand, before the fist in the air, they didn’t know if I was alive. Nobody did. And when I put the fist up, they were just relieved and happy and thrilled. And the place went crazy. It was pretty amazing. It was a terrible thing, but it was [inaudible 00:16:15].

It was incredibly moving. Yeah. Well, and I mean speaking of the sort of slide that got you to turn, that saved your life really, was the legal immigration slide.

That’s right.

Maybe this is worth talking about that slide. That slide saved your life, basically.

You’re right. Illegal immigration saved my life. You’re right. But it had to be at that exact angle.

I mean, that’s a great one. Saved by illegal immigration.

The incredible thing though, when you talk about the odds. You had to be exactly at that angle. But the incredible thing is that the chart, I used it less than 20% of the time. It was just a moment.

Yeah.

It’s always on my left, never my right. And it’s always at the end of the speech. So here we have it. It’s on the right, not the left. It’s at the beginning, not the end. And even the people that put it up, they were unprepared. And they did a great job. They got it up immediately, fortunately. But I looked to the right and the bullet came whizzing by hitting my ear. So it was amazing. But when you think of the odds of that, and that normally you wouldn’t use it. Normally I wouldn’t have the thing. And then it would’ve been a very different story. It’s very much, I say an act of God. It’s a miracle that it happened. And I’m honored by it. I’m honored by it.

Well, what were you about to say about illegal immigration before you were rudely interrupted?

Well, I was going to how good the numbers were. By the way, we’re going back to Butler.

Great.

And we’re going to go back in October. We’re all set up, and the people are fantastic in Butler. It’s a great area. These are incredible people. Like the three that in the case of Corey killed, and the other two, the families are, I get to know a little bit, and the families are great. But we’re going back to Butler. And I think I’ll probably start by saying, “As I was saying, prior to being so horribly interrupted.”

Yeah, so rudely interrupted by an assassination attempt.

No, but the chart.

Some people have no manners.

Elon, the chart was just a chart that in my last week we had the best illegal immigration numbers, meaning stopping. It was at the lowest. You’ve seen the chart. It’s become quite a famous chart.

Yeah, yeah.

But that was the lowest point ever recorded. It was a really, I mean, I was very proud of those numbers. And then you see what happened with these people, Kamala and Joe, you see what happened. They just let it go. I remain in Mexico policies. I had all these different policies that were so good. Guys like Tom Holman and Brandon Judd from Border Patrol. These are all people that they’ve been on television. They say it’s the best numbers we’ve ever had. We had so many different checks, catch and release in Mexico, not the United, we had catch and release in the United States. We had it in Mexico. We had so many things.

(19:16)
We had things where if many people come in there, they have contagious diseases. We had everything passed. If you have a contagious disease, I’m sorry, but we cannot allow you into the country. So we were setting literally records. And all I was doing is showing that. And I used it sometimes. And in this case, I’m glad I used it. I can tell you that. But there were fantastic numbers. But I’m going to sleep with that chart always. I’ll be sleeping with that chart. That chart was very important, very important for a lot of reasons.

Would it be accurate to say that you’re supportive of legal immigration, but we obviously need to shut down illegal immigration, and especially unvetted illegal immigration?

Yes.

And that’s not the same as saying that everyone who’s an illegal immigrant is bad. In fact, I think most people who are illegal immigrants are actually good. But you can’t tell a difference unless there’s a solid vetting of who comes across the border.

100%.

Does that actually represent your position?

I say it very simply. They have to come in legally. They have to be checked.

Yeah.

Because look, Kamala was the Border Czar. Now she’s denying it. Everything that I do, she’s saying she was strong on the border, we’re going to be strong. Well, she doesn’t have to say it. She could close it up right now. They could do things right now. It is horrible. No tax on tips. And all of a sudden she’s making a speech, she’s saying, “There will be no tax on tips.” I said that months ago. And by the way, they had just the opposite. They had not only tax on tips, but they hired 88,000 IRS agents. And many of them were assigned to go get waitresses and caddies and all of this on tips. They have a policy. They had a policy, they were really going to go after you and we’re really harassing people horribly. And then all of a sudden for politics, she comes out with what I said, which I think is terrible.

(21:14)
And I think it’s also hitting them very hard. These people are fake. Now they’re also saying they did a good job in the border. We had the worst numbers in the history of the world, not of our country. There’s never been a country in history that has had a catastrophe like this. We’ve had, I believe, and I think you believe this too, you hear 12 million, 13, I believe it’s over 20 million people came into our country. Many coming from jails, from prisons, from mental institutions, or a bigger version of that is insane asylums. And many are terrorists. And I’ll tell you what, they’re coming not just from South America, they’re coming from Africa. They’re coming from all over the world. They’re coming from Asia. They’re coming from the Middle East. They’re coming from countries that are stupidly and horribly bombing Israel, October 7th. They’re coming from all over the world. And you look at, it’s so sad, October 7th, because it should have never happened.

Yeah. Sure.

It’s so sad when you look at Ukraine. It should have never happened. We have a defective government. These are defective people. And they’re not people that should be running it. But where you see it the best is the border. Because you have millions of people coming in a month. And then she gets up and she tries to pretend like she’s going to do something. She had three and a half years. And by the way, they have another five months that they can do something. But they won’t do anything. It’s all talk. She’s incompetent and he’s incompetent. And frankly, I think that she’s more incompetent than he is. And that’s saying something, because he’s not too good.

Yeah. No, I think it is essential to have a secure border. I mean, you’re really not a country unless you’re in a secure border.

Correct. And secure elections too.

Yeah, absolutely. Secure elections. And so it is just essential to have a real border, or we can’t function as a country, and our central services are being overwhelmed in a lot of cities. But as we were talking about earlier, I think having a legal immigration process that is smooth and efficient and done well, and speaking as someone who is a legal immigrant. And I think that one way to think of it is, who do you want on your team? Who do you want on Team America? And I think we want to just say, “Okay, we want to let in people who are going to be great contributors to our society and to our economy.” And who do you want on the team? And it’s not to say that, in my opinion, actually, I’d say probably most of the illegal immigrants are actually good, hardworking people. That’s my opinion. But some are not.

(24:01)
And you just have this sort of adverse selection process where if somebody has a career in theft or robbery, I don’t understand what’s taken them so long to get here, because we such a target rich environment. Why aren’t more people who have a career in bad things coming here sooner? Because it’s a piece of cake to go rob houses in LA or New York compared to other parts of the world. And in a lot of places in America, if you try to stop the person who’s robbing you, you’ll be arrested. So it’s insane.

Yeah. That’s right. I mean, what’s happening with crime and our police are so good, but they’re not allowed to do their job. But I have to tell you, Elon, I hate to say, because such a downer to say it. I hate to say it. I hate it. But you have a lot of people that just shouldn’t be… I think it’s a much bigger number than you think.

I think you’re right.

Again, they’re allowing people from their jails. And if you were running one of these countries where they’re coming from, you would’ve had all of them. As an example, Venezuela, their crime is down 72%. They’re taking their drug dealers, they’re taking frankly, their prisoners. They’re emptying out their prisons. They’re taking their criminals, their murderers, their rapists, and they’re delivering them into the-

That’s what Castro did.

Yeah. Well, he did on a much smaller scale. It was much smaller scale.

Yeah.

But this is a massive scale, because this is being done worldwide. But here’s what’s happening. Crime all over the world is down. And wait till you see the numbers that we have. This is migrant crime. This is crime that’s going to be-

Yeah.

And I saw it today in New York where somebody was knifed, where they raped the girlfriend of a man that stood there watching in New York in one of the shelters, and started pulling out the knives. And bad things happen today. But this is happening every day. These are rough people. These are people that are in jail for murder and all sorts of things. And they’re releasing them into our country. And they’re telling them, “If you come back, we’re going to kill you. We’re going to give you the death penalty or kill you.” So they don’t want to come back. But these are rough people. These are criminals that make our criminals look like nice people. And it’s horrible what they’re doing.

(26:23)
And she’s in charge of it, because now she’s trying to say she had nothing to do with it. And she’s such a liar, because she was called the Border Czar the first day, and it was on the headlines of every newspaper. She’s the Border Czar. And she never even went there. She went to one location, which had nothing to do with where the problem is. She went in and out. I guess she was getting a lot of press. But had nothing to do with the problem. But she was the Border Czar, and people can’t allow them to get away with their disinformation campaign. Now she’s trying to say that she wasn’t really involved. And the whole thing is horrible.

(26:59)
She was totally in charge. She could have shut the border down without him. He didn’t know what he was doing anyway, so he wouldn’t have even known what happened. You could shut the border down. He wouldn’t even know the difference. But the fact is that she was Border Czar. But you don’t have to call her that, the fact is you could just call her, she was in charge of the border and the border was the worst ever.

It’s simply not working.

No, it’s horrible.

Whether it’s a question of intention or competence, either way, we don’t have a secure border. And we have people streaming over, it looks like a World War Z zombie apocalypse at times. And sometimes you got to sort of wonder, is it real or not? Because you see things, and you’re like, “Is it real?” So I went to the border at Eagle Pass, and I saw it for myself in Texas. And I was like, “Okay, it’s real.” I’m seeing this in real time. I actually posted the video just live. I just flew there one day and just to see, hey, is this made up or real? And I’m just seeing people stream across the border. And I have to say, at least the people that I saw did not look friendly. People can look at my video and say, “Hey, these people look friendly.” They don’t look super friendly.

These are people that Elon, would not be the same man if he had to walk across the street and look these people in the eye. These are rough people. These are really rough people coming across. And I know rough people. And these are people that we don’t want in our country. And the caravans are coming in. And who’s doing this is the heads of the countries. And you would be doing it. And so would I. And everyone would say, “Oh, what a terrible thing to say.” The fact is its brilliant for them, because they’re taking all of their bad people, really bad people. And I hate to say this, the reason the numbers are much bigger than you would think is they’re also taking their non-productive people. Now, these aren’t people that will kill you. We have enough of them. But these are people that are non-productive.

(28:58)
They are just non-productive. I mean, for whatever reason. They’re not workers or they don’t want to work or whatever. And these countries are getting rid of non-productive people in the caravans in many cases. And they’re also getting rid of their murderers and their drug dealers and the people that are really brutal people. And they’re coming into our country at levels that have never been seen before. And I saw an ad just before I got on the air. I’m walking over here, and I saw an ad by Kamala saying how she is going to provide border security. Where has he been for three and a half years? For three and a half years.

Yeah.

We have 20 million people pouring in. It’s a terrible thing.

Yeah. Frankly, I think this is a fundamental existential issue for the United States. And if we have another four more years of open borders, and with another four more years, it’s going to be even worse than it’s been for the past three and a half years. I’m not sure we’ve got a country at that point.

You don’t have a country left. Elon, if they get in, you’ll have 50 to 60 million people from all over the world. Not South America only. We think of South America, we think of Honduras and El Salvador, Guatemala and Mexico, the four. But it’s not that. It’s everywhere. They’re coming in from everywhere. And I had to stay in Mexico.

Yeah, this is a super important point. Basically, when I went down there, I was like, “Well, where are people from?” It’s like almost no one was from Mexico.

No, Mexico [inaudible 00:30:30] of the Earth.

It’s just the border with Mexico. But the people coming in, it’s Earth. The rest of Earth. And America is only about 4% or 5% of the population of Earth. It would only take a few percent of the rest of Earth to overwhelm everything in the US.

We’re already overwhelmed, Elon. We’re overwhelmed. You had to see the news tonight about New York. And I love that place. And what they’re doing to it is horrible, what they’re doing to it.

Yeah.

And all the courts do is they try and focus on Trump.

Okay. Then let’s focus on Trump who did nothing wrong. I complain about our rigged election. Elon, what’s happened is unbelievable. You have from Africa, from the Congo, they’re coming. From the Congo. 22 people came in from the Congo recently and they’re murderers and they’re dropped. They drop them. They take them out of jails, which is very expensive to maintain the jails, although they don’t do too much maintaining, I can tell you.

(31:26)
They take them out of jails, prisons, they take them out and they bring them to the United States. They deposit them to the United States and say, “Don’t ever come back, or you’re going to be executed.” They don’t want to come back, but they won’t come back. They’re coming from Africa, they’re coming from Asia, they’re coming from the Middle East, they’re coming from South America. They’re coming from everywhere. There are a lot of really bad ones.

It’s just an everywhere on Earth thing. It’s just not possible for the United States to absorb everyone from Earth or even a few percent of the rest of Earth, is just not possible.

Well, Elon, just to finish this up, we’re going to have the largest deportation in history of this country. We have no choice. Otherwise, we’re going to have a country… What they’ve done to our country, think of it.

(32:16)
In Venezuela and in some of these other countries, crime is down 50, 60, 70, 80%. You would be the same. I’ll tell you what, Venezuela has not gotten rid of all of them. They’ve gotten rid of about 70% of their really bad people. Their jails are about 50% put into the United States.

(32:36)
Same with other countries. Some are 30%, some are at 50%. They’re all different. The bottom line is they’re all going to be at a hundred percent. Why wouldn’t you put a hundred percent of it? They’re doing it right now while this third-rate, phony candidate… Don’t forget, I beat Biden. He failed in the debate miserably.

(32:57)
Some people said, “Oh gee, it’s too bad. It’s too bad he did so badly,” or I did well in the debate. The first night they said, “Wow,” one of the people at CNN said, “That was the greatest debate performance I’ve ever witnessed.” Then two days later, they didn’t talk about that. They just said he was bad, but that’s okay. That’s the way I get treated, and I don’t mind that at all.

(33:15)
What I can tell you is this, we cannot have a Democrat. We cannot have her. She’s incompetent. She’s as bad as Biden in a different… She hasn’t done an interview since this whole scam started and say what you want. This was a coup. This was coup of a President of the United States. He didn’t want to leave. They said, “We can do it the nice way or we can do it the hard way.”

They just took him out back behind the shed and basically shot him.

Oh, what they did with this guy. I’m no fan of his, and he was a horrible president, the worst president in history. One of the reasons he was so bad, first of all, the Israeli attack would’ve never happened. Russia would never have attacked Ukraine and we’d have no inflation. We wouldn’t have had the Afghanistan mess if you think of it. We wouldn’t have had Afghanistan. Think of it, you take a few of those events away and we have a different world. We would also have… Inflation was caused by oil.

Yeah, I think you’re making an excellent point here, which is that when other countries that are thinking about invading or doing bad things, when they’re thinking about that, they’re thinking about, okay, what’s the American president going to do? Do they fear the American president? Or is there someone they do not respect and do not fear? I think they do… They would rightfully be, I mean, look at the footage of the assassination. They’re like, okay, President Trump is like, “Don’t mess with me.”

(34:47)
I mean, whereas I think people are not going to be… They obviously have not been at all intimidated by Biden, and they certainly will not be intimidated by Kamala. You have to really think about in the context of global security, that if the American president is someone that evil dictators are scared of, that makes a huge difference to the security of the world.

So I had a good relationship with Putin despite the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax that lasted for over two years. Just a hoax created by Hillary Clinton and Adam Shifty Schiff. Some just bad people, just sick people frankly. I mean, Schiff is a sick person. He’s going to end up probably being a senator. It’s hard to believe. The whole thing is hard to believe.

(35:33)
They put our country in danger with that stuff too. They actually, when they make up stories and you have to fight your way out of it for a long time. I know Putin very well, I got along with him very well. He respected me. It’s just one of those things, and we would talk a lot about Ukraine. It was the apple of his eye. I said, “Don’t ever do it. Don’t ever do it.”

(35:54)
I shut down Nord Stream too. That was the big oil pipeline, the biggest, I think the biggest pipeline in the world going all over Europe. I shut it down. Biden came, and then they say, I loved Russia. I was a friend of Putin and I loved Russia. No, he actually said to me one time, “If you are my friend, I’d hate to see you as an enemy.” I shut down his pipeline, the biggest pipeline. They were looking at that to fund.

(36:16)
This pathetic president gets in there and the first thing he did, one of the early things he did is he shut down… He shut down Keystone XL Pipeline, which is our pipeline that would’ve employed 48,000 people, pipeline workers, shuts it down. That was a massive job that Obama refused to allow.

(36:39)
I allowed it in my first week because it was jobs and it moved oil. By the way, in a much more environmentally friendly way, it’s underground. It’s not a truck that catches on fire or a train that catches on fire. Think of it, he shut down the XL pipeline, the Keystone XL pipeline. He shuts that down and he approves the Russian pipeline.

Yeah, it doesn’t make any sense. It’s inconsistent, certainly. I mean, I think it’s just worth emphasizing to listeners the immense importance of whether the United States president is intimidating or not intimidating and how much that matters to global security. There’s some real tough characters out there and if they don’t think the American president is tough, they will do what they want to do.

I know every one of them.

It puts the whole world in danger.

Elon, I know every one of them. I know them well. I know Putin. I know President Xi. I know Kim Jong Un of North Korea. I know every one of them. Let me tell you, people will say, “Oh, this is terrible.” I’m not saying anything good or bad. They’re at the top of their game. They’re tough. They’re smart, they’re vicious, and they’re going to protect their country whether they love their country, they probably do. It’s just a different form of love, but they’re going to protect their country.

(37:57)
These are tough people at the top of their game. When they see a Kamala or when they see Biden, Sleepy Joe, they can’t even believe it. They can’t believe this happened. All the stuff that you are seeing now, all the horror that you… Look at Israel, they’re all waiting for an attack from Iran. Iran would not be attacking, believe me.

(38:17)
When I was there, and I say it with respect because I think we would’ve been good with Iran. I don’t want to do anything bad to Iran, but they knew not to mess around. Iran was broke because I told China, “If you buy from Iran oil…” It’s all about the oil. That’s where the money is. “If you buy oil from Iran, you’re not going to do any business with the United States.” I meant it. They said, “We’ll pass.” They didn’t buy oil.

(38:42)
Other countries, likewise. If you want to buy, you’re not doing business with the United States. They were at a point where they had no money for Hamas. They had no money for Hezbollah. They had no money for any of these instruments of terror. It was amazing.

(38:57)
In fact, there were articles when I was leaving, which is hard to believe actually. Especially when you look at what’s happened to our country. Our country is so bad right now. It’s such a different place. We were respected. Think of it, four years ago we were so respected to a point where when I said, don’t buy oil, they didn’t buy oil, but they had no money. Israel would’ve never been attacked. Zero chance.

(39:20)
Again, I said to Vladimir Putin, I said, “Don’t do it. You can’t do it, Vladimir. You do it. It’s going to be a bad day. You cannot do it.” I told him things that what I do, and he said, “No way.” I said, “Way.” It’s the last time we ever had the conversation. He would never have done… I got along well with him. I hope to get along well with him again.

(39:42)
Getting along well with them is a good thing, not a bad thing. I got along well with Kim Jong Un. When I met with President Obama just before entering, it’s sort of a ritual, and I sat down with him. We talked, it was supposed to be for a very short period of time. It turned out to be a long period of time.

(39:59)
I said, “What’s the biggest problem?” He said, “North Korea.” I had that problem worked out very quickly. It was nasty at the beginning with Rocketman and all the different things. All of a sudden I got a call.

Those were some epic tweets, by the way.

No, they were epic everything. He said that he has a red button on his desk. I said, “I have a red button on my desk too, but my red button is much bigger and my red button works.” Then I called him Little Rocketman. If Little Rocketman… Anyway, here’s the bottom line.

(40:27)
All of a sudden I got a call from him and they said they want to meet, they want to meet me. We met, as you remember, we met in Singapore. We met also in Vietnam. I got along with him great. We were in no danger. President Obama thought we were going to end up in a war, a nuclear war with him. Let me tell you, he’s got a lot of nuclear stuff too. He’s got plenty of nuclear.

Exactly.

He can do plenty of damage.

Yeah. It’s because people like Kim Jong Un, they respond to strength, not weakness. He projects strength.

He and I had a good relationship. Remember I met him and we walked onto his land. Nobody ever walked onto his land before. I walked on. I wouldn’t say… Let’s bring up Secret Service again. I wouldn’t say they were thrilled when I did that. I walked onto his land and it was an amazing period, but we were not in danger with him because of me.

(41:22)
I always say that we have enemies on the outside and we have enemies on the inside. We have some really bad people in our government and people that are… Controlling of the people. I mean, I’d mentioned names, but I really don’t want to give them the credit. We have some really bad… I say they’re more dangerous than Russia and China. If you have a smart president, a president that gets it, we are not in danger from those countries because they need us and they need our help.

(41:51)
I mean, we forced… If you think about it, Obama and Biden and Bush to a certain extent, in all fairness, forced Russia and China together. If you’re a history student, the first thing you learn is you cannot let Russia and China align. Then they also got, if you take a look, Iran, and they have North Korea. They call it the access of evil in the old days, you had the access of evil. Here we have a modern day access of evil.

(42:19)
These are powerful countries, very heavy nuclear, which is the biggest threat. The biggest threat is not global warming, where the ocean’s going to rise one eighth of an inch over the next 400 years and you’ll have more ocean front property. The biggest threat is not that. The biggest threat is nuclear warming because we have five countries now that have significant nuclear power and we have to not allow anything to happen with stupid people like Biden.

(42:49)
Biden did something with Russia. There was no chance of him ever going in. When I left… Then after I left, they started forming big armies on the border with Ukraine. I looked at that and I thought he was doing that because Putin’s a good negotiator. I thought he was doing that to negotiate. Then Biden started saying such stupid things.

(43:10)
For instance, he said that it can be a NATO country. Now Russia, for as long as there’s been NATO has said, “We’re never going to agree to that.” We go right up front and say that. We did things and said things through this president with a low IQ, very low IQ. He had a low IQ 30 years ago, by the way. Now he might not even have a IQ at all. There’s nothing on the board that goes this low.

(43:36)
He said things that were so stupid that that war had zero chance of happening if I were there, zero chance. He was saying everything the opposite. Everything the opposite. It’s so sad because many more people have been killed in Ukraine than you read about. You don’t read about how bloody it is and how [inaudible 00:43:58].

(43:58)
Look, just in the two armies, you lost a half a million people. Ukraine’s having a hard time. Ukraine, I don’t know if you saw the article recently, and it’s true, you don’t hear the true story. If you think about it, Russia’s gone… Russia defeated Germany with us and they defeated Napoleon. They’ve been around a long time. They’re a big fighting force and it’s very unfair. Ukraine now doesn’t have enough men. They’re now using young men and very old men to fight. We’re in a very bad position. I’m not going to blame exclusively, but I can tell you I could have stopped that and a smart president could have stopped that. It wouldn’t have happened. We had a man that actually made it more prevalent. It was so bad, the words that he was using, the stupid threats coming from a stupid face that he was using.

(44:52)
I said, “This guy’s going to cause us a war. He’s going to cause us…” Let me tell you, it can lead to World War III. That can lead to World War III, the Middle East can lead to… We have numerous places that could end up in a World War III right now for no reason whatsoever.

I think you’re right. I think people underrate the risk of World War III. When looking at the risk of global thermonuclear warfare, it’s game over for humanity. It’s something that, I think after the end of the Cold War, people have become complacent about. They actually have forgotten that there are currently a lot of nuclear missiles that have targeting parameters for the United States from other countries.

One of the things we’re going to do is we’re going to build an iron dome over us. Israel has it. We’re going to have the best iron dome in the world. We need it and we’re going to make it all in the United States, but we’re going to have protection because it just takes one maniac to start something. We’re going to have protection and we’re going to have… Why shouldn’t we have an iron dome? Israel has one. Some other places have one that nobody even knows about frankly. Israel has it. We’re going to have an iron dome. With all of that being said, to me, that’s so important, the most important. With all of that being said, the elections coming up and the people want to hear about the economy. The fact that they can’t buy groceries because they don’t have enough money to buy groceries. The inflation has killed them. Food prices are up 50, 60, even a hundred percent in some cases. This stupid administration allowed this to happen. It’s a shame.

(46:26)
That’s the thing that people most care about in my opinion. They care about the border a lot and we discuss the border at great length. It’s nice to have a forum like this where I can discuss something at length. By the way, do you think Biden could do this interview or do you think that Kamala could do this interview? They would take a pass on you.

No, they could not.

They don’t need Elon. They don’t need Elon screaming out questions. It’s pretty sad when you think that somebody that does this for a living can’t answer a question or is afraid to do an interview. In her case with a very friendly interview, she’s got all friendly interviewers. It’s pretty [inaudible 00:47:02].

Yes, absolutely.

The big thing now is the economy, Elon, and as much as, I mean I view nuclear as the single most important thing, but a lot of people don’t understand that. It doesn’t have to. If I understand that that’s all you need because if I was president, you’re not going to have that kind of a problem. The thing that really is making them angry is what Kamala and Biden have allowed to happen to the economy. It’s a disaster with inflation.

(47:29)
It doesn’t matter what you make, the inflation is eating you alive. If you’re a worker or if you’re just a middle income person, you can’t afford… Four years ago, five years ago, people were saving a lot of money. Today they’re using all their money and borrowing money just to live. It’s a horrible thing that’s happening. We’ll end that quickly.

A lot of people just don’t understand where inflation comes from. Inflation comes from government overspending because the checks never bounce when it’s written by the government. So if the government spends far more than it brings in, that increases the money supply. If the money supply increases faster than the rate of goods and services, that’s inflation.

(48:12)
So really we need to reduce our government spending and we need to re-examine… I think we need a government efficiency commission to say like, “Hey, where are we spending money that’s sensible. Where is it not sensible?” We need to live within our means. We are currently adding, I think, a trillion dollars to the deficit roughly every hundred days. The interest payments on the national debt have now exceeded the defense budget. It’s on the order of a trillion dollars. It keeps growing.

I rebuilt our military, largely rebuilt our military. Did a great job on it, which was so important. We had jets, we had fighters and bombers that were 70 years old, and we did a great job in that. By the way, then we gave 85 billion of it back to Afghanistan, if you can believe it. We gave them 85 billion.

(49:04)
They’re one of the largest sellers of military equipment in the world. They’re selling what we gave them. That was one of the most embarrassing days in the history of our country.

(49:14)
If you think about, let’s go back to the economy. We have to bring energy prices down. Energy started it, the price of gasoline. Now, your cars don’t require too much gasoline, so you have a good… You do make a great product. I have to say, I have to be honest with you.

Thank you.

That doesn’t mean everybody should have an electric car, but these are minor details. Your product is incredible. The gasoline, Elon, is the cost of energy, not only gasoline, it’s the cost of heating your house and cooling your house. That has to come down. It’s gone up a hundred percent, 150 and 200%. That has to come down.

(49:54)
When that comes down and we’re going to drill, baby, drill. They stopped drilling and then they went back to drilling because they went back to the Trump policy. If they won, the day after they get into office, this country will go out of business because they’re going to go to an energy policy that’s not sustainable. Wind and different things, you’re not going to have anything.

(50:17)
I know you’re a big fan of the AI. I have to say that AI, and this is shocking to me, but AI requires twice the energy that the country already produces for everything. So we’re going to have to build a lot of energy if our country will be competitive with China, because that’s our primary competitor for this on the AI. You’re going to need a lot of electricity. You’re going to need tremendous electricity, almost double what we produce now for the whole country if you can believe it.

Sure. Well, just going back to this basic thing, which that people try to make it sound complicated, but it’s not. Inflation is caused by government overspending. Would you agree that we need to take a look at government spending?

Yes.

Have perhaps a government efficiency commission that tries to make the spending sensible so the country lives within its means just like a person does?

The waste is incredible and nobody negotiates prices. You used to have a lot of people making jets, and you end up with two companies. They’ll probably try and merge at some point. I mean, I went through it. Just a thing like Air Force One, one of the first documents they asked me to sign, a general said, “Sir, will you please sign this document?” “What is it?” “Air Force One,” that’s with Boeing, which is basically two planes, two 747s. The price was $5.7 billion for two planes.

Wow. That’s insane.

Now, they’re highly sophisticated. They’re even nicer than your plane, but much more sophisticated. They’re very… I won’t say what’s on it, but they got a lot of stuff on it. Anyway, but it’s 5.7.

That’s a crazy number.

It’s a crazy number. I said, “I’m not going to pay 5.7. I’m not going to do it.” I said, “Who made the deal?” “Obama and his people.” I said, “Well, then I know the deal’s no good. I’m not going to do it.”

(52:06)
Over a course of about four weeks by my saying, “I’m not going to do it,” I got the price reduced by $1.6 billion for the exact same plane. Other than we had a nicer paint job, if you want to know the truth. For the exact same plane, I saved one… I said to Boeing, “Man, you guys must make a lot of money if you can reduce the price by that.”

(52:27)
Now what I do hear is that they’re going back to the Biden administration and wanting big cost overruns because they see these dopey suckers in there and they’ll end up getting some of the money back. I saved it by $1.6 billion for the exact same plane. You can now take that and multiply that out times thousands of other items.

Exactly. Multiply it by a zillion.

The numbers are astronomical. I agree with you.

I think it would be great to just have a government efficiency commission that takes a look at these things and just ensures that the taxpayer money, the taxpayers hard-earned money is spent in a good way. I’d be happy to help out on such a commission.

I’d love it.

If it were formed.

Well, you, you’re the greatest cutter. I mean, I look at what you do. You walk in and you just say, “You want to quit?” They go on strike. I won’t mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, “That’s okay. You’re all gone. You’re all gone. So every one of you is gone,” and you are the greatest. You would be very good. Oh, you would love it. If you look at…

Well, I’d be happy to help out.

By the way, congratulations. I just looked at the number of people that are listening to you and I chat. We’ll call it a chat, but congratulations. This is very good. I mean, it’s great. You’re an interesting character.

(53:46)
The new head of a place called Argentina, and he’s a big… He’s great. He’s a big MAGA fan. You know that? He ran on MAGA. He took it to an extreme too. He ran on MAGA, and I hear he is doing really a terrific job. It’s called Make Argentina Great Again. It worked out perfectly. He came in, he bought a lot of hats, he brought over… He’s doing a big job.

(54:10)
He really cut. I’m hearing they’re starting to do pretty well. Inflation is getting down. They had like 2000%, they had inflation like not normal inflation. They had the real deal.

(54:24)
We’re going to have that pretty soon. I think we have the worst inflation we’ve had in a hundred years. They say it’s 48 years. I don’t believe it. I think we have the worst. They don’t include a lot of the items that should be included.

Yeah, well, it’s just from government overspending and just not spending taxpayer money effectively and having so many departments, you can’t even name them all. What Milei is doing is he’s cutting government spending. He’s simplifying things. He’s putting in regulations that make sense. Argentina overnight is experiencing a giant improvement in prosperity.

(55:08)
It’s also a lesson for the United States, which is that Argentina used to be one of the most prosperous countries in the world. I think in the ’30s, ’40s. Because of bad government policy, it ruined the country.

(55:22)
If you take Venezuela for example. Venezuela should be incredibly prosperous. They have phenomenal reserves of everything, oil, everything, and should be prosperous. If the government’s wrong, it impoverishes the people. So I think we should not be complacent in the United States and thinking that and taking our prosperity for granted, because with bad government policy, we can run the country into the ground. That’s just something people should bear in mind. Don’t take prosperity for granted.

Well, think of education. So we’re ranked at the bottom of every list of the top 40. We’re ranked number 40, number 38. Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, different countries are ranked good. Actually China’s pretty close to the top. They’re a top six or seven, but we’re ranked at the bottom, almost at the bottom, 38, 39, 40. In other words, horrible. Yet we spend more per pupil than any other country in the world. So we spend more.

(56:22)
What I’m going to do, one of the first acts… This is where I need an Elon Musk. I need somebody that has a lot of strength and courage and smarts. I want to close up Department of Education, move education back to the states where states like Iowa, where states like Idaho… Not every state will do great. States that basically aren’t doing good now, you look at Gavin New Scum, the governor of California, he is terrible. He does a terrible job. So he’s not going to do great with education.

(56:53)
Of the 50, I would bet that 35 would do great. 15 of them or 20 of them will be as good as Norway. Norway is considered great. You can name them. I mean, they’re so good. Some of these countries are so good. If you go into some of these really well-run states, we have states that don’t know what debt is. We have states that have low taxes, no debt, everybody working. They’re really well run.

(57:23)
Maybe they have certain advantages in terms of location, in terms of the land or the sun and the water and the whole thing. There are a lot of advantages that some people have. If you moved education back to the 50, you’ll have some that won’t do well, but they’ll actually be forced to do better because it’ll be a pretty bad situation.

(57:44)
If you think about it, you’ll have some of these states, I’ll bet you’d have 30, 35 states, it’ll be much better. You know what it’ll cost? Less than half what it is in Washington. These people don’t care about the students in these faraway states. It’d be unbelievable.

Yeah, I think you’re making a good point in that if each state has to compete against other states, then people will naturally move to states where it’s better.

Well, like California, as we said, it’s a badly run state. I got so many friends that are in those states, even if they’re Democrats, I hate to mention certain states, but Illinois is badly run with Pritzker. He’s a real loser. Some of these places are just badly run, but it’s almost going to force them to run better.

(58:36)
They won’t do good initially, but you’re not going to do worse than you’re doing right now. I would say that the cost, you would cut your costs by 50 or 60% and you’d have a little monitor. You want to make sure they’re teaching English as an example. Give us a little English.

Sure. No, but some of these governors are doing so badly. I mean, they got so many people moving out of their state they should get U-Haul Salesman of the Year award because they’re driving so much U-Haul sales.

It’s actually amazing.

People moving out.

Isn’t it amazing to you as a businessman that they can even survive? Like Illinois, so many people are leaving and you wonder how do they survive? I mean, how do they survive? I saw where you left California and you moved to Texas. Texas does a great job.

(59:25)
I just wonder, how do these states survive when big businesses… A big oil company just left California as you know, and they moved to Texas. How do these big states survive when they lose so many businesses and their taxes are already really high. Their taxes are among the highest taxes.

(59:43)
You almost wonder how do they continue on? In many cases, the governors don’t do a good job and they’re crime ridden places. You wonder how do they continue to just go on? It’s not a good situation.

I think the only thing that’s going to force some of these states to change is if they risk bankruptcy and they’re not getting bailed out by the federal government.

Right. Right.

That’s the only thing that’s going to get them change.

You remember the area in California where they had that, where I guess somebody had sticky fingers and they stole a lot of money. They went into a form of chapter and it was very nasty for a period of time. Now it’s probably the most popular place in all of California. So at some point, something like that may have to happen.

(01:00:28)
The problem is you can’t penalize people that loan money to the state when you have incompetent people like a Pritzker. Look, the family didn’t want him in the family business, and then he ends up being governor of Illinois. What? Is he going to be a great governor? You have people, I could name every one of them. I got to know every one of these. Some are very good and some are just horrible.

Well, I think that the larger point here, as you’re saying, a lot of people are concerned about the economy, a lot of people concerned about inflation. Inflation is effectively a tax on people that save money and for people that are working day to day. It’s just a form of taxation. If we can solve the government spending problem, we’ll solve the inflation problem, which means people will have a better standard of living. That’s a really big deal.

Well, the people that got hurt worse are the people that did it the way they were taught to do it all through their younger life and their young life and their whole life. The people that saved money and then they got no interest on their money and inflation destroyed them. Frankly, they were almost better off if they didn’t do anything like that. I mean, those people have been absolutely decimated, and we’re going to bring those people back and help those people.

(01:01:40)
We’ve got to get the prices down. When I look at bacon costing four or five times more than it did a few years ago, when you look at some of the food products and groceries, those people go, they can’t believe it. They used to be able to buy a whole cart. Today a lot of people just don’t have the money. They go in and they can’t buy anything.

… anything they look at.

Yeah.

It’s sticker shock. They call it sticker shock, right?

Like I said, think just comes down to really, I guess really two things, which is that if you solve government overspending, you solve inflation, which improves living standards-

Right.

… of the average person. And then if you deregulate, have sensible regulations, because a lot of the regulations are nonsensical and cause the cost to be extreme for no reason. But unless you’ve got effective deregulation… Reagan did a great job on deregulation in the eighties, but it’s been 40 years since we hadn’t anyone-

That’s right.

… really. And during your administration, we made some progress. But I think the opportunity to make, I think, radical progress with sensible regulation. And if [inaudible 01:02:49]

Well, Elon, we-

Those two things. Yeah, those are the big deals.

We set a record. We did more deregulation and more restrictions on all of the different businesses than any other president. Remember I had the rule for every one we put in, you have to get rid of 10 or 12? And we did radical cuts on all of that, and a lot of that’s being put back by this administration. And we did radical cuts and things that weren’t necessary, but we were all set. We had the best economy ever maybe in the world. And then what happened is COVID came in and we had a focus on that. And nobody knew what it was. And I always say I got good marks on economy, good marks on military. We knocked out ISIS, we did so many different things, we rebuilt, but I never got the credit that we really deserved on what we did with COVID. We never got the credit.

(01:03:39)
But had that not happened, a gift from China, from Wuhan, came in from Wuhan, the Wuhan labs… And I always said it and it turned out to be right. But had that not happened, we were set to start reducing debt. We were going to reduce taxes further. I gave the largest tax cuts and we were going to reduce taxes still further for middle income people, not only businesses. But we did it for businesses because they’re the ones that… That’s why we had the great job numbers, but we were set to really start reducing debt. And we’re sitting on the biggest pile of liquid gold anywhere in the world, bigger than Saudi Arabia, bigger than Russia. And we were going to drill and we were going to make so much money. We were going to supply Europe with oil. I had stopped the Russian pipeline and we were going to supply them with oil and gas. We were going to make a fortune. And then the COVID came in and we really had to divert. Then what happened is when they came in… We kept a lot of businesses alive. If I didn’t do what we did, we would’ve had a 1929 type depression. But the problem is when Biden came in, he got trillions of dollars and just started spending it stupidly. You didn’t need it anymore. We got over that bad period where everybody was dying and it was just not a good period. Interestingly, during his administration, many more people died during his administration of COVID than during my administration. And we really got the brunt of it, but people don’t realize more people died during his administration than ours. But it diverted us from doing what I wanted to do. But we had the greatest for almost three years. We had the great… And you know that probably better than anybody.

(01:05:26)
So many of your friends said to me, “The best years we’ve ever had in business were during the Trump years.” And also said that African-American, Hispanic-American were so incredible. They were having the best… Asian-American, women, men, young people without a diploma, young people that graduated from the best colleges, from MIT, from the Wharton school, from all of the great colleges, Harvard, they were doing better, and people without a diploma were doing better, and everybody was happy. And then COVID came and the problem is they spent trillions and trillions of dollars they wasted. They shouldn’t have taken any money and we wouldn’t be having inflation right now, which is killing our country.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. I should probably say something about maybe my views on climate change and oil and gas because I think they’re probably different from what most people would assume because my views are actually pretty, I think moderate in this regard, which is that I don’t think we should vilify the oil and gas industry and the people that have worked very hard in those industries to provide the necessary energy to support the economy. And if we were to stop using oil and gas right now, we would all be starving and the economy would collapse. So I don’t think it’s right to vilify the oil and gas industry. And the world has a certain demand for oil and gas, and it’s probably better if the United States provides that than some other countries, and it would help with prosperity in the US. And at the same time, obviously my view is like we do over time want to move to a sustainable energy economy because eventually, you run out of oil and gas. It’s not infinite, and there is some risk.

(01:07:20)
I think the risk is not as high as a lot of people say it is with respect to global warming. But I think if you just keep increasing the cost per million in the atmosphere long enough, eventually it actually simply gets uncomfortable to breathe. People don’t realize this. If you go past a thousand parts per million of CO2, you start getting headaches and nausea. And so we’re now in the sort 400 range. We’re adding, I think about roughly two plus per million per year. So it still gives us… What it means is we still have quite a bit of time, so it’s not like we don’t need to rush and we don’t need to stop farmers from farming or prevent people from having steaks or-

Right. Right.

… basic stuff like that. Leave the farmers alone.

I agree. How crazy is that where you have farmers that are not allowed to farm anymore and have to get rid of their cattle, and the whole world is a little crazy,-

It’s silly.

… but it’s largely taken its lead from us. I do say though, I’ve heard in terms of the fossil fuel, because even to create your electric car and create the electricity you needed for the electric car, fossil fuel is what really creates that at the generating plants. And so you sort of can’t get away from it at this moment. Someday you might be able to, but I do hear we have anywhere from 100 to 500 years left. Much of it hasn’t even been found yet.

(01:08:51)
But there are tremendous… Like ANWR, I got ANWR in Alaska approved. Ronald Reagan couldn’t do it. Nobody could do it. Everybody tried. Nobody could do it. I got it approved. The first thing that Biden did was unimprove it to get rid of it. He ended it. His secretary went in and she ended it, and what a disgrace. That’s ANWR. That’s bigger, or they think it could be bigger than Saudi Arabia in Alaska. Could be bigger than Saudi Arabia, but they went in and they terminated it. And I’ll get it going very quickly because not only is it big for Alaska, you talk about economic development, that for the United States, that is, they say bigger than Saudi Arabia or the same size and pure really good stuff, and they end it. So I think we have perhaps hundreds of years left. Nobody really knows. But during that time, something will come around that will be very good.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, my estimate would be a little more aggressive than that, but it’s not the sort of we’re all going to die in five years stuff. That’s obviously BS. But my view is if you just look at sort of the parts per million that increments every year, you get sort of two or three parts per million every year of CO2. I think some of that, it’s problematic if it accelerates, if you start going from two or three-

Right.

… to say five. And then there may be some situations where you get a step change increase in the CO2. And I think we don’t want to get too close to 1000 PPM because that’s actually makes it uncomfortable to breathe. Just existing in 1000 PPM CO2 is uncomfortable. That’s considered an industrial hazard.

Right.

So that’s actually… You start getting headaches and stuff. So even without global warming, it’s not comfortable to live. So you don’t want to get too close to that. But I think we want to just move over. And if, I don’t know, 50 to 100 years from now, I don’t know, mostly sustainable, I think that’ll probably be okay. So it is not like the house is on fire immediately, but I think it is something we need to move towards. And on balance, it’s probably better to move there faster than slower, but like I said, without vilifying the oil and gas industry and without causing hardship in the short term. I think this can be done without-

(01:11:32)
People can still have a steak and they can still drive gasoline cars, and it’s okay. I don’t think we should vilify people for it, but I think we should just generally lean in the direction of sustainability. And I actually think solar is going to be a majority of Earth’s energy generation in the future, and it’s certainly trending that way. And so you get the solar power, mine that with batteries because obviously the sun doesn’t shine at night, and then you use that to charge the electric cars and you have a long-term sustainable solution. That’s what Tesla’s trying to move things towards, and I think we’ve made a lot of progress in that regard. But when you look at our cars, we don’t believe that environmentalism, that caring about the environment should mean that you have to suffer. So we make sure that our cars are beautiful, that they drive well, that they’re fast, they’re sexy. They’re cool. In fact, literally I made the sexy joke model. S, model three, model X and Y spells out sexy. It was probably the most expensive joke out there.

Right.

But I don’t know, I like cheesy humor. But I’m a big fan of let’s have an inspiring future and let’s work towards a better future, and we can do so without demonizing people.

Right. I’m okay. It’s very interesting, you use the word global warming, and today they use the word climate change because you have some places that go up [inaudible 01:13:00]. So they were getting themselves in a little trouble with the word global warming because not every place is warming, some places are going the opposite direction, but I’m sort of waiting for you to come up with solar panels on the roofs of your cars and on the trunks of the cars. And it just seems like something that at some point, you will come up with. I’m sure you’ll be the first, but it would seem that a solar panel on the roofs, on flat surfaces, on certain surfaces might be good, at least in certain areas of the country or the world where you have the sun. But I would think, and I have no idea because that’s not my world, but I would think that this would be something that would be interesting.

(01:13:38)
But the one thing that I don’t understand is that people talk about global warming or they talk about climate change, but they never talk about nuclear warming. And to me, that’s an immediate problem because you have, as I said, five countries where you have major nuclear, and probably some others are getting there, and that’s very dangerous. That’s where you need a strong American president because you don’t want to have this proliferation, but you have five countries and getting more. China is much less than us right now, but they’re going to catch us sooner than people think. They’re way lower. Russia and us are number one, and we’re sort of tied. And China is far behind, but they’re developing at a level that you’re not surprised to hear very fast. They’ll end up catching up, maybe even surpassing. But to me, the biggest problem is not climate change. It’s not… And everything’s a problem, but it’s degrees. To me, the big problem is the nuclear power. The power of nuclear is so great.

Yeah. Yeah. Nuclear power is underrated. It’s awesome.

And when I talk about I’ll prevent World War III, I will. But the truth is that you have to, because this is no longer army tanks going back and forth and shooting at each other. This a level of destruction and power that nobody’s ever seen before.

And actually, there’s the bad side of nuclear, which is nuclear war, very bad side, but there’s also, I think nuclear electricity generation-

Absolutely.

… is underrated.

You’re right.

And it’s actually, people have this fear of nuclear electricity generation, but it’s actually one of the safest forms of electricity generation. It’s just a huge misunderstanding. And if you look at the injuries and deaths caused by, say… I’m not going to try to pick on coal mining, but just any kind of mining operation, and there’s a certain number of injuries and deaths per year. When you compare that to nuclear, nuclear is actually way better. So it is underrated as an electricity source, and I think it’s something that’s worth reconsidering, but there’s so much regulation that people can’t get it done. So [inaudible 01:15:48]

Maybe they’ll have to change the name. The name, it’s a rough name. There are some areas

Yeah, it’s a rough name.

Like when you see what happened in-

Bad branding.

We’ll have to rebrand it. We’ll have to give it a good name. We’ll name it after you or something.

I don’t think [inaudible 01:16:02]

Hey, it has a branding problem. When you see what happened-

It does have a branding problem.

When you see what happened in Japan where they say you won’t be able to go on the land for about 3000 years, did you ever see that? And in Russia where they had the problem where they… There’s a lot of bad things happened, and they have a problem. And they say that in 2000 years, people will start to occupy the land again, you realize it’s pretty bad.

No, that’s not true.

But you’re right about it. It’s amazing.

It’s actually not that bad. So after Fukushima happened in Japan, people were asking me in California, “Are we worried about a nuclear cloud coming from Japan?” I’m like, “No, that’s crazy. It’s actually… It’s not even dangerous in Fukushima.” I actually flew there and ate locally grown vegetables on TV to prove it. And I donated a solar powered system for a water treatment plant.

Yeah, but you haven’t been feeling so well lately, and I’m worried about it.

No, no, but-

I’m only kidding.

… it’s fine. It’s like Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, but now they’re full cities again, so-

Right. That’s great.

… it’s really not something that-

That’s great.

Right. It’s not as scary as people think, basically. But let’s see, are there some other topics we should touch on? lawfare, I think we need to be concerned.

About what they’ve done to this country.

Obviously.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, we just won the big case in Florida. This was a… Biden administration did something that’s never been done in this country, and that’s go after their political opponent, me, with this nonsense and just nonsense. And the big case in Florida, we won, but they always pick a judge and a jury. And they use the local DAs. They use the local attorney generals like Fani. You know Fani, spelled F-A-N-I Fani. And it’s all a big hoax, and it’s all run from there. In Manhattan, one of the top people from the justice department went in, ran Manhattan, ran the state. The Letitia James deal was run by a person from the Department of Justice Biden. They’ve never done this before. And they set up a very bad precedent. It’s called lawfare, warfare. It’s a terrible thing, and never happened in our country. It does happen in Banana Republics in third world countries, but it’s never happened.

(01:18:23)
And the incredible thing is it actually drove my numbers up because people see… Fortunately, I have a platform like you, or in all fairness, like a conversation like this where I can talk about it and people understand. You fight for election integrity and you end up getting indicted because you’re fighting for election integrity. And when the day comes and you can’t fight for election integrity, you don’t have a country anymore. So what happens is they went after their political opponent, me. Now Biden’s close to vegetable stage, in my opinion. Okay? I looked at him today on the beach, and I said, why would anybody allow him? The guy could barely walk. Why would anybody allow him? Does he have a political advisor that thinks this looks good, thinks this looks good because it looks so bad? And it’s ridiculous. And he is been doing that for a long time. He can’t lift the chair. The chair weighs about three ounces. It’s meant for children and old people to lift and he can’t lift it. The whole thing is crazy.

It’s clearly like we just don’t have a president right now. This is obviously the case.

You don’t have a president. And she’s going to be worse than him because she is a San Francisco liberal who destroyed San Francisco, and then as Attorney General, she destroyed California. You talk about location, and we’re talking about the sun and the water and all. There’s nothing better than California. She has destroyed that. She was the original da. She was the original. In San Francisco, she was the original Attorney General in California. What she has done to California is… Well, you know better than I do. You just left California for a lot of those reasons. And what she’s done with crime, with cashless bail where you kill somebody… We have states there. You kill somebody and they let you out right away. You don’t have to even put up. And then they never find the people unless they kill again, and then they let them out again. Our country is becoming a very dangerous place, and she is a radical left San Francisco liberal, and now she’s trying to protect…

(01:20:27)
Now she’s looking like she’s… She wants to be more Trump than Trump, if that’s possible. I don’t think it’s possible, but she wants to be more Trump than Trump.

Well, yeah.

I want a wall. I want-

I think that’s-

She wants to release all the prisoners that are in detention, and some of these guys are really bad.

Right. Yeah, just [inaudible 01:20:44]

That just came out today.

Yeah, just [inaudible 00:18:45

She doesn’t want to build the wall, even though the walls work, walls and wheels. In your business, everything you do is obsolete. Well, not the tunnels, but everything is obsolete. Even your rocket ships, like a month later, they’re obsolete. You find a better way to… The only thing that’s not obsolete is a wall and a wheel. And the wall, I built hundreds of miles of wall and that’s why we had such good numbers. I was going to add 200 miles. We bought it. We could have flipped it up in three weeks, and they sold it for 5 cents on the dollar. That meant… I said, wow, that means that they actually do want to have open borders. She wants to have open borders, and now she’s going like, she’s tough on the border. It’s such a lie.

Yeah, this is simply not true. This is simply not true.

And everybody knows it’s true.

Yeah, simply not true.

It’s a disgrace that she can say it.

No. Obviously what’s happening overnight is they rewriting history and making Kamala sound like a moderate, when in fact she is far left, far, far left.

Worse than Bernie Sanders. She is considered more liberal by far than Bernie Sanders. She’s a radical left lunatic. And if she’s going to be our president, very quickly, you’re not going to have a country anymore. And she’ll go back to all of the things that she believes in. She believes in defunding the police. She believes in no fracking, zero. Now all of a sudden, she’s saying, “No, I really want to see fracking.” If they got in, the day she got in, she’ll end fracking. And by the way, if people didn’t think that, the lunatics that really believe in that, they won’t vote for her. Like the Palestinians and Israel, she is so anti-Israel. And she’s bad for both. Biden actually did something that was impossible. Both sides hate him, both sides. That was a hard thing to do, unification.

Yeah. No, no. Netanyahu came to give a talk to a joint Senate and house sitting, and I was there and Kamala stood him up. What does that say?

I think it’s highly disrespectful. And I say if you’re a Jewish person or if you believe in Israel, if you’re a person that is very pro-Israel, if you vote for her, it’s worse than Biden, and Biden was bad. But if you vote for her, you ought to have your head examined. And you see tonight, as we’re doing this, I’m seeing reports coming that they expect an attack tonight or tomorrow from hundreds and maybe thousands of rockets. Their iron dome, as they call it, as we all call it, but they’re shield that they built, that can be swamped. We’ll use the term that’s appropriate, swamp, but they swamp it by shooting enough missiles. You know this better than anybody. By shooting enough missiles, they can’t defend themselves. They just obliterate the whole place. And that’s what some people think they’re looking to do. And we have no leadership. There’s no respect for the United States of America with these people. And I’m telling you, she’ll be worse than him because she’s a believer in being radical left and he wasn’t.

I think you’re right. It;s important for the public that maybe listening to this to look at Kamala’s track record before the last month and say, is that a track record you agree with? And I think if you’re an independent moderate, you definitely would not agree with it because her behavior has been far left, and we’re seeing just an overnight propaganda attempt to rewrite history and make it sound like Kamala’s moderate when she in fact is not moderate.

Well, her running mate approved, signed into legislation, tampons in boys’ bathrooms. Okay? Now that’s all I have to hear.

Yeah. Yeah, that’s weird.

Tampons in boys’ bathrooms.

That’s weird.

And that means she believes in that too.

Yeah, that’s not okay.

She picked this guy because he was the closest to her. A lot of people thought she’d picked sort of the opposite, but she picked an anti-Israel radical left person. But she is far worse, they say than Bernie Sanders. If we have her as a president, if we have a Democrat at this moment as a president, I don’t think our country can survive.

I think we’re in massive trouble, frankly, with the Kamala administration, and that’s my honest opinion. And I think really, it’s essential that you win, for the good of the country, this election. I’m just stating my opinion. Now, you may have seen this, but I got a letter from the EU Commission saying to not have disinformation during this discussion that we’re having. And there’s a lot of attempts to do censorship and to force censorship even on Americans from other countries. And what do you think about that?

Well, I know the European Union very well. They take great advantage of the United States in trade,, as you know. We, through a different forum, NATO, we protect them. And yet if you build a car in the United States, you can’t sell it in Europe. You just can’t sell it. It’s impossible. The same thing with our farmers. Our farmers find it very difficult to do business. We have a deficit with them of $250 billion, which people don’t know. It sounds so nice, the European Union, but let me tell you, they’re not as tough as China, but they’re bad, and I let them know it. And that’s probably why they notified you. No, they don’t treat our country well. We defend them. With Ukraine, so we’re in for 250 billion and they’re in for about 71 billion, and they have the same size as… If you add up the European nations in terms of an economy, it’s about the same size, wouldn’t you say, as us?

(01:26:41)
And they’re in much greater risk. They’re right there. We have an ocean separating us from, in this case, the enemy would be Russia. Used to be for the Soviet Union, but let’s assume they’re close enough. And what happens is they’re in for 70 something million, I think even less than that, billion, and we are in for about 250 billion, and it could be a lot higher than that. And I say, why aren’t you going to equalize? Why aren’t they paying what we’re paying? And they’re in much more… It’s much more important for them because of the fact that they’re right near there. They’re all sort of in that location. We’re not. But they should… And I did it with NATO. There were only seven countries that were paid up in NATO out of 28 at the time, and the United States was subsidizing NATO, tremendously subsidizing NATO.

(01:27:38)
And I said… I went in and I said, “You got to pay up. If you don’t pay up, we’re not going to defend you any longer.” I took a lot of heat. But you know what happened? Billions and billions of dollars came flowing in, and yeah.

Yeah. I think a lot of the public isn’t aware of the fact that the United States pays a disproportionate share of the NATO expenses.

And then we can take an advantage of on trade, so think about it.

Yeah. Well, the point of NATO is defending Europe, and it’s like then, okay, well, why is the United States paying disproportionately more to defend Europe than Europe? That doesn’t make sense. That’s unfair. And that is an appropriate thing to address.

Well, when you talk about cost cutting and savings and everything else, honestly, look, there’s nobody that feels worse about the Ukraine situation than I do, because I know it would’ve never happened. I know Zelensky. He was very honorable to me. Because when they went with the Russia hoax and they said, I had a phone call with him, he said it was a perfect phone call. It was a great phone call. He could have Grandstanded and said, “Oh, he was very threatening.” He said, “No, it was a very nice phone call.” I called him up to congratulate him on his win, and you end up getting impeached because these people are lunatics.

Yeah. Yeah.

I was talking about the difference from the people within and the enemies on the outside. In many cases, the people from within are more dangerous for our country than the Russians and the Chinas. If you have a smart president, you’re not going to have a problem with them. You’re going to do things. Now, they’ve taken advantage of us incredibly,-

Yeah, absolutely.

… but you’re going to do things with the right person.

Yeah. Well, I think it’s obvious that you’re a believer and an advocate of free speech because during your first time as president, you were attacked relentlessly every day, often very unfairly with false attacks, and you didn’t try to shut down the media, you didn’t try to inhibit their freedom of speech. And I think that says a lot.

Well, the good thing is that you and I have, and some people, very few, we can get the word out, although sometimes it’s hard because they don’t want to print it. We’re having a great conversation right now. Kamala wouldn’t have this conversation. She can’t because she’s not smart.

No.

She’s not a smart person, by the way. She can’t have this conversation. And Biden, we don’t even have to talk about it. He couldn’t have this conversation. He would’ve given up on the first half of a question. He would’ve walked out. He would’ve said, “Where am I? Where am I going?” So anyway, but no, he wouldn’t have this.

That’s true.

Not a lot of people would have this conversation, but we cover a lot of territory. But the beauty is that we can have a conversation and-

Yes, we can actually have a…

… I’m able to get it out without, because I get treated fairly by the press.

This is a really big point. You can actually have a conversation with you.

Yeah, it’s nice, isn’t it?

And you can’t have a conversation with Biden or Kamala. It’s not possible.

That’s true.

It’s just like talking to an NPC, so it’s just impossible.

But think of it, we need a man or person who’s unbelievably sharp in order to stop all the nuclear danger and all the dangers that I’m talking about. And I got along with all these. I got along with Kim Jong Un. We had dinner. We had everything. And he really liked me, and I got along with him really well. By the way. He’s the absolute boss over there. A lot of people said, “Oh, do you think he really….”

That’s for sure.

Let me tell you, I saw things that you don’t want to know about. He is the boss, but we had a good relationship. And he doesn’t like Biden. He considers him a stupid man. He said, “He’s a stupid man.” Well, at least he speaks his mind. But in this country, you’re not sort of allowed to say it, but I guess you are. You should be allowed to say it if it’s true, but we need smart people and we need people that have an ability to lead, and she doesn’t have that ability. Can you imagine… Now you know Chairman Xi very well. Can you imagine her and him negotiating, or even standing together?

No, it’s silly. It would be silly.

The whole concept is ridiculous. She is terrible. She’s terrible, but she’s getting a free ride. I saw a picture of her on Time Magazine today. She looks like the most beautiful actress ever to live. It was a drawing. And actually, she looked very much like a great First Lady, Melania. She didn’t look like Kamala. That’s right. But of course, she’s a beautiful woman, so we’ll leave it at that, right?

Yeah. Well, I think part of what people in America want to… People in America want to feel excited and inspired about the future. They want to feel like the future’s going to be better than the past, and that America’s going to do things that are greater than we’ve done in the past, reach new heights that make you proud to be an American and excited about the future. And it just-

They want the American Dream back. They want the American dream back, more important than anything else. It’s like you don’t have that today because the people, they’ve been just sucked. They see incompetent people running our… The Biden thing is very interesting. People just found him to be incompetent. And when I debated him, I was like, is this for real?

Yeah, it was just absurd. But I think there are some grand projects that we could do. I think we could build a base on the moon. We could send American astronauts to Mars.

Right.

We could build high-speed connections that are more advanced than anything else in the world between our cities so people have fast transport.

… support. It’s possible to solve traffic with tunnels.

That’s right.

We’ve already made great progress in Vegas doing that, and just do things that are exciting and inspiring to make the future feel like it’s better than the past.

Well, I saw what you did in Vegas and I’ll tell you, it was amazing. I got to see, I took a big glimpse at it, and it’s incredible. It’s incredible. And you could do that all over. You could do that all over. It’s deep.

Yeah.

You don’t even need much structure assuming you’re in the right areas.

No, it’s straightforward.

It’s amazing.

And I think we could do some things that, like China’s got incredible high-speed rail between its cities, but I think it’s actually possible with tunnels. With deregulation, with an ability to actually, where it’s legal to actually do the tunnels, then you could have high-speed tunnels that are actually better than anything else in the world for high-speed between cities. And that would be something that Americans can say, “Wow. Okay, we’ve got something that’s cooler than anyone else in the world,” that’s the kind of thing that makes you proud to be American.

And much safer than surface trains, where there is a danger there with people, with crazy people. It’s much safer, much better. And it’s sad because I’ve seen some of the greatest trains. I find it fascinating, and I’ve seen the systems and how they work, and the bullet trains they call them I guess, and they go unbelievably fast, unbelievably comfortable with no problems, and we don’t have anything like that in this country. Not even close. And it doesn’t make sense that we don’t, it doesn’t make sense.

Yeah. I think also I’m hopping on the excess regulation, but I think something that I people can generally understand is that what happens with laws and regulations is that there’s more and more of them every year. And unless there’s a process to clean them up, eventually everything becomes illegal-

You’re right.

… and that actually slows down the development of new technologies. If you take, I think there’s room for some reform at the FDA for improving the speed with which we approve drugs that could help save lives and improve people’s lives.

Yeah. I worked very hard on that. We got that down to the lowest number ever, and we got therapeutics approved and the FDA that people can’t even believe the speed, but I took them on. I don’t think they like me too much, but I got things approved, and the FDA at numbers that they wouldn’t believe, and it’s a very bureaucratic group. Actually, it’s a fine group of people in many cases. I got to know a lot of them, but I was pushing them really hard for regenerants for so many different things that were really pretty amazing. But the FDA takes too long. It’s 12 years to get a product approved. I got it down to four, and I got some things done very quickly. But it’s really something that is going to have to be worked on because it takes too long, it just takes too long.

Yeah. It just takes too long, and you end up in the same with the approval, but it takes years instead of something that I think could potentially take months that improves people’s lives. But I just wanted to hop on this point that there has to be an active process for reducing rules and regulations because otherwise they just keep building up every year, and you get hardening of the arteries and eventually everything’s illegal or takes forever, and then we just ossify as a society, we can’t make any progress, and it’s a really big deal.

Well, Elon, just getting back to the FDA for one second, I got something done called Right to Try. This is where you can go in and if you’re terminally ill, you can use a space age medicine or whatever it may be. We have the best doctors, the best labs in the world, we really do. But people would go to other countries because you couldn’t use the product even if they thought it worked because it’s going through the FDA. I got it approved where you basically…

(01:37:11)
Look, nobody wanted it, the doctors didn’t want it because of the liability. The country didn’t want it, our country because they didn’t want to get through it. These are people terminally ill, the insurance companies didn’t want it and the pharmaceutical companies, nobody wanted it. I got everybody into a room and we came up with an agreement that, “You won’t get sued.” And also they didn’t want it on their record if somebody’s terminally ill and they die after taking a drug, they didn’t want that on their record. So we set a separate list if somebody was, so it wouldn’t count as a negative. And as you know, we got it done.

(01:37:41)
We have saved Right to Try. They’ve been trying to get this done for 58 years. And it sounds simple, but it wasn’t because, I mean you know the insurance companies, nobody wanted it, but we got it done. Somebody signs, you sign a document that you’re not going to sue the insurance companies, the country, you’re not going to sue anybody. And we got it done, and we’re saving tens of thousands of lives, so Right to Try. Hopefully you never need it. But if you do, you don’t have to travel to Asia. People, if they had money, they go to Asia, they go to Europe. If they don’t have money, they go home and die. That’s what happened. They’d go home and die.

Yeah. And actually to give Europe some props here, it’s like if a drug is approved in Europe, which has a crazy amount of regulations, it should obviously be approved in the US. I mean, they’ve get more regulations than we do, so why would a drug be approved in Europe and not in the US? That’s crazy.

Well, we did something that really, they’ve been trying to do it for 50 years and they just couldn’t get it done and I got it done, and it’s really something. But you’re right. Some people go to Europe because a drug isn’t approved here, but it’s approved in Europe, and it’s a drug that generally speaking would work. It’s pretty crazy.

Absolutely.

So you’re right.

I think as long as people are properly informed of the pros and cons, and like, “These are the risks, those are the risk,” and you make your own decision. That makes sense.

Well, I think just in closing up, and by the way I’m looking at the numbers. You’ve got a lot of people listening. I hope you don’t get nervous because you got a lot of people listening to you right now, like 60 million or something. What is that number? It’s crazy. It’s amazing how you can see that right away. How many, what is the number? Wow, what is it?

Well, I think in terms of people-

Wow, that’s bigger than you said, you said 25 and you have much more than double that number 25 million. I think you’re going to be 60 or 70, and I guess over a period of time, I congratulate you. Do I get paid for this or not?

Well, I think actually in terms of the number of people that will hear this conversation over the next few days, two weeks, it’s going to be hundreds of millions.

That’s what they say. That’s good. Well, look, it’s an honor. But I just asked this, are you better off now or were you better off when I was president? Nobody’s better off now. We put out polls on that, and nobody’s better off now. Inflation has killed it, and they also feel very unsafe. You look at what’s going on with a lot of different things. You look at the riots we had at the colleges over, I mean it’s ridiculous, but all of the riots, they just feel unsafe, and now they really feel unsafe because you have a new form of crime. It’s called migrant crime. I call it Biden migrant crime. Maybe I’ll call it Kamala migrant crime.

I mean, with all these things, I always try to get to the ground truth by just asking people. And my mom lives in New York and I was like, “Mom, have any of your friends been attacked or assaulted?” And she said, “Yeah,” three of her friends in three separate incidents-

Crazy.

… were assaulted just in recent months just walking around the streets in New York. And I said, “Well, what happened to the people that assaulted them?” “Oh, nothing. They got away.” And they just know-

They always get away.

And they don’t even bother reporting it because they know that people are not going to get prosecuted. They just let violent criminals out in New York-

The only one that gets prosecuted is Donald Trump. They prosecute Trump.

Yeah. I mean, it’s just obviously messed up.

Oh, it’s terrible.

If violent criminals are being getting off scot-free, and meanwhile New York spending massive resources prosecuting you, and I think the sensible public looks at this and says, “What the heck’s going on here? This is obviously abuse of the legal system.” The legal system’s supposed to be protecting the public from violent criminals, and it should be obviously allowing the public to make their own decision about who should be president as opposed to some legal case.

Once they start this precedent, because this can go on with the next one. I mean, this is a very bad precedent, what they’re doing in terms of going after their political opponent, and that’s all it is. It’s going after their political opponent. And then you get a judge who’s a strong Democrat, and I’m being nice when I say that in many cases, crooked as hell. But you get a judge and you go into an area where a Republican gets three or 4% of the vote, and you’ll have a jury pool with people that hate Republicans or hate… It could also be the other way though-

Of course.

… because it could start the other way in areas where they hate Democrats-

Exactly.

… and you get into a Pandora’s box. It’s a very dangerous thing for this country, and a very dangerous thing even for the state. New York City is losing… New York City and state lose a lot of business over what they did to me because these people say, “We don’t want that to happen to us. That’s no justice system.” You have an unfair system of justice and it’s costing New York state a tremendous amount of money. People are leaving and companies are leaving, and they won’t come back. So all of that stuff is important, but the economy now is the big thing, and we can turn that economy up so fast and people are going to be back again. We’re going to get rid of the inflation.

Yeah, I think there’s a lot of opportunity, absolutely.

Absolutely. And I want to congratulate you. You’ve done an amazing job. You have definitely got a fertile mind. You and I can talk about rockets.

It’s kind of you to say, thank you.

Well, we can talk about tunnels, and rockets, and electric cars, so many things. And now you’re into the AI, and that’s going to be another beauty, I’ll say. So it’s an amazing thing you’ve done, Elon. It’s an amazing thing, and I congratulate you.

Thank you. Well, I’ll just say here’s to an exciting inspiring future that people can look forward to and be optimistic and excited about what happens next. And that’s the kind of future that I think you’ll bring as president, and that’s why I endorse you.

Well, I appreciate that. That endorsement meant a lot to me. Not all endorsements mean that much to be honest. Your endorsement meant a lot. And we have a phrase, “Make America great again.” It’s pretty simple, but it really says that we want to make America great again, and we can do it. We can do it now, but if we were going to suffer another four years like we’ve suffered for the last four years, I’m not sure the country can ever come back. That’s how bad it is. It’s so bad. We have to do a lot [inaudible 01:44:14].

I think that’s a very real risk.

Yeah, it’s a big risk.

That’s a very real risk. I’d just like to note to people listening, I’ve not been very political before, and if you look at my record, I’ve actually been, they try to paint me as a far right guy, which is absurd because I’m making electric vehicles and solar and batteries helping them with the environment, and I actually supported Obama. I stood in line for six hours to shake Obama’s hand when he was running for president. And so it’s not like I’m some sort of dive in the world, long-term Republican. I’m actually, I call myself historically a moderate Democrat, but now I feel like we’re really at a critical juncture for the country. And I think a lot of people thought that Biden administration would be a moderate administration, but it’s not. And obviously we’re just going to see an even further left administration with Kamala. That’s my honest opinion. I mean, her dad is literally, I mean she was brought up as an actual… Her dad is a Marxist economist. You can Google it. I mean, we’re not making this up, that’s how she was brought up.

(01:45:30)
And we want to have a future that is prosperous, and I think we’re just at this critical juncture, and I think this is a case of America is going to at a fork in the road, and I think it will take the path, you are the path to prosperity, and I think Kamala is the opposite. That’s my honest opinion. I’m going to get attacked like crazy. I’ve also experienced quite a bit of lawfare myself, but I’m just trying to tell people my honest opinion, and I haven’t been really active in politics before and I’m just trying to point out that my track record historically has been moderate, if not moderate, slightly left. And so this is to people out there who are in the moderate camp to say, I think you should support Donald Trump for president. And I think it’s actually a very important junction in the road, and we’re in deep trouble if it goes the other way.

Well, I want to thank you. And I actually always did think of you as somewhat left, I must say that. So it’s even more of an honor to have your endorsement. I know how strong you feel about it. But when you think of her, San Francisco 15 years ago, I had a great friend Bob Tisch. He said it’s the greatest city in America, and now it’s almost not livable there. And California likewise, and she was involved in the destruction of San Francisco and the destruction of California, and she will be involved in the destruction of our country if people are so unwise as to elect her.

(01:47:06)
And I hope that doesn’t happen, and I hope the elections are going to be run honestly. And we’re going to turn this country around. We’re going to do things that, and we can do it fairly quickly, and we have to get rid of the criminals that have been given to us by other countries as they laugh. They laugh at us. They think we’re stupid to accept these people. These are radical stone-cold killers in many cases and terrorists, and they’re in our country by the hundreds of thousands, and we have to take them out.

I mean, if I could summarize it, perhaps, I think these are issues that I think most people in America would agree with, which is that we want safe and clean cities. We want secure borders, we want sensible government spending. We want to restore both the perception and reality of respect in the judicial system. Stop the lawfare. How are those even right-wing positions. I think those, that’s just common sense. I mean, would you agree with that?

A hundred percent. I don’t understand the whole, they call it progressive. They don’t like the word liberal anymore, but call it liberal or progressive. I don’t understand how somebody could say that it’s okay for them to empty prisons into our country. And again, I told you their crime-

[inaudible 01:48:27].

… rates all over the world are going way down, which makes sense. In fact, the next time what we’ll do is if something happens with this election, which would be a horror show, we’ll meet the next time in Venezuela because it’ll be a far safer place to meet than our country, okay? So you and I will go and we’ll have a meeting and dinner in Venezuela because that’s what’s happening. Their crime rates coming down and our crime rate’s going through the roof, and it’s so simple. And you haven’t seen anything yet because these people have come into our country and they’re just getting acclimated, and they don’t know about being politically correct, law enforcement or lack of law enforcement. And our police, I have to just end with this. We have great police, we have great law enforcement, but they’re not allowed to do their job. They have to be able to do their job without being destroyed.

Well, absolutely. And it’s obviously demoralizing if you’re a police officer risking your life to arrest violent criminals who could kill you and do kill you sometimes, and then you arrest a violent criminal and then the DA doesn’t prosecute and then just let the guy out. Well, then why should a police officer risk their life to arrest a violent felon-

Well, even worse-

… if nothing’s going to happen.

… even worse, they prosecute the police officer. They go after, and they prosecute the police officer and they take away his pension, they take away his job, he loses his family, he loses his house.

Well, I thought it was very telling, incredibly telling that when there was a case where a gang of thugs beat up police officers. I think it was in Times Square in New York, and then nothing happened to those guys. They were let out zero bail, and I think a bunch of them were given free tickets to California. Well, I mean that is a gross indignity against the United States, and that’s how this is insane. Have we lost all pride? How can such a thing be allowed to occur?

I’ve never seen anything… We’ve seen where they get shot. It’s a very dangerous profession, but something they’re very proud of and they want to be able to do their job. But I’ve seen them get shot. I’ve seen a lot of things, but I’ve never seen where these guys are standing in the middle of a big street, everybody watching them and they’re literally boxing, like punching, stand up fighting a police officer. There were two of them, and you had about six of these guys and they’re punching the hell out of them, and in their own country they would be dead if they did that. They’d be shot.

Dead.

They would be shot instantly. And they come from these countries, and it’s taking them a while to realize that we don’t do that in this country, but in their own country, if they stood on a street and had a fight with a police officer, they would be shot. There’s no political correctness, and it’s such a sad thing to see. And that’s the reason you have crime, by the way, because we don’t do anything about it.

Yeah. We just cannot have a situation where our police officers are beaten up on camera by a gang of illegal immigrants and then nothing happens to the guys that beat up the cops, and they’re let out. This is unacceptable.

Well, we’re going to change it and we’re going to get them out of the country. When I first got involved, they said you couldn’t get them back to these countries. You couldn’t take them back. In the case of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, some others, you couldn’t get them back. And I said, “Really? Oh, you can’t get them back?” Because under Obama he couldn’t get them back. They’d fly them in and they’d put planes on the runways in these countries so you couldn’t land a plane. They’d bring them back. And the the generals told me, “Sir, we can’t bring them back. The countries won’t accept MS-13 gang members. They won’t accept them. And I said, “Really? How much do we pay these various countries in terms of economic aid?” Which is also somewhat ridiculous. And the answer was $750 million. I said, “Good, tell them they’re in default. They’re delinquent. We’re not going to do, we’re not paying them anymore because they won’t accept it.

Yeah, it’s-

And you know what happened? They all called me. Every one of them. They said, “We would be honored to take them back, sir. We would be honored,” it was so easy. But it’s one of those things, and we got them back. We took in so many, the MS- 13 is probably the worst gangs in the world. They’re the most vicious, violent. We took them out of here by the thousands and got them out of here, and their countries took them back. And because I said, “You’re not getting any more economic aid,” and once I said that they were nice, they wouldn’t take them back for Obama. They wouldn’t take them back for anybody. And now we have a problem because we have this guy, and again, they don’t take them back anymore with Biden because they don’t respect him.

… yeah, it’s just got to be done. We just can’t have, whether they’re citizens or not citizens, we can’t have, because they weren’t prosecuted citizens either, not just illegals. So you can have repeat violent offenders that don’t get incarcerated.

That’s right.

Because they will obviously by definition continue to hurt people. And I think where part of this comes from is that, and I do consider myself liberal in some ways. I mean, it is just that you want to have empathy for people. Obviously you want to have empathy for people. I totally agree with that. You want to have empathy, but you also have to have empathy for the victims of the criminals. And if you just have empathy for the criminals, it’s actually shallow empathy. It’s not real. You’re not thinking you have one layer deep empathy. You’ve got to say, if you don’t incarcerate this person, who are they going to hurt? They might kill someone, they might rape someone if you don’t incarcerate them. You have to have empathy for the victims. And there’s a lack of empathy for the victims of the criminals, and too much empathy for the criminals, it doesn’t make sense. That’s why you want to have deep empathy for society as a whole, not shallow empathy for criminals.

And we have to give our police officers the dignity and the respect that they deserve, and we have to let them do their job. They can do a great job, but we have to let them do their job. And if we don’t do that, it’s going to all disappear. There’s never been a society like this where you’re allowed to do anything you want and nothing happens, and I’m talking about violent crime. And it’s going to get more violent because these are really, really violent people. And we are going to get them out of our country, and we’re going to get them back to where, because they were sent here by the presidents and by the various people that run those countries, and I know every one of those guys, and they’re smart people and they’re streetwise people, and they really think that the USA is stupid. They think we’re run by stupid people, and they happen to be right.

(01:55:08)
But when I was there, we had no problem. We got them out. We took out thousands of MS-13 gang members, we brought them back. And now again, it is the same old story. We don’t do it. And they actually gave them a big increase in aid. They raised it up to billions of dollars, and they get nothing for it. I hope everybody’s going to vote for Trump and we’re going to get this country straight. And I didn’t need this, I’m like you, I didn’t need this. I had a very nice life. I didn’t need to go through court systems and go through all the other stuff and run at the same time. I have to run. I have to go through fake trials with, in some cases corrupt judges, totally corrupt judges. I didn’t need it. I had a nice life. I have great locations. I have beautiful oceans that I have places, but I felt it was important.

(01:55:56)
And if I had to do it over again, you probably think I’m crazy for doing it actually. But if I had to do it over again, I would’ve done it over again because this is so much more important than me or my life. We’re going to save this country. This country is going down, and these people are bad people that we’re running against and they’re liars. They make statements, they do things that are so bad. They say they’re going to make a strong border. They say they’ve been great on the border and they’ve been the worst in history. They say they’re going to stop crime.

Yes, it’s horrible. The facts speak for themselves.

It’s so incredible.

The facts speak for themselves. It’s gone to the point where people just don’t even bother reporting crime in a lot of cities-

That’s right.

… because they know nothing’s going to happen. That’s what I hear anecdotally from people all the time. So my values, I’m just saying to people out there, the things I think are important for the future is we’ve got to have safe cities. We’ve got to have secure borders, we’ve got to have sensible spending, and we’ve got to have deregulation so we can have a prosperous future. And then we want to have some exciting moonshot projects that people can get fired up about, and that’s the future I’m looking for. And I’m pro environment, but I’m not against, I don’t think we should vilify the oil and gas industry because they’re keeping civilization going right now, but I do think we want to move a reasonable speed towards a sustainable energy economy. Those are my values. I mean, that’s why I’m supporting you for president.

Well, I appreciate. We’re going to give incentive to companies to come into our country, not to leave our country. We’re going to be giving tremendous incentives. We want companies to build here, not to build in other locations. And we want to create jobs. And again, it’s about the American dream. You don’t hear about the American dream anymore, Elon. You’re the American dream in the truest sense, but you don’t hear about the American dream anymore, and you’re going to hear about it. People, they need that incentive to go out and do it. And they’re going to love their lives. I mean, they’re going to look forward to getting up in the morning and going to a job that they love, not a job that they can’t stand, or not any job at all where they have no money, where they literally have no money and then they end up with violence and lots of other problems.

(01:58:23)
No, we’re going to do some great things. And I learned a lot in the first. We had a great economy and all of that. We rebuilt the military. We did so much. But I also learned, and I also learned the best people. I learned the good people, the smart people, the dumb people, the people that can do things, you learn. When I first came in, I tell people I was in Washington, D.C only 17 times, according to the fake news media. I was in 17 times, I never stayed over, and you don’t know people. You rely on other people to give you names and then you realize the people you relied on weren’t so good.

(01:58:55)
Now, we had great people, but we also had some where I wouldn’t have used them had I known. Now I know everybody, and I think we’re going to really turn things around fast. We have no choice, otherwise we’re not going to have a country. And I really appreciate this has been, to me, it’s been a lot of fun being with you. You’re an amazing guy. You’ve done an incredible job, and a great inspiration to people, a great inspiration. And I hope you keep going and just continue to do well. And we’re going to have a big election coming up, and I think November 5th will be the most important day in the history of our country. I think that election will be the most important election, and I think it’ll end up being maybe the most important day in the history of our country because if we don’t win, I just feel so sorry for everybody.

No, I think we’re a fork in the road of destiny of civilization, and I think we need to take the right path, and I think you’re the right path, so I think that’s what it comes down to.

Thank you very much, Elon. It’s a great honor and we’ll do it again sometime. And it’s been really fun, and I hope you’ve got a lot of viewers. I hear you’ve got a lot, but I hope you-

Sure.

… I know you’ve got a lot of them, so I appreciate it. I’ll see you soon.

All right, sounds good. Thank you.

Thank you, Elon. Thank you very much-