Joining us now by phone is one of his best friends, President Donald Trump. Mr. President, I'm really sorry for our country's loss. I know you lost one of your closest friends and an ally in the Senate. Um, how are you feeling?
Well, I don't feel great. He was a great guy, and he was a friend. He would call me all the time. He would just -- I'd say, stop calling me, Lindsey. He was just -- he was amazing. You know, he just didn't stop and he would be -- he was a worker. He was a total workaholic politician. Now, some people don't call that work.
Some people call that a lot of talking. But everybody loved him. Uh, he was good on the other side. If I had -- if I had Democrat problems, he could solve them. He was a man of all different abilities, actually. And -- and he was a nice man. He was a great guy. He loved -- loved playing golf, loved being outside.
He'd play golf with people and you just liked him. It wasn't that he was a great striker of the ball. He wasn't -- he wasn't exactly a perfect -- he wasn't Jack Nicklaus, he was not Tiger, but he was -- he loved it and he got -- he had fun. You know, he was a man who had a lot of fun. He had fun with politics, but he was really good at it. And then when he got angry, like he did in the case of Brett Kavanaugh, it was so impactful.
I think it saved the -- I think it saved the, uh, Brett becoming a justice. You know, it was just a moment in time that the Democrats got so sick and so angry and so crazy, and they were going to do something very bad. And Lindsey went on his tirade, and it was much more than a tirade, but it was -- I think it was one of the great 10 moments of Congress, if you want to know the truth.
I said, that was one of the 10 greatest moments in Congress, and I think you wouldn't find ten other cases where -- where somebody did what he was able to do there. And he saved Brett from, you know, a very, very unfair decision, or they would have had to -- they would have turned a man down who was so qualified and such a good man.
So, you know, and I do -- I do think it was one of the top 10 in Congress. You know, like they have the top 10 in sports, this was the top 10 in politics.
That's right.
And -- but he was just a good man and, you know, he called me. He came back from Ukraine and he called me and -- which didn't surprise me at all. And he said, I'm back and told me a couple of things. He was very strong on fighting for the SAVE America Act. And I'm not sure if he was at the beginning, but he really became the primary advocate for it. And I think he would have felt the same way about terminating the filibuster, which was so important.
I mean, it's so important. The Republicans have to do it it's so insane. Otherwise, we're going to have a shutdown in September, and we have a debt ceiling problem coming in two years. And if you terminate the filibuster, everything goes away, and we do anything we want. We pass everything we want, and the Democrats are going to do it. And he started to see that, because he was against because everyone was sort of against.
Not everybody, 20 percent were against. He was one and now he was starting to say, terminate the filibuster, otherwise, we're going to have, you know, these continued, ridiculous, crazy, Trump-deranged -- they're Trump deranged. These people suffer from a very fine disease known as Trump derangement syndrome, and he was seeing that.
And --
Mr. President, did you notice any --
-- he was -- he really come a long way on the -- on the terminating the filibuster, which is the single smartest thing we could do. Because then you'd get everything. You know, that's -- that's the bigger -- that's bigger. But even if we took the small loaf and the small loaf is the SAVE America Act, and it's very simple.
It's voter ID, it's proof of citizenship, and it's no voter -- it's the -- the ballot. Look what happened to the kid in California. They sent a million ballots; nobody know where they came from.
Yeah.
So it's, you know, you don't do mail-in ballots unless you're in the military, you're in deployment, you're in the military. You don't do them if somebody's sick, if somebody's disabled, or if you go on vacation, you know, you get a pass. We make it nice and easy.
Mr. President, did you notice any -- did you notice anything different?
But they find millions and millions of ballots. In California, they find millions and millions of ballots. It's impossible. Spencer Pratt came up to my office. He said he thought he won. I said, why didn't you complain? He didn't know who to complain to. But what they did to that guy was unbelievable. He's a nice guy.
He works so hard. And they found millions of ballots, you know, and they took the election away from him. They almost did it to Steve Hilton. I complained.
Yeah.
I got the US attorneys involved and the FBI. And as soon as -- because he was -- you know, they were putting out reports, Steve Hilton is starting to fade. He's running, as you know, for governor of California. And they said, Steve Hilton -- I said, here we go, they're going to find ballots. And they said he was starting to fade.
He wasn't fading, hge was the opposite. And I put the US attorney involved. They said, we'll know in two weeks. After I -- can you imagine? This is the week after the election, they're saying he started to fade. And then I got the US attorney involved, and they didn't know in two weeks. They let it be known an hour later that Steve Hilton had -- Steve Hilton [Inaudible] that he's going to be in the runoff.
So Mr. President, real quickly, did you notice anything different from Lindsey --
So these elections are very dishonest and you can't have a country unless you have really honest elections. And when people don't want to have voter ID, when people don't want to have proof of citizenship, it's only for one reason, because they want to cheat and they're very good at it.
And, Mr. President, obviously, Senator Lindsey Graham was a co-sponsor of the SAVE America Act. Let me ask you, though, we were talking and you were just talking about that Kavanaugh moment being a top 10 moment, and I would agree, as we were all watching on that day in 2018 and knew -- we knew we were witnessing history.
But -- but I wonder whether or not that was a significant, pivotal moment in your friendship and the development of your close bond with him, when you saw him standing and fighting, since no other person was, that delivered, ultimately, Justice Kavanaugh? Was that in a key moment?
No, it was just a sign of respect. I knew Lindsay, by that time -- don't forget, Lindsay was one of -- there were a total, actually, of 18 people that -- they always say 16 or 17, but there were actually 18 people running for president. A couple had dropped out very early, and he -- he was one of them, one of them running.
And he was totally against me. I mean, he was fighting me. He sort of used me as the example because I was leading in the polls by a lot. And he said, I'll get you in South Carolina. I'm going to get you in South Carolina. That didn't work out too well. I joke about it. You know, it was like -- it was amazing, actually.
The whole thing was amazing. Hey, the whole career was amazing, but Lindsay was a big part of it because once that ended, he left the race. And once that ended, I became really good friends with him. Now, he had one bad moment and that was, you know, in the January 6th thing when he stood up, all right, now I've had it, that's it, I can't do it anymore.
Then he called me like about 40 minutes later and he said, did I really say that? I can't believe it, and he took it back, which -- So I give him a 99 instead of a 100. You know, most people -- a lot of people were at 100. But he did have that one little moment and it was sort of funny when he goes, uh, did you see it, by the way, I've had it, now I've had it. He was just, you know, too -- I was too much for him.
He said, this is it, I've had it. I had nothing to do with that, by the way, just so you understand. And people got terribly destroyed because of that, where they did absolutely nothing wrong. I was very proud to give everybody a pardon. But Lindsay goes up and he goes, now I've had it, that's it. That was his only bad moment.
He said, I wish I never said it, but about 45 minutes later, he called. He said, I made a big mistake, what do I do? So I give him a 99.9 instead of 100. You know, it's one of those things.
So, Mr. President, um, Lindsey Graham was definitely on your side when it comes to Iran and the threat of them not having a nuclear weapon. It looks like they're back at their business, trying to take over the strait. What's your response?
Well, we're taking over the strait. They have nothing. They've got nothing. So something that nobody knows, yesterday, they had an 11-hour meeting. Everything's 11 hours with these guys. You know, you can't settle in one sentence, in one hour, in one minute. It should be one minute. And everything was agreed to yesterday.
And they leave the room and they call back and they say, we had to make a couple of changes. I said, changes, they got to make changes? We're not going to make changes. Always changes. They just -- you know, they're professional negotiators. That's all they are. That's -- I don't even call them good at it. They haven't gotten anything.
They got nothing from me. But if you look, for 47 years, they've been tapping people along, presidents. Every president got tapped along, didn't do anything, and they became more and more powerful. This should have been done 47 years ago. It shouldn't have been allowed to start. But Clinton let them go and Bush let them go. Everybody let them go. And Obama was the worst of all because Obama actually went to their side.
Obama, because, you know, he's a -- well, let's not say -- let's -- let's not say. Let's leave that for another time. He was terrible. And he allowed them -- he allowed Iran to -- he gave them $1.7 billion in cash, in green cash, put in satchels in an airplane, and brought to Tehran, $1.7 billion. Do you know what that is? Did you ever see -- did you ever see $1 million in cash?
This is $1.7 billion. It took up an entire seven -- Boeing 757, and they flew it to Tehran, and they gave it to people that were waiting at a plane. Can you imagine, these people, they never saw money and now all of a sudden, they've got $1.7 billion in cash and he gave them hundreds of billions of dollars in cash and everything else.
And he went to their side. And because of that, they built -- they became much more powerful because of Obama and Biden, who was the vice president but he probably had nothing to say because he was such a stupid person. But then Biden, you know, when Biden came in -- and then I held him down, I stopped him and, you know, the JCPOA, I stopped it. And, uh, and stopped it really, really powerfully.
I ended -- that agreement was the worst -- somebody said, C. Maybe it's a C, it ends with a C. That agreement is the worst agreement that has been signed by this country. That's the top five bad agreements. And that basically gave them everything and they built and built and built, and they were minutes away from a nuclear weapon.
Had I not terminated the agreement, the Iran nuclear deal it's called, they would have had a weapon then. Had I not killed Khomeini, who was a, you know, brilliant but mad general. He was a -- he was a crazy Soleimani uh, I killed Soleimani. Soleimani was, uh, you know, like one of the really, really bad people in this whole thing.
Right.
But he was good at what he did. He was a very brilliant general.
Mr. President --
The killing of Soleimani was one of the biggest things. I think the --
We heard they're rebuilding.
-- the B-2 bombers -- I'll tell you, Ainsley, had I not attacked on the B-2 bombers, they would have a nuclear weapon. And, right now, the Middle East, in its current form, would not exist.
I love what you did last summer. Last summer, you destroyed their nuclear sites. It was awesome. And now we're hearing they're trying to rebuild again. What are you going to do about that?
Well, they'll -- they have no chance. Look, we have them -- we have them on the run. Most of their equipment is gone. Their anti-aircraft stuff is gone. We hit them very hard last night. Every time they send a drone, we hit them very hard. But we had a deal. What nobody knows, we had a deal. It was a done deal and then they broke it. They always break it. We've had 10 deals with these people, and so we're just going to hit them very hard.
And we're going to -- we're going to keep the straight and we'll probably run it. We'll become the guardian of the straight. Maybe we'll call it the guardian angel of the straight and we should be reimbursed for that. When we do that, we're going to be reimbursed because the other nations are very wealthy they're on our side, and we can't be expected to do that for nothing, unlike we had for many years.
You know, we -- we guarded the strait for 50 years, more, and we never got paid for it. They made all the money in the United States was just, you know, not -- they wouldn't -- it's amazing -- it's, uh, we never made -- we guarded it for nothing and now we're going to guard it and we're going to get paid for guarding it, a lot of money.
But we just want to be reimbursed for doing all of this, for putting our people in danger. But we're really not putting people -- we're really saving people. Remember this, they killed 52,000 protesters so far. As of this moment, the number is 52,000. So who's going to protest? And a lot of people are surprised about the protesting, you know, that they haven't -- but nobody's going to protest when they get shot.
They have AK-47s. They have machine guns aimed at people's heads. If you move one foot further, you get shot and then they'll shot -- they'll shoot 10 of them and everybody flees. Who's not going to flee? They don't have guns.
Right.
So, uh, they're a bad group of people. Let me just tell you that. I don't say that often, and I have to live with that statement. They're a bad group of people. They've been this way for a long time, and right now, they're getting their ass kicked. And in the top form -- you know, I get a kick when The New York Times and CNN, so you got to understand, their entire military is gone.
They got nothing. They have no navy they have no air force, it's all gone. Their anti-aircraft is gone. Their leaders have all been killed. Their best leaders have been killed. They're gone. Khomeini is gone. The son is 90 percent gone and the New York Times writes an article, they're doing better today -- oh, and they have inflation that's 350 percent, that used to be at five percent six months ago.
They have 350 percent inflation and the New York Times writes an article, they're stronger today than they were four months ago. These people are sick. The New York Times are sick.
Yeah. Obviously, the American people don't believe that, Mr. President. They understand who's winning this war. Real quickly, Mr. President --
I actually think it's treasonous, Lawrence. I think it -- by the way, how good is Lawrence doing? OK? Is he doing a good job?
He's great. He's great.
He's OK.
I appreciate it, Mr. President, but we want to talk about --
I had my doubts at the beginning. Ainsley, I had my doubts. I wasn't sure, but I'm telling you -- and Griff is -- you have a very good team, very good team.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Thank you.
We want to ask you about something that we know you don't like talking about because you don't want to talk about yourself, but today marks two years since they tried to assassinate you in Butler, Pennsylvania. Um, how do you feel about this on this day? Iran is still trying to take you out. The threat level is high, but you continue to serve our country.
Well, let's put it this way, so I've known Ainsley longer than the two of you. I've known her through a great gentleman, a very handsome man named Sean Hannity. She seemed to be attracted to him for whatever the hell reason, right? So I've known her for a long time, and I once told her a long time ago, I said, this is a very dangerous -- Being president is a very dangerous profession.
I said, why didn't you tell me that, Ainsley? I wouldn't have run. But -- now, by the way, the press will take that and they'll say, he wished he didn't run, you know, because they're sick, because they -- you can never be sarcastic when you're dealing with a fake news, right? So anyway, but jokingly, I said jokingly, but I say, Ainsley, if you would have told me this, I wouldn't have run.
So it's 5.2 percent of the president's basically are killed. 8-8.5 percent are shot at or shot, like Ford was shot and actually, Teddy Roosevelt was shot. It hit him in the wallet. He had a wallet and a speech in his left pocket, right over his heart. And he took one to the heart and it, uh, it didn't get through.
It actually got through a little bit, but not far enough. It's pretty amazing. But it's a -- it's a dangerous, 5.2 percent are assassinated. Now, there's no other industry that anybody can think of, like I consider race car driving very dangerous. It's one tenth of one percent. Bull riding; I don't know anything about bull riding, but those guys are pretty brave guys.
It's one point -- same thing, it's one percent out of one percent. OK? Think of that, one -- very -- it's a very small number. TGhey get pretty well beat up, but it's not -- it's a very small number.
But, Mr. President, can I just ask you --
So think of that, this is 5.2 percent. So Ainsley should have told me that when we talked about it many years ago. Right, Ainsley?
Well, we have you covered in prayer, I'll say that. Most of America is praying for you. God clearly has a purpose for you. Look at George Washington too. He was shot at. But how are you feeling today? I think we all just want to know. And after the report that came back, I, you know, I hate to Monday morning quarterback and put down law enforcement because they do such an amazing job, but they missed some things and the report showing that.
What's your response? What's your reaction to that?
We're talking about the Butler report, basically?
Yes.
Well, they blew Butler because they had one building that was empty and they blew it. Now, at the same time, David, our sniper from 300 yards, was able to act within less than four seconds and took out somebody that he didn't know existed, which was unbelievable, the job he did, because if he didn't do that, you would have had a lot of people -- and maybe not me, because they were on top of me pretty quickly, I had a lot of people on top of me and they were very brave.
Secret service was very brave. They were on top of me very, very fast. They saw what was happening. Everybody saw very quickly. I knew -- I knew exactly what was happening. There was nothing -- I mean, it was amazing how I understood exactly and I knew it was the ear -- they thought it was all over, because the ear bleeds -- something -- some little fact.
You'll ask your doctor that who's fantastic, by the way, he just gave the report on Lindsey. He's such a great guy and such a great doctor. But you'll ask him, it has to do with cartilage, the ear bleeds more than anything. So I got hit in the ear and it was a bloody mess. But I knew I only got hit there and they thought I got hit at many different locations because of the blood, the amount of blood, and you know, they blew it. They blew it because of the one thing.
After that, they were incredible. They were very brave. They stood over and the -- the -- our shooter, our sniper, from very far away, he was on the other side of a field, he hit one shot, one bullet, and it was over. And if he didn't do that, you know, this guy had like 300 rounds of ammunition. He would have killed -- because they had 55,000 people there at that rally.
And then we went back and we had 117,000 people showed up. We went back. We had to go back. I always have to go back, because you can't let them win. You can't let crazy people and bad people, and he was a very strange cookie, this one, very -- very academically smart but very disturbed. He was a very disturbed person.
But academically, his boards, he had almost perfect boards. He was a great student, but he was a person who was very tormented. He was a tormented person and, uh, they should have had somebody at that -- you know, I mean, this is now history we're talking about, I guess, but they should have had somebody at the -- standing on that building or at that building or watching that building.
But with that being said, after that, I mean, I got lucky. God was watching. There's one, Ainsley. God was watching, because, you know, my son Don and Eric, both of them, they know a lot about guns. They hunt. They like to hunt. And they said, from that distance, with that gun, that particular gun, uh, there's almost no chance of missing.
They -- they considered it something maybe easier than a two-foot putt, to put it in golf terms. TGhey said that's -- from that distance with that gun, it's like -- dad, it's like sinking a two-foot putt, which is hard to -- for those non-golfers, a two-foot putt is almost automatic. I wouldn't say automatic.
For some people, it's not. But it's -- it's almost automatic. And, uh, so, you know, God was with me. I turned my head to show a chart and -- a chart that I never show on the right hand side but this time I did and a chart that I don't even use that much. I use it probably 1 in 10 times at the rallies and -- but it's always on my left.
And this time it was on my right. I looked to the right and -- if I looked to the left, I wouldn't be talking to you right now. So many amazing things. And the chart is always at the end of the speech and I just put it at the beginning because it was appropriate. You know, sometimes I'll start out and I won't be reading a lot of things because it makes it much more interesting.
I think that's why people like it. But I just said, I'm going to put it up there. It just felt good. It felt right. You know, I speak the way I feel and it felt right. and the chart, I said, let's talk about the chart, and I look over to the right as it's coming down and I said, wow, what was that?
Wow.
I said, it's either the biggest, most violent mosquito in history or I just got shot. It was one of the two things, because I -- I touched my ear. There was blood all over my ear. As soon as I touched it, this wasn't like a slow bleed. I touched it, you saw. I mean, the picture is a very famous one, and I'm going down and I said to myself and sort of, I guess as much as you can joke about something like this, but --
Well, Mr. President --
-- I said, that's either the most violent mosquito in history or I got shot.
We're so glad that you're still with us.
I pretty much knew what happened, Lawrence.
We prayed hard, Mr. President, but we thank you so much for giving Fox & Friends some time this morning.
Yes, thank you, Mr. President.
We lost a great man. He was a great man. He was a great politician, and he was a kind man. And you know who really lost, Israel, Ukraine, a lot of countries that he really fought for and they lost somebody who was very special. But the real loser was the United States of America. We lost a great person, a kind person, a very smart person, and a great, great -- you know, they ask me sometimes, what do you think?
He was a great politician. You know, we have mostly bad politicians. We have stupid politicians all over the place. This guy was a great politician. He really got it and he was a nice guy, as you know very well. You interviewed him probably 500,000 times, you guys. I think he got more television time than anybody in history, right?
That's right.
Such a remarkable --
He loved it. Everything for him was about work. It was about loving the country. It was --
It's true.
It's not easy to do that. You know, when you do television, it's -- it's not that easy to get ready, be prepared. You got to look good, you got to -- you know, not that easy. A lot of people can't do it at all. A lot of people, when the camera goes on, they're terrible. I see it all the time. I watch people.
Some -- most people aren't very good, and he did it and he did it with pride and he did it because he loved our country.
Yeah, he served his country until literally his death. Mr. President, thank you, sir, for taking time and joining us and sharing your thoughts.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Well, thank you. Thank you all very much. We lowered the flags for a full week for Lindsay, which is, uh, which we maxed out. And he's, uh, we've got every American flag in the country lowered and -- until Saturday night, and he was a special man. And thank you all very much and we're going to give him a special type of funeral because he deserves it.
[Inaudible] yes, sir.
Thank you all very much.
Thank you.
Thank you, Mr. President.
Bye.
The 45th and 47th President, Donald J. Trump. Thank you, sir.