Trump Interview On The Joe Rogan Experience

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Good to see you. Here we go. One of the things I wanted to talk to you about, I wanted to play this, but we decided we shouldn’t play it because it could get copyright strike and we don’t want to get the episode… We don’t want anybody to have any sort of way to get it down.

Sure.

But it was the episode of you when you were on The View, and I think it was 2015 or 2016 when you were running for president and you got introduced as, “Our friend, Donald Trump.”

That’s right.

Whoopi Goldberg gives you a big hug and a kiss. Joy Behar gives you a big hug. Barbara Walters gives you a big hug. They all loved you. They were all talking about how you might be conservative in your financial positions, but you’re very liberal socially. They were talking about you in such a favorable light. The audience was cheering and then you actually started winning in the polls and then the machine started working towards you.

Yeah.

But there’s probably no one in history that I’ve ever seen that’s been attacked the way you’ve been attacked and the way they’ve done it so coordinated and systematically and when you see those same people in the past very favorable to you, like Oprah when you were on Oprah’s Show.

Very.

She was encouraging you to be president.

Last week, I did one of her last shows. I think maybe Thursday or Friday. That was a big deal being on Oprah’s Show, the last one. And I was like one of the last shows in that final week and I said, “Boy, we’ve come a long since that.”

What was it like?

Well, the concept, it was really like two different lives. I had a very wonderful life, but I wanted to do this. The Apprentice was still going very strong. We had 12 seasons and we had actually 14 seasons, 12 years over… They had a couple of them-

Well, they canceled the Apprentice when you were running for president, correct?

No, they had Arnold Schwarzenegger do it. I was involved in that and I had enough of it and we did great. It was doing great, but they wanted me to stay. They all came to see me. They said, “We’re going to give you a contract.” They wanted to extend my contract. Mark Burnett is a great guy. Then they wanted to extend the contract. Mark said, “You’re crazy. Don’t run, don’t run. Nobody gives up prime time,” they said. It’s one of those little things, which is probably true for the most-

Nobody gives up prime time though for being president?

Well, for running against 20 some odd people. Turned out to be 18 professional people, mostly politicians. They said, “Who would do this? I mean, it’s a long shot.” Actually the heads of NBC came over, Paul Telegdy, all top people came over to see me, try and talk me out of it ’cause they wanted to have me extend. The Apprentice was doing well, so it was 14 seasons, it was 12 years. We had one, two seasons where we had a double, which rarely happens. It was just a hot show and I said, “I want to do this.” What happened is previously like three years, four years before that they did a poll. They had Mitt Romney and somehow they put me in a poll and I blew everybody away. I blew him away, which isn’t that hard frankly. But I blew everybody away and I said, “That’s interesting, ’cause I never really gave it that much real thought.”

(03:35)
I thought about it, but never real thought. But I saw these polls were very good and so I was thinking about doing it then, but I had a contract with The Apprentice plus I was building two big buildings at the time and I wanted to make sure they got finished up properly and it was one of those things. The kids were just sort of getting involved. They’re very capable kids, but they were getting involved early on. So I did that. I got them done. I had some very good successes and I came on and then I thought about it for the next one after the Romney disaster and I ran and I won against Hillary and it was quite an experience, but it was a different life because you’re right, The View, I was on The View many, many times and they loved me.

Just the way people would talk. I mean, even if people had criticisms about you, people that didn’t like you, there was always feuds and stuff like that, but the reality was the thing turned on you when they found out that you were going to be president. It was very coordinated and some people are catching onto that now. There’s a lot of people that were longtime Democrats like Elon and Bill Ackman and all these different very intelligent people.

And they support me now. Bill Ackman-

And they support you now.

… supports me.

Yes.

He’s been very supportive too.

This is what I wanted to ask you. What was it like when you actually got in? ‘Cause nobody really can prepare you for that when you’re running for president, you don’t really know what it’s going to be like when you actually get into office. What did you think it was going to be like?

Do you mean in office or when I decided to run?

No, when you got in.

Oh, when I was.

When you got in.

So when I was in and won and was in The White House essentially.

Yes.

Well, first of all it was very surreal. It’s very interesting. When I got shot, it wasn’t surreal. That should have been surreal. When I was laying on the ground, I knew exactly what was going on. I knew exactly where I was hit. They were saying you were hit all over the place because there was so much blood from the ear. You would know that better than anyone. When they get the ear torn up, it’s a-

Ears bleed a lot, yeah.

Anyway. And I was thinking the other day when that happened, I really knew where I was. I knew exactly what happened. I said, I wasn’t hit anywhere else. With the presidency, it was a very surreal experience, okay.

What’s day one like? You win, you get inaugurated. “Holy shit, I’m the president.”

Yeah, that’s what happened. So I’m driving down Pennsylvania Avenue. I had just built a building on Pennsyl, you know, the hotel, the old post office it was. We called it Trump National Hotel and we sold it to the Waldorf Astoria and it was a wonderful thing. But I’m driving down, I’m passing the hotel. You’ve never seen so many motorcycles, police, military, it was a major thing. I got off, really the first time I used Air Force One, landed and we’re coming down and it was very… I mean, it was incredible. And we’re going down Pennsylvania Avenue in the opposite direction. Normally you’re used to going one way and all of a sudden you’re going the other way. The street was loaded up and I wanted to go out and I wanted to wave to everybody, but that wasn’t smart. The kids, little bit dangerous when you watch Kennedy and some others, but I really felt, I don’t know, the love was so crazy.

(06:46)
And so I did get out of the car for a brief, you know, just for a very short walk. I thought it was very important to do. And Melania got out with a beautiful dress on that became sort of a staple. People loved it and Barron and we’re walking down the street, but where it really got amazing, we get to The White House and now it’s a little bit before dark, beautiful. And we went up to the President’s quarters, they call them the presidential quarters and I’m standing in this beautiful hallway. It’s funny. Nobody ever talks about The White House as being beautiful inside. You think everything’s going to all metal doors and stuff. It’s not. It’s so beautiful. I made my money largely on luxury. The hallway is like 25 feet wide. The ceiling heights are… It’s so beautiful. But I was standing there and I said to the guys, “I want to see the Lincoln bedroom.”

(07:46)
I had never seen the Lincoln bedroom. I’d heard about the Lincoln bedroom and I was standing with my wife. I said, “Do you believe it? This is the Lincoln bedroom.” I mean, it was amazing because look, if you love the country, but here you are, the Lincoln bedroom. And the bed, he was very tall. He was six foot six, which then would be like Barron. Would be like Barron Trump. He’s 6’9, but six foot six, he was very tall. Then on top of that, he wore-

There it is.

… that. Yeah, there it is. It’s a long bed, elongated bed. And because people were shorter then. You see, some of the chairs are very, very low to the ground actually. But he had the long bed and you had the Gettysburg Address right under that. You can’t see it here, but right there, the original version of the Gettysburg Address, and this is the original, and I’m looking and I just looked around. I said, “Do you believe this?” Because I was never a… First of all, even if you were a politician. But I was never a politician. I sort of just started, right.

Right.

And all of a sudden I’m standing in The White House and it was very surreal. That room was so beautiful to me, much more beautiful than it actually is. To me, when I looked at the bed, and the bed, you could see it was a little bit longer, had to be a little bit longer. He lost his son and the two of them suffered from melancholia. They didn’t call it depression, they called it melancholia and they suffered from it. He was a very depressed guy and she was a very depressed woman, more so than him. And on top of that, they lost their son whose name was Ted. And just seeing and the little picture. There’s a little tiny picture.

(09:39)
I mean, you can’t see the details there, little tiny… Everything but the bed was a little tiny picture of Ted who he lost and it was devastating and he was in a war and he was having a hard time because he couldn’t beat Robert E. Lee. Robert E. Lee won like 13 battles in a row and he was getting a phobia, like a fighter. You know a lot about the fight stuff, but I went to a UFC fight and it was a champion who was 14 and 1 about a year ago, you would know the names, 14 and 1, and the only guy he lost to was this one guy. But the guy that he was fighting was almost just an average fighter. He lost numerous times, but he beat this one guy. So I said, “Okay-”

I really don’t know who you’re talking about. I’m trying to-

I will figure it out.

Okay.

But about a year ago… But the point is that he lost. He wasn’t nearly the fighter as the one… But the one who was not nearly the fighter had beaten, he’s the only guy that beat the champ like five years before. And then he said, “I’ll take the guy that won the other fight.” And that’s what happened. He beat him a second time.

Sometimes psychological advantages.

Yeah. What is this crazy thing? Lincoln had a… I don’t know, I’ve never read this. I heard it from people in The White House who really understand what was going on with the whole life of The White House. But Lincoln had the yips, in a way, as the golfers would say. He had a phobia about Robert E. Lee. He said, “I can’t beat Robert,” because Robert E. Lee won many battles in a row. He was just beating the hell out of… They tried to get Robert E. Lee to be on the north, but he said, “No, I have to be with my state.”

(11:23)
The state was his whole thing and he went to the south. And I’ve had generals tell me… We have some great generals. The real generals, not the ones you see on television. The ones that beat Isis with me. We defeated Isis in record time. It was supposed to take years and we did it in a matter of weeks. These are great generals. These are tough guys. These are not woke guys. But their favorite general in terms of genius was Robert E. Lee. He took a war-

In terms of strategy, you mean?

Strategically. He took a war that should have been over in a few days and it was years of hell, a vicious war. And so here I am standing there, and again, I had never really done this before. I ran a number of months before I won. I probably, I guess if you figured, max it out, it would be a year, something like that. So I had never run for office and I did well. I mean I went into debates. We had 18 people including me, and then slowly but surely they started to disappear. We had good debates.

Everyone’s aware of all this stuff. But what I want to get to is what was the experience once you got inside?

It was just-

Like, what did you think it was going to be like in terms of your ability to govern? This is your first experience governing anything. You’ve never been a governor, you’ve never been a mayor-

Yeah.

Right.

Private stuff.

Business.

Yeah.

But now all of a sudden you’re inside The White House.

The biggest thing was just that first moment of being in this hallowed… It was really a hallowed place to me. It was-

Surreal.

… beyond… To me, that was the experience. It was a surreal experience. And then with time that wears off. With time, it becomes your place where you stay.

Right.

And I was doing a lot of… I had two things that I really focused on, governing the country and survival because from the moment I won, before I got to office, all of a sudden… I mean, they came down. I mean, nobody has ever been treated that way. And you see that, I mean, you see we’re in The Washington Post very early on. They said, well now the impeachment stuff starts. And it did. I mean it literally started from the beginning. So I had survival and run the nation. I had a combination. Most people don’t have the survival, they get in.

What did you expect though, in terms of once you got inside you had to appoint all these people? How many appointments did you have to make with a very short amount of time?

You have actually 10,000 appointments. Now, they’re different. You have big ones and then they appoint 100 people and 200 people. But the president really is involved with approximately 10,000 appointments. So you’ll appoint a Secretary of State and he or she will appoint a lot of people. So it’s a lot. But in terms of major ones, you probably have like 100, but they’re big ones. Treasury, state, military.

And how did you know who to appoint?

Well, I didn’t. I had no experience-

You didn’t.

You have to understand, Joe-

Right. So are you going-

I was there 17 times in Washington and I never stayed over. According to the press, which I think is probably right, over the years I was only there 17 times. I never stayed over. So now I’m sitting there, I’m saying, “This place is gorgeous, but I don’t know anybody.” It’s like you, you go to certain areas and other areas, they may be great. Washington was great. Washington’s not so great now, we got to fix it, we’re going to make it better. A very dangerous place, very badly maintained place. We’re going to make it great. We’re going to make it better. We’re going to bring it back. But I wasn’t a Washington guy. I was a New York guy. I was a New York builder and I built buildings in New York and I knew that whole world, but I didn’t know the Washington world too well. And all of a sudden you’re supposed to be appointing top people. So-

What did you think it was going to be like? Did you have any ideas of what it was going to be like and what was different?

Well, I was always involved in politics, but usually from the standpoint of a donor.

Right.

I was a donor. I was a big donor. I gave money to politicians. I enjoyed-

Mostly Democrats, right?

Both, really. Pretty much both. I have actually pictures of Ronald Reagan and me when I was very young.

Well, you were a Democrat until what year?

I was a Democrat, I could get you the exact, but the early nineties. The early nineties. I switched over eventually. Actually they had a reform party. I was thinking about doing that for a little while, but then fortunately I didn’t because it’s very hard. It’s a two-party system. And anytime you hear third party, I know you like RFK Jr. and so do I, he’s a fantastic guy.

I do. But-

But that whole thing is very tough.

… I thought that thing, being an independent was nonsense.

It doesn’t work because even if you do great, you’re not going to get Congress. In other words, you need now to say, “Okay, now I’ll get half of Congress.” They’re never going to vote for you. So even if you got there, which is very hard, and I know how you feel about Bobby and I feel the same way, and he’s now with us. But it’s pure and simple. It’s a two-party system. And somebody, I won’t mention his name, but somebody spent $ 250 million trying to get the nomination as a reform party candidate or whatever, and they got just nowhere. You just get eaten. The system eats you alive.

Right.

So it was really somebody that not only was new to Washington, but was new to politics. So in the office of the presidency, over the years, all those presidents you’ve had 92% were politicians and 8% were generals, General Eisenhower, General Washington, right. General George Washington. You had generals. So it’s 8% generals, no admirals. 8% generals and 92% politicians. They’re politicians and they go on. So they never had a business guy or they never had a guy that wasn’t elected to an office. Like, Ronald Reagan was really, he was a movie actor, but he became the governor of California for, I think two terms, and then he ran. So you’d never had a thing like this. But in terms of me, and sometimes I’d use it as an excuse, and I don’t like having excuses actually, but I use it as an excuse. I had to rely on people that I respected or liked, but that I didn’t know that well because I didn’t know them that well.

(17:48)
Some of those people I campaigned against ’cause when you have 18 people, we had mostly politicians running in the election, running in the primaries, and they got knocked out one by one. But I got to some of them, some of them I didn’t like at all. I don’t like them now. And I’d rely on them and I’d rely on other people. So all of a sudden people would come in, I’d like to recommend so-and-so to be Secretary of State, and I’d have three, four people recommend… One thing I can tell you, Joe, everybody wants the position.

Of course.

No, no. But sometimes they’ll hear, “A lot of people don’t want to work with Trump because Trump is tough to work with, et cetera.” Let me tell you, everybody wants to be any one of these positions. They’d die for it.

Of course.

Now they don’t want to be known. I mean, there’s a particular guy in New York, primarily. Very big, very successful, very strong, very political, although he is not a politician. He’d give anything to be Secretary of State. But if they ask him, “No, I don’t think I would do it.” But in the meantime, begging for it. Okay, begging.

I believe you.

Look, everybody wants it.

But what I wanted to get to-

And by the way, no matter what you do… But it’s very dangerous to pick somebody outside of a politician because a politician has been basically vetted for years. You pick a business guy and they’ve never been vetted at all, and they’re the head of a big company or something, but they’ve never been vetted, you know nothing about his personal life, you know nothing about where he’s been. When you put him in, it’s a little bit dangerous because all of a sudden they get checked up and you hear things that you say, “Wow, this is not going to work out too well.” So it’s very dangerous. Picking people that are outside of politics is somewhat dangerous.

So you’re kind of stuck in a position where you have to pick established people. Then the problem with established people is established people are already indoctrinated into the system.

And they’re stiffs in many cases.

Stiffs.

Stiffs. They’re survivors. I find that-

What do you mean by stiffs? When you say stiffs-

A stiff. They don’t have nothing. They have nothing. Or they’re smart and survivor… One little thing. So there was a congressman years before I ran, and I was very close to him and I needed a license on something and he was very important in getting the license, but it was a little bit controversial, the license, this particular thing that was being licensed. But I was close to this guy and helped him and everything else, and I went to him. I said, “I’d like to have you help.” And he said, “Let me take a look at it.” I said, “Ooh, that’s not too good, but I really hope you’re going to help.” Anyway, he tapped me along for a long period of time and ultimately didn’t do it. And I said, “You are a stiff. You could have done this thing so easy,” et cetera. But it was controversial. He was in Congress for many years, like 28 years. And there’s a reason when somebody’s there for 28 years, you got to be sort of smart.

Right. A survivor.

You have all the scandals. And I realized he was a survivor.

And so they never do anything controversial.

Well, they don’t do-

They never take any chances or speak-

Yeah, they don’t take-

… their opinion. It’s outside of the-

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

And yet I don’t disrespect him for it. I actually respected the guy more in a certain way. I said-

‘Cause he did survive.

… “You know what, he’s been there for 28 years and he made it through. A lot of people don’t make it through. They don’t last long.”

It’s a good way for non-exceptional people to survive.

Well, it is. It certainly is.

So you’re in there, you have 10,000 appointments you have to make. So you’re getting advice from people. And did you have a moment in time where you realized these are bad choices, like, “Some of these people I shouldn’t have had in there”?

Oh, yeah. So the one question that I think you’ll ask me that people seem to ask, and I always come up with the same answer. The one mistake, ’cause I had a lot of success, great economy, great everything. Everything was great. The military, we rebuilt it. Biggest tax cuts in history, all the stuff we did… We had a great presidency. Three supreme court justices. Most people get none. You pick them young, this way they’re there for 50 years, right.

Right.

So even if a president is there for eight years, oftentimes they never have a chance. I had three. It was sort of the luck of the draw, but I will say that it always comes back to the same answer. The biggest mistake I made was I picked some people. I picked some great people, but you don’t think about that. I picked some people that I shouldn’t have picked. I picked a few people that I shouldn’t have picked and-

Neocons?

Neocons or bad people or disloyal people or-

People that were just bad-

… people that were into the… You got the-

You got bad advice?

Yeah, I mean, look, you’re reading about them a little bit today, A guy like Kelly who was a bully, but a weak person. You know more about bullies than anybody probably around ’cause you deal in a certain sport where the bullies are exposed very quickly. But he’s bad. Bolton was an idiot, but he was great for me because I’d go in with a guy like a John Bolton. You know John Bolton?

Mm-hmm.

A friend of mine called me up. I was picking Bolton, and he’s a very smart guy. His name is Phil Ruffin. He’s a very rich guy from Las Vegas. He’s a great card player. He doesn’t play cards, but he’s a great… He’s just a natural, got poker sense, right. The good old poker sense. And Phil Ruffin is a very, very wise kind of a guy and very, one of the richest people around and has had great success and understands people, so it was in that I was picking Bolton or I picked Bolton, he called up, he said, “Don’t pick him.” “Why?” “He’s a bad guy.” Now, he wasn’t in politics at all. He’s in various businesses. He said, “He’s a bad guy. It always works out bad with that guy.”

(23:36)
I said, “Oh man, I wish you told me this two weeks ago. I already hired him. He’s here.” And he was right. But he was good in a certain way. He’s a nut job. And every time I had to deal with a country, when they saw this whack job standing behind me, they said, “Oh man, Trump’s going to go to war with us. He was with Bush when they went stupidly into the Middle East, they should have never done it. I used to say it as a civilian. So I always got more publicity than other people. And it wasn’t like I was trying. In fact, I don’t know exactly why. Maybe you can tell me why.

Oh, I could definitely tell you. You said a lot of wild shit.

Maybe. Maybe I did.

You said a lot of wild shit.

Maybe that’s it.

And then CNN in all their brilliance by highlighting your wild shit made you much more popular.

Yeah, yeah.

And they boosted you in the polls ’cause people were tired of someone talking in this bullshit pre-prepared politician lingo. And even if they didn’t agree with you, they at least knew, “Whoever that guy is. That’s him. That’s really him.” When you see certain people talk, certain people in the public eye, you don’t know who they are. You have no idea who they are. It’s very difficult to know. And you see them in conversations. They have these pre-planned answers. They say everything. It’s very rehearsed. You never get to the meat of it.

(24:57)
One of the beautiful things about you is that you free ball, you get out and you do these huge events and you’re just talking and you’re making… We’ve highlighted you on the show many times when you did this Biden impression where he’s walking around and he doesn’t know what he’s doing-

It scares-

It’s stand up. It’s funny stuff, but it’s like you… And you were making fun of Elon one time. You were doing an Elon impression. It’s great. You have comedic instincts. When you said to Hillary, “You’d be in jail.” That’s great timing.

Yeah.

But it’s like that kind of stuff was unheard of as a politician. Like, no one had done that. And I think-

It’s funny, you need at least the attitude of a comedian when you’re doing this business. This is a very dangerous business first of all. It’s a very tough business. When-

It’s the most dangerous business.

Yeah. It’s the most… Well, for a job?

Yes. I mean, other than-

This is the far-

… going to war and being a firefighter or being a cop, it’s the most dangerous business because-

It’s the most dangerous. Being president is the most dangerous-

Especially you. I mean-

I’m much more [inaudible 00:25:55]-

You haven’t even got to the election, there’s been two assassination attempts. And they’ve brushed those out of the news like it was nothing.

Yeah, they’d rather not talk about them.

Imagine if there was assassination attempts on Biden, how hard people would be attacking the right. They would be trying to get guns taken away from people, they would try to ramp up gun laws. They would try to figure out some way to blame you. If there was a tax on… If Biden got shot in the ear, we would’ve never heard the end of it.

But I think he’s in good shape because it’s only consequential presidents. If you take a look at what’s happened, look, I’m for having countries pay us billions and billions and trillions even, dollars. I took in hundreds of billions of dollars from China. Nobody took in 10 cents. Not one other president. I do things that don’t necessarily make so popular. I just do what’s right. And when you do that, you’re more… Look at Iran. We would’ve never had the attack on Israel at all. Iran was broke. I told China, “If you buy, you can’t do business in the United States under any…” We we’re going to go cold Turkey with China. Some people think that would’ve been a good idea anyway. But, “If you buy any oil, one barrel of oil from them, you’re not doing business.” I said that to many countries. Iran was broke. They had no money for Hezbollah. They had no money for Hamas. They had no money. But I make myself… I mean, I understand what I’m doing. You make yourself a target and it’s a very dangerous business. But if you just look at statistically, so I sort of think, I don’t know if it’s right, but one-tenth of 1% for a race car driver, it’s a pretty dangerous business, right.

Yeah.

One tenth of 1% for a bull rider. I tell you to me, I-

You talking death?

These guys that ride the bulls is worse than UFC.

Yeah.

These guys. You see these big monster bulls and you see it in slow motion where the foot is like an inch away from the head. If it hits them, the guy’s gone. But they die. They die.

So one tenth of 1% die, is that what you’re saying?

Yeah, yeah. One tenth of 1% die.

Right.

And they certainly get hurt badly. Really, I mean, they can’t walk after a certain period of time. But with a president, if you look at the assassination-

The amount of assassination attempts-

… and attempts too. And attempts. No, it’s a very dangerous position. I never thought of that, by the way, when I did it. You don’t tend to… I don’t think of-

Did you just assume because people loved you on the Apprentice, they were going to love you as a president?

Well, I think it would be so easy. It was very interesting.

Well, it probably would have been if the media didn’t attack you the way they did. If they didn’t conflate you with Hitler. I mean, even today Kamala was talking about you and Hitler. They’re going to take what you said about Robert E. Lee. “Oh, Donald Trump wishes the South won.”

“Oh, he loves Robert E. Lee.” That’s right. “He loves Robert E. Lee.”

They love to take things out of context and distort things.

Well, they don’t even have to take them out. They make them up entirely.

They do that too.

But it’s interesting when you mentioned… I was very popular and all those people love me. I mean, some of these women, they’re so stupid… And Joy, every time she’d see me, I’d be in the theater or something and she goes, “You have to be on the show again. Come on, come on, let’s go. We have to.”

She loved you.

Loved me.

That episode where-

By the way-

People should watch that episode just to see what we’re talking about. Like I said, we don’t want to get a copyright strike, so we’re not going to put it up, but-

It’s okay.

… if you watch the episode, it’s bananas. It’s like an alternative universe. And it’s only-

But Whoopi loved me.

… nine years ago.

Whoopi loved me.

Loved you. Gives you a hug and a kiss.

And how about that other one, the new one on there, the one from my administration? She writes me a letter, “You’re the greatest president.” She leaves. She worked as an assistant press secretary. I hardly knew her, but she leaves and she writes me this gorgeous letter. What’s her name? She was… I don’t even know. Anyway, she was in the administration, she’s on now currently, sits in the far right-hand side, whatever the hell her name is, and she writes a letter, the most beautiful letter she’s quoted on the paper, “He’s a consequential, he was the greatest president, ba, ba, ba.” Then all of a sudden she goes on The View, she started hitting the hell out of me because they won’t hire

… hire her unless. I’ve had many people go on CNN and they called and said, “I don’t know what to do. They want to pay me a lot, but I have to be negative on you.” I said, “Be negative. That’s okay.” There were guys on like CNN, they won’t hire them. Sean Duffy is a congressman and he retired. He got a good job with CNN, but he was only positive about Trump. So they kept him, but they would never put him on. I mean, I respect what he did. He could have gone negative. I tell people, go negative. Let my friends make the money. It’s so crooked. The press is so crooked.

It’s crooked, but it’s also, they’re diminishing themselves.

They’re hurting themselves.

They’re killing all their credibility and it’s opening up their credibility to new media. It’s opening up their credibility to independent media. All these-

The worst I’ve ever seen though, and I’ve seen the worst. I mean, I’ve been a part of it. I’ve seen the worst. Kamala goes on 60 Minutes, gave an answer that a child wouldn’t give. It was so bad. And 60 Minutes took the answer out. They took the whole and they put another answer in …

They edited it deceptively.

… which didn’t make sense either, but it was better. They took the … Well, it wasn’t editing, it was fraud. This was not editing. Editing is where I’ll give an answer and they’ll take a couple of words and change it around. Or they might even take a sentence or two off, which is very bad, but it’s sort of bad. I’d give an answer, which was a very good answer. I always talk about I like to give along the weave. I like to …

Yeah, you like to weave things in.

Yeah. But when you do the weaves, and you have to be very smart to do weaves, when you do the weave … Look at this. Just in this one thing we’re talking about little pieces [inaudible 00:31:35] but it always ends up-

Uh-huh. Got to get it back to home.

No, no. It comes back home for the right people. For the wrong people, it doesn’t come back home and they end up in the wilderness, right? But they can take my answer. And you know what? They may take a little piece of it out or something and they use the term, yes, we want to save time. Well, it’s not it but I’ve never heard … I think it’s the biggest scandal in broadcast history what happened to CBS. So you have CBS 60 Minutes. That’s a news program. It’s not an entertainment program. It’s under their news. It’s the head of their news thing. She gives an answer that shows that she’s essentially incompetent and they took the answer. Could you imagine them doing that for me?

We can show it if you want people to see it. Can we show it?

Go ahead, sure.

No. We’ll get in trouble. We’ll get copyright strike.

[inaudible 00:32:20]

Okay.

I’ll indemnify.

Listen, anyone can find it but it’s drastic. But what was interesting was the other full version was available initially. It was like a preview.

Somebody made a big mistake.

Somebody put that preview out there and then-

Some kid put the preview out.

Exactly.

And then the bosses did this or that and then all of a sudden said, “We got a problem.”

Exactly. And then it became-

They got caught by mistake. But don’t you think that’s a … To me, and don’t forget, this is election interference and fraud and it’s 60 Minutes. It’s their news division.

It’s a big deal.

They give those licenses out, Joe, for free. They should pay a fortune. They’re worth a fortune. They give them out for free because they’re using the public airwaves. With cable, you don’t have that. Cable’s different, but it’s just a different deal. But with the networks, they give those license. They’re worth billions of dollars. They give them out free but you have to be honest and all, that was bad.

(33:16)
I think that David Muir and that woman that was aside, I never even heard of her, but they kept interrupting me. It was like I said, “How many people am I debating here? I got this one and I got you two.” But he went after me 11 different times. It’s interesting. I always thought he was a nice guy, but he’s just like the rest of them.

Well, that’s his job, unfortunately. And I’m sure what they want-

No, but not when they’re wrong.

You’re right. Well, the problem was they fact-checked you and they didn’t fact-check her.

Not at and all.

One of the most egregious examples of that was when she said that there are no troops right now deployed in war zones. There’s a very famous viral video that went online of troops in a war zone saying, “Well, what the fuck are we then?” Because there’s thousands of them. Dan Crenshaw, the congressman posted on his Instagram all of the various examples of …

Too many.

… troops that are deployed, thousands and thousands of troops that are currently deployed.

Stupidly deployed.

But the point is, if this is going to be an actual real debate and not a propaganda exercise, if it’s going to be a real debate, you have to fact-check everybody. If someone says maybe she thought there was no, which is also a problem. So it’s one of two things. It’s either it was not true. It was a lie on purpose, which is terrible. Or it was the opposite. It was ignorance, which is also terrible.

Well, Joe, when I said crime is soaring, he said, “No, no crime has gone down.” I said, “Where did you hear that one, crime has gone down?” I mean, I’m debating with this guy, but I’ve had that.

Well, there was amended FBI statistics that came out after that, that showed that crime had gone up substantially.

And by the way, the statistics were fraud because when they put out the statistics, they didn’t include some of the worst places. They didn’t include some of the worst cities, some of the most deadly places.

Then there is also a problem-

But when the real numbers came out, I turned out to be right. But I haven’t gotten-

You turn out to be right but then there’s another problem. Unreported crime is way up because people have lost … Look, the morale that the police department has, in a lot of these cities what they’ve done is defund the police, bullshit. The morale of these poor cops, it’s fucking horrible. It’s the dumbest idea of all time.

So bad. So bad.

But what they’ve done is they’ve made these cops feel terrible, like good cops. I think cops are just like everybody else. Most of them are great. It’s like everybody else. But if you run into one carpenter and he does a shitty job in your house, you say “Carpenters fucking suck.” But they don’t suck. Most of them are great.

Police have been-

And that’s the key thing with cops. But the point is they did all of these things in this very foolish way. And these cops are suffering the consequences of it. And so subsequently, what happens is a lot of crime is unreported. A lot of crime, like you call the cops. They’re too busy. They can’t even get to you. “Oh, your house got broken into. Sorry.” It doesn’t even make a report. There’s a lot of people that they just give up.

It’s so sad what’s happened. And I’ll tell you what. I go to police funerals and we went to one in Long Island. I visited the family in Long Island. A very big deal. It’s so dangerous. People don’t realize the car, dark windows pull over. He’s a gentleman. “Please pull over.” Door opens. Guy comes out firing. Even if they were allowed to pull out their gun, which they’re not, they can’t pull out the-

Doing time, yeah.

They still wouldn’t have time.

It’s every cop’s first nightmare.

They open a door and he was killed and his partner was hurt. He was killed. And you don’t even have an eighth of a second to think. And it is such a dangerous job. That in particular, think of it. You go up to a car. You don’t know who’s sitting there with a gun. And if they have a gun, you really don’t have a chance. You’re not allowed to have your gun out, by the way. There’re very strict rules.

(36:53)
So, number one, they’re in it. But even if you could have your gun out, the door opens and a guy and bullets start firing out, and especially where they have the darkened windows. It is such a dangerous profession. And it’s very hard to get cops now because they’re not given any backup. And you’re right. They have like an eighth of a second to make a decision that’s going to change their life. If they make the wrong decision, they’re going to end up on the front page of every newspaper in the country and they’re going to lose their house and their pension and their job and their wife is going to be gone and everything is going to be gone.

Absolutely. And here’s another thing that people don’t talk about. How many of them have PTSD? Probably most of them. These guys are seeing people shot all the time. I’ve talked to a ton of cops about it and a lot of cops commit suicide. A lot of cops are deeply depressed. A lot of cops have seen-

But we have to give them back their dignity. We just have to give them back … You said it so good. You never hear anybody say that … You’re never going to have it perfect, you’re going to have a bad apple.

In everything, in every profession.

But every time there’s a bad apple, that gets massive publicity and it taints everybody also.

But it’s also this very irresponsible thing where people say defund the police, get rid of the police. Even Kamala Harris was a part of that, that it’s a very stupid way to look at it. What you should do is fund the police. You should have better training. You should have cops that feel more appreciated. You should have some something that helps mitigate this PTSD that all of them suffer through.

Right. She was a big part of defund the police. That was a big thing for her, defund the police, always defund the police.

Well, it’s a political idea.

Yeah. But anybody with that political thought I don’t think should be running for president. And I think people are getting wise to it. We’re doing pretty well now. I don’t know. Maybe in a week from now, say sorry about that. I was wrong.

(38:42)
But we’re leading everything. And I think we’re going to have a very good election. But I tell people because people are starting to get to know her. But she was defund the police. She was all these transgender operations. If you wanted a sex change and you were in detention and you demanded a sex change, they would give you a sex change.

Well, the wildest one is this idea of giving free sex change to illegal immigrants.

That’s right, in detention.

That is the wildest thing. Is that the biggest problem you have? You just walked here from Guatemala. You need to become a girl.

That’s right. But she was in favor of it.

Yes.

So, think of it. Now she changed. She’s changed 15 policies. In fact, I’m going to send her a MAGA cap.

She stole your idea about no tax for tips.

I came up with this idea that honestly, nobody ever heard of. And now it took her two months. But you know what? All of us-

Well, it caught fire.

And she just put it into a little speech.

Yep, it became popular.

Well, I think we still have that issue. I think that issue is a good one. And then we have a lot of good issues. We had the other day. Think of how simple some of these things are. We’re trying to get cars built in the United States. Detroit has been really tough. It’s been a disaster. They have a huge factory, a huge car auto plant being built by China in Mexico. Make cars, sell them in the United States, put everybody out of business. Here we go again.

(40:02)
I said, “If that plant is there when I’m president, I will put 100 or 200 percent tariffs on every car.” They’ll be unsellable in the United States. And they just announced they’re not going to build the plant because they think I’m going to win. Think of it. They’re not going to build the plant. This was the biggest plant in the world. More than all of Michigan makes. That’s how big. This is what we’re getting to. And I said, “If that plan goes up, I want them to understand if I win, I’m going to tax those cars at the rate of 100 or 200 percent apiece so that you won’t be able to sell them in the United States.” They just announced they’re not going to build the plant.

Yeah, I read that.

And they did a big favor for our country by doing that. And I’m not even there yet. To me, the most beautiful word, and I’ve said this for the last couple of weeks, in the dictionary today and any is the word tariff. It’s more beautiful than love. It’s more beautiful than anything. It’s the most beautiful word. This country can become rich with the proper use of tariffs. It will keep-

Did you just float out the idea of getting rid of income taxes and replacing it with tariffs?

Well, okay.

Were you serious about that?

Yeah, sure, why not? Because we … Ready? Our country was the richest in the, relatively, in the 1880s and 1890s. A president who was assassinated named McKinley, he was the tariff king. He spoke beautifully of tariffs. His language was really beautiful. “We will not allow the enemy to come in and take our jobs and take our factories and take our workers and take our families unless they pay a big price.”

(41:45)
And the big price is tariffs. And he’d speak like that. But he was right. And then around in the early 1900s, they switched over stupidly to, frankly, an income tax. And you know why? Because countries were putting a lot of pressure on America. “We don’t want to pay tariffs. Please don’t.” Believe me. They control our politicians. If you look at the kind of numbers that these guys make then and now. But we had a commission meeting in the I think it was 1887.

(42:17)
Think of this problem. We were so rich. We had so much money. We didn’t know what to do. So they set up a blue ribbon commission on tariffs. And the sole purpose is what to do with all the money we had. We were so rich because we were taxing other people for coming in and taking our jobs. And China does it. That’s what China did. If you want to open a factory and sell cars, if you build a factory here or have a factory, they don’t take our cars. They wouldn’t take our cars. But if you build a plant in China, you can do that. Elon did that. By the way, Elon is great. That guy is such a great guy. I think you’re a fan of Elon.

I love him.

He is from a different planet. He’s the greatest guy. That rocket coming in. I told the story once or twice, so you may have heard it because his speeches have been good. Did you see the one last night?

Yeah.

29,000 people. That was it. And the one the night before was the same thing. We are rocking and rolling. But Elon, and I’m talking to this very important guy, I said, “Wait a minute, I’m looking at something.” The television’s unmuted.

(43:26)
And I see this rocket. It’s all brown from the heat, 10,000 degrees pouring down at thousands of miles an hour. And I see this thing. It’s like a 20-story building.

And it catches [inaudible 00:43:39].

And I say to this guy, he’s an important guy, “Wait a minute. Let me just put you to hold. I got to see this.” And I see this and it’s going to crash. I said, “It’s going to crash into the gantry.” They call it a gantry. I said, “Oh man, that’s going to be a disaster” because it’s starting to get very close. And then all of a sudden you see the flames in the bottom rear and then boom. And then you see the two arms grab it.

Crazy.

And I forgot the guy. I had him on the phone. I forgot. No, I said, “The hell with it.” No, I called Elon. I said, “Was that you?” He said, “That was me.” And I said, “Who else can do that?” He said, “Nobody. Russia can’t do it. The United States. Nobody can do it.”

(44:14)
You know, I set up Space Force. That was me. And that’s the first time in 82 years that we opened another branch since the Air Force. And that’s going to be one of our most important things. But think of what Elon does. And he did one other thing that I never heard of it. It’s Starlink. I went down to North Carolina, Georgia, the different places, right?

(44:35)
I followed it right down. And they had no communication. The poles were all knocked down. And one of the guys in North Carolina said, “Could you do me a favor? Do you know Elon Musk?” “Yes. He endorsed me.” By the way, he gave me the nicest endorsement to the tough.

(44:51)
He said, “The country is going to fail and you should do the same thing, Joe, because you cannot be voting for Kamala.” Kamala. You’re not a Kamala person. I know you. I’ve watched you. I know him better than he is. You know what? Without speaking to you, I think I know you maybe almost as well as your wife. I have watched you for so many years. You’re not a Kamala person. You’re a Khabib person, but you’re not a Kamala person. Nobody’s going to know who Khabib is.

They know who Khabib is.

But he was not bad, right?

Oh, he was phenomenal.

But that’s your kind of person.

Your weave is getting wide. We’re getting wide with this weave.

No, no. My weave but is it much better?

I want to bring it back to tariffs.

But wait. One second. Before we finish with tariffs. So they said, ” Could you get him? We need Starlink.” And I called Elon. He got it for him so fast, saved so many lives. And I said, “How was it?” They said, “Better than the wires.” You know, they couldn’t put them in. They were all gone. So getting back to tariffs.

I’ve used it recently in Utah in the mountains.

That’s great. Did you find it good?

Oh, it’s phenomenal. It’s the size of an iPad. You just set it down on the ground, you get high speed internet. It’s incredible.

Just to show you. We’re spending a trillion dollars to get cables all over the country, right? Up to upstate areas where you have, like, two farms and they’re spending millions of dollars to advocate. Elon can do it for nothing.

Well, talk about the $42 billion that was wasted on this internet access program. They didn’t get anybody access to internet.

They haven’t hooked up one person yet.

Not one person.

That’s right.

They spent $42 billion. They could have gotten Starlinks to everybody with that kind of money.

For almost nothing.

Yeah.

For a monthly charge.

And it would have been incredible. And it’s high speed internet everywhere you want to go.

And he wanted to do that.

And he wanted to do it.

How about this? They built the charger stations, right? In the Midwest. They built eight of them. They cost $9 billion. That’s like a gas pump, right? They built nine gas pumps, except electricity comes out. They spent $9 billion. Three of them don’t work. The whole thing. There’s so much waste. I could sit here and tell you about things that there’s so much waste, abuse, and fraud.

Yeah. I’m sure. I mean, I think everybody’s aware of that now.

Likes get back to tariffs.

When you’re talking about… One of the criticisms of your administration was with tax cuts and with tariffs, you increased the deficit.

Yeah.

So what was the strategy behind that? And did you think it was going to increase the deficit by a substantial amount?

We were ready to rock. It was all… You know, I had a bad system. We had horrible tax policy. I made it great. With a much lower tax rate. So I took it from almost 40% down to 21%. Now I’m bringing it from 21% down to 15%. But only if you make your product in the United States, which is great. People call me. They said, “What a great idea.” Nobody ever heard of that before. I don’t care if they make the product in Japan. Why should I give up? So it’s a 21.

(47:49)
At 21, in the first year, we took in much more revenue than we did at almost 40. Think of that. It inspired… Now we had other things, too. We were able to get people to bring back their money. You couldn’t bring back your money. If you had money in Europe, like Apple, Apple had many billions of dollars outside. They couldn’t bring it. There was no way to bring it back in. The bureaucracy, the documents, the whole thing. And also the tax was too high. They wanted like half of it or something.

(48:19)
Nobody’s going to do that. So they leave their money in Japan and they spend their money there. That was part of what I did. The money came pouring back in. Apple took in hundreds of billions of dollars. They brought it back from overseas. They brought it in.

So how does the deficit increase because of that?

So what happened is this. We were ready to rock and roll. And then we had the COVID thing and we had to focus on that. And if we didn’t give some businesses a hand, they would have all… You would have had a depression like in 1929. But we were ready to start. We were going to… We would have very shortly been paying off debt.

(48:54)
You know, we have $35 trillion in debt. And I’ll never forget it. We were… It was talking about from, you know, the standpoint of being in office. I’m in the Oval Office and I have John McLaughlin and Fabrizio, the two very good pollsters probably. I don’t know. I would say the two best. Who knows? But very good pollsters. And we’re starting to think about running for a second term. And we had the greatest economy in history. Never has there been an economy like that.

And you attribute that to lowering taxes and tariffs.

Yeah. A lot of… Two things. And also, I cut regulations more than anybody else. And if… I asked many of the businessmen, you know, from the big companies, you know, the guys running the big companies, I’d say, “So if you had your choice, you’ve had it now for a long time. What’s more important to you? The tax cuts, you paid less tax, or the regulation cuts?” Every one of them said the regulation cuts meant more.

(49:49)
Who would think that? Right? Because you don’t equate it to dollars, but it actually is more dollars. We had it going and then we just had to focus on something else. But they were sitting-

So you think-

These two pollsters were sitting there and they said, “Sir, if George Washington came back and Abraham Lincoln was his VP, as opposed to Walz,” how bad is he, by the way? But if Abraham Lincoln was his VP, they couldn’t beat you. You have a… And I’ll never forget it. The following day, they said, “Something’s happening in China, sir. Could we meet?” I said, “What’s happening?” ” People are dying.” And it was all around the Wuhan lab, by the way. There are pictures with little lines, their body bags, all around the Wuhan lab. And I always said that from the beginning, Joe, was, you know, they tried to say, first they said it was France and they blamed everybody.

Right.

But then they say it was bats from a cave 2,000 miles away. So we got hit with that. And despite that, we had the best economy. And when I gave it over, the stock market was higher than it was pre-COVID. I mean, nobody could even believe it. But we saved it. And we were helping businesses. They were dying. You know, they were dying.

So it’s your belief that if you had a second term, given the policies in place, the way the economy was booming, that you would have been able to pay off a lot of the debt. And that was the strategy.

If we didn’t have COVID, we would have been paying off debt. And we would have had… And don’t forget, by growth, the word growth is actually more important in a way, because you could have the same debt. But if you doubled your growth, all of a sudden you’re under levered. But still, we should pay off debt. You know, if you viewed this $35 trillion right now, it’s a lot.

(51:42)
But if you look at the asset value, if you looked at it purely as an asset value, we have oil underground, we have water, we have mountains, we have… I mean, the assets are so enormous. But regardless of that, we’ve got $35 trillion in debt, we should pay it off. And we would have started paying off debt and probably even giving further, given further tax reductions.

(52:06)
I want to get it down to 15%. We’re going to do more business. But when you get hit with a COVID, everything stops, and you have to keep these businesses alive. The businesses were dying. I mean, they were just dying. This whole place, this country was going to die.

Are there influences outside of environmental that keep people from wanting to drill for oil and frack and do those sorts of things? Outside of the environmental concerns, which are legitimate, of course.

Yeah, no.

But are there other influences that maybe over-accentuate or over-exaggerate these environmental effects? Are people being influenced in a way where they’re trying to keep us from producing American oil?

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah?

So the environmental is the biggest tool for stopping growth, the biggest tool. The other is regulation. And if you speak to Elon, he said the regulation now to send a rocket up to anywhere, even if you do everything, it’s almost, it’s becoming impossible. But they use environmental in order to get people not to do anything. And sometimes I say, you know, I look at some of the, I know the environmental stuff better because I had to build buildings in New York.

(53:18)
I had to build, I had to do environmental impact studies. And I would see some of these guys that I’d hire for a lot of money, environmentalists that would get you through the process. And they’d be up in Albany, that’s the capital of New York, and they’re up there trying to make it tougher for guys like me that were builders because they’d get paid more money. In other words, I had one guy, highly recommended, you know, he was good at getting permits.

(53:44)
I was one of the kings of, I was always very good. But the environmental stuff was always horrible. They could slow a project down 10 years, 15 years. I had a project in Louisiana, built… big LNG plant. For 14 years, it was going to cost $18 billion, one of the biggest, like the Empire State Building, laying down on its side, times four, massive, on the coast, on the Gulf Coast. And they said, “Sir, they’re going to give it up.” I said, “They shouldn’t give it up. What’s the problem?”.

(54:15)
“They can’t get their environmental.” They had environmental permits that would fill this whole room up to the ceiling. And they said there was one mistake on one little line, they wanted him do it all over again. I said, “It’s not going to happen.” And I got them their permit instantly. And they built the plant, it’s massive.

So when you’re saying that-

The weapon.

So there’s people that are making money by making it difficult. Are you talking about lawyers? Because they’re dragging out-

No, I’m talking about environmental-

the process?

…consultants and lawyers.

Environmental consultants, profit off of dragging out the process.

Absolutely.

And how do they profit?

They make the process worst.

How do they profit off of it?

And I’d probably do the same thing if I were them, to be honest with you, you know?

That’s business, men.

I want to be honest with you.

How do they do that? How do they make it?

They go, let’s say New York, they go to Albany.

Okay.

And they convince people that if you have a certain type of plant on the ground that’s this big, and in theory valueless, that it’s a rare plant, and you cannot even touch it, you can’t go near it, you can’t put a building on it, you can’t do anything. Or there’s a little puddle, and they call it a lake, and you have to go by the standards of a lake. I said, “No, no, that’s a puddle.” Oh, you have no idea. Guys are filling a little puddle. You have no idea what they do. And they use it as a way to stop you.

They use it as a way to stop you and also as a way to generate money.

It’s a weapon.

I’m curious at how are they generating money that way, though?

Well, they get fees.

They get fees?

Massive fees. And you pay these guys.

And people rely on them as experts, because they’re the people they go to when they have to run these studies in the first place?

Yeah, but some of them are just bad guys, and they’re trying to make it more and more difficult.

And they have a lot of power?

Yeah, I think they may be had more. They didn’t have as much with me, because I would get through them, and I understood it. Look, I’ve done so many, they call it environmental impact study. I did so much. To build a building.

(56:05)
To build a building in New York is very tough. You’ve got to deal with, think of it, financing, unions, all the municipal stuff, environmental. Of all of it, to me, the toughest thing was the environmental, because they could stop you cold with the environmental impact study stuff. And you hire a so-called expert, and they say, “Sir, he’s the one guy who can get you through the morass.” It’s a morass. It’s horrible. They use it as a weapon. They use it all over the country.

Right. But there are legitimate concerns about environmental impact, correct?

There are. There are but.

Like, look about the BP oil spill.

Sure.

There’s a lot of things that do happen that are environmentally devastating.

Sure, yeah.

And you want to mitigate that as much as possible.

You do. You do. Look, I had… during our four years, we had the cleanest air and the cleanest water. I view it differently. I say air and water. Remember this. It costs much more to do things environmentally clean. China doesn’t do anything.

(57:02)
When Kerry goes to see President Xi at China, which he probably doesn’t even get to see him, but they look at him, “Oh, yes, yes, we will do, oh, yes, yes, we’re going to do that. No more coal, no more coal.” And then they approve 58 coal plants for the next, you know, every, they build a coal plant a week, okay.

They built a lot of coal plants. We’ve covered that.

But let me just tell you, though, so here we are cleaning and scrubbing everything and everything’s got to… and the air’s got to be pure. But in 3.8 days, that stuff floating over China is right over the top of us.

Right.

Same thing with the oceans. They dump their garbage into the Pacific Ocean. If you take a little cork and put it there, in about a week and a half, it’ll be in front of Los Angeles. We’re picking up their garbage. So nobody ever talks about that. But in a way, the bigger one is even… the air. It’s the currents. It’s an amazing thing. It’s been flowing that way for a million years, long before we were there.

We share air with the whole world. Yeah.

No. If we’re cleaning-

We get the Sahara dust clouds over here.

Absolutely.

We get dust clouds in Austin from the Sahara Desert.

But we get the China, you know, they call it the China curse. We get the China curse, they’re better, and their air is dirty. You know, when I went there, I had a great relationship with President Xi. We got along very well. And they treated me better than anybody’s ever been treated. Same thing with Saudi Arabia, a number of them. But they laid it out. And I said, “This air is good.” Do you know, they closed every factory one week before I got there, from within 200 miles.

That’s like what Gavin Newsom did when Xi Jinping came to San Francisco.

He cleaned it up.

He cleaned it up. He got rid of all the homeless people.

Isn’t that terrible in a way? To think, you know, he cleaned it up, and then it became a pigsty.

Well, the dumbest thing is, he said, “When your friends come by, when you have visitors, you clean up your house.” Like, how about just keep your fucking house clean?

Can you imagine?

That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard anybody say, ever, as a governor, as to excuse to why you finally cleaned up your homeless problem.

And the day he left.

Right back to it.

It went right back.

Yeah.

But in a way, that was a bad thing that he did. Because he showed-

He showed it could be done.

What a disgrace that was. What a disgrace.

Well, this is the thing that, like, shows you how foolish a lot of these people that are running these cities think, and a lot of these people that are running these states think. It’s foolish. You’re insulting the intelligence of the people that live in that city that are impacted by these people just camping, and needles, and human feces. There’s an app that you can buy. There’s an app that you can get, rather, that will show you where the human feces has been documented in San Francisco.

(59:44)
It’s a poo app. And it’s just everywhere. It’s just bum crap. Everywhere.

But let me give you one that you may not know, which I think you know everything, actually.

That’s not true.

As a student of yours. But water. In

Right.

… Los Angeles, you can’t get proper amounts of water and it’s unbelievably expensive, and you might have a house in Beverly Hills, and they’re actually thinking about rationing water. Can you believe it?

I could believe it. I used to live there.

I was in the farm country with some of the congressmen. We’re driving up a highway and I say, “How come all this land is so barren?” It’s farmland and it looked terrible. It was just brown and bad. I said, “But there’s always that little corner that’s so green and beautiful.” They said, “We have no water.” I said, “Do you have a drought?” “No, we don’t have a drought.” I said, “Why don’t you have no water?” Because the water isn’t allowed to flow down. It’s got a natural flow from Canada all the way up north of water, more water than they could ever use. And in order to protect a tiny little fish, the water up north gets routed into the Pacific Ocean. Millions and millions of gallons of water gets poured.

(01:00:58)
You got to see this. We’re driving up and I had never seen it before. It’s like Iowa. It’s the most fertile land. Iowa’s blessed with great land. Idaho for a potato, right?

Yeah.

By the way, some land is good for a potato. Some land is good for corn. It’s the craziest thing. I love the farmers. They’re great. They’re the greatest. And by the way, they’re getting killed right now.

They are.

They’re getting killed because of this stupid administration. So I see this and I said, “You got to be kidding.” I said, “You mean you have water?” And I looked at it, it’s like a valve in your sink, except it’s massive. The thing’s five times taller than your ceiling.

Did you know the center of California was a giant lake?

They have so much water.

You ever see what it looks like before they rerouted it?

No, I never saw that. No.

The center of California, what is it, 200 years ago? How long ago did they do that, Jamie?

One second.

The center of California had a fucking enormous lake in the middle of California.

So they dumped it into the Pacific.

Who knows what they did. But whatever foolishness that they did led to the situation they’re in now.

Think of those dry forests that burned down all over. The head of Austria said-

Here it is. Tulare Lake or Tache Lake. It’s a freshwater lake in the southern San Joaquin Valley, United States. Historically, Tulare Lake was one of the largest freshwater lakes west of the Mississippi. Show a photo of what it looked like back then.

That’s a great system.

So that’s what it looked like. Look at that image. Now the one… Go to the one on the third from the right.

Yeah.

Yeah. That was an enormous lake in the middle of California.

What a beautiful thing.

Imagine that.

That’d be much more valuable property.

How crazy is that? But how crazy is that’s what it used to look like and human beings screwed that up.

No, they let it go into the Pacific and then they did something.

I don’t know what they did. What did they do? How did it go missing?

Wow.

They said they drained it in ’83.

Yeah, they drained it.

1983. Oh my God.

It went dry a handful of times.

Oh, it went dry a handful of times. Well, lakes do go dry, but that’s a big one.

But think of it-

That’s a big one to go dry.

You could have all of the water you need, all of that land would have more water. The whole thing could be like that little patch. Literally I’d say… I was with Devin Nunes, a congressman and other congressmen, we were going up. I was visiting them because they asked me to go up and visit their territory and I did. But I kept saying, “Look at this land. It’s beautiful, but it’s so dry.” And I thought they were going through a desert like a drought. They said, “No, we have water, but it gets…” So I looked into it.

What is the fish?

And I got it done. I got it done. I could have water for all of that land, water for your forests. Your forests are dry as a bone, okay?

Yeah. Dangerous.

That water could be routed. You could have everything. Not only dangerous, billions of dollars a year they spend on forest fires. And there’s a case with the environment. They’re not allowed to rake their forests because you’re not allowed to touch it. When a tree falls down, after 18 months it becomes very dry. It’s like real firewood. It’s bad.

(01:03:54)
A tree that’s up, these are all things I learned the hard way, the easy way. But when a tree is up, it sucks water. It’s wet. I went to, they had a couple of horrible forest fires in California and I went. I said, “You got a lot of trees standing.” “They were healthy trees, sir.” I said, with this intense heat that you could see they were charred a little bit on the bottom, but they were going to be all right because they’re soaking wet because they suck up the water.

(01:04:20)
But when they fall, it’s like lighting a match and you got to be able to clean. They call maintain your forest. So I was with the head of Austria. He said, “You know what? It’s a shame. I see all those forest fires in California and all they have to do is clean their forest,” meaning rake it up, get rid of the leaves, get rid of leaves that are sitting there for five years and-

Well certainly get rid of the dead fall.

And get rid of the trees that have fallen that are… So many things, this country, by the way, I had it all-

Could you really rake the whole forest though? I don’t think you could rake the whole forest. I think you can get rid of the dead fall, but raking all the leaves-

You could certainly get rid of the dead, okay?

Yeah, I think that’s the real issue is the dead fall.

Environmentally, they don’t want to do that. They said it’s got to be nature and all this stuff. But in the meantime, this is exactly… But you could have… So it was the Department of Commerce that needed the approvals, but Gavin Newsom had to sign them. I got it all done. Nobody could believe it. It was all done. I said, “I got it.” You got so much water. All you have to do is sign. And that guy didn’t want to sign.

Did he not want to sign because that would be a political victory for you?

No, he didn’t. No, I don’t think so. He used to say he’s a great president, and we got along. We did. We actually got along at that point. But I think somebody said, “You just can’t continue to call him a great president.” They do say that. But we had it all done. He didn’t sign. And then we got onto other things. And every time I go to California, I said, “You have so much water.” They don’t know it. I’m telling you, people living in Beverly Hills, they turn off their water. Same thing with the electric. They want to go to all electric cars, but they have brownouts every weekend.

Well, right after they made the announcement that as of 2035, you’re not going to be able to buy an internal combustion engine in California. Within a month they had some announcement asking people to not charge their Tesla’s because the grid couldn’t handle it. Well, how are you going to handle-

I’ll terminate the mandate immediately, this mandate.

Good. Thank you.

That will be done, I would say in my first day, maybe two days, because it’s a little bit busy.

Let me ask you about nuclear. One of the things that when I’ve talked to people that have a real understanding of nuclear power, what their position is, it’s probably the cleanest, safest form of electricity that we could generate and that the fears of nuclear power are really about a few disasters. The Fukushima, Three Mile Island, these are old systems and they’re much more capable now and they’re capable of making even better systems. But it’s a difficult political issue because you think nuclear power, you think Chernobyl, that’s what everybody does. They have this connection in their heads that the potential-

Or Fukushima where you’re not supposed to enter the land for 3,000 years or something. It’s crazy.

I think it’s worse than that. I think that area is going to be radioactive for probably longer than you could imagine. But the point is they’re better at it now and that they could do it now. And you can generate power in a way that you don’t have to worry about these… One of the most ridiculous things is electric cars being powered by coal- fired plants. It’s a ridiculous thing.

It’s what’s happening.

Yeah, it is what’s happening.

That’s what’s happening.

And people want to think they’re being green, but it’s-

Well, you look at the way the battery is made. But here’s the other thing. We don’t have… Well, we do actually. It’s being held. We have certain areas where we have great raw earth material and we’re not allowed to use it because of the environment. And we have areas in California that have incredible raw earth and they’re not allowing, and I’m going to open it up. I’m going to let them use it.

But how do you do that and protect the environment?

Because the environment’s going to be protected. You can do it. You can make a lake out of it, okay? We’ll put back a lake. Something nice about lakes. You can do things magnificently-

You just have to do it carefully and responsibly.

Absolutely. You have to do it carefully. But the problem, China has all of those areas, most of those areas, and yet when they say go electric with the cars, China’s going to be the one that gives us the cars. All of those guys in Detroit are going to be out of business. You’re going to make your electric cars over there.

(01:08:30)
We have a thing called gasoline, and we have more oil and gas under our feet than any other nation. I had in Alaska, there’s a find, it’s called ANWR. I got it approved. Reagan couldn’t get it. Nobody could get it. I got it all done. It was amazing. They were getting ready to start drilling the equivalent, they think, of Saudi Arabia, one of the biggest finds in the world. It was all set to go and Biden comes in, one of his first orders were, we’re not going to use it. It would’ve been so good for the… We could have supplied all of Asia with oil and gas.

What was the negative about it?

And you talk about money-

Right.

The negative was politically, they didn’t think it was good for them. That’s all.

That’s all it was. So you don’t think that it’s environmentally dangerous?

No. Taking it from way down deep in the earth. Environmentally would’ve been fine.

So it can be done responsibly?

Absolutely.

To the point where it protects the environment.

Well, I think windmills… Okay, so they talk about windmills.

It’s a good point.

I think windmills are really disruptive. When you talk about the environment, they kill the birds. You want to see a bird cemetery, go under a windmill someday that hasn’t been cleaned out with all the bird carcasses. It’s like massive amounts of birds.

They’re also a massive eyesore.

Oh, they’re horrible.

I went to a ranch in south Texas. We had to drive past this enormous windmill farm, and it’s gross. It’s dystopian. You’re looking in the left and the right and all you see is these big spinning machines that aren’t even that effective at generating electricity.

Correct. Most expensive form of electricity is a windmill, and then they start to rust and rot.

And you have to replace them.

And then they get abandoned by the people that built them because-

Well, you have to get rid of all that material too. When you replace those blades, now you have a problem because you have to dispose.

You can’t bury them.

Right. You have to dispose these enormous windmills. And how do you dispose them?

By the way, they say you can’t bury them. So I even questioned that, but I’m not going to get into it. But they say you can’t bury them. So you have the blades and you can’t bury the blades. You can bury the blades. It’s not going to matter. You can bury. You’ll find areas you can bury. But they come up, this is what I mean, they come up with this, but the environmentalist dream is windmills everywhere. You know what happens to them? After five years, they start to rot. After 10 years, you have to replace them. Did you ever look at certain parts of California where they have heavy windmills and they’ve been abandoned and they’re all different manufacturers and all different companies and they all-

I haven’t seen that.

It is the ugliest thing. It looks like a graveyard almost, a graveyard of windmills.

It’s pollution.

It’s so bad. And the oceans-

It’s no different than leaving garbage on the ground.

How about in New Jersey? Off the coast of New Jersey, they want to build, the people are going crazy not to build them. But where you have them, the whales are washing up on shore. So in 50 years they had one whale come ashore. Now they had like 18 come in the last year.

What is happening with the whales? I’ve read about this.

Well, they say that the wind drives them crazy. It’s a vibration because you have those… Those things are 50 story buildings some of them.

Right. And they’re super sensitive to vibrations and sounds.

The wind is rushing, the things are blowing. It’s a vibration and it makes noise. You know what it is? I want to be a whale psychiatrist. It drives the whales fricking crazy and something happens with them. But for whatever reason, they’re getting washed up on shore. And yet the environmentalists-

Conveniently ignored by the environmental people.

But the environmentalists, they don’t talk about it. I think there’s nothing uglier. I see it Scotland. I see it all over the world. You have this beautiful valley. It’s been there for, in civilization, thousands of years, but millions of years, and all of a sudden you have these ugly windmills up.

Would your plan to be replace that with nuclear? What would you do?

Well, nuclear is better. I think there’s a little danger, nuclear, but we had some really bad nuclear. They did one in Alabama. They did one in, I think South Carolina. They do them wrong. They build these massive things. Then the environmentalists get… I don’t want to go into a long story because it’s too long for the show. This show is too valuable to talk about concrete, but they have hardened concrete. It’s number 12 concrete. It’s the hardest. It’s harder than steel. It’s incredible. They put up a wall and an inspector comes along those lines, “Nope, nope. You’re a quarter of an inch…” The wall might be eight feet wide. You’re a quarter of an inch too short. I’m sorry. You got to rip down the wall. You got to… Because it’s got to be poured contiguously. You’re one quarter of an inch… I’m sorry, rip down. You can’t rip it down. This stuff, you can’t put a hammer through. It’s incredible. Concrete technology is unbelievable what’s happened. You think of concrete-

So you think that’s an example of over-regulation, pointless over-regulation?

Well, you have an inspector that comes along and he says, “Take down a 25 zillion dollar wall.” These things ended up costing 25 billion dollars. One of them never got opened. But here’s the story. So France does it. France is largely nuclear, and they build small little compact plants, and if they need more, they build the same thing and they hook it up and they hook it up because they get too big and too complex and too expensive, and it is very clean. They say it’s absolutely… My uncle, I had a great uncle who was a great genius, just like other members of my family, but he was a professor at MIT for I think 41 years. He was the longest… When I was in the White House, the head of MIT, Princeton and Harvard came down to meet me, and the MIT person said, “I have a book on your uncle Dr. John Trump. He was our longest serving professor. He was a great genius, sir. Do you know how…”

(01:14:04)
He knew everything about nuclear. From math to chemistry to nuclear, he knew it. And he said, “Someday it’s got to be the way to go.” But the problem is it’s so dangerous in terms of war. He said, “Donald, someday,” and this was a long time, uncle John, Dr. John Trump, he said, “Someday you’ll have a little satchel at your side and you’ll go into a building and you’ll be able to blow up New York City.” I said, “Uncle John, that’ll never happen.” He’s right. He’s right.

Well, that was part of the problem-

The power is so great.

… with giving nuclear power to other countries. That was the problem that happened with India and Pakistan. They got nuclear power and then they were able to weaponize it.

The biggest problem in the world today is not global warming. It’s nuclear warming. And we have idiots that are negotiating for us. We have a guy that doesn’t make it past four o’clock, and it’s not because of age. I know so many guys in their late 80s, and they’re better than… I said to one guy the other day, “I think you’re smarter than you were 25 years ago.” I’ve known him a long time. He’s 89 years old. He’s sharp as… I mean, he’s great. Biden gives people a bad name because that’s not an old… That’s not an age. I think they say it because I’m three or four years younger. I think that’s why they say it. They say his age. It’s not his age. He’s got a problem.

Had two major brain surgeries.

Operations, yeah. He did. He did. Those are not good operations.

And did you see what he did today? He went running towards the camera and made some apology to Native Americans, and he said that’s why he is headed out west. He’s off the reservation, so to speak, for lack of a better term.

It’s interesting because during the debate, I was looking over him saying, “This is strange.” Sort of strange things were happening.

Yeah. Well, he couldn’t keep it together. But do you think they knew he couldn’t keep it together?

I think so.

Do you think that they wanted… Is that why, historically, that debate was earlier than they’ve been in the past, right?

I think they wanted to… Well, there’s a lot of theories. A lot of people said, do the debate now and we’ll get him out.

Right.

I think that maybe could be.

Well, that is what happened. So it’s logical to assume that’s the one.

It is what happened. I think they also said do the debate now and get it over with.

Right.

I don’t think anybody thought he was going to get out, really.

It didn’t make any sense.

The debate got him out, but I think it’s very unfair. Look, you have a bad debate, his numbers went down, but I think she’s not doing very well right now, and I think she looks…

Well, I want to get to that too, because it’s hard to know. The whole poll thing is very bizarre for most people because most people don’t answer polls. So they read the polls, then like, who’s getting polled? I’ve never been polled. If I did, I’d hang up.

I was never called by a pollster.

If I did, I wouldn’t answer. I’m busy.

You know how polls are done? Oh, I’m going to get myself in trouble.

Please.

So I really don’t believe too much in them.

Well, 2016 taught a lot of people about the ineffective use of polls.

Well, they were very ineffective because I thought I was doing well. I’d go to a place and I’d have 30, 40,000 people. Hillary would go, they have 500 people. And they tell me I’m going to lose. I said, “Why am I going to lose?” I had 40,000 people. She had 200 people. But I have a theory, these pollsters, they charge you a lot of money too. They charge you half a million bucks to do some stupid poll and they interview like 251 people. I don’t think they interview them in many cases. I don’t want to get myself in too much trouble.

Do you think it’s bullshit?

No. I think they sit there, they make a deal, they get a half a million bucks, and they say, “Trump’s leading 51 to 49.” They announce it and everybody says, “Oh, oh.” Do you understand?

Yeah. So you think-

I think in a lot… Look, I’m a very common sense person. I think that they probably don’t always poll. Some of them probably never poll. What’s the difference between 49 to 51 and 47 and a half?

Well, it’s also a tiny percentage of the population. I don’t think it’s representative of the overall population. I just don’t think it is.

I don’t know of one person in my whole life that ever got called by a pollster.

Exactly. That’s my point. So here’s my question-

But I shouldn’t say that because I’m doing really well in the polls.

But I think that’s-

So this week I happen to believe in [inaudible 01:18:13]. I only believe them if they’re good. No, I like them this month. But no, I honestly believe that there’s probably a lot of fraud. I had a poll, Washington Post, ABC in the Hillary thing on Wisconsin. They had me down 17 points the day before the election. I knew it was wrong because I had a rally, I had 29,000 people at a racetrack, and it was like zero degrees, Wisconsin, and they had me down 17 points. In other words, you had no chance. And I won.

(01:18:41)
And I called up my pollster, he’s a good guy, good guy. And I believe he’s legitimate. And some of them are, and some of them are. I said, “Tell me, why did they have me down so much?” Nobody’s going to believe them the next time. They said they don’t care. When you’re down 17 points, people are going to stay home. They’re not going to vote because they’re going to say, “I love Trump, but I’m not going to waste my time. It’s cold out.” I said, “But what if they make it four or five?” He said, “At four or five, they’re going to go and vote. At 17, they’re not going to go and vote.” But think of it, this is the Washington Post, ABC poll. I was down 17 points in Wisconsin and I won. It’s crooked stuff.

There’s a lot of crooked stuff, and I wanted to talk about that too, because one of the things that people talk about with you is the denial of the results. And I think JD Vance did a brilliant job the other day when he was being interviewed and they asked him, “Did Trump lose the 2020 election?” And he turned it around and said, “Was there legitimate election interference in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story on social media and was that a concerted effort?”

Well, they say it made 10 point difference, and I lost by one tenth of a point. They say it was 22,000 votes. But look, it was much more than that. And I appreciate JD Vance saying that. And by the way, I think he was a great pick. Do you like JD?

I like him a lot. Yeah.

You’re allowed to say that.

No, I do. I like him a lot.

No, I think he’s good.

I think he’s a brilliant guy and I think his ability to talk like a normal human being… You did my friend Theo Von’s podcast and he just did it.

How did he do with it?

He did great. He just talks like a normal human being.

Is that why you called me to do this?

No, no.

I’m only kidding. He was a nice guy.

Once they shot you, I was like, “He’s got to come in here.” It’s all about timing. It’s all about the timing.

Timing is good.

Timing’s perfect. Do you have even have a scar on your ear? You got anything on there?

I do.

Let me see. Let me see what you’ve got there.

So right over here-

It’s a tiny little mark.

It zicked right there.

It healed up pretty fucking good.

Yeah, it’s pretty good. Yeah, it’s not like some of the wrestlers, some of the UFC fighters.

No, you didn’t cauliflower ear.

No, no. It got me, was sort of like a top shot. The point of the bullet was [inaudible 01:20:57], but you see the things take it off a little bit, but it makes me a tougher guy. The fighters, the fighters love their… You know Bo Nickal? He is a great fighter.

Yeah, I love Bo Nickals.

How’s he going to do? I think he’s terrific.

He’s great. He’s a fantastic fighter.

He was almost undefeated in college.

Yeah, he’s a fantastic wrestler and one of the best mixed martial artists.

When is he fighting again? I want to-

He’s fighting in Madison Square Garden in November.

Oh, that’s going to be after the election.

Yep.

So I’ll either go as president or I’ll be depressed and I won’t bother going. I think they’re having a fight right after.

One of the things that was fascinating also was the denial of the election results is a pretty common thing. Hillary Clinton famously denied that… She called you an illegitimate president and she said that Russia put you in place.

Even though she conceded.

Yes.

She conceded the night of the election because she was beaten.

Yes. And it was a thing that was pretty common for people, especially Democrats, to deny the elections. There’s been many of them. The Bush administration, the dangling Chads, all that stuff.

Well, look at these guys in Congress. All these sleazebags in Congress that are Democrats, they’re still denying 2016, but now they don’t so much because they try and pin it on me. You don’t hear them say-

But here’s my point.

… but they denied it right up until the end.

My point is this idea of election fraud is a forbidden topic, and you get labeled an election denier. It’s like being labeled an anti-vaxxer if you question some of the health consequences that people have had from the COVID-19 shots. “Oh my God, you’re an anti-vaxxer.” If you say, and what I say publicly, and I’ve said this a lot, it’s not 0%. So if you ask me what is the amount of election fraud in this country? Is it 0%? No one thinks it’s 0%. I’ve never met one person, not a super liberal, progressive, far-left person or a right-wing conservative, not one person thinks it’s 0%. They think when you have human beings, and also you have a lot of weirdness that was going on during the 2020 elections, particularly with mail-in ballots.

And you had legislatures that had to approve and they didn’t approve and they went out and did it anyway, and you had ballot… You had old-fashioned ballot screwing. You had people going up and dropping in phony votes. You had unsigned ballots, et cetera, et cetera.

There’s certain people that think that they have… And the rhetoric is also that you’re Hitler and that in order to stop Hitler, you have to do whatever it takes.

That was okay. Yeah.

Yeah. And you’re hearing this now, Kamala compared you to… Said your love of Hitler yesterday.

Kamala is a very low IQ person. She’s a very low IQ. I’m for taking tests too. I think anybody that runs for president should take… They should give them tests. And it’s not an age thing, it’s not based… If you look back on history, ’70s and ’80s, some of your greatest leaders in the world, world history, long time, world history, they were in their 70s and their 80s. But I think you should take cognitive tests. I think everybody… They say it’s unconstitutional, but I think-

That’s ridiculous.

I think Kamala should have a test because there’s something missing. There’s something wrong with her.

Well, I think it’s pressure. I think the pressure and the scrutiny. You’ve been a celebrity for a long time and you understand what this is like, but for someone who’s in her late 40s, who becomes the vice president, who runs for president, becomes the vice president, and then all of a sudden the weight of the world is on your shoulders and there’s all these people paying attention. A lot of people clam up.

But you either have it or you don’t.

Correct.

Look, this is an interview. We’ve covered a lot of territory and it’s fine, I don’t care. I want to. I think it’s much more interesting. She to do an interview with Anderson Cooper, a softball, crazy softball interview. She took two days off and she studied and studied all day long and then she comes out with a result that was a real embarrassment. That was a really bad interview. She couldn’t answer a question. And every question’s not answered. Like, “What would you do your first day in office?” Okay, I’ll build a wall. I won’t build a wall. There’s a hundred things you can say. Just say anything. There’s something off with her.

Well, I also think-

Joe, we’re dealing with the smartest people. They hate when I say… When the press, when I call President Xi, they said he called President Xi brilliant. Well, he’s a brilliant guy. He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist. He’s a brilliant guy whether you like it or not, and they go crazy and say, “Oh…”

Right. It doesn’t mean he’s not evil or it doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous.

Yeah, of course not. But actually, we have evil people in our country.

Yes.

If you have a smart president, he can deal with Russia. He can deal with all of it. Russia would’ve never gone into Ukraine if I were president.

How would you have stopped it?

Automatic. Two things. I told him, I said, “Vladimir, you’re not going in.” I used to talk to him all the time. “You’re not going in.” I can’t tell you what I told him because I think it would be inappropriate. But someday he’ll tell you. But he would’ve never gone in. But you know why else he wouldn’t have gone in? Oil prices at $40 a barrel wouldn’t have allowed him, wouldn’t have given him the money to prosecute that war. Wouldn’t have given him the money.

(01:26:07)
I said it with President… I was with President Xi. I said… It was almost the same conversation. With Vladimir, it was Moscow. With President Xi, it was Beijing. It was almost the exact same conversation. I said, “Don’t do it.” He would’ve never done it.

(01:26:25)
The day I left, they flew 28 bombers over the middle of Taiwan, 28 bombers. And it’s the apple of his eye. And the same thing with Russia. It’s the apple. Ukraine is the apple of his eye. I used to talk to him. I had a very good relationship with him. He wouldn’t have done it. He would’ve never done it.

(01:26:43)
But he also wouldn’t have done it because of… One of the reasons that what happened is, number one, he doesn’t respect Biden at all. Not even a little bit. And who the hell would? But he doesn’t respect him. But when he saw what happened in Afghanistan, how horribly that was handled, number one, you take the soldiers out last, not first, okay? That was their big mistake. And we had that thing charted out and they weren’t obeying us. They weren’t… Abdul is the head of the Taliban. Boom, boom, he had to do all these things. Some he didn’t do. I said, “Nope, you got to do them all.”

(01:27:17)
This guy, he immediately took all… He left the equipment behind. 13 soldiers dead. But he took everybody out. He took his soldiers out before. A child would know… That’s where Milley was so stupid. He was such a stupid guy, Milley. Okay, those generals should have all been fired, the Afghan. The people that were involved with Afghanistan should have all been fired. Then they’d be writing books about him, how stupid he was and bad he was. But you take your soldiers out last.

(01:27:48)
I had a big rally and I saw a child in the front row about a year and a half ago, and I called the child up. I said, “Do you mind if I borrow your child?” “Oh, yes, please.” And they came up. Kids five years… I gave them quick details. I said, “We want to get out of this place, and we have this and we have this, and we have the equipment.” I gave him a little thing. I said, “Do you take your soldiers out first or last after everything’s done?” “You take them out last, sir.” A child would know that. We took our soldiers out first.

What was your plan-

And we left Bagram.

Well, not only that, we left billions of dollars worth of equipment and military vehicles that they use for parades now.

The best equipment yet, to embarrass us, the best equipment in the world.

The Taliban parade where they got tanks rolling down the streets and Blackhawks flying is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen.

We left-

The fact that we left all that stuff there.

… the best equipment in the world behind.

What would you have done differently?

Well, number one, we would’ve taken it out. Just so you… Go back a little bit further. I had a couple of conversations with Abdul, and from the time I had those conversations, because they were shooting our soldiers with the sniper stuff. They were shooting a lot of them. They were shooting a lot with Obama, much less with me, but they were shooting them. And I said, “Get this guy on the phone.” The press went nuts when they heard this. I had a great conversation with… It was a tough conversation.

(01:29:13)
18 months later, there wasn’t one soldier that was ever shot at, and even Biden admitted it in a moment of stupidity because he shouldn’t admit it. His people went nuts. He said, “Yeah, well, I will admit no soldier…” We didn’t have a soldier killed in 18 months in Afghanistan. Not one soldier was killed because he understood what was going to happen if that happened. I didn’t have one soldier.

(01:29:36)
So then when I left, after having gotten more votes than any sitting president in the history of the country, and much more votes than I got in 2016, when I left, they started shooting our soldiers. But more importantly, what they did is they did that whole thing with leaving. He shouldn’t have left. Number one, should have left from Bagram because Bagram’s

This massive base, it’s got tremendous acreage around it, tremendous. It’s a very big… It was built many years ago and part of the reason you wouldn’t have taken that is because it goes to China, one hour from where China makes its nuclear missiles. You should have never left Bagram, number one. They should have left from Bagram. They should have left last. We have Americans that are still there. They should have taken all their equipment out, everything, every plane, every screw should have been taken out, every tent. And I said that. That’s when I realized that Milley was a dummy. I said, “We’re leaving, but I want to get everything out.” “Sir, it’s cheaper to leave it.” I said, “What do you mean leave it?”

It’s cheaper to leave it?

Yeah, he said it’s cheaper to leave it. That was his-

Cheaper?

Cheaper. He said, it’s cheaper. “Sir-

Not more dangerous?

He just said cheaper. I said, “I want every plane. I want every tank. I want the goggles.” They have night goggles. They have all this stuff that these guys now have. He said, “Sir, it’s cheaper to get out and leave it.” I said, “So you think it’s cheaper to leave $150 million brand new airplane in there than it is to fly it out with a tank of jet fuel and put it in Pakistan or just fly it directly back?” “It’s cheaper to leave it.” I said, “This guy’s nuts.” I’m telling you, he was so stupid. He was so unwise. He was like an unwise man. And there were a number of them.

(01:31:23)
But I defeated ISIS with the greatest generals. I had a guy who was so great. I flew to Iraq and I met the real generals, not these idiots that we deal with, and we knocked out… I defeated 100% of the ISIS caliphate. They said it would take five years. I did it in a matter of literally a few weeks. And we hit them hard. And he said, “Sir, we’re going to hit them here. We’re going to hit them there. We’re going to hit him here, there.” And I said, “This guy’s great. I like this guy.” I was told it would take five years. That’s why I went. I said, “How could it take five years? We have brand new fighters, we have the best planes, the best weapons, the best guns, the best bombs. How could it possibly take that long?”

(01:32:09)
And I flew in, left at three o’clock in the morning. Nobody knew I was going. I got on Air Force One and we started flying, and when we reached about half an hour away from Iraq, that was where the airport was, big airport, about a half an hour away, they said, “Sir, I’m sorry, you’ll have to turn off all your lights.” “Why?” “We’re getting close to our site, our land.” I said, “We spent $8 trillion that we can’t leave the lights.” Think of this, 20 years, $8 trillion that we can’t leave the lights on in a plane. I said, “That’s okay. Turn the lights off. I’m not going to fight them this one.”

This is because it’s too dangerous?

Yeah, too dangerous because they see the light up in the air.

They shoot at it.

They’ll shoot at it. So I said, “Turn the lights off.” Then they said, sir, we’re going to also pull your shades if that’s okay.” Said, “That’s okay.” The plane pitch black. All the lights outside, the blinking they call them the blinking reds. They were all turned off. And I like to sit with pilots a lot of times, and these guys are specimens. I always say they’re better looking than Tom Cruise. And they’re even taller, like perfect specimens. These guys, for a fighter, you have some guys that are perfect specimens, these guys. They pick the best pilots in the United States Air Force to fly Air Force One.

(01:33:29)
And I get up there and I’m feeling my way up. It’s up high because 747s you go through the stairs. But I sort of knew my way up. There wasn’t a light in the plane. I’m saying, “Can you imagine? We spent trillions of dollars and we’re trying to fly in blind.” But I got into the plane. The cockpit is dark black, little tiny light, you could see the pilot, a perfect looking human being. His copilot, everybody was perfect. They were all like movie stars. I could have cast a movie with these guys and nobody would believe it because they were too good-looking. So I said, “How are we doing, Captain?” “Sir, we’ll be landing in 10 minutes.” And I look outside, there’s not a light. And I’m sitting, I’ve landed a lot of planes and you see little lights at least. There’s nothing. It’s just pure desert. And I said, “Okay, Captain, good.” But I’m looking. You’ve been to many planes where it has the computer sign saying 1,000 feet. [inaudible 01:34:29].

(01:34:28)
It goes, “1,000, 900, 800.” It’s a computer voice but it sounds like… But it’s an incredible voice. “700.” I say, “Captain, are we okay?” I’m looking. “Are we okay, Captain? There’s no lights.” And I’m looking Normally when you land… Because I sit with pilots a lot. I think it’s great. I think it’s a great profession, everything. They’re incredible. These machines are incredible. He said, “Sir, we’re fine. No problem, sir.” I said… I’m going, “I don’t see any lights up there, Captain. Sure we’re okay?” I’m exaggerating a little bit. Problem with exaggerating, they’ll tell the story, they’ll say, “Trump was a coward.” So I’m sitting with him. He goes, “500” And I’m telling you, there wasn’t a light on the runway, nothing. And we’re going in. “You okay, Captain? Everything good?” “Yes, sir. No problem. We’ll be down in about one minute, sir.” And I’m telling you, Joe, there’s always a light. There’s not a little pin.

(01:35:32)
And all of a sudden, pssh and you hear it, bah, bah, perfect landing like glass. That’s how good… These guys between the equipment and… It’s genius. It’s pure… It was so dark, you couldn’t see a thing. There was no runway. You wouldn’t know where the hell you are. You’re in the middle of a desert. And then I got out of the plane, I said, “Thank you, Captain. It’s a great job.” And then I got out of the plane and I’m going down and I see a general and another general, and I see a staff sergeant, a drill sergeant and various guys, all central casting. Central casting. They said, “Sir, would you like to rest?” I said, “I don’t want to rest. I want to figure out what the hell are we doing with ISIS? I’m hearing it’s going to take years.” “No sir. We can do it very quickly, sir.”

(01:36:19)
Anyway, we go into the room. Biden would’ve taken a nap for four days and then left without a meeting. So we go into the room and they have these guys. I say, ” How long can you do it? How long?” “We can do it in a couple of weeks, sir.” I said, “Wait a minute. They told me five years.” “We can do it in…” I don’t know. He gave me a number like [inaudible 01:36:41], in no time. I said, “Why haven’t you done it?” “Because the orders came in from Washington, sir. And they would come here and tell us what to do.” “Don’t you challenge that?” “We’re not allowed to do that, sir. That’s not the military way. They tell us what to do and we have to respect them. I just-

So do you think that it was incompetence why they didn’t go after ISIS? Do you-

I think it’s a bad system. When Mattis goes there or when Milley goes there, who’s stupid, and they tell these guys that are actually smart what to do, and the guys that are smart are saying, “We don’t like what they’re doing.” But they’re not allowed to counteract. Plus the guys that went there are arrogant. They’re arrogant fools. They’re stupid fools. As an example, the way they pulled out of Afghanistan with the people falling off the plane-

It was a disgrace.

It was worse than Vietnam with the helicopters falling. It was so bad. There was no reason for it. Anyway, so we knocked them out and we have great military, we have great people, but not the television guys. And I rebuilt the military and then they gave a chunk of it… I have to tell you, as much as it is, it’s a tiny little piece. Believe it or not. We have an unbelievable… I rebuilt the military. I rebuilt our nuclear, and in a way I hated to redo it, but I got to realize how powerful that nuclear is. Joe, one bomb, Israel is gone. But forget. One bomb could take out the entire East Coast. It’s so bad.

(01:38:12)
And I watched these poor fools talking about our oceans will rise one-eighth of an inch over the next 500 years. We have people, we have countries, right now you have five countries. And don’t underestimate, if you take a look at North Korea, their… I was there. I was with Kim Jong. I got along great with him. The press is, “He got along good.” That’s a good thing. It’s not a bad thing. It’s a great thing. Obama thought we were going to go to war with North Korea. When I met with Obama just prior to the takeover, you meet, you have sort of a ceremonial meeting, but it lasted a long time, a lot longer than it was supposed to last. I said, “What’s the biggest problem?” He said, “North Korea.” By the time I finished, we had no problem with North Korea. We were really… It was a little tough at the beginning, remember?

Mm-hmm.

He said, “I have a red button on my desk.” I said, “I have a red button also, but mine’s bigger than yours and mine works.”

I liked how you called them Little Rocket Man.

Yeah, Little Rocket… I said, “Little Rocket Man, you’re going to burn in hell.” And it was a rough… Oh, so rough that people were worried. This is crazy. And then one day I got a call, sort of like a fight. I got a call. You ever see one of them pounding fight? And then all of a sudden, but I got a call and it was from him, meaning his people, they wanted to meet. They wouldn’t meet Obama. He tried to meet. They wouldn’t even talk to him about it. And I think he expected to go to war. I actually do. I believe he expected to go. And we checked their nuclear stockpile. It is substantial. I got to know him very well. I got to know him better than anybody. Anybody. And I said, “Do you ever do anything else? Why don’t you go take it easy and relax? Go to the beach. You have beautiful beach, nice beachfront property.” Kiddingly. I said, “You’re always building nuclear, just relax. You don’t have to do it. Let’s build some condos on your shoreline.” They actually have gorgeous stuff.

(01:40:10)
And he said, “I just have to do it because I need it for my safety et cetera.” I got to know him very well. We had no problem with him. If you have a smart problem… If you have a smart, really the right president, the smart president, you’re not going to have a problem. And I say it to people, we have a bigger problem, in my opinion, with the enemy from within. And it drives them crazy when I use that term. But we have an enemy from within. We have people that are really bad people that I really think want to make this country unsuccessful. When you look at what’s happening at our border, Joe, when you have people coming in that… When other countries are allowed to empty their prisons into our country with murderers… We had 13,099 murderers dropped in our country over the last three years.

And 15,000 rapists, convicted.

Rapists, drug dealers, drug lords, terrorists.

And that’s just the ones that have been accounted for.

Correct. People from mental institutions.

What do you think the strategy is?

Hundreds to hundreds of thousands of major criminals, tougher and worse than anybody we have. These are-

Well, we’re seeing the consequences of it in San Antonio. They’ve taken over apartment buildings in Aurora, Colorado. They’ve taken over-

That’s right.

Apartment buildings, these Venezuelan gangs.

Just the beginning.

What do you think the strategy is? One of the things that they’ve said is that you stopped a bill from being passed. But didn’t that bill also include amnesty for the people that are already here?

This is years after the fact. The damage was already done.

But what was the bill? What was the problem with the bill?

And the bill was nothing. It allowed two million people in, they were going to get amnesty. It was a horrible bill. It didn’t protect us at all.

But we should just tell people what the strategy is. So one of the things that’s-

Well, [inaudible 01:41:58] what their strategy was.

Their strategy, one of the things that’s been very clear is that they’ve moved a large percentage of these migrants that are coming across the border illegally, they’ve moved them to swing states. This is what’s going on with Springfield, Ohio, right?

They’re in swing states. Well, that’s not a swing state. I’m going to win Ohio by a lot. So that’s not a swing, but it’s called Springfield, Ohio to be exact. And Springfield, Ohio is this very nice community of 52,000 people that just had 32,000 migrants that don’t speak the language dropped into their community. You can’t get into a hospital. You can’t get into a school. It’s gone from a beautiful little place to a horror show. And the mayor is a nice guy. And the mayor says, “We’re looking for interpreters.” I said, “No, you’ve got to remove them and bring them back to their country.” Mostly Haitians in this case. But they speak no language. They speak no English.

No English you mean.

In fact, even the language, they do speak, they can’t get interpreters. They can’t do anything. And the mayor’s trying to be politically correct. They’re all trying to be. In Aurora, Colorado, you have probably the worst gang… MS-13 might even be… Those two are the worst gangs. These are Venezuelan gangs. They have taken over apartment complexes and they’re going to want to take over the whole thing. And you have a weak governor, pathetic governor, who’s a radical left Democrat. He doesn’t know what the hell to do. But you have it in many other communities, but they don’t like to talk about it because it’s bad for the community to talk about it. These people have been let in here by this imbecile. And I mean it, she’s a low IQ person. Low IQ.

But also, it’s obviously not just her. There’s a strategy that’s involved in letting these people in.

Well, she was in charge of the border.

Well, she’s in charge of the border, but they also, they utilize that app. The app that used to be used-

Sure.

It used to be used, I think essentially, wasn’t it for shipping? Wasn’t it when people were in this country…

It was used for shipping and now it’s used to deal with the cartels. The cartel, heads of the cartel, rich people by the way, these are loaded, these people have so much money. They would call up… Think of this. They call up the app and the app tells them where they should take their load of illegal migrants from the Congo. We have a lot from the Congo, prisons in the Congo. I made a little bit of a sarcastic joke. A man named Dana White, who you love, who I love, I assume you love him. I-

Love that dude.

I think he’s in a class by him… He’s-

He’s probably the reason why you’re here.

I don’t know. Maybe.

He’s one of the big ones.

He is the greatest guy.

I love him to death.

I always say nobody’s indispensable. Everybody can be replaced. Maybe you can’t be. You might not be. But they know I truly, I don’t think… You know the thing, they sold it for four billion. I said, “Who the hell is going to pay four billion?” And they made a great deal.

It’s worth a lot more than that now.

Because of him. Take him out, I think it’s whole different ball game but-

No, he’s the best fight promoter of all time.

He’s also the greatest guy. He spoke at the whole thing with I had just been shot and he got up and he spoke better than anybody. Who would be better to introduce you? I asked, of all the people, and I know the biggest people in the world, and they all would’ve loved to have done it. I said, “Dana, would you do it?” It was interesting. He was away. And he said to the people, one of my guys called, said, “I won’t be able to do it. She had just left with my wife and family, I won’t.” I said, “Ooh.” He said, “No, yeah.”

(01:45:37)
I was a little surprised, even though I knew he was very far away. He was in some place some… And he deserved it with his family, the whole thing. And then I said, “All right. That’s…” So we’re looking at who are we going to get. And all of a sudden she comes in, “Sir, Dana White just said he’s going to do it. And he’s coming back in tonight. He’s taking it.” The guy is just an incredible guy. And he’s like a tough champion, but loyal. He’s got to be one of your favorite people. He’s one of my favorite people.

[inaudible 01:46:04]. I love me to death. I’ve been friends with him for 23 years. I love him to death.

So would you have… Because what you’re doing here is incredible. Everybody tells me. All I know is today I’m going… “You’re on Joe Rogan today.” People are telling me like that’s [inaudible 01:46:18]. I say, “How the hell do you know that?” What you’ve done here is amazing. Where would you be if you didn’t do the UFC stuff? Would you have this show, do you think?

Yeah, I would still be doing it for sure. I’m doing it-

Would it be at the same level?

I don’t know.

But you would have the show?

It’s hard to know. I think one of the things that works for this show, I guess, is that I am involved in so many different things. Stand-up, comedy, UFC and all the interests that I have that lead to the podcast.

Will you always want to do… First of all, you love UFC?

I love it. Yeah.

You love the fights. I watch you. You are loving it. They could pay you nothing, you’d be very-

They didn’t pay me anything. For the first 13 shows, I did it for free because they were hemorrhaging money. And I became friends with Dana, and my position was, “You’re going to give me the best seat in the house. I get to sit cage side for the fights.” I go, “I’ll do it.” And I wanted to help. I was like, “I think these are the guys that we had always hoped for.”

He’s an amazing guy.

In the early days of the sport, I started working for the company in 1997, before the UFC was purchased by Zuffa, which Dana worked for.

Oh, wow. Wow.

So I was a part of the previous owners, and I only did it for a couple of years. It was just too much and I was losing money. And it was banned from cable because of Budweiser and John McCain, and you could only get it on Direct TV. And so-

And then I came along and I gave him the sites.

You did. And he loves you for that.

And he never forgot it.

He loves you for that. He talks about it all the time.

Just to interrupt you for one sec. So they couldn’t get a site because it was too dangerous and everybody was against it and they couldn’t get licensed. And I gave him the first two or three sites. And they were great. And by the way, I went to the first fight, I said, “I never saw anything like this.” It was crazy. It was so good. Take the best fight you’ve ever… It was like that fight. It was so good that I gave it to him again, and again. And all of a sudden it caught on.

(01:48:02)
But when I wasn’t in vogue, I’ve had time, you probably never had a time, but I had times when I wasn’t exactly in vogue, Dana, they called him, he said, “He’s the greatest guy. There’s nobody like him.” He said, “I’ll never say anything bad about that guy because when I needed…” Because they were having a hard time at the beginning, they almost pulled the plug a couple of times. He said, “He stood up and he gave us stuff that nobody else gave us, and nobody wanted anything to do.” And he said, “I will never…” And there was a time where it would’ve been very popular for him to say bad stuff about me. He said the greatest stuff about me. He said, “You’re going to try and get me to say bad stuff about Trump but I’m never doing it.” So he’s-

He’s a very, very, very loyal guy.

An unusual guy.

Very unusual guy.

He’s a fantastic guy.

A perfect guy to be at the helm of something so controversial as the UFC.

Less controversial now certainly.

Well, now it’s huge. Well, this was always the thing that I would hope that it would be. I always knew that it was unbelievably entertaining, but I just didn’t know if maybe I was crazy. Maybe I loved it because I’ve had this long history of being involved in martial arts and maybe other people who just think it’s too violent.

Can boxing make it?

Yeah. Boxing’s still a great sport. I love boxing.

But it seems to be so unimportant now by comparison to UFC, don’t you think?

I think… Well, Dana is working with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They’re going to start promoting boxing now.

[inaudible 01:49:26].

And with Dana at the helm of it, I think boxing could return, because the thing is, they want to make fights that other maybe promoters don’t want to make because they want to protect their fighter. Controversial fights where it’s dangerous. You don’t know, this guy could lose. And so the Saudis, they’re smart. They just offer a tremendous amount of money, and they’re putting together fights that no one else can put together. They’re doing that in boxing.

If Dana’s involved, he’ll probably make it good.

He’ll make it good.

The amazing thing though, in fighting, no UFC fighter they say has ever died, and it looks to me much more violent than boxing. Many boxers have died. Isn’t it interesting? And Dana tells me, because they take so many shots to the face.

Yes and there’s also no other options to preserve yourself, to protect yourself. So if you get hit in a UFC fight, you can clinch, you can try to take the fight to the ground. You got options. Also, you don’t get allowed to get knocked down and then get back up. When you get knocked down, you’re concussed. And generally, if a guy’s really hurt, they could be finished on the ground and the fight’s over. If it’s boxing, you have 10 seconds to get up. You get up, your head kind of clears, but you’re still in real bad trouble, and then you can run away and survive until the bell rings. They’re only three minute rounds, and then you start again. So you’re getting repeated punishment to the head.

(01:50:40)
And then there’s also the issue of guys weight cutting, which is a problem with the UFC as well. But weight cutting and boxing has led to… If you look at deaths in boxing, there’s very few of them in the heavyweight division. Most of the deaths in boxing are the lighter weight divisions.

Wow, oh, that’s [inaudible 01:50:54].

Because when guys dehydrate themselves to lose weight, to make weight, their brain is the last thing that gets rehydrated. It’s very difficult to completely rehydrate your brain quickly. And you only have 24 hours between the weigh-in and the fight. And it used to be, the weigh-ins were the day of the fight. Like when “Boom Boom” Mancini had a fight with Duck Koo Kim and killed him in the ring, which is one of the last ones on television that we’ve seen-

That’s right.

That was a crazy event for people and heartbreaking. And it led to a bunch of different changes. And one of them is day before weigh-ins to allow people to rehydrate better. And the other one is they dropped it from 15 rounds down to 12.

Which, look, they should do that. I’m not the fighter, but those 15 round fights were unbelievable.

They were unbelievable.

They were unbelievable. In terms of-

You go back to the golden age-

In terms of entertainment, those were the championship reps. Those were the greatest fights ever.

Those last three rounds were crazy.

That was brutal.

It’s such a war of attrition. A lot of people think even a five-round UFC fight, the UFC is five-minute rounds, it’s so much energy are burning out. And those last couple of rounds, those five round fights, the fourth and the fifth round, unbelievably brutal.

Who’s the greatest UFC fighter, are you allowed to say, in your opinion? It’s tough for you to say because you do this, but who do you think is the greatest of the fighters?

There’s a lot of arguments for who’s the greatest of all time. Jon Jones, most people would say is the greatest of all time. Never lost. There’s certainly a really good argument for that. There’s another argument for Georges St-Pierre. I always leave in B.J. Penn in his prime, Anderson Silva in his prime. Mighty Mouse, people forget about Mighty Mouse because unfortunately he’s a smaller guy. He’s a 125 pounds flyweight champion. He’s one of the greatest expressions-

[inaudible 01:52:41].

Of mixed martial arts I’ve ever seen. I think to this day he’s probably-

And Khabib. What about Khabib?

Khabib is fantastic. But if you looked at accomplishments in terms of championship fights, Khabib retired 29-0, but he didn’t have as many world championship fights.

And probably never lost around. They say he-

He might’ve lost to Gleison Tibau. He might’ve lost to him.

A round.

He might’ve lost a round. And that was a controversial fight where people think that Gleison Tibau could have even got the decision in that fight. I’d have to go back and watch it again to make a decision. But-

Big, great athletes, though.

Oh, the best athletes in the world, and the most dangerous sport in terms of it’s… I always call it high level problem solving with dire physical consequences.

Yes. Just brutal.

That’s what fighting is.

I’ll never forget, so there was a fighter named James Toney.

Oh, yeah. I love James Toney. “Lights Out”.

He fought as a very light fighter and he ended up as a heavyweight. This guy went through everything. He was almost like a lightweight.

He went from middleweight all the way up to heavyweight.

And I’ve never seen that.

Even Evander Holyfield is a heavyweight.

And he was a real fighter.

Oh, yeah.

So James Toney and I think it was St. George-

George St-Pierre.

St-Pierre. I think was him. Who did he fight? James Toney…

No, James Toney didn’t fight Georges St-Pierre.

He fought a UFC fighter.

Yeah, Randy Couture fought James Toney.

Was it Randy Couture? Maybe.

That was an easy fight. That was a very easy fight. Randy Couture just took him down and strangled him.

It was the most… And he’s half the size. Once he got to the ankles… In fact, the announcer said, “It’s over.” And he put him to sleep.

He ankle picked him, took him down, mounted him, strangled him. It was pretty quick.

And James, he was a nice guy, but he was talking big because he was much bigger. He was a pretty big guy.

I think James just wanted to make some money in that fight.

You think so?

Yeah.

But I never forgot it.

[inaudible 01:54:16].

It was over very quickly. And he’s lying, sleeping on the mat and he was talking, he was doing the Muhammad Ali stuff, but it didn’t work out. But I remember-

He sold the fight.

Yeah, that was Couture probably, wasn’t it?

Yeah, it was Couture. George never fought a boxer in an MMA fight. If he did, he would kill them. George-

Was he one of the greatest?

Yes, unquestionably. There’s a handful of guys you can make the argument is the greatest of all time. People forget about Anderson Silva. In his prime, he was unstoppable. But that’s the thing is-

Anderson Silva.

And then there’s Fedor Emelianenko who fought [inaudible 01:54:46]. In his prime he was unstoppable. There’s this-

And you have a couple now that are pretty good.

Yes. Oh, we’ve got so many now. Alex Pereira.

Correct.

There’s an argument that he’s the top [inaudible 01:54:54] fighter in the world right now.

He’s looking very good.

He’s unbelievable. But fighters can only compete at that level for so many years. And so in my opinion, you have to judge them at their very peak. You can’t judge them when they’re hanging on and still fighting. You can’t judge them when they’re coming up. You got to judge them in that championship peak and that championship peak, there’s a handful of guys that you would consider at the very top.

If they stopped a little bit sooner, some of them would’ve had… There are a couple of that you just mentioned without mentioning names, if they stopped, they had the perfect… They were unbelievable. And then at a certain age, they start getting knocked out, right?

Yes, it’s unfortunate. But the thing is, that same belief in themselves that lets them become a champion makes-

It’s okay.

Them think that they can do it long past the time that they actually can.

Well, Anderson Silva was essentially unbeatable and then he lost a close one. Then all of a sudden he had [inaudible 01:55:44].

No, he got knocked out. He got knocked out by Chris Weidman. He was kind of clowning in that fight famously. And Chris Weidman had a vicious left hook, knocked him out, and then they fought a second time and he broke his leg on Chris Weidman.

That’s right.

And after that fight, he was never the same because that leg break injury, which Conor McGregor had, there’s quite a few fighters that-

That was a bad one.

Weidman actually wound up having the same injury, ironically. There’s only been like four of these.

You’re never the same because you can’t kick.

You’re never the same. Well, you can. Weidman is still kicking with that leg. You can but, psychologically, when you throw a kick and your leg snaps in half and you’re in agony for a year, you have to get surgery, you have to get bolts and plates to keep your leg together, and then it takes forever for it to heal.

It always amazed me how the kicker… You have those cases… But the kicker will do tremendous damage to somebody’s leg, but their leg doesn’t seem to get damaged. Isn’t it amazing?

It does get damaged. It hurts.

More than you think.

Your shin gets very numb after a while. And guys that are really good kickers, they’re kicking the thigh and they’re kicking the calf.

They’re kicking that.

They’re kicking soft areas and they’re slamming this hard numb shin. Their shin gets all these micro fractures all over the shin and it calcifies.

Oh, wow.

These guys can kick baseball bats. You ever seen them break baseball bats with their shins?

I’ve never seen.

It’s crazy. Some guys can do two baseball bats. Some will hold the baseball bat and they just kick right through them. But their shins almost get numb.

But see, I watch your enthusiasm now, right?

Yeah.

And that’s why you’re good at what… Nobody does this better. Without the enthusiasm, forget it.

Well, it has to be authentic. The only reason why I do MMA commentary is because I am very interested in it for real. I don’t have to manufacture it. I’m very interested. So I think that’s why-

And you love going in there after the fight, and they’re sweating all over you. They’re slopping all over you. You’re beautiful.

They bleed on me.

They’re bleeding on-

Sometimes their nose is [inaudible 01:57:33].

Does that bother you a little bit?

No.

Like two weeks ago when the guy was… I never saw it.

Khalil Rountree.

More stuff came out of his nose.

Yes. It was pretty nasty. But no, I’m very used to it. I just wanted him to be able to-

That’s great.

Express himself.

You’ve done a great job.

Thank you.

You’ve done a great job.

So back to you and back to… What are you… First of all, I love this idea of you teaming up with Robert Kennedy, and I love this make America healthy again idea. Because there are chemicals and ingredients that are in our food that are illegal in other countries because they’ve been shown to be toxic. There’s pesticides and herbicides and there’s a lot of shit that’s been sprayed on our food that really is unnecessary. And there’s a lot of health consequences that people are suffering from a lot of these things.

I brought this chart for you.

Beautiful.

Because I had a feeling you’d be asking me.

Thank you.

Look at this chart. These are healthier countries. Look where the United States is. I’m going to send this to R.F.K Jr. Look at that.

So this is… Well, something along the… I was actually talking to R.F.K today and he told me that more than 70% of young men are ineligible for the military because of their health.

I could see it. A lot of it’s-

That’s crazy.

A lot of it’s obesity.

So here’s the life expectancy versus health expenditure.

Same chart. Did you see that?

USA.

Wow, that’s pretty good. Jamie’s the best.

(01:58:56)
He’s very good.

He’s the best.

No, but look at that. Look where the USA is. [inaudible 01:59:01]

It’s not good. And that’s our food. That’s our diet. That’s sedentary lifestyle. That’s our diet. That’s the chemicals we ingest. That’s what that is.

But R.F.K is going to be very… I think he’s a great guy. I think he’s great.

I love the fact that you guys teamed up. And are you completely-

It’s a good combination.

Committed to have him a part of your administration?

Oh, I am. But the only thing I want to be a little careful about with him is the environmental, because he doesn’t like oil. I love oil and gas. I think it’s-

Just keep him out of that.

[inaudible 01:59:30]. So I’m going to keep him out of a little. I said, “Focus on health, you can do whatever you want.” But I got to be a little bit careful with the liquid gold.

I understand. But listen, there’s plenty of good work that could be done if you focus on health.

Here’s the one that my all-time favorite though.

What is that?

See the arrow right here. That’s when I left. The day I left.

Do you have anyone that is pressuring you to not work with him? Have there been people that have reached-

To not work with who?

R.F.K. Jr.

Yes.

Yes? I would imagine. Because financially he could put a dent-

I would say that… And I think in many ways they’ve done a good job, in many ways they’ve done a bad job. But I would say that the big pharma wasn’t thrilled when they heard that you don’t have a… I’ve actually always gotten along very well with him. I’ve known him a long time. He’s a different kind of a guy. He’s very smart, great guy, and he’s very sincere about this. I mean, he really is. He thinks we spend a fortune on pesticides, on all this stuff, and then you end up at… That chart is a terrible chart, the one previous. It’s such a bad chart when you look at where we are compared to other countries that don’t spend 10 cents. And you save a lot of money. But yeah, I’ve had some people that aren’t exactly thrilled. You can imagine, right?

Sure.

It’s a good question actually.

Well, certainly if there have been-

It doesn’t affect me.

… some pharmaceutical drugs that have been prescribed that have negative consequences that these people have been profiting off of, and then you have a guy, RFK Junior, who spends an enormous amount of time highlighting those things, you could see how they’d be very reluctant to have you support him.

I would say that’s an understatement.

Yeah. So what do you do to stop that from getting in the way?

Well look, they’ve come up with some amazing things. I mean, I don’t know how you feel. I know you’re against certain vaccines. But the polio vaccine, people had polio, it was like a disaster. And they came up, Dr. Salk, and he came up with a vaccine, and there’s no polio. Now, very interesting there hasn’t been polio, but now in the Gaza Strip… Can you believe that? Have you heard that? There’s been a big strain of polio coming out in the Gaza Strip?

Is it vaccine-derived polio? Because there’s a strain of polio that comes directly from the vaccine. Because unfortunately, sometimes when you vaccinate-

I don’t know.

… people for polio, you have to give them polio.

Oh, I see. See, I haven’t heard that. Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, all I can do is I sit down and I listen to him, and… And I’ll give it total… I would love him to be right, because if he’s right, it’s a lot less expensive, generally speaking.

There’s two things that people point to when they point to the dangers of the pharmaceutical drug industry. One thing is when pharmaceutical drugs were allowed to advertise on television. We’re only one of two countries in the world that allow pharmaceutical drugs to advertise on TV. The other one’s New Zealand, but they’re more restrictive than we are. People are worried-

But those ads, when you hear, “Take a certain drug”-

And then you hear all the consequences.

… and then you say, “It causes cancer and baldness,” we don’t like baldness here.

Suicidal ideation.

And this, and that, and eyesight, and you can lose your vision. And I actually asked one of these guys, “I would never take…” I mean, it causes things that are so bad, they go through a whole list. I guess they save some liability, but, man. I said, “Does that affect the purchase?” They say it really does. When there’s something you have and you read, and then they go through the list of-

Side effects.

… the potential side… It’s not even… The potential side effects. I mean, a lot of people are just… I asked that question. People hear that. When I hear it, I am going to take a pass. It says, “May affect your vision, may cause blindness, may this…”

Yes. Well, I know you’re aware of Calley and Casey Means, right?

Yes.

Well, one of the things that they pointed out, and this is a very important thing for people to understand, is what a lot of these drugs do is they act to somehow or another mitigate the effects of poor metabolic health. But most of these problems that these people are suffering from wouldn’t exist if we put an emphasis on metabolic health. If people got healthier, they started eating nutritious food, taking vitamins, a whole host of these problems that people are having would go away. And the problem with that from the pharmaceutical drug standpoint is they wouldn’t be able to sell drugs to these people. And this is a fear that a lot of people have.

And the pesticides and things like that on the plants. What do you think of that?

It’s terrible. Well, I think regenerative agriculture, unfortunately, is very difficult to scale to a point where you got a Jack-in-the-Box on every corner.

Right. That’s right. That’s right.

If everybody wants food, and we have food deserts, and we have places like Los Angeles where no one’s growing anything and everything has to be shipped in, it’s very difficult to feed that many people. We’ve created this incredible society where we have these enormous cities, but it’s very difficult to get food to these people. And then for a lot of these people in low-income areas, the only food that’s available is cheap, unhealthy food. And we could fix that. If we could send $175 billion to Ukraine, we could do something to fix a lot of the health problems that the United States has. And I think it would help us as a nation overall if you just put it out there that, “Hey, as a nation, we’re going to make a concerted effort to get people healthier.” Just put it out there and people start making better choices.

Well, when you look at that chart, I was-

It’s crazy.

They just gave me that chart because they said, “You may want to discuss this topic,” which I know is a big topic for you. And when I looked at that chart and I looked at how unhealthy we are as a nation, that’s a pretty big thing.

How are you so healthy? Is it golf?

No, it’s genetics, I believe. I’m a big believer-

Genetics is a big factor.

I really am. My father, he was an old guy-

Unfortunately, it is a big factor for health. Some people are just way more robust. But you do play golf a lot, and that is exercise.

Both of my parents… For me, it’s good.

Fresh air-

It really is. It’s fresh air-

… exercise,

… you’re outside. Even mentally, you are focused on that three-footer, and for a couple of hours you’re not… And I go quick. I play fast, real fast, and I’m in, I’m out. But it gives me… I was never one that could run on a treadmill, and I can do it. When passing a physical, they asked me to run on a treadmill, and then they make it steeper, and steeper, and steeper. And the doctor, it was at Walter Reed, they said, “It’s unbelievable.” I’m telling you, I felt I could have gone all day. But I said, “Doc, I can do this all day long. I have no problem.” But it’s boring to me, do you understand?

Right.

It’s just boring.

Golf’s exciting.

But I did it for so long, they couldn’t believe it, that I did it. And I don’t do it, I don’t really… I have friends that run on this stuff all day long. But I had no problem doing it, but it’s really boring. So with golf or something, or tennis, or whatever, but golf, as you get older, there’s something really good about it. And you have competition with your friends, you know, there’s something-

Competition, concentration, focus.

And it’s a great handicap sport.

And it’s also a thing, I think, it cleans your mind because when you’re looking at a shot, that’s all you can think of, when you’re executing.

It gives you a couple of hours. It’s interesting, with tennis, if you’re much better than somebody, you can’t really play with somebody. It doesn’t work. You can give them the equivalent of strokes, but it’s not the same. With golf, you can play with a lousy guy and give him a stroke a hole or two strokes a hole or something. It’s a good handicapping sport.

Right.

But it gives me a little exercise. But I haven’t played in a long time. I won 32 club championships, can you believe it?

Didn’t you play right after you got shot?

No. What I did is I played with Bryson DeChambeau. Do you know Bryson?

Yes.

The pro. He’s a great player. And we played, it was a certain thing that we played, I guess called breaking 50 or something. 50, we play from a certain tee, and if you can break 50… And it got tremendous ratings, it was sort of like a crazy thing. He’s a great guy. He’s a great-

But wasn’t that a couple of days after you got shot?

I don’t know. I know I haven’t-

That was one of the funniest things, you were on the golf course.

I may have. I think I did. Yeah, maybe I did. But I view it very interestingly. I’m running for President of the United States, to me, it’s such a big deal. It’s so important. So I’ve got now-

Well, it’s the biggest deal in the free world?

It’s 100 times bigger than the Super Bowl, and it’s one person. So you’re down to two people, and we start off at nine billion, because you have nine billion, they say, in the world. Who knows what that number is? But you get down to 350 million. Sadly, we have no idea what we have in this country, but let’s assume it’s 325, 350. And you’re down to two people. It’s the biggest thing in the world. And when I heard she took off yesterday, and she took off the day before, and she’s going to take off tomorrow or the next day… I haven’t taken a day off in 56 days. That’s a long time. I haven’t taken one day off. I don’t want to play golf, this is too exciting. Golf is great, but this is too exciting. This is more exciting than anything you can do. And the thing is-

Also, it’s the homestretch.

It’s the homestretch. Who would take a day off? So we have 11 days left now, and think of it, so I think I’ve gone 54, 55 days in a row, no days off. And I make speeches oftentimes, sometimes not, but I make speeches. And when you make a speech… And my speeches last a long time because of the weave, I mean I weave stories it, and if you don’t, if you just read a teleprompter, nobody’s going to be very excited. You got to weave it out. But as you say, you always have to get right back to what… Otherwise it’s no good. But the weave is very, very important. Very few weavers around. But it’s a big strain on your… It’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work. You got to be careful with the voice. You can lose that voice. The voice wasn’t designed… I said today…

(02:09:21)
So I made a big one last night. I was in Las Vegas, a big one the night before in Arizona, big one. I mean, they’re all big. There’s never been anything like it in terms of crowds. Never been close. Never been close. They say, “He talks about crowds.” You know what’s very interesting? So we get crowds that are really big. And I say, “You know, I’ve never had a story…” Because I don’t get good press. I don’t think I’ve had a good story in years. I really don’t. I swear, I don’t think I… You were talking about it a little bit with Oprah. Everybody loved me. I became President of the United State, I did great the second time, I did much better. I don’t want to get you in any disputes, but I won that second election so easy. And not just because of-

But let me get to that.

But wait.

I want to talk to you about that.

But here’s the thing. I did that and now I’ve gotten the nomination again. And don’t forget to get these nominations, you go against very smart people. Ron DeSantis was hot, had to go through him. Nikki Haley was hot, had to go through her. I went through everybody, record time, right? Record time. I got three nominations in a row, won the first time, did much better the second time. I get millions of votes more the second time. And now I’m doing it a third time. And it’s an incredible thing, I never get a good story. I only get bad press. Now, I will say this, it’s a lot easier if you’re a Democrat. If I were a Democrat-

You’d get a lot of positive press.

I would get a lot of positive press.

Yeah, no, it’s a creepy, corrupt business. And the media, to a large extent, acts as a propaganda arm for the Democratic Party.

It’s not even believable.

Yeah. It’s bizarre to watch. And most young people I think are aware of it. I think most boomers still unfortunately read the newspapers and believe in CNN.

But it’s getting younger. Let me tell you. It’s getting for us, for a conservative… And I don’t even-

But you know why that is?

I consider myself a person-

It’s the internet.

I think so.

It’s because the internet’s giving people information that they’re not getting from anywhere else. And like the “Very fine people” hoax, the Russiagate hoax, all these different things that they’ve done, they tried to pin on you, it’s a clear distortion of what you actually said.

The bloodbath hoax.

Yes.

I was talking about the auto industry. It’s a bloodbath because Japan and China are taking our auto. And I said, “It’s a bloodbath.” They said, “Ah, he used the word “bloodbath”.” You know, you’d think if somebody-

You said if you don’t win, it’s going to be a bloodbath because they’re going to take over.

That’s right. That’s right.

That’s exactly what you said.

It’s a terrible thing they do.

But that’s the problem with propagandists, because they take things out of context. And ultimately what they do is they diminish their own credibility because people don’t want to listen to them anymore, because they see that they’ve done that, and they recognize what’s going on, and they feel insulted. Their intelligence is getting insult.

Well look at the ratings. Shows like yours… So I have a son who’s very smart and tall, Baron. And he knows all about you. He knows about guys I never heard of. He said, “Dad, you don’t know how big they are. They’re big.” He was telling me how big. I said, “Who the hell is he?” Like Ross, I didn’t… He said, “Dad, he’s a great guy.” I mean, guys that are doing… It’s a whole new world out there.

It’s a different world. And I think-

But I’m on TikTok now.

Congratulations.

And I’ve done really well. No, but you know the crazy? Have you seen the numbers? I’ve billions of hits. It’s crazy.

I’m sure. TikTok’s a wild application though.

And I’ve gone up 30 points. A Republican is always down 30 with young people. I’m plus 30, and I’m on TikTok.

I think young people-

Its had a huge impact.

Young people are rejecting a lot of this woke bullshit.

Yeah, they are.

Young people are tired of being yelled at and scolded. They’re tired of these people that they think are mentally ill telling them what the moral standards of society should be today. People are upset.

There’s a big difference now, even in just a couple of years… I was shaking hands with people. They’re young people-

The rebels are Republicans now.

Yeah, I never thought about it that way. I think you’re right.

They’re like, “You want to be a rebel? You want to be punk rock? You want to buck the system? You’re a conservative now.” That’s how crazy. And then the liberals are now pro silencing criticism. They’re pro censorship online. They’re talking about regulating free speech and regulating the First Amendment. It’s bananas to watch.

Joe, they come after their political opponent.

Well, they do.

I got more guys… I always say I kid, but I’m not kidding. I’ve been investigated more than Alphonse Capone. He was the meanest of them all. He’d kill you in two seconds if he didn’t like you. I’ve been under investigation more than Alphonse Capone only because it’s political opponent stuff. And I’ve won. I won the big case in Florida. I’m winning the other stuff. You win. But you know what they did? They did something that’s only done in Third World countries, they came after their political opponent. I could have put Crooked Hillary in jail.

Well, not only that, but they’re weaponizing it by saying that that’s what you are going to do once you get in office.

Of course, yeah. Yeah, isn’t it great?

Ignoring what they’re doing right now. It’s crazy.

I heard it, somebody was defending me today, says, “No, that’s…” They say, “That’s what you’re doing to him.” They’re going, “He’s going to put us in jail. He’s going to invest…”

That’s what you’re doing.

They said, “That’s what you’re doing to him.” A lot of people say, “Will you do that? Will you do that to them if you win?” The presidency has tremendous power. I could have put Crooked Hillary in jail.

I respected that you didn’t.

I didn’t.

Because what you said was, “It would be bad for the country.”

No, I couldn’t even imagine. You have, first of all, Secretary of State, but more importantly, the wife of the President of the United States of America going into jail. And if you ever saw when I’d say something about her, they’re all say… I didn’t say it. I never said it. They say, “Lock her up. Lock her up.” And I’d always go, “Take it easy. Just relax. We’re going to win this thing. Take it easy. Take it easy.” And I’m telling you, I kept it down, just the opposite. Now they say, “Oh, Trump wanted to put her in jail.” No, I saved her from going to jail. They had more stuff on her.

(02:15:24)
And Comey had it, because when Comey got up, and he stupidly, because he’s a stupid guy too… He’s a stupid son of a bitch. Joe, he got up, and instead of saying she’s innocent of all charges, he went over each charge, and each charge was a killer. And he’d go, “And as far as her doing this, she’s innocent. And this…” And then he said, “Only an unfair prosecutor would go…” But every time you heard these charges, they sounded so bad. They were bad. And all it was is he wanted more airtime. If you would’ve gone up and said, “I’ve thoroughly investigated Hillary Clinton, and she’s done nothing that we feel is wrong,” it would’ve ended. Instead, he wanted to be up there because he’s a PR hound. He’s a hog. And he starts going through the… And you know what he had? They had a huge problem, because FBI is great, the people there. Not the top people, the people, the real people, the people that work there. It’s like the real generals that I told you about that defeated ISIS in record time. The FBI guys are great. I’ll bet you I’d be at 95% in the FBI.

I bet that’s right.

Underneath… And so here’s the thing. So he goes with Hillary, and instead of just saying, he goes through each charge.

Right, which looks damning. Yeah.

And even I would say, “Man, those are bad charges.” And this is before I got-

Sounds terrible because it’s associating her with those charges,

Don’t forget, this is before I got there.

Right.

Now, he was trying to protect her, but he did her a great disservice.

Because he wanted attention.

He was stupid.

So, I want to talk about 2020, because you said over and over again that you were robbed in 2020.

Yeah, totally.

How do you think you were robbed? Everybody always cuts you off. I’m going to allow-

They do. Well, they not only cut you off. Well, what I’d rather do is we’ll do it another time, and I would bring in papers that you would not believe. So many different papers. That election was so crooked. It was the most crooked election.

Okay, but give me some examples of how.

Well, let’s start on the top and the easy ones. They were supposed to get legislative approval to do the things they did, and they didn’t get it. In many cases, they didn’t get it.

What things?

Anything. When they made-

Approval of?

Like for extensions of the voting, for voting earlier, for this, all different things. By law, they had to get legislative approvals. You don’t have to go any further than that. If you take a look at Wisconsin, they virtually admitted that the election was rigged, robbed, and stolen. They wouldn’t give access in certain areas to the ballots because the ballots weren’t signed. They weren’t originals. We could go into this stuff. We could go into the ballots or we could go into the overall. I’ll give you another one.

Are you going to present this ever?

Well, let me…

Do you think in a-

Let me just give you one more before.

Okay, go ahead.

51 intelligence agents come up that the laptop was from Russia. It turned out to be totally false. It wasn’t-

51 former intelligence agents, right?

They say that made… I don’t believe it’s this much, but it doesn’t matter. I lost by… I didn’t lose. But they say I lost… Joe, they say I lost by 22,000 votes. That’s like one 10th of 1% less than that. It’s a tiny little thing. 22,000 votes, that’s spread over this period. So 51 intelligence agents lied. They lied. They lied. They knew it was. It was Hunter’s. It was from his bed. It was Hunter’s laptop. They said it was created by Russia. Russia, Russia. It was the Russia hoax. The Russia hoax was a big hoax. It was all a big hoax. So they get more-

Well, that’s clear. That’s one example. That is a good example.

But that is a big example. They say it made a 17 point difference. That’s a big example. But that’s only one. And you could go into the ballots where they wouldn’t give you access to the ballots. You could go into the ballot harvesting. You could go into $500 million for the lock boxes.

But just in terms of narrative, so there’s two things. There’s the Russia hoax, there’s the collusion with Russia that was never proven. That’s one.

No, it was proven it didn’t happen.

Right. Right, but they talked about it on television as if it was a-

But it took two and a half years to prove.

But not only that, but it was a constant narrative on television. That’s a constant narrative that gets into people’s minds, especially low-information people that just watch the news, that you’re in collusion with Russia. So that’s one. So that changes the narrative. And then you have the 51 former intelligence agents that work with the original Twitter and get them to remove links. You can’t share it on DMs. You cannot share that story. They swept that story because they said it was Russian disinformation, even though they knew it was not.

100%.

So that’s two examples that are real examples. Now, anyone who considers himself a legitimate objective observer of American politics, if you really want the best person to win, you would want people to not lie. And the only reason why they got away with this lie was because they continually labeled you as this horrible threat to democracy, and Hitler. They kept saying you’re going to be a dictator, ignoring the fact that you weren’t a dictator for the four years where you actually the President.

Correct, the opposite. I was actually the opposite of a dictator. I was a very straight guy. But look, those three things, you take those three things, each one of them by themselves causes the result to be different, okay?

It does.

And then you can go into 100 other things. There’s so many. We can’t have corrupt elections and we can’t have open borders. To have a country, you need borders, you need fair elections. And I’ll tell you the other thing you need is you need a free and fair press. One of the things I like about doing a show like this, can you imagine Kamala doing this show?

I could imagine her doing the show.

She’d be laying on the floor-

I would try… She was supposed to do it, and she might still do it.

She wasn’t going to do it.

And I hope she does.

She’s not going do it.

I will talk to her like a human being. I will try and have a conversation with her.

If she did this kind of an interview with you… I hope she does, because it would be a mess. She’d be laying on the floor, Kamala. You’d be saying, “Call in the medics.”

I think we’d have a fine conversation. I think I’d be able to talk to her. I wouldn’t try to interview her. I’d just try to have a conversation with her and hopefully get to know her as a human being. That was my goal having her on, trying to get her to express herself just as a… I don’t think these formats are good. I don’t think that two people… First of all, I hate the idea of the presidential debates because I hate the idea of a time limitation on complex ideas. Also, you have to break for-

I think you have to have the debates, though.

Right, but the way they do the debates I think is the wrong way to do it. I think they should have a conversation. I think you and Kamala, you sit across the table with no one in the room, but the two of you, of course you’re not going to shout at each other, of course you’re not going to insult each other.

Well, you may. I mean, it may get a little… They used to do it that way.

Yeah, but hopefully it wouldn’t. But that would be the way to do it.

Yeah. They used to do it that way in the old days.

And just to put cameras on you with no one interfering with checking whether or not it’s factual, especially when it’s biased. Because they checked you all those times and they didn’t check her with clearly things that were inaccurate. So have two people just have a conversation with each other without a time constraint. And also this idea they caught off the microphone when-

Well, and no crowd. How about no crowd?

No crowd. Crazy too, because you’re good at working a crowd.

I would rather have a crowd.

Of course you would, you’re good at crowds.

But I would rather, but I had no… So they gave me an alternative. I don’t think he wanted the debate.

Why did they want no crowd? What was the argument?

Because I think they thought I wasn’t going to accept it. So I believe what they wanted to do is have me not accept. So they gave me a deal I couldn’t refuse, and I said, “I’ll do it.” It’s like the mob. I’ll take it. So they came to me, they said, “We’ll debate Joe Biden.” That thing got tremendous ratings too. That was crazy. But, “We’ll debate Joe Biden, but you can’t have a crowd.” They also wanted sitting down. I said, “That’s the only thing…” I said, “Look, you got to stand up. You can’t really sit down.” In the old days, they did sit down a little bit.

He gets tired.

But you got to stand up. And they agreed to it. It was a very tough thing, it almost killed it. They wanted to have desks, we sit. I said, “I think we should stand up.” And that was the only thing I asked for. I said, “We got to stand up.” I thought it looked bad for the public. But they said, “No crowd, and cut off the mic.” And I said, “I can live with it. I mean, I can live with it.” And they thought I was going to reject it. And then they would say, “He didn’t want to debate Sleepy Joe.” That’s what they thought was going to happen.

Well, they tried to say that with you and Kamala as well. They tried to say that you didn’t want to debate her as well. But that’s-

No, by the way, with her, number one, I’m leading. Number two… They also said it with the primary. So I had 10, 12 guys in the primary. No stupid guys. I mean, they’re governors and they’re senators, they’re not stupid people. Some are stupid, but not all of them. And all my guys said, “You have to be in the debate. I said, “Why? I’m leading by 74 points. The closest guy to me, I’m 60 points, 70 points higher. Why would I stand there like an idiot for two hours and let every one of them scream at me? I’m going to be the focus.” And I said, “I’m not debating.” And it was a very smart thing because they just killed themselves.

The Republican primaries, yes.

Yeah, the Republican primaries. I like debating. I think you have to debate. But I like debating-

But it has to be fair.

I like debating like the Rosie O’Donnell debate. I like debating when you have a crowd. Remember that Rosie O’Donnell thing?

Yeah. It was very funny. Megyn Kelly.

It was crazy thing. Megyn. That was a hell of a question, man. If I didn’t come up with that answer, I was done.

It was a great line.

Well, what it was is, we had 28,000 people. That was the Cleveland Arena where the Cavaliers played. LeBron James, I’m not a big fan of LeBron James, but he is a good basketball player. And when I said that, the place went crazy.

Because it’s funny.

And she’s kept talking. No, she had 10 other… The names-

Yeah, well, Megyn said you said it to other people and you admitted you did. But it was funny. It was a comedic timing moment.

It was fine.

That’s what they wanted to avoid.

It was lucky I did, it because she was… Oh, she wasn’t finished, that question… But she kept talking, but you couldn’t hear. To this day, they don’t know what she said, but it wasn’t positive. So anyway, but we had a good time. I think it’s important.

But it’s comedic timing, and that’s the reason why to have a debate in front of a large audience. And then they probably thought you would stack the deck.

Well, how did I do with the Al Smith dinner?

It was great.

I got very good reviews on that.

That was great. Very funny.

I got good reviews.

Some very funny stuff. The Tim Walz stuff was very funny.

Tim Walz, yeah.

He’s funny.

That’s a real beauty.

That’s a crazy one. She said that she had picked him, and this is one of the questions I want to ask her, when she was sleep-deprived. She said she was suffering from sleep deprivation when she picked him, which is just like, “Hey, maybe take a nap.”

Okay, look, let’s see how it all turns out. I think we’re going to win. I think we’re way ahead now. I think we’re way ahead.

Can I bring you back to 2020? Can I bring you back?

But if they lose, I think they’re going to look at two things. They’re going to say they should have had a primary, even if it was a short primary, they shouldn’t have picked her. And then she’s going to say, “I shouldn’t have picked this guy.”

She shouldn’t have picked that guy.

That guy’s a disaster.

Just the lying about Tiananmen Square-

Everything.

… admitting that. Yeah, the military record, assistant coach versus head coach.

But she lied too. She lied too.

Yes.

Little thing, so I did McDonald’s last week.

I saw that.

And I actually got a call from your friends at Google, from Sundar. That’s pretty good, right? He said, “This is the biggest thing we’ve had in years,” the hits.

You at McDonald’s?

At McDonald’s. Did you know that? It was one of the-

It was funny,

Who’s a great guy, by the way. But he said, “This McDonald’s thing, I want to tell you, it’s one of the biggest things we’ve ever had on Google.” It just hit. But the reason I did it, and I actually… You never know about this stuff. I thought it was a throwaway. I didn’t think our conversation’s a throwaway, but I thought that was. I thought I’d walk in. And that was only to highlight the fact… And I have a friend, he owns like 56 of these McDonald’s, and he said, “Do you want to use one?” I said, “Yeah, I love it.” So we went there and the crowd was crazy. They had 28,000 people around the whole thing. Did you see the outside? It was crazy. The cars couldn’t get through. Secret Service was not exactly thrilled. We had no idea what the hell… But I went into the place and I did the french fry thing, and it just hit. But that’s like in life, sometimes you do… I thought it was like a quick throwaway, we’re going to be there for 15 minutes. Then I said, “I’ve worked here for 15 minutes, which is 15 minutes more than she worked here.” She lied about McDonald’s. And those-

Is that proven, that she never worked at McDonald’s?

100%. Well, McDonald’s has no information. She has no information. There’s nobody. The manager said she’d never worked there. It was a certain place, and he said they never… No, she lied. She’s a liar. You know what they do? They’ll say on any one of the questions, take any one, they’ll say… It’s the exact opposite of what I say. IVF, “He’s against IVF,” the fertilization. And it’s the exact opposite. I came out immediately strongly in favor. And they do ads. I’m against it, it’s wrong. On every single topic. And she changed policies on 15. I’ve never seen a guy change, anybody change on more than one. You can maybe get away with one. Her whole life, fracking, every single thing that she was for, the confiscation of guns. She wants to confiscate, now she’s saying everybody should have a gun. In fact, we’re going to get her a MAGA cap. I’m going to send her a MAGA cap. But she’s changed, and I don’t think people are buying it. I don’t think people are buying it.

Well, some people are buying it because they want to buy it. Because it’s blue, no matter who. There’s a certain percentage of our population that’s going to vote Democrat no matter what.

That’s true.

And they’re pressured. Their community, their ideology, it’s left is good, right is evil.

You know what I don’t understand? I don’t understand why… Okay, you have a wall or you have a… You know, I built 570 miles a wall. Everyone said… I built a lot of wall, exactly the stuff. But you have a border. What I don’t understand is who would want people to come into our country from places unknown. Like sometimes they’ll say about a fighter, “From parts unknown,” right?

Right.

Remember Haystacks Calhoun, he says, “From parts-

Yeah, the old days.

The old days. Those are the old days. That’s even before you. But who would want people to come in, pouring into our country, we don’t know anything about them?

But I want to ask you this. Why do you

(02:30:00)
Do

You think they’re doing that?

I think because-

Do you think they’re trying to buy votes? Do you think they just want cheap labor? What’s the idea?

Okay, it’s a couple of theories. They hate our country, they’re stupid, or they want to buy votes. It’s one of those three things. Now, they are trying to get people registered who don’t even know what the country is.

And they’re trying to give people amnesty. People that live here, they’re trying to give them a path to citizen.

They want to give them amnesty, they want to give them citizenship. Well, how about what happened-

And if you think about the amount of money that they’ve given them when they’ve come here, the food stamps, the benefits that even our poor people aren’t getting.

$200 billion, and that’s a way low number, that’s a way low. It’s interesting, New York has always been looking for money. They’ve spent $100 billion on this stuff. I don’t know where they… And they’re not getting the money from the federal government, it’s crazy. And because the mayor came out and said, “We can’t live like this.”

They investigated him.

By the way I called it, I said, “He just got himself indicted.” This group is stupid, but they’re vicious. They’re stupid people, but they’re vicious people.

The 2020 elections, you say you have all this evidence that it was rigged. Why haven’t you put this evidence in a consumable form?

I did.

In what?

Oh, I did. I have books on it. And by the way, books have been written on it. We have an author named Hemingway who is a great writer, she wrote a book on it. But many books have been written on it. What’s happened is judges don’t want to touch it. They would say, “You don’t have standing.” They didn’t rule on the merits. The merits never got there. The judges didn’t have what it took to turn over an election.

Let’s talk about the potential vulnerabilities for elections and election fraud. One of them is mail-in ballots. The other one is if someone can break into voting machines, if someone can hack voting machines, those are two huge ones. And what can be done?

So Elon, Elon Musk, I think he said it public. I hope he did because I wouldn’t want it to be the winner. But he’s a really smart guy and he’s a very good guy with computers. You’d say he speaks-

He’s one of the smartest people alive.

Anybody that can land that 20 story building, and perfect and boom.

While he’s doing Starlink, while he’s doing Tesla, while he owns Twitter.

And then he agrees to Starlink and-

And Tweets 100 times a day.

He’s an amazing guy. He said to me that unless you have paper ballots, it can never be an honest election. That’s a big statement.

It’s a big statement.

We should go to paper ballots. France did. They went to mail-in voting and it was all messed up.

What can be done?

You know the amazing thing with the machines? So we have the machines, they cost 10 times more. A paper ballot would cost 8%, and they make paper ballots, they’re all watermarked and everything else. They’re very sophisticated. But if you take a look, paper ballots, 8% the cost, and you’re done by nine o’clock in the evening. Now we have these sophisticated machine that goes up to heaven, it goes all over the place and down and around, and they say, “We’ll need two weeks to figure out who the hell won the election.

Do you think that’s by design?

Yeah, I do. I think it’s very crooked. That’s my opinion.

You’re allowed to have an opinion. Let’s say you win in November. What can be done to mitigate these problems? What could be done at the level that the president has power?

Well, if I win, this will be my last election. But I think I owe it to the country.

It has to be.

But I think I owe it to the country, we have to have fair elections.

So how can you fix that?

Jimmy Carter was in charge of a commission many years ago, and they put him and Scoop Jackson, and various senators, distinguished people that were retired, and they came up with a report. And the report’s primary finding was you cannot have mail-in ballots, because if it’s a mail-in ballot… I went to the voting booth the last time, whatever it was, and I walked in, in Palm Beach. And I walk in, and they know me. They say, “Mr. President, could I see your identification?” “Yes.” Boom, here’s this, here’s that. Everything. And then you sit and they watch you sign, and there’s not a lot you can do.

(02:34:21)
If you wanted to be dishonest, it’s sort of beautiful. If instead of that I’m going to send them a ballot, it has to go through the postal services. It has to go through a lot of people. They mail you, houses, that the house was demolished and the people have left. And it’s so bad. The one thing with Jimmy Carter, he had a very strong commission, no mail-in ballots. And we are the only one that does elections this way anymore, they’ve gotten away from them.

And it ticked up in a big way after COVID, it used to be like soldiers serving overseas.

They used COVID to cheat.

Yeah, well, they used COVID to certainly push this mail- in ballot.

But they used COVID. And the last election was a little bit of a, you couldn’t even get security guys, big strong guys to watch. You know what, you’d call them. They’d call them and they’d say… They were afraid to go out. We were in the middle of COVID. We were in the middle of COVID, right smack in the middle, and they didn’t want to die. They didn’t want to catch it. In a way, it was like a ghost town, but mail-in ballots are a bad thing. Bad thing.

That certainly is a problem, mail-in ballots are a problem.

But every other country-

The other problem is voter ID.

Voted ID, how about-

Voter ID is the most bizarre argument that I’ve never seen anybody articulate in a way that’s convincing why you don’t need voter-

Because they want to cheat.

Well, it doesn’t make sense any other way. I’ve tried to straw man it, or I tried to steal man it rather, I’ve tried to look at it from a position, like why would you want people to have ID? And a lot of the ideas are just ridiculous, you need an ID to get a driver’s license.

Okay, but here’s now the next step. Gavin Newsom, one of the worst governors in the world, and I used to, frankly, I used to get along, but I don’t get along with him because he’s just too… It’s just a whole con job. But Gavin Newsom the other day signed a bill that you are not allowed to ask a person, even ask them whether or not they have a voter ID.

Now what could be a charitable reason why anybody would want that?

Because they want to cheat.

But that would be the only thing that makes sense.

But that’s taking it to the next level. Now, you have ID, the Democrat National Convention, when they had it the last time. I saw they had a sign, like a billboard, the name of the person, where they live, how they live, who the hell their boyfriends are, every single… And a big picture, that’s for their they have an ID, a big ID. It was hanging like you were a prisoner. They had these massive cards, everything. And yet when it comes to the vote, in theory, the most important thing we do, okay, when you go to a grocery store, you give ID. But for a vote, it’s supposed to be a sacred thing. And it should be a sacred thing, no voter ID, because they want to cheat.

Well, it doesn’t make sense in any other way. I’ve tried to look at it.

There’s no other way.

There’s no argument that anybody’s presented that makes any sense why?

You know the funny thing, Joe, the Democrats, the people, they all think you should have it. In other words, you should have voter. If you go to the people, Mrs. Schwartz, Mrs. Smith, Mr. and Mrs. Jones. They say, “Of course, yeah.” Democrats, they say yes. It’s the politicians that don’t want it, like Schumer and these guys, they don’t want it. Because they want to be able to cheat, because you know what? If they didn’t have it, okay, who is going to vote for somebody that wants open borders? Who’s going to vote for somebody that wants to have men playing in women’s sports?

(02:37:55)
I have never had one person come up to me and say, “President, you got to do something to allow men to play in women’s sports.” Have you ever? It’s like I’ve never been called by a pollster. I told you my little theory on pollsters. I’m getting myself in trouble with some of these things, but I don’t really care. Nobody’s ever come up to me and said, “We want to have men play in women’s sports.” And I had a funny thing at a property I own in California. I have a woman who’s a very good athlete and she works there as a manager, and Brian Urlacher, the big Chicago Bears, great player, 10 time also, I guess Hall of Fame, a great guy. Big strong guy. And she said, “Oh, he’s one of my favorite athletes. Can I have a picture?” And I took a picture and I sent it. And I noticed she was the size of his leg, his leg was bigger than she was. And I put it out, “Should men play in women’s sport?” It was just so ridiculous.

What’s one of the most bizarre and polarizing ideas that’s promoted by the left?

But who wants it? Now, unless you’re going to cheat in elections, you’re never going to get… Nobody wants it, I don’t think anybody wants it. I’ve been told everything, some people want this. I don’t know of anybody that wants open borders, nobody’s ever come up to me and say, “President, you’ve got to let the world come into our country.” Now, if they won, so they have 21 million. I think it’s much higher than that because you’ve got a ways, got a ways where they just walk in. They walk in by… And the other thing you have is human traffickers. You have traffickers and the traffic in women, and they’re going wild now. You know where you have to look? The trunk of cars, can you believe it? They put women in trunks, they’ll put three women in a trunk. These people are savages. They’re horrible. The worst people, and the kind of money they make on drugs they’re almost making on trafficking now.

(02:39:48)
And the thing that’s made it hot is the internet. You think of it almost as an ancient thing, but it’s the internet. But who would want to have these things? Who would want to have… There’s so many, the transgender operations, where they’re allowed to take your child when he goes to school and turn them into a male, to a female without parental consent. Who wants this? Does anybody want this? I’ve never heard of anyone, and I can go into 10 different things. The only way they get them is by no voter ID. You can’t have voter ID, they want to cheat. There’s only one reason, because the voter ID is so basic, it’s the most basic thing.

It’s very basic.

Who would want this? They want it so they can cheat, because their policies are no good. I’ll tell you, they’re very smart when it comes to that, they’re very smart. Although they’re not smart in terms of politics in a way, because what do they have that people want? They really don’t have. They give away a lot of healthcare, a lot of stuff, but for the most part, their policies are terrible. Their policy on military, she’s running on a tax hike. She’s going to raise your taxes. You got to hear this. We are going to raise your taxes, and the people clap. But who is going to win with her? All my life I grew up with politicians, lower taxes. She’s politic in that we are going to raise your taxes.

Well, the idea is you want to raise the taxes to the highest earners.

I know, but it really doesn’t work out.

They think that millionaires and billionaires are not paying their fair share.

I know, but it doesn’t work that way.

Well, it’s a narrative, and it’s a narrative that appeals to people that are not doing well. And they’re like, “Yeah, our problems are that these rich people are not paying taxes.”

Well, the problems are the rich people are going to leave and they’re going to close up their companies, and then the other people aren’t going to have jobs. That’s what happens.

It does happen in other countries.

Because you brought it up. I’ll tell you what, he’s doing a very good job in Virginia, Glen Youngkin, I don’t know if you like him, not like him.

I don’t know him.

Oh, you don’t know him, the governor of Virginia? So we have a case where they found thousands of illegal ballots. A judge just ruled that they have to be able to vote, just happened today. Just before I walked in here I heard. A judge just ruled that you have to keep those people in. They’re illegal, they’re illegal votes. Now, I think they’ll be overturned at the next court. One thing I found, because I had a couple of things that they get overturned a little bit, the system. Because the system, you have to hope that the appellate judges are honest, otherwise we don’t have a country anymore. It’s very important. But the whole thing with the legal ballots, it’s got to be looked at. You have to have voter ID and you have to have additional ID. You have to have an ID that shows that you’re a citizen of the country.

I agree.

They don’t want that either.

I agree. One of the things that I wanted to talk to you about is the JFK files, and one of the things that you said was that if they showed you what they showed me, this is your quote, “You wouldn’t want people to know it either.”

So I opened them up partially. I was met with, from good people. Look, I mean good people. People that were Well-meaning, Mike Pompeo was one of them. He’s a good person. They called me, they said, “Sarah would rather have you not.” And I did open him, but I was asked by some people not to open them. There’s a Martin Luther King file too, by the way, that they’d like to see. I don’t know if you know, but there is that, but JFK in particular. So they called me, a lot of good people called me. People that you would find reasonable people, and they asked me not to do it. So I said, “Well, we’ll close it for another time.” But if I went, “I’m going to open them up, I’m just going to open,” enough times.

Why didn’t you open it up the first time though, what was the hesitation?

Addresses, people that are still living, there are people that are affected. And there could be some national security reason that I don’t have to necessarily know about, but some very good talented people asked me not to do it. I opened it up, and then they said, “Would it be possible for us to do that a different day?”

How much much of it did you read into?

I think it’s going to be just fine to open it, let me put it that way. I think it’s fine. It’s going to be time. It’s a cleansing, it’s really a cleansing. So I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it immediately, almost immediately upon entering office.

Well, the thing, when people look at it from the outside, and you imagine what could be a reason why they would not release those files. It would be there’s people that were implicated in the assassination.

Well, when there are living people, you generally tend not to want to do it, when people are still living.

Living people that formerly worked for the government.

For the government, and living people that were somehow involved in it. And you tend not to do that. But it’s time to open them. I can’t tell you whether or not they’re going to find anything of interest. And I did partially open, I think I’ve opened up 50%, but I was asked not to do it. And I thought that was a reasonable ask, but now I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it very soon. There’s a lot of interest in it. There’s a lot of interest in the people coming from space.

Yes.

And I know you’re interested in that too.

Oh, I’m very interested in that. How much did they tell you about that?

A lot.

Really?

Yeah.

What’d they tell you? How much can you tell? How’s that work? Is it super top secret?

I can tell.

Tell me.

Well, based on Hunter Biden, I can say whatever the hell I want. But I interviewed a few people. It’s never been my thing, I have to be honest. I have never been a believer. I have people that, Area 51 or whatever it is, I think it’s the number one tourist attraction in the whole country or something. Area 51, do you know that, right?

Sure, I know what it is.

Anyway, but it’s a big tourist thing. So I interviewed jet pilots that say they saw something. If you saw them, you’d love to have a [inaudible 02:46:02].

I’ve had a couple in here, Commander David Fravor, I had him in who had that sighting in 2004. Very, very compelling, with visual video evidence, radar evidence. Ryan Graves.

I don’t believe his name, but I interviewed jet pilots that were solid people, perfect. Great pilots, great everything. And they said< “We saw things, Sir, that were very strange. Like a round ball, but it wasn’t a comet or a meteor, it was something. And it was going four times faster than an F-22,” which is a very fast plane. And it was round, which is in theory a great shape.

So when you were talking to these people, was this something that you were compelled to have conversations about?

No.

Was this your personal interest?

A little bit. It’s not a great interest for me, but it’s a little interest. I get that question as much as almost any question, do you think that we have aliens coming, flying around or whatever?

What do you think?

There’s no reason not to. There’s no reason not to think that Mars and all these planets don’t have life.

Well, Mars, we’ve had probes there and rovers, and I don’t think there’s any life there.

Well, maybe it’s life that we don’t know, but maybe it’s a different kind of life.

Well, maybe there was life there at one point in time. This is a speculation about Mars, that Mars had an atmosphere at one point in time, a long time ago, that could support life. It also had large bodies of water, but we’ve had no evidence of even bacterial life that exists on Mars. But the universe is pretty vast.

It’s not been a big thing for me. When I looked at what China did to this admin, they would’ve never done it with me, where they put the balloon up. And a lot of people thought for a little while that that was one of these things.

Well, that’s a lot of the speculation too, that some of these drones that hover over battleships, that these are Chinese drones and that they’re not UFOs.

They could be also.

There’s some super sophisticated-

But I did interview, let’s say three or four guys, and without tremendous interest, if you had them, as I said, you’d love to have them as your children. Solid beautiful people. They said, “Sir, there’s something there.”

There’s something there. Yeah, I’ve talked to quite a few of them.

They’re not conspiracy guys.

Well, just the Commander David Fravor thing in 2004 off the coast of San Diego, they clocked that thing going from 50,000 feet above sea level to 50 in a second. They don’t know what it is.

That’s tough to beat.

Yeah, they saw something in the water, it was hovering over that something that was making a disturbance in the water. They got video evidence of this thing. Two different fighter jets with pilots in them saw it. There’s visual evidence, photographic evidence, video evidence, radar evidence, whatever the hell it is, it moves in a way that would turn a human being into jello if they’re inside of it. The G-Force, no one would survive. It’s like, what is that? And it doesn’t have a [inaudible 02:48:57] signature, they don’t know what their propulsion system was.

When you fly in some of these jets, these pilots have to be in great shape.

Oh yeah, I flew with the Blue Angels once. Yeah, I got to fly. I guess it’s an F/A-18.

And those are older machines.

And they’re crazy.

When you fly in some of these things, it’s amazing.

Oh my God. Yeah, I can imagine.

But you got to be special.

But these things that these people are in encountering are far superior to what we know of. Is it possible that there’s some military or government program that they didn’t tell you about?

I think I had a great relationship with the military basically, but I didn’t like certain people. I would’ve gotten them out if I thought… If the election was different, I would’ve fired all of them quickly. Most of them I did fire. Biden should have fired every military person involved with Afghanistan, he should have had a lot of firings. If you look at him, he told Israel not to do anything, and at least Israel’s not going to look at it in a bomb the way they would’ve been. I think if they listened to Biden, they’d be waiting for a bomb to drop on their head right now. He’s been wrong about so much. I guess you’d have to say that she’s been wrong too, because she always said they made the decision together. But Israel didn’t follow his advice, and the Middle East is rapidly changing.

(02:50:22)
There are Prophets that say the world will come to an end in the Middle East, you know that, right? And we have weapons today that are so scary when you look, I rebuilt them all. And when you look at the weapons we have today, the biggest threat we have in the world today is nuclear weapons. And we have other weapons too that are devastating, but the nuclear weapons, the biggest threat we have in the world today. I was talking about de-escalation with both China and Russia. I’m telling you, we were going to de-escalate, they were going to de-escalate. You got to be careful, it’s a little tricky playing with them. Because they say, “We’re going to do it,” and they don’t do it, maybe. But they understood the curse too, it’s a curse. China’s way behind us, but they’ll catch us within five years.

So let’s imagine, let’s say you win in November. What do you do differently and how do you change this course that it seems we are on for World War III? How do you get us out of Ukraine? How do you stop what’s going on in the Middle East? How do you put a stop to this?

Well, to me it’s an easy question, because I think I can do it easily, but it’s a complex question in the sense that the times change, every day changes. Who’s winning, who’s not winning? Russia’s a war machine, whether you like it or not, it just grinds along, grinds along. You speak to people like Viktor Orban, he’ll tell you, it’s just a big fat war machine, and that’s what’s happening. You look at what’s happened to Ukraine, if I were there, it would’ve never happened.

But what could you do now, if you get into office in January, what could you do now?

Right now, you would get both of them. I know both very well. And again, I do not want to tell you for the purpose of looking smart to five people that say, “Oh, he was great.” Because if I told you exactly what I’d do, I could never make the deal. All I can tell you is that I would meet with Putin and I would meet with him, and I know exactly what I’d say to each one of them. And I believe that as President-elect, I would get that war stopped and stopped fast. We have tremendous power in the United States if you know how to use the power. I stopped other wars just by the use of tariffs. I got Macron of France, good guys, like a friend of mine, but he’s a wise guy. And he’s a person that likes France, and he was going to tax our companies. And I sent all the smartest guys. I sent Mnuchin, they all failed me. And I said, “I’ll do it myself.”

(02:53:00)
And I called him, I said, “Emmanuel, you’re taxing American companies. We’re not going to allow you to do that.” “Oh, Donald, nothing I could do. It’s already been passed.” I said, “Emmanuel, if you do that, I’m going to put 100% tariff on your wines and champagnes that come in to the United States, and you’re going to regret that you ever did it.” He said, “Donald, please, that’s not fair.” Anyway, within about two minutes he dropped the whole thing, and it was massive amounts of money against American companies. I have to protect American companies.

So why doesn’t the Biden administration do this?

Because they’re incompetent, they don’t know how to talk. Look, they met in Alaska with the Chinese, and the Chinese lectured them about how badly we treat people. Okay, think of it. You remember that day, they didn’t talk to me that way. They respected me. They respected our country. They don’t respect our country. They don’t respect Biden, they don’t respect her. They’re dreaming about her because she’s incompetent. She’s not a smart person. Look, she can’t put two sentences together. She talks, I watched her two nights. I watched her last night too, it was the same thing. She’s not a smart person. These guys are very smart and they’re very streetwise, and they’re very tricky and evil and dangerous. And if she becomes the president of the United States, which I can’t believe can happen, I don’t think this country is going to make it. I think just really bad things will happen to our country.

(02:54:37)
And you know what? I look at the outside forces and I say they can all be handled, because we have a pot of gold, but we’re not going to have that pot of gold to play with anymore. It’s a great negotiating thing. I told you, I knocked out this massive car company, going to take all of our car business from Detroit. I knocked it out just by my rhetoric, rhetorically I said, ” They’ll never sell a car in here. I’ll put tariffs. I don’t care they’re 2000%, they’re never going to build that plant.”

Is it possible to apply that same thing to the electronics that we use? One of the things that disturbs me greatly is that all of our phones are made overseas, and then some of our phones are made in places like-

And the chips.

Yes, and the chips. And some of our phones are made in places like Foxconn, where they have nets around the building to keep people from jumping off the roof because they have so many suicides. Wouldn’t it be better to have an American made iPhone, where you know people are paid good wages, they have health insurance, they’re taken care of, they can live a good life. Where you’re not buying a piece of electronics that’s cheaper because someone has to suffer in a horrible way that’s not even legal in the United States. It’s not even legal to have them work that way in the United States, so they get these people to build them overseas.

You do it, but let me just say, that chip deal is so bad. We put up billions of dollars for rich companies to come in and borrow the money and build chip companies here, and they’re not going to give us the good companies anyway. All you had to do is charge them tariffs. If you would’ve put a tariff on the chips coming in, you would’ve been able to, just like the auto companies, no different. More sophisticated, but no different. Taiwan, they stole our chip business. They want us to protect and they want protection, they don’t pay us money for the protection. The mob makes you pay money. But with these countries that we protect, I got hundreds of billions of dollars from NATO countries that were never paying us. And my biggest fan is Stoltenberg, who just left as the director general, as a secretary general, good guy.

(02:56:40)
He said, “Bush came, he made a speech. Obama came, he made a speech. Trump came, he said, you guys aren’t paying. You got to pay.” And they said, “Will you protect us from Russia if we don’t?” I said, “No, you got to pay. If you don’t pay…” Billions of dollars came in to NATO. When I see us paying a lot of money to have people build chips, that’s not the way. You didn’t have to put up 10 cents, you could have done it with a series of tariffs. In other words, you tariff it so high that they will come and build their chip companies for nothing. In other words, Joe, you put a big tariff on the chips coming in. I say, “You don’t have to pay the tariff, all you have to do is build your plant in the United States.” We didn’t have to give them the money to build the plant, besides that, they’re very rich companies. These chip companies, they stole. They stole 95% of our business, it’s in Taiwan right now.

(02:57:32)
They do a great job, but that’s only because we have stupid politicians. We lost the chip business, and now we think we’re going to pay. You can’t build it that way. You have to make them spend their money in the United States, and those plants would open up all over. And they’ll fund them, we don’t have to put up 10 cents. I am in the process of making a huge speech in about a little while, and you and I, how long have we been talking?

A long time.

Let’s go.

Probably like three hours.

I got to make a speech, but we’ll do it again. I want to do it again with you. You are something.

Thank very much.

I said, “How long will this last?” Anywhere from an hour to three or four hours.

How long we do, Jamie? Three hours.

Good. Well, we’ll do it again. I thought it was great.

I think it was great, it was a lot of fun.

You are a fascinating guy and you’ve done a great job.

Thank you very much.

I’m a big fan, and thank you very much. It’s been an honor.

It’s been an honor to have you as well.

I’m going to make a great speech and I’m going to say, and if I’m a little off tonight, I’m going to blame you.

Blame me. Go ahead, blame me.

I’m going to say, “I spoke to this guy for three hours.” Anyway, it’s a great honor to be with you.

Thank you, sir.

Thank you.

Good luck to you.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

Appreciate it.

All right. Bye everybody.