Thank you so much for joining us.
Thank you very much.
We're always grateful whenever you give us a few minutes of your time at One American News, sir.
Thank you.
But I wanna start out, uh, news of the day, the government has shut down for the first time since 2018, sir.
Right.
And what's fascinating about this situation is you have the House Republicans who have passed a clean CR.
Right.
Democrats voted for that back in March. They voted for clean CR 13 times under former President Biden. So I want to ask you, in your opinion, what changed? Why won't they vote for it this time?
Well, it's politics, and they're doing things and asking for things that you wouldn't want, and most people that are sane wouldn't want, and, uh, patriots wouldn't want. They want illegal aliens to get taken care of with healthcare. And it's not -- Look, I have a bigger heart than they do, but, uh, it's not even that everybody in the world is gonna enter our country and say, "Give us free healthcare.
Give us this, give us that." It's gonna ruin all of the things that we have, all of the plans that we have. Obama Care was never any good, but it, it subsists. It's there, and everything will be destroyed because no country has enough money to take care of that. So they want the illegals, they refuse to get away with open borders.
They wanna do open borders. They'll -- If they ever got in, they'll open up the borders. We have closed borders now. You only come into our country legally. But they would open up the borders in two minutes, if any -- And you understand it better than anybody 'cause you've covered it so well for so long.
Even though you're a young guy, you've covered it very well. Uh, they want transgender for everybody. They want men and women's sports. They haven't learned what happened in the last election. I think they forgot. And it's pretty amazing actually. But in terms of the dollars or the, the money that we're talking about, they want us to take care of illegals.
They want us to take care of people that can absolutely get a job. They're healthy and strong as you can be, and young. And this is not what this was all about.
No, it wasn't. And there was a lot of intrigue because you welcomed Hakeem Jeffries, Chuck Schumer, and you sat down with them and you heard them out. What did you learn from that specific meeting ahead of this shutdown, sir?
Well, we got along very well. I learned that they were much different outside of the office, 'cause in the office, they were total gentlemen. Outside of the office, they get out to the press, and they start ranting and raving. And it's, uh -- I said to those, the two guys that just left, they were very nice.
We had a nice talk for an hour, and they went outside and it was a different group of people. I mean, they're political people. And one of the other things is fraud, waste and abuse. They don't want to have any -- anybody -- Uh, I mean, the whole thing is crazy. When you find obvious fraud, you want to take care of it. Waste and abuse, they don't want anything to change.
And what that's gonna do is ruin it for the people that are taxpaying great American patriots.
It's not rocket science, when you think of it. There is an OMB memo going around suggesting that there might be firings during the shutdown. Do you think that will happen if the shutdown goes for a little bit of time, sir?
Well, there could be firings and that's their fault. And it could also be other things. I mean, we could cut projects that they wanted, favorite projects and they'd be permanently cut. So you could say a lot of people are saying, "Trump wanted this," that I wanted this closing, and I didn't want it. But a lot of people are saying it because I'm allowed to cut, uh, things that should have never been approved in the first place.
And I will probably do that.
One thing that you did when the government was open, though, sir, is you delivered historic tax cuts in under six months, fulfilling a major campaign promise, and you inherited an absolute mess of an economy. When you came in here, inflation was sky-high, groceries were sky-high, gasoline was sky-high, electricity was sky-high.
You immediately delivered on no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, no tax on social security, making permanent the tax cuts from your first administration. Can you talk a little bit about how Americans are going to feel that in 2026, and how much better their financial situations going to be because of the tax cuts that you got done so quickly?
Well, first of all, we passed a bill that was the biggest bill ever passed in the history of our country. And it was tax cuts, and it was all of the thing -- Regulation cuts, which a lot of people don't understand are actually more important than the tax cuts in terms of jobs than everything else. But we passed a bill, we call it the big beautiful -- I call it the great big, but the great big beautiful bill.
And we had fun with it. And all of a sudden, we started to realize it really was a great big beautiful bill. And what's happened is we're getting the big -- I don't have to go over them, you just went over some of them, but tax on tips and tax on social security and tax on overtime, there is no tax, and nobody can believe it even.
And when we talk about the kind of things, most importantly, we got the Trump tax cuts from the previous, from the first administration, my first administration, uh, we got that extended and amplified and actually made much bigger, much better, much stronger than it was even before. And that's what led us to a record.
We had record growth, and now we're having record growth like never before. Nobody's seen, well, we have 17 trillion plus. Think of it, $17 trillion is being invested in a country. Under Biden, in four years they had less than $1 trillion. So we have 17 trillion in eight months. And I think there'll be an explosion of success in the country like we've never had before.
You talked about the growth, that's like been a key word throughout your first --
Right.
-- this administration. So you talked about how much we want to grow the economy, the numbers back it up. Quarter two GDP was revised up to 3.8%. The widely watched Atlanta Fed, I believe their econo- -- their G- -- their fed GDP now model is up to 3.9% for a quarter, three for real economic output, real wages for --
Right.
-- blue collar workers, electricians, plumbers, construction workers. It's growing at the fastest clip that it did in 60 years, sir. So when you think about all these really, really positive macro numbers, how will it make people's lives -- Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, the Rust Belt, how will it improve all of their lives?
How will they feel these types of numbers in their own personal situation?
So the fairest question of all, it's called jobs. They're going to have great jobs. They're going to have the job that they wanted. They're going to be able to go out and negotiate the best deal they want to, and, and most importantly, they're going to have a job that they want and that they're good at. So we have factories opening up all over the country.
We have auto plants opening up all over the country. Just today. I read where Volvo said that, because of the tariffs and because of President Trump and the victory that we had, Volvo is opening up a massive plant, which had no intention of doing this. The, uh, president of Volvo said, "We had no intention of doing this," and now, because of a couple of things, the election, but maybe most importantly the tariffs, but the election was probably more important. 'cause without me, this wouldn't have happened.
So we have all of this investment come in, but one thing that just came up, as I'm walking into the room, this beautiful room in the White House where you sit and ask me very good questions, uh, the trade deficit was cut in half. Nobody ever saw that, and it was cut in half because we're taking in hundreds of billions of dollars worth of tariffs.
So the trade deficit in one -- in just, uh, a few months was cut in half. Nobody thought that would be possible to do so quickly except me.
Mm-hmm.
I mean, I did. I said, "Frankly, I think we're going to -- you're going to see numbers." We are becoming a country that's so rich, so powerful, it gives us power, but so rich, and we can take care of people. We can take care of our people. We can help other countries, frankly. But the numbers we're making are, uh -- nobody thought it was possible.
Now, they're all saying Trump was right.
Sir, you mentioned the tariffs, you talked about how the tariffs, plus the Big Beautiful Bill and the tax cuts in there, are incentivizing massive amounts of investment commitment --
And no inflation.
-- and no inflation at all. Inflation is completely stable.
Yep.
It's around target rate, and the country is ultimately taking in unprecedented amounts of tariff revenue, more than $200 billion at this point in time, sir. What do you believe this extra source of revenue can be put towards and how big of a game changer is it for your administration?
Well, ultimately, you know, 'cause we're talking about, uh, uh, just kicking in, they're just starting to kick, kick in, but ultimately, your tariffs are going to be over a trillion dollars a year, in my opinion. Uh, we're going to do something, we're looking at something where, number one, we're paying down debt, because people have allowed the debt to go crazy.
Uh, but, you know, with growth, with the kind of growth we have now, the debt is very little, relatively speaking. Uh, you grow yourself out of that debt. It's not a question of paying it. You grow yourself out. And the numbers are so much bigger than they ever were. The numbers we have now are bigger than they ever were.
So when you have $36 trillion in debt a year ago, or two years ago, and you have a lot less revenue coming in, then you have 37 or 38, uh, it's not 38 yet, but it will be. Uh, and the numbers are so much bigger. All of a sudden, 38, you're under-levered, whereas for 36 you were highly levered. We're not highly levered anymore.
Now, with that being said, we'll pay back debt, but we all -- we also might make a distribution to the people, almost like a dividend to the people of America.
How much are you thinking for that, sir?
Well, we're thinking maybe $1,000 to $2,000, be great.
Another way that you directly made sure that you prioritized forgotten communities, I asked you about this in the Oval Office a couple of months ago, but you went to Pennsylvania and you announced a slew of investment commitment for the Keystone State, specifically regarding AI. But I want to hone in on Homer City, Pennsylvania.
Okay.
Back in, uh, I believe it was July 2023, the Homer City Generating Station, which was Pennsylvania's biggest coal-fired plant, sir, closed down, a lot of regulations. On October 9th of 2024, you went to, uh, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania --
Yeah.
-- and you told the residents of Homer City that you would not forget about them, you would make sure that they were prioritized. You did that. Early July, you announced a $15 billion investment commitment for Homer City, the, the largest natural gas-fired plant in the entire country. You're the president of the United States.
You have a gazillion things to do every day. You're trying to end wars. You're dealing with other countries. Why did you want to make sure that these people were taken care of?
Because they were really screwed for many years. What they got -- uh, they got the short end of it from administrations that didn't know what they were doing. Uh, you could look at East Palen- -- Palestine, you could lo- -- in Ohio with what happened there, and we took care of those people, and before that, Biden did nothing.
He did absolutely nothing. Look at North Carolina where they had the, the horrible -- it was like a flood, massive flood. It was a hurricane, but it was a water hurricane, a lot of -- nobody's ever seen anything like it, where land, you know, big, beautiful pieces of land were out in the middle of a lake.
The whole thing was surrounded by water. They were devastated. Uh, I got in and we took care of North Carolina before I got in, uh, they let it go. It was terrible. They just forgot about it. The people --
You went your first week.
-- they, they suffered. Yeah, the first week, the first week I went in. But while they were there, it was -- and we got it solved fast, but it was a big investment and it was a lot of talent and a lot of good congressmen and, you know, et cetera, et cetera. But, uh, when you look at the, uh, you know O- -- Ohio situation, the North Carolina situation, uh, and just what you're saying, I mean, the people were not being, the people of our country weren't being taken care of. Other nations were being taken care of and a lot of billionaires were being taken care of. Now, you know, people would say, "Well, what about you?" I said, "Well, I think I'm from different cloth somehow." I care more about the people and I really do. I think it was disgraceful the way people were being trade -- treated by the Biden administration.
Now, Ed, on top of that, you let 25 million people come in from prisons and jails and, and from mental institutions. Your quality of life was way down. I mean, you, you look at what's -- The fabric of our country was changing. Many of those people have been taken out. Many of those people were criminals, career criminals.
When you look at what happened to DC and, and you look at before and after, it took us 12 days, intense, but it took us 12 days to fix DC. At the end of a month, it's never been better than it is right now. And we're gonna keep it that way, we're not gonna let this go back. We had one of the worst crime ridden places.
Now we're going to Memphis.
Mm-hmm.
And we're going to Chicago. We're gonna save Chicago because it has to be saved.
So you are going to Chicago?
We're going to Chicago.
Have you settled on a date yet, sir?
Pretty soon.
Pretty soon.
Pretty soon. We've already been there. You know, we've been there for five months with the FBI getting it ready for what we're going to be doing.
You also announced that you would be sending the National Guard to Portland, Oregon.
Yeah.
To obviously help protect ICE facilities, ICE agents have seen a 1000% increase in assaults on them since January 21st of this year when you compare the same time of last year. Uh, your attorney General wrote in a memo saying that we've entered a new era of extreme political violence.
Yeah.
Do you believe that the presence of the National Guard and a lot of these Democrat run cities is a major deterrent to the violent crime that is broken out?
Well, the beautiful thing about DC is we showed it. In 12 days, it was almost gone. In 25 days, it was gone. And there is no crime. And you know, when I say no crime, there is no crime virtually in DC. It's like a safe place. You can walk down with your wife, your beautiful new wife. Very nice. Congratulations.
Thank you, sir.
Who was also a very good, uh, journalist. And I assume still is right?c
Still is [Laughs]
I hope she continues. But, but you can walk together hand in hand and you're not gonna be, uh, mugged and all the other things that happened. Uh, we had many murders, over 11,000, I guess 11,888 murderers. People that, uh, were many people, more than one murder, I guess over 50% killed more than one person.
These people were released into our country. They're not gonna get better. They're not gonna say, "Well, now I'm gonna be good." They're killers and probably born that way. But you'll have to figure that one out for yourself. Uh, these people are out of our country now, a lot of 'em. We're looking for the rest.
We, we know who they are and we're coming to get 'em. But our country was a very -- Our country was, was becoming, if I didn't win this election, we would've had a third world country. I really believe that. So now we have a safe city. We're going to have safe cities. We're gonna be in Chicago, we're going to Portland.
And now the mayor is, and the governor is trying to keep us outta Portland. And where do these people come from? The governor says that, "Oh, Portland is just fine." And then you turn on the television, you see the places burning down to the ground and it has been for a long time. We're gonna take care of Portland.
Why do you think these Democrat politicians in these cities are so resistant to them? JB Pritzker, Brandon Johnson, uh, of -- officials in Oregon. What are they afraid of? Uh, have you proven that their policies have directly led to decline?
So they're either bad people or they're stupid, and I don't believe they're stupid. They have something going on where they think that a Portland is in good shape, that Portland is not burning to the ground. That the fires that I'm watching on television aren't there. You had to see this governor. She didn't know what she was doing.
She called me. She said, "We don't want troops in Portland." You know who wants them? The people. They go around, interview people, even CNN, they interview people. "Send as many troops as you can." The people want 'em. The people in Washington DC want 'em. Everybody, they wanna have safety. And if it means we put in National Guard and I'd go a step further than that if I had to, but Chicago is a big deal.
I mean, you're gonna lose Chicago. We're not gonna let that happen.
Have you thought about other cities that you might --
Yeah. I, I did.
-- go into? Other than Chicago and Portland?
Any city that you see shootings like Chicago, 5, 10, 11, 12 killings a weekend and 38 people being shot, think of that. 38 people being shot, 11, 11 people dying. And this is all the time. Sometimes it's five, sometimes it's four, sometimes it's 12 people being shot. And then after shot, you have 28 to 48 to 58 people -- Think of this.
You have people being murdered and people being shot at numbers greater than any place in the world. And you have this governor, this stupid person who got thrown out of his family business 'cause he was incompetent, standing up and saying, "Chicago is doing fine, we'll handle Chicago." But every weekend, you'd see this, you have long weekends.
They made one where they had over a Labor day weekend, they said, uh, there were 20 people murdered. 20 people. And you know what they said? "Well, it was Labor Day weekend. It's a longer weekend, so that's okay." You know, can you believe it? I don't know where they come from. So, you know, your question is to how come they're this way?
If I were -- I don't care if I'm a Democrat or what I am, I would be begging Trump to get in and bring in the troops or do whatever you can because their reputation is shot, and this is why the Democrats are doing so badly. I think crime is gonna be the biggest factor this time. You know, I -- I had crime, but I had all sorts of other things.
Open borders, men in women's sports, I had, uh, transgender for every -- I had everything. Now the word crime is so big because they're trying to fight me. I mean, every time we send in the troops to clean it up, we end up in court. We end up winning, but we end up in court. But you look at what happened to D.C. It's -- it's been so beautiful to see.
The restaurants are booming. People are going out to lunch, they're going out to dinner. They haven't --
You went to dinner.
I have a friend hadn't gone out in years, and now he's gone to restaurants four or five times in the last couple of weeks. And he said, it's so beautiful.
You mentioned that crime is gonna be a major factor. You got your tax cuts done in half the amount of time it did last time, sir.
Yeah.
You did it December of 2017. Now you did it before July 4th, here this time around. Looking ahead to 2026, do you believe that your response to combat violent crime and the amount of tax relief and economic success you've had, do you believe that will be enough to help buoy Republicans in the 2026 midterms?
I hope so. Now, the one thing that I worry about is that if you look over many, many years, I don't have the numbers, but the person that wins the presidency always seems to lose the midterms. I don't know why. It's crazy. Even presidents that did well, and there have been some. And I think we're at the top of the list in terms of doing well.
Nobody's done what I've done. Seven wars. We put out seven wars, now it could be eight. You saw -- You reported, it looks like the Middle East could very well be solved after 3000 years approximately. We're gonna have more than Gaza. We're gonna have Gaza plus peace, overall peace. That would be an amazing achievement.
And then we'll get Russia taken care of somehow. We're gonna get that. I thought that would be an easy one. That's been a difficult one. 5,000 people are being killed every single week. Soldiers, mostly soldiers, Russia and Ukrainian soldiers. But, um, seven different wars I ended, and it's soon gonna be eight.
And when you think of it, nobody's done anything like that. Then on top of that, we get you the largest tax cuts in history. People are doing better than they've ever done right now, and we have no inflation. I inherited a mess and now we have a country -- I'll tell you, I was with the king of Saudi Arabia.
He said, "A year ago you were in a dead country and now you have the hottest." We're the hottest country in the world right now.
We certainly are. And do you have any big plans for 2026? Do you plan on hitting the campaign trail at all and helping out some of the candidates? Could you kind of give us a little bit of a inside scoop on regards to your plans in 2026, sir?
Yeah, I do. I have big plans. Yeah, I have big plans. I wanna survive. That's one of my big plans. Uh, you look at what's going on, it's crazy. You know, the rhetoric that these, uh, crazy democrats are using is very dangerous. They've made politics very dangerous. And, uh, we'll be, uh, we'll be -- you're gonna be very happy with the job we're gonna do.
Well, it's fascinating you mentioned that rhetoric. Uh, Senator John Fetterman from Pennsylvania, he actually put out, uh, um, a thing on X saying quote, "Unchecked extreme rhetoric like labels as his- -- Hitler or fascist will foment more extreme outcomes."
Yeah.
Political violence is always wrong, no exceptions. Do you think he's right with that description?
Well, he's right. And it can bounce back on the other side too. You know, it's a two-way street, and it can bounce back the other way. What they're doing is very dangerous. It's very bad. And, uh, there probably hasn't been this kind of intensity maybe in a long time in this country. And that intensity, that kind of intensity is very bad.
They're using rhetoric that's very dangerous and, you know, you have stupid people doing it, like Crockett, she's a low IQ person. Uh, and uh, others that are not smart people. And then you have some smart people doing it too. And those are the ones you have to be more careful of. So, uh, they've gotta stop it, they've gotta stop it fast.
You actually just went to the memorial service out in Arizona for Charlie Kirk. The nation is still grieving. It will be grieving for quite some time. Uh, thinking back on that service, what did it mean to you to be there? What did it -- My wife obviously works for Turning Point.
Yeah.
So it, it hits, it hits home quite seriously. What was that experience like for you?
Well, as your wife knows, Charlie was a great guy. Charlie and I were very close. He was a big factor in our big win. I mean, he got a lot of -- Especially young people. I mean, it was like an army of people and he was a believer and, uh, I was a believer in him. And I think they're gonna go on to very great things.
He became almost bigger because of what this horrible thing this ha-happened. Who would've thought this would go, you know, they talk about chapters. He wanted to have 20,000 chapters someday. Somebody said they have 150,000 requests.
Mm-hmm.
So he would've been very proud to see, but it should have not have happened to him. And his wife is great. Erika is gonna go on and I guess she was, she's now the chairman.
Mm-hmm.
And she's gonna go on, I think, to great success. He always used to say she's very smart. He loved her a lot, but he said she, she was very smart. So we're gonna find out and I think she's gonna do great.
I wanna call back to 2016 real quick. What's fascinating about 2016, it was during one of your debates with Hillary Clinton, she was asked to give you a compliment, say something nice about you. And she said that your children specifically reflected very well on you as a parent. You met my wife, she's actually -- We're actually expecting our first child next year.
So I wanted to wonder if you could give us and the million other of couples here in the United States some parenting advice.
Well, I know both of you and you're both outstanding and you're both very smart. And, uh, you're going to have a country given to you. You know, you're only sort of as good you can be great, but if you're born in the wrong country, it's not so easy. You're gonna have a great country again. We have a country that was really a sick country and we're getting better, very fast, a lot faster than people could have imagined.
You, uh, you know, as I just said, we're the hottest country anywhere in the world. So you're off to a good start. You just wanna be good, solid -- I always tell my kids, I always tell them, no drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes. I'd add in cigarettes. No cigarettes. It's good. But I'd say that all the time.
And Ivanka sometimes say, "Dad, stop saying that." I say it all the time. I've seen people, uh, wonderful families, you know, there's so much problems with drugs and alcohol, but drugs pouring in. You didn't have that years ago. And I just put it in my kids, man, you gotta stay away from drugs, alcohol, stay away from cigarettes.
I think it's so important. And obviously, you know, you're gonna have smart children and all that stuff, but education's so important. All of those things. But I've seen very smart families, very brilliant children, they get hooked on drugs they don't have a chance. So keep them away from the drugs and keep them away from the problems.
And I think you're gonna have a, a great and successful marriage and life. And I congratulate you and your wife. You're both incredible. I've seen you face so much asking me questions.
[Laughs]
Sometimes good ones, sometimes bad ones, sometimes tough ones, right? But, uh, the country's doing well where I really think we're back. We're back. A big thing is crime in our cities and we're solving that. Nobody thought -- I didn't even campaign on that, but that's now a campaign factor. But people living in New York and Los Angeles, Los Angeles wouldn't even be there now if I didn't send to the troops very early, because that was a riot.
That was an insurrection. But you look at, uh, Chicago, what's happening. We're gonna give you safe cities. We're gonna give you a great country and you're gonna have a great family.
Mr. President, thank you so much.
Thank you very much.
You're always generous with your time, thank you.
Thank you, Daniel.