All right. Joining us now, the 45th and 47th president of the United States, Donald J. Trump. Mr. President, good to have you on the show.
Hello, John.
All right, sir. I want to dive into something we confirmed earlier this week. The FBI under Kash Patel has opened a grand conspiracy case looking at the last decade of weaponization against you and the protection of Democrats like Hunter Biden and Hillary Clinton as one ongoing criminal conspiracy. I want to ask what you think of that approach and whether you think a special prosecutor might be warranted?
Well, I'm happy that they did that. I don't know much about it, but it deserves to be done. It was a disgrace, what happened, and what happened in 2016 and what happened in 2020. It's a disgraceful situation and our voting has to be straightened out. I always say, if you don't have borders, if you don't have fair and free voting, you don't have a country.
And we have disgraceful voting, voting that -- they spent all of this money on voting and some of the votes don't come back for weeks later. The whole thing is -- it's a scam and we have to straighten it out.
For all the things that have happened, there is the Russia collusion against you, there is Jack Smith against you. There's all the things that happened in 2020, not investigating China, interference in the 2020 election. Where do you think -- what are the things are most important that you would like to see the FBI get to the bottom of?
I think they could look at all of it. It's all the same scam. They could look at this Jeffrey Epstein hoax also because that's the same stuff. That's all put out by Democrats. And you know, some of the naive Republicans fall right into line, like they always do. They just don't have the -- they don't have the sustainability.
They don't have the -- something. They don't have that stick to it like glue. The Democrats, you know, they have bad policy. They have bad candidates. They have bad everything, but they stick together. The Republicans don't do that, but they ought to look into the Jeffrey Epstein hoax too, because that's another hoax that's frankly put out by the -- pushing, pushing the Republicans and put out by the Democrats.
No, they definitely set the Republicans up one. One big prosecutor look at it all, would that make you feel good, do you think?
Well, I think in the case of Epstein, they've already looked at it and they are looking at it and I think all they have to do is put out anything credible. But you know, that was run by the Biden administration for four years. I can imagine what they put into files, just like they did with the others. I mean, the Steele dossier was a total fake.
Right.
It took two years to figure that out for the people. And all of the things that you mentioned were fake. So I would imagine if they were run by Chris Wray and they were run by Comey and -- because it was actually even before that administration, they had been running these files.
Right.
And so much of the things that we found were fake, with me, but especially you look at that Steele dossier where they paid like $14 million or $16 million, that's more than James Patterson gets paid to do a number one bestseller.
Isn't that crazy.
And the thing turned out to be a total scam. So frankly, you know, I think -- I love that they're looking at all this stuff, if they are. I hope they are.
Yeah. We've definitely confirmed it. They definitely are. Go ahead.
Yeah. And Mr. President, this is something that could give the American people answers on three different elections, 2016, 2020 and 2024. But to get that rolling, there are two sets of documents that are key to identifying possible conspiracy, but a grand jury can't see them unless you declassify them. Would you declassify the classified annex in the Hillary Clinton email case, as Senator Grassley has been asking?
Well, I would do that. I would do that, absolutely. I think it should be looked at. The whole thing was a scam and I would do that gladly.
Great. And there's one other one, sir, I want to mention. In the Durham Report, they talk about the Clinton plan intelligence, The Intercept where Hillary Clinton approves hanging that Russian shingle on your campaign house. That's another one that hasn't yet been declassified. Was that another one you'd consider declassifying?
I would declassify it. Yeah, why not? I would absolutely declassify it. And I will say this. The Durham Report was preceded by the Horowitz Report and Bill Barr should have used the Horowitz Reports. You didn't need the Durham Report, because Ð
That's right.
Say what you want about Mr. Horowitz, though. He was appointed by Democrats, but he wrote the most vicious and true report that you've ever seen on somebody, and that was on James Comey.
Yeah.
And I believe, you know, a couple of the people in the FBI that were crooked. But this report was so big. And then go back and check, even The New York Times wrote a violent editorial about Comey based on this report. And for some reason, Bill Barr didn't use it. I never -- I never -- it's such a disappointment, but he didn't use it. But that was one of the big things and it got very little press.
I think it was approximately 28 pages of corruption, absolute corruption.
You're right.
And that should have been used. Well, instead, Barr wanted to do a further report, so he Durham in charge and Durham took years. It took so many years. I think it was just a tapping. They ought to look at that too. Why did they tap it along? They tapped it along forever. Do you remember how long it took for Durham to come out with his report?
23
By the time he came out with the report, everybody was old and looking to retire.
Yeah. Yeah, you're exactly right. Yeah.
Mr. President, I want to shift to the --
But you should -- I'd love you to look at the Horowitz Report. It was absolutely incredible, and had more credibility because he's a Democrat.
That's right.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Sir, I have a story out this morning with a number of lawmakers and experts who are increasingly confident that you might be the one to be able to put the country on a path to balancing the budget. The last time was the beginning of this past century. Rising tariff revenues, growing spending cuts, how possible is that before you leave office?
Well, I read your story this morning, not having anything to do with this call, actually. I read your stories all the time.
Thank you.
And yeah, I have a real shot. We're taking in tremendous amounts of money. You saw that we had a $25 billion surplus last month.
Yeah.
And the tariffs haven't really started by comparison to what they will be. You know, we're doing them on cars right now, cars and steel, mostly. But the other ones kick in on August 1st and they're very substantial. And the answer is, yeah, there's a -- I think there's a real shot. I actually say there's a shot at -- you know, we have the Internal Revenue Service.
We could use the External Revenue Service and we wouldn't even need the Internal Revenue Service. But the money is very substantial. It's hundreds of billions of dollars. And the other thing that's something of so interest and you've covered it very well, but is this whole thing at the fed. The fed rate is way too high.
This guy is an incompetent guy and he's also obviously a Trump hater, which -- and I do have a few of them, unfortunately. But this guy is -- and every point is over $300 billion in terms of borrowing, think of that. And we should be at one percent. We shouldn't be at -- you know, we're at 4.25 or something now.
We should be at one percent, not that. We should be the lowest of the group and -- because without us the whole world collapses, and we should be at one. We have a strong country now. We're making a lot of money. We're taking in a lot of money. We're not going to be ripped off by every country in the world, both friend and foe anymore.
And they know that and they're all calling. You know, I sent out letters that is a deal, basically, a letter. You know, they all say, well, when are you going to make deals? Well, I made deals. The best deals are the letters. You just send them out saying, congratulations, you're paying 25, 30, 40 percent.
I did one at 50 percent.
Yeah.
And that's better than the deal because any deal sort of comes down from there. But we made a very good deal yesterday with Indonesia. We're making other deals, but the deals are -- when we send out the letters, we may adjust them a little bit, but that's when the deal is. And that money starts coming in on August 1st. And as you figured out, a lot of people haven't, they never understood tariff.
And now they're starting -- people that didn't -- even Ken Langone, yesterday, was very generous to me.
Yeah, Home Depot.
He said, you know, I never really liked tariffs, but I'm telling you, this guy is -- he's changed his whole country around, short. And I'm telling you that the big numbers actually start kicking in on August 1st. That's when all the countries start paying. But we're getting a lot in anyway, cars and steel primarily and lumber a little bit.
It's pretty impressive and you've turned a lot of tariff critics around to tariff proponents now. It's amazing. You mentioned the fed. Last night, David Malpass, your former World Bank president was on our show and he said the fed needs to be completely reimagined. They are getting in the way of President Trump.
They're afraid of economic growth. They try to suppress economic growth. I want to just get your thoughts on what he said about that mentality at the fed, that's got a 50-year-old mentality.
Well, I think he's right. David was picked by me and did a good job when he was at the fed. But I think he's 100 percent right. This guy is getting in the way. Think of what -- you know, we're talking about costs. He's talking about the cost of tariffs. If he lowered three points, if he would lower that -- you know, Europe has had 10 lowerings in the last year and a half, 10. We've had none with this guy, none.
That puts us at a disadvantage. Now, everything else is so strong, we're bullying through the rates, the high interest rates. The housing market would boom if this, you know, numskull -- he's a numskull. And if this guy would -- can you imagine -- we're talking about housing. He's building a building. He's building an addition, I guess, for more people to tell him what to do, and he's always wrong.
They had 71 different geniuses that they interviewed and that were put up. You probably saw that.
I did.
And with predictions. And the only one that got it right was me and one other person. 69 were wrong. This guy got it wrong and he wants to put in thousands of additional people to tell him what to say. I mean, how many people do you need? Read a newspaper and make your own decision, right?
Yeah.
Thousands of people are working at the fed. He's spending $2.5 billion on a building. It's way over. It's almost $1 billion over budget. Shouldn't have been built anyway, and this is a guy running the fed. I never saw him as somebody that wanted to build that type of building, to me, and I have to tell you, but it's ridiculous and then he talks about costs.
It's crazy. Sir, are you thinking of removing him or do you think he resigns before his term is out, Jerome Powell?
I'd love, if he wants to resign, that would be up to him. They say it would disrupt the market if I did. But you know, there are many people who say he should be removed because of the fraud of what he's doing at the fed with regard to the $2.5 billion. He's spending $2.5 billion to -- I guess it's a renovation.
I don't know.
That's all it is. It's just a renovation.
Might have to go. I'm very good at that stuff. I should go look at it at least. I feel guilty that I haven't.
Yeah, we got a story up on it today. It's crazy. The building costs less to build than it's cost to renovate. It's insane. Yeah, it's crazy.
It's like one of the most expensive buildings in the world. He's putting all sorts of parks on the top of the building and this that. And I guarantee the contractors are making a fortune. No, this is not a guy -- this is a guy who was recommended -- he was recommended to me by Mnuchin and [Inaudible] worked out good.
That's great.
Mr. President, you mentioned Indonesia, so I was curious if there are some other big tariff agreements on the horizon. Can you give us a hint, maybe our northern neighbors?
We do. We have some -- again, every time I send out a letter, I always have to say it, but that's the deal. But we're very close to India.
Wow.
And we're very close to -- we could possibly make a deal with EU. EU has been terrible to our country over the years. They've really abused our country financially over the years. And you know, I would say almost as bad as China, almost as bad as some of the others that you would be, you know, more willing to talk about in terms of, you know, using the word abuse.
Yeah.
But the EU, European Union has been brutal, and now they're being very nice. They want to make a deal. And it'll be a lot different than the deal that we've had for years. I was going to do them last time, but we had the COVID come up and you know, it wasn't a good time to be telling Spain and France, guess what, you're going to be paying a lot of money.
So they had a lot of problems. You know what happened with that. So yeah, we could make a deal possibly with Europe. You know, I'm very indifferent to it because the deal we sent out a letter, I think we had 30 percent.
Right.
And 30 percent tariff. That means 30 percent of everything they do, they pay to us. You know, that's not a bad business, I will tell you. We're making a lot of money and you pointed that out very well in your article today. We are making a lot of money.
Thank you, sir.
Yeah. Sir, India would be huge. Canada has been really intractable. I've actually been shocked at the way they've looked at the United States the last few months. What do you think happens with Canada?
Too soon to say. They've abused us very badly. They've charged tariffs as high as 400 percent to our dairy farmers. They've really abused the United States with these deals. And I mean, they charge -- you never heard that, the 400 percent. They've been charging for years, our farmers --
It's insane.
-- 200, 300, even in some cases, 400 percent. Our farmers have been very hurt by it and we had, you know, stupid people the last four years running things. They didn't care. They didn't care. They never cared about any of this stuff that we're talking about right now, but this is really the lifeblood of the country from an economic standpoint.
Yeah.
And sir, those reciprocal tariffs with Africa, those are expiring soon, any update on that?
Well, we're going to be making individual deals with those countries or we're going to put out, you know, numbers. Now, you have a lot of countries. Don't forget we're talking about, you know, 15 majors and then you start getting into the medium size. But then you have -- you know, we have -- you have over 200 countries, right?
So we're going to put out one number for a remaining, you know, close to 150 countries.
Wow.
We'll just put out -- we're going to put out one number.
Wow.
And it'll be probably 10 or 15 percent. We haven't decided yet.
Wow. That's a big deal. That's a big moment in history. So you secured the border so quickly. There's no one crossing the border now. People are going in reverse direction. We're still looking at some of these attacks on law enforcement, and I think they look very similar to what we saw with the George Floyd protests.
That's right.
If the FBI determines there's a foreign or domestic group that's the organizer, would you consider designating them a domestic or foreign terrorist organization like you did with the drug cartels?
Sure, I would do that. In a minute, I would do that. These people I watched last week as they were throwing rocks at brand new cars, Border Patrol, and I saw that and I gave them total authorization to stop your car and do whatever is necessary to arrest those people. Use whatever you have to use to arrest them.
That was -- number one, is dangerous. Number two, the damage it does to these beautiful brand-new cars, they're -- and the Border Patrol people want to be able to do that. Somewhere along the line, somebody said don't do anything. Well, you're going to have rocks -- you saw that, I'm sure. Everybody saw that.
That's a terrible look. I called Tom Homan and I authorized him to do whatever he has to do.
Yeah. I was in a Home Depot the other day, sir, and a woman came up and she was the wife, I think of a Border Patrol agent. I think her name was Lydia, and she said, tell the president thank you for having my husband's back. And I think that sense in law enforcement --
Yep.
-- it was just -- it was an organic moment in the middle of a Home Depot, but it was really striking.
That's beautiful. That's beautiful.
Yeah.
That's good. They recognized you. See that, John. You've become very famous. I think that's good. [Inaudible]
I think they were more impressed with you than me, though, sir.
Listen, you do a fantastic job.
Thank you, sir.
We have -- you need truth and you know, we have some. Sean Hannity is great.
Yeah, Sean's great.
Jesse's great. You know, there are people that are -- there are people that are great, but for the most part, it's just so crooked, these people. ABC, CBS, NBC are horrible and then you have CNN and MSDNC, zero relationship to the truth, zero, and they know it.
I have a funny feeling --
I'll give them something and they'll print the exact -- they know how bad they are.
Yeah.
And the only thing, it's hard to understand why they would do it. You know, why would they want to have open borders? Why would they want to have incompetent people like Kamala and like Joe Biden running this country? Why do they want it? How does it work? It's going to -- you know, if we didn't win this election, the country would be finished.
So when I was over in Saudi Arabia and I met with a lot of the leaders, but I met with Qatar and I met with UAE and I met with the king of Saudi Arabia, they all said one thing, almost identical words, separately, they said it. They said, one year ago your country was dead and now you have the hottest country anywhere in the world.
Amazing.
And all my supporters want to talk about is the Jeffrey Epstein hoax. It's unbelievable.
Yeah. I think that goes away quickly. I do.
I think so. Sir, speaking --
Well, it's a disgrace and I'm going to -- I remember every one of these guys. They're my supporters and they just -- they love it. They love it. And it's all endorsed by the Democrats.
It is.
The Democrats are the ones that are getting them to say this stuff. And the files are all set up by the people that ran it for the last four years. And actually, before that. You could go way back and go back into the -- you know, right after I won. It really became bad after I won in 2016. They didn't think I was going to run.
So they weren't as bad before the election, which is -- which shows how stupid they are. If you're going to be bad, be bad before the election, right?
Yeah.
Not after. But after the election, they went crazy.
Sir --
That's where, I guess, the Washington Post said that he's going to be impeached and you know, all the different things, right?
Yeah.
You see that a few days after the election, they said they're going to be -- they're going to impeach him and worse. It's a dangerous group of sick people.
Yeah.
But the Republicans have to learn that. Maybe they're learning their lesson, maybe they're not. But I'm going to remember all the people that took us away from this great -- instead of talking about this tremendous -- this flawless attack on nuclear weapons that took place in Iran.
Yep.
Flawless, compare that to Jimmy Carter where the helicopters were crashing into each other, right?
Yeah.
And everybody was captured.
You're right, 1970.
It was a national disgrace. Or compare that to Afghanistan, the way we left, the way we left in -- like humiliated and defeated, with a president that was no good, with a general that was no good. Milley, these guys were terrible. Compare that with what we just did in a much more complicated -- this is much harder, much more -- Those planes flew for 37 hours back and forth.
It's amazing.
Incredible.
It's amazing. Yeah.
And we didn't have -- there wasn't a bad bolt on the plane.
Incredible.
I mean, everything was flawless. It was a flawless campaign. But I remember so vividly, younger, a long time ago, but those helicopters in the storm and landing and horrible crashing.
Yeah, horrible tragedy. Yeah.
And what a disgrace that was, what an embarrassment it was. We don't have that anymore. That's what we ought to be talking about, not nonsense.
I agree with you. I agree with you.
Sir, something else that is also being talked about right now. And actually, last October, Just the News broke the story that Adam Schiff committed possible mortgage fraud, and now also Marilyn Mosby, Letitia James. Democrats seem to have a mortgage fraud problem. How should the DOJ handle it?
Well, you know, he looks to me like he did commit that. I looked at it just recently. I read a story about it and it's -- I mean, to me it looks like he committed mortgage fraud. No, he should be -- he said about my children, Don, in the case, in particular, who knew nothing about the Russia, Russia, Russia, hoax.
Think of it, it was made up by Adam Schiff and Hillary Clinton in the group, right?
Yeah.
And now everybody knows, they've admitted it, it was a total hoax, that my son should go to jail for a very, very long period of time. And he knew it was a hoax. This guy knew it had nothing to do with my son. It was them using that as a way to save the embarrassment of Hillary Clinton's loss in the 2016 election.
Yeah, that's what it was. That's why Kash Patel --
You know, it was going to be a one day story. They wanted to use it. They said, yeah, Russia, Russia caused it. That's I remember the guy -- I was watching that day they started talking about Russia and then the fake news picked it up and instead of a one day story, they made it a two year story.
It's amazing.
You know?
It handicapped --
But no, he's a bad guy, Schiff. He's a sick puppy. He's unattractive in every single way, every single way you can be unattractive, that Schiff. He's a bad guy. No, if he created fraud, he should suffer just like he made everyone else suffer, just like the horrible things he did to so many Republicans and conservatives and others too.
Yeah. I have a funny feeling that case that we started talking about at the top of this interview may be that vehicle for that, that conspiracy case. Sir, it is -- I know how busy you are. We are so grateful for all the time you gave us today. Thanks for joining us.
Well, I'm grateful to you for great reporting.
Thank you, sir.
And you know, just good, strong, honest reporting.
Yeah.
And I don't want any favors, I don't want -- I've never asked you for a favor.
Never, no.
But you're a real, real professional and you should both be proud of it.
Thank you, sir.
Great job you're doing. Thank you very much.
It means a lot to us, sir. Thank you so much. Thanks for your time today.