I believe, on the Squawk news line, we are joined by former President Donald J. Trump, DJT 45. It is good to welcome you. It's been a while, Mr.
President. Good morning. Nice to be with you. The -- this is the first interview I've been told since you became the presumptive nominee.
I'm not -- I'm not sure that that prior to last week, you weren't already the presumptive nominee. But I think this is your first interview since the State of the Union as well. So, can we just start with -- with your -- your vision for this country after watching the State of the Union? How does it differ from what you heard from President Biden, President Trump?
Well, I heard a very angry man who's losing badly in the polls, who's willing to weaponize government like has never taken place in this country. It has taken place in third-world countries, quite often, actually. And they will use the Justice Department to sue opponents like me because I'm his only opponent other than life -- life itself. And, frankly, you know, I saw a very angry and confused man.
I assume he's going to be the candidate. I think it probably maybe it was a terrible performance, but I think it was probably good enough to get him over the heap, to get him over the -- you know, the barrier as to whether or not he's going to be their -- their nominee. I was saying that's been it for a long time. I find it hard to believe.
But I think he probably will, and we'll see what happens. But it was really a speech on division and hate more than anything else. Starts off by talking about Snickers. You don't want to really talk about Snickers, even though it's true that they put a little bit less than a bag.
But you have -- you have more interesting examples of inflation and other things that he was trying to point out than that. You could -- you have a lot of -- you have a lot of big-league things you can be talking about, like energy prices through the roof and food prices through the roof. But, no, it was probably the worst State of the Union ever made according to many. That's not according to me.
Although, according to me, it was also, but I haven't heard too many of them. There are stark policy differences, obviously, Mr. President, but one thing that I think that at least the perception is that there's not a whole lot of difference between what you think we should do with entitlements or nondiscretionary spending and what President Biden is proposing. It's almost a third rail of politics.
And we've got, what, a $33 trillion, $34 trillion total debt built up and very little we can do in terms of cutting spending. Discretionary is not going to help. Have you changed your -- your outlook on how to handle entitlements Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Mr. President?
Seems like something has to be done, or else we're going to be stuck at 120 percent of debt to GDP forever. So, first of all, there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements, tremendous bad management of entitlements. There's tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do. So, I don't, you know, necessarily agree with the statement.
I know that they're going to end up weakening Social Security because the country is weak. And let's take a look at -- outside of the stock market are -- we're going through hell. People are going through hell. If they have -- and I believe the number is 50 percent.
They say 32 and 33 percent. I believe we have a cumulative inflation of over 50 percent. That means people are -- you know, they have to make more than 50 percent more over a fairly short period of time to stay up. They've gotten routed.
The middle class in our country has been routed, and the middle class largely built our country. And they have been treated very, very badly with policy. When I was president, I was doing a job -- we were going to start to pay off debt. We were drill, baby, drill.
We were producing oil, but we were going at a much higher level oil and gas. We were doing -- you know, we were third when I started. And when I ended, we were one by a long shot. And we were very close -- we're energy independent.
We're very close to becoming energy dominant, Joe. We were going to be dominant, so dominant, like double what Saudi Arabia and Russia were doing. And we were on that path. We were going to be paying down debt.
We were doing -- we were doing a lot of things. And then, we got hit with COVID. We did a fantastic job with COVID. But nobody -- nobody wins with COVID.
I guess China found that out because they also really got hit very hard also. But nobody wins. We had to help. You know, if we didn't -- if I didn't do the expenditures, if we didn't do the kinds of things we did for the economy, we would add in 1929-type depression.
And I had to stay out in front of it, and we did. We did a great job on that. And we did with all of the things. We're coming up with Regeneron doing so much else, getting all -- because, you know, we had empty -- when I came in, we had empty -- I call them empty cupboards.
We had empty shelves, we didn't have equipment, we didn't have the gowns, we didn't have the ventilators. We didn't have anything. This country wasn't prepared -- Right. But, sir -- For a thing like that.
And I'm not even blaming anybody in that. Because, you know, when -- when it came, nobody thought the pandemic would ever happen again. It sounds like an ancient's problem, not a problem that you'd have -- Right. You know, at that time, you know, in modern -- a very modern age.
It was like an ancient thing. You know, who -- who would ever -- so I'm not blaming anybody. But we had empty cupboards, and I got them stocked, and I got them stocked fast. And we did a great job with it.
Never got credit. I got credit for the greatest economy. I got credit for foreign policy. I got credit for knocking out ISIS and not going into wars.
Right. But we beat ISIS, but I never got the credit for having done a great job with that. Mr. President -- But I think history will give us the credit.
I'm sorry to interrupt. We've got Jay Clayton here -- is here. I know your -- you work with Jay. Jay was at the SEC.
We want to -- I want to get Jay to talk to you about regulation, etc. OK. But before I turn it over to Jay, I just wanted to ask you about something very specific for regulation, and that is bitcoin. And I have, in the past -- I don't know if you recall, but I said you got to get -- you got to look at this closely, Mr.
President. And, you know, the current SEC commissioner, Gary Gensler, finally allowed for these spot ETFs. And now, we see bitcoin at almost 72,000. But it's almost as if it's in spite of some of the efforts over regulation of maybe the Biden administration.
You have any thoughts now on -- on crypto? Well, it's taken its own life. You know, I do little things sometimes for fun and, you know, make money with it, and -- but I have fun with it, too. You mean you bought bitcoin?
No, no, no. But sometimes, we'll let people pay through bitcoin, or we'll let people get involved in a new -- you know, if you think of it, it's an additional form of currency. And I used to say, you know, I want one currency I want the dollar. I don't want people leaving the dollar.
And I feel -- I feel that way. But I will tell you, it has taken on a life. I did a thing that people smile at, but it was wild. We did a thousand sneakers, so limited-edition sneaker run.
The last one -- and you could go through, you know, our crazy new currencies because that's what I call them. They're crazy, whether it's bitcoin or others. And so many people were buying these things when, ultimately, the last pair of sneakers sold for approximately, I hear, $450,000. It was a limited edition or run.
They were gold. They were, you know, nice, cute. And we thought it was just a very small thing. It was a branding thing.
And it was -- had a good time with it. The last -- the last pair sold for $450,000. People were going crazy for these sneakers. You probably were, too.
Everybody was. Every friend I have was calling me for a pair of sneakers. So, it just took off. And I noticed that so many of them were paid for with this -- the new currency.
The crypto, yeah. It's a -- it's a new -- crypto, yeah, cryptocurrency. And I couldn't believe the amount. And I'm saying, you know, this thing is really -- and other things I do, people are using it.
And you know, I would be -- I'm very much a traditionalist. I like staying with the dollar. You know that from when I was there. It's make -- make the dollar the choice.
I hate when countries go off the dollar. I would not allow countries to go off the dollar because when we lose that standard, that will be like losing a revolutionary war. That will be -- that will be a hit to our country just like losing a war. And we can't let that happen.
And too many countries now are fighting to get off the dollar. Yup. And, frankly, and I know Jay feels strongly about this -- and Jay did a fantastic job, by the way, in a group when there's always scandal and problems. Jay went through for years.
There wasn't one scandal. I don't know, Jay, maybe you can tell me. But there wasn't one scandal. That is the most scandalous position because it involves massive amounts of money.
With Jay Clayton, we had no scandals, zero, nothing whatsoever. So, I thought it was great. But I have seen -- I have seen -- there has been a lot of use of that. And I'm not sure that I'd want to take it away at this point.
Yeah. Hey, Mr. President, thank you for that. That was -- that was nice.
Before you came on, I was saying to Joe, look, your regulatory agenda in a second term would be one of pro-growth. Not anti-consumer, not anti-competition, but pro-growth. Right. Correct.
Mostly because, you know, we don't have a lot of fiscal tools left. Do you -- do you want to talk about the pro-growth agenda that you had in the last term? Yeah. Number one, we don't have a choice.
It has to be -- it's not like we have a choice. It'd be nice to say, "Let's get nice and -- nice and conservative, and let's not grow." If we don't grow, you know, we have $35 trillion out there. We have -- more than anything else, but we also have to cut spending.
And we can cut spending. There's massive amounts of waste. Look, we give foreign countries trillions and trillions of dollars a year. And when you want to cut them, you met with levels -- it's crazy.
When you want to cut some of these foreign countries, many of whom don't like us, many of whom -- almost all of them take advantage of -- everybody takes advantage of the United States. And I had that very much stopped. But they very much take advantage of the United States. I mean China, until I came along, China was killing us.
China was taking out 300 -- just in terms of numbers, you know, we're just -- it's $507 billion a year. Now, under Biden, it's worse. It's gotten much worse. And you can't -- no country can sustain.
When -- we can't sustain that. When somebody -- when a country just rips us off like China, then what I did is that the tariffs -- and the tariffs were forcing companies back to the United States. We want those companies that go to China. And many other countries, not only China.
The European Union rips us almost as bad as China, but they do it with a smile. Nobody thinks of the European Union that way. You know, they say, "Oh, they're wonderful." But they really take advantage of us.
And until I came along, they took advantage of us militarily, as you know. NATO was a total disaster for us. We were paying almost -- so think of it, European Union, we were paying almost all for their military -- we were paying close to 100 percent until I came along. I said, "I'm not doing it.
You're going to have to pay." We're not doing it anymore. They said, "Would you protect us if we don't?" I said, "If you're delinquent?
" They said yes. I said, "If you're delinquent, you're not going to be protected." And $400 billion came in like clockwork. Obama, Bush, everybody else, they did absolutely nothing.
Mr. President, I just wanted to ask you, though, you've also talked about proposing a 10 percent tariff, if you will. Yeah. I wanted to ask you about that because the center-right American Action Forum, which is a think tank, said that they thought the plan would "distort global trade, discourage economic activity, and have broad negative consequences for the US economy.
" Well, they're wrong. It would distort international trade. It would bring it back to the United States. We have companies -- if you look at -- if you look at India, you look at China, you look at so many different countries, they're smart, much smarter than our country.
We were getting ready to do this, and we were -- and I had it just about set -- But you don't think it would result in higher prices for American families? By some estimates, it could be the equivalent of $2,000 a family according to The Economist. No, I think it will -- I think taxes could be cut. I think other things could happen to more than just that.
But I'm a big believer in tariffs for two reasons. Number one, I fully believe in them economically when you're being taken advantage of by other countries. For instance, China was taking advantage of us on the steel. They were destroying our entire steel industry, which was never doing very well over the last 25 years anyway, but, you know, because it's been eaten alive by foreign competition.
And they were dumping steel. I put a 50 percent tax on China's steel coming in. And every person in the steel industry when they see me they started crying. They would hug me, they would kiss me, "Sir, you saved our industry.
" I put a very strong 50 percent tariff on -- on dumping steel -- on their dumped steel. And it -- by the way, nothing was perfect. Frankly, the tariffs should have been higher. I was getting ready to do that, by the way.
Mr. President -- But the tariffs should have been higher. Are you concerned at all that there -- This saved the whole -- this saved the whole industry. But one thing, let me just say, beyond the economics, it gives you power in dealing with other countries because China would come in and said, "No, no more tax.
No more tax." They were absolutely fine for me to deal with because they were so petrified of me putting on additional tariffs. And we don't use that. China is, right now, our boss.
They are the boss of the United States, almost like we're a subsidiary of China. Is there no concern -- And that's because the Biden administration has been so weak. Mr. President, is there no concern that China could impose retaliatory tariffs or retaliatory actions that would make doing business in China difficult for American companies, which are dependent on China for growth?
That's OK. That's OK. Yeah, sure. They might do that.
But you know what? They didn't do it with me. It's OK? So, tell Starbucks, tell McDonald's that -- Yeah.
It's going to be, all of a sudden, maybe more difficult to do business there. Sure. But they didn't do it with me. You know, we went through years, and they didn't do it with me, and they never pulled that trigger.
That's a big trigger for them to pull. But even if they do, let American companies come back to America. Look, if you want to sell a car in China, you can't. OK?
You have to put a -- they pay a -- you pay a massive tax or massive tariff. They built a big plant in Texas. I was working on that very, very hard with various companies that they build in China because if they build in China, they have no tax, so they make it in China. I said, "We want you to make it here.
" They were coming back -- they did. They came back with a very big plant here. Mr. President -- But it also gives us a big political power.
Tariffs are tremendously powerful in terms of stopping wars because they don't want tariffs. And, frankly, I made them sing. I made other countries sing with the threat of tariffs. And if you don't have tariffs, we have nothing whatsoever on them.
It's -- we have lost such an opportunity. When I've seen -- if you want to build -- Harley Davidson, as an example. I said, "How are you doing in India?" They were in the White House.
"How are you doing an India?" "No good." "Why?" "They have a 100 percent tariff, or more than that even, and therefore, we basically [inaudible] because you have to double and triple the price in India.
I said, " So, what are you going to do?" "Well, they want us to build a plant in India in that way we don't have --" so they go -- they go, and they build a big plant in India. We started -- under me, we started doing the same thing here. And we have the pot of gold.
We have the best pot of gold. But eventually, we won't have that because our country is going down. And we're not going to have it. We're losing our economic power.
Mr. President, talking about China, I want to ask you about, perhaps, one of the biggest business stories and policy stories of the moment, and that is TikTok. Yes. You have called TikTok a national security threat.
At one point, you said that they are "data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to American's personal and proprietary information." And yet, it appears that you've now reversed your view on banning TikTok. Why is that? So, I had it done.
And then, Congress said, well, they never -- they ultimately usually fail. You know, they are a -- like, extremely political, and they're extremely subject to people called lobbyists, who happen to be very talented, very good, and very rich. I could have banned TikTok. I had it banned just about, I could have gotten it done.
But I said, "You know what, but I'll leave it up to you." I didn't push them too hard because, you know, let them do their own research and development. And they decided not to do it. But as you know, I was at a point where I could have gotten it done if I wanted to.
I sort of said, "You guys decide. You make that decision." Because it's a tough decision to make. Frankly, there are a lot of people on TikTok that love it.
There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it. There are a lot of users. There's, you know, a lot of good and there's a lot of bad with TikTok. But the thing I don't like is that without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger.
And I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people, along with a lot of the media. What Facebook did with lockboxes with a $500 million Zuckerbucks lockboxes that he put in, I mean, I consider it illegal. But, you know, they -- you know, they put people in jail when they spend -- they put people in jail when they spend more than $5,000, $6,000 in a campaign. They go to jail if they're $200 -- look at Dinesh D'Souza.
Right. They put him in jail over a couple of 100 bucks. And yet, here's the guy who spends $500 million, and he doesn't go to jail -- Mr. President, is TikTok -- do you believe that TikTok is a national security threat or not?
Because if it is, and I believe that your -- the emergency powers order that you had put in place at the time suggested that it was. Was that not true? I do believe that. I do believe it.
And we have to very much go into privacy and make sure that we are protecting the American people's privacy and data rights. And I agree. But, you know, we also have that problem with other -- you have that problem with Facebook and lots of other companies, too. I mean, they get the information, they get plenty of information.
And they deal with China, and they'll do whatever China wants. You know, if you look at some of our American companies, when you talk about, you know, highly sophisticated companies that you think are American, they are not so American. They deal in China. And China -- if China wants anything from them, they will give it.
So, that's a national security risk also. Right. But when I look at it, I'm not looking to make Facebook double the size. Right.
And if you -- if you ban TikTok, Facebook, and others -- Right. But mostly Facebook will be a big beneficiary. Did -- And I think Facebook has been very dishonest. I think Facebook has been very bad for our country, especially when it comes to elections.
Mr. President, you met recently with Jeff Yass, who is a hedge fund manager, has a stake in TikTok. He's a huge GOP donor. Steve Bannon has suggested that you've been paid off to switch your view.
How did your view change? How did that come about? And did you have a conversation with Jeff Yass about it? No, I didn't.
I met with him very briefly. I made a speech, and I said hello to him, and his wife was lovely. And, actually, her primary thing was on education. She wants choice, as I do.
And she mentioned to me, more than anything, you know, we talked about education. It was a meeting that lasted for a few minutes. Now, the only one I met was -- I met them both and they -- you know, I never -- I don't think I ever met him before. But he never mentioned TikTok.
She did mention her school choice, and that's what her whole -- in fact, she said, "My whole life is based around school choice." It was a very important thing to her, and I agree with it. We never talked about it. Mr.
President. I think you also -- a piece written that Silicon Valley, uncharacteristically -- I'm not saying it's, you know, 100 percent behind your candidacy, but certainly, there seems to be a sea change to some extent this time around. What did you -- what did Elon Musk tell you? You think you eventually get his support in some way, whether it's just verbal or monetary?
I mean, you have a grid system in this country that's obsolete and a disaster. One of the things we worked on a lot is our grid system that can't produce the electricity. It doesn't -- can't distribute the electricity. And, you know, the electric cars are not even a possibility to go all electric.
This Biden all-electric mandate is by very, very stupid people. First of all, they don't go far, they cost too much, and they're all going to be made in China. And the autoworkers are going to vote for Trump. I don't know about their top union people because they're just riveted into Democrats.
They have no idea why, they're like blind sheep. But the autoworkers are going to vote for Trump because they understand -- look at my numbers in Michigan, I'm leading him by 12 or 14 points. It's always hard for a Republican but not now. We're leading in a lot of places that Republicans don't lead and including with African Americans.
We are -- we have numbers with the African American population, the Black population, the Asian population, Hispanics. We have numbers like nobody's ever seen before. So, I think we're going to have a very good election, and I think that's probably why Silicon Valley is. But I think they're also with me because, you know, I want -- I want to help businesses.
They saw what happened. We had, and you know that, just prior to this horrible scourge coming in and the gift of China, we had the greatest economy in the history of the world. There was never an economy. Blacks were doing the best they've ever done.
Hispanics, women, Asian, men, with a diploma from MIT, without a diploma at all from a high school, every single group, every single group was doing great. And that's the way it is. And we had the greatest economy ever. And we were getting ready to pay off debt.
We were drilling. We were doing things -- think of it. I got ANWR approved. It's bigger -- perhaps, close, but probably bigger than Saudi Arabia in Alaska.
And one of the first things Biden did is end it. Reagan tried to get it, he couldn't get it done. Nobody got it done but me, and nobody else could have gotten it done. ANWR is the biggest -- probably the biggest site, Jay, if you look -- remember, we celebrated that when nobody could believe I got it done.
And they were getting ready to start drilling, and they were doing it. It's going to be great for Alaska. Yeah, yeah. Tremendous economic development for Alaska, but I got it done.
And they ended it. We were going to pay off debt. We were going to do things that were incredible. And then, we had an election that -- I will be very nice on this show, it didn't go too well.
Let me ask you about that -- let me ask -- Yeah. Let me ask you about that, Mr. President. Yeah.
Something that I want you to comment on that I -- that I've said on this program is, you know, we have this tendency to want to import European regulation to the US -- Sure. Thinking that European-style regulation, whether it's around the environment, whether it's around how we deal with national security, financial matters, and like. Can you comment on that? Because I think the US is different.
And, you know, we have to play to our strengths. Can you give us your thoughts on that? Well, the last thing we should be copying -- yeah, I think you're right. I think -- you know, they -- we have a tendency to follow them a little bit amazingly in regulations because they're doing so badly.
They do so badly. They've become a socialist state. And, you know, they're not doing great. And you look at what happened, I'm going to -- believe it or not, I was very friendly with her, but I disagreed with her in allowing 2 million illegal aliens, we would say, or migrants, or you call them anywhere you want -- there's about 19 different names now.
And everyone becomes obsolete within about two weeks. But she allowed 2 million people coming from -- now, they like to call them neighbors. You know, the new name by the Democrats is "We'd like to call them neighbors." So, they want to call the people that are flowing into our country and, in many cases, killing people, neighbors.
But, you know, Europe, what they did -- what Germany has done to itself between that and their energy policies has been a disaster for Germany. Nobody talks about it. And they totally reversed course, amazingly. They totally reversed course.
So, we shouldn't be following them. We have to go by our own. We need guys like Jay Clayton and others. Jay did a fantastic job in deregulating so much at the SEC and so much of -- you know, of what he did.
It was a big deregulator. And, again, he did it with -- it was a beautiful thing to watch. That agency ran so -- you know, I had a lot of great people. We never talk about those people, and I think that's natural.
We talked about some of the ones I didn't like and some of the ones I had in there I didn't like. But mostly, I had fantastic people because, you know, we got -- we got -- and you can check every record in the book, nobody was even close. I did the biggest cut in regulations. We gave the biggest tax cut in -- very bad, I think, for the Democrats, but it'll be very bad for this country if that's not extended, the Trump tax cuts.
But they are the biggest tax cuts in history. The other one is we gave the biggest regulation cuts in history. Jay was a part of that from his -- what he was doing. We gave -- but we gave them on the environment.
We gave them on so many different things. We had plants built in Louisiana that were refineries that were absolutely dead for 14 years. And I got them approved in one day. I've got two plants in Louisiana, massive plants -- Mr.
President -- Like three Empire -- like three Empire State Buildings lying on their side. These were the biggest plants. I got them done and literally got them done in one day. They were waiting for 14 years for permits.
I got them done in one day. Mr. President -- Yes. You mentioned earlier about the country losing economic power.
And some might cite the downgrade of the United States credit rating as one example of how we are losing some of our economic power. When Fitch downgraded the US to a AA over the summer, they specifically cited the increasing polarization, declining governance over the past 20 years. But, more specifically, they cited the January 6 insurrection. Under your presidency, if you are reelected, what can you tell us about how stable the US will be, especially as it appears that you're stoking some political divide?
You held a rally in Waco, Texas, and you're sort of playing to this polarization of groups here. Well, when I had the rally in Waco, we had 100,000 people show up, and that's where they wanted the rally. You know, I'm like a businessman politician. You go where the people are.
And I go to places -- we had a tremendous rally this weekend. We're having rallies in Michigan. The rallies are bigger than they've ever been. We have -- as soon as the season gets a little bit warmer, we can do the outdoors.
Right now, there's no arena that can hold the number of people. Does it matter to you, though, that we are downgraded -- that we've been downgraded and that our credit rating could be at further risk should there be further political polarization? Sure, but it is not because of January 6. It's -- we get downgraded because of incompetent people, very incompetent people doing incompetent things.
And as far as the dollar is concerned, we're losing countries. We lose Iran, we lose this one. We have Russia, that's out. We have many, many countries that we throw out of the system, and we can't lose that system.
That system is very -- the dollar, that system is a very important system to the vitality and strength of our country. If we ever do lose that -- they take out Russia. China would love to be -- you know, the leader of the pack is China because they'd love to take it over. And it will be possible to take it over if we're not strong.
We have to hold countries in. And if countries want to get out, we're going to have to say, "Well, if you want to get out of our system and go to, let's say, a Russian version or your own version, then we're not going to do any trade with you." And they'll be back in about two seconds. But it depends on who's posing that statement to whoever it is the leader.
Like, you're dealing with Macron or you're dealing with the leaders, you have to be able to talk to them properly. Our people don't know how to talk to him. Our people are like -- we go there hat in hand like beggars. Our country is no longer respected.
The people representing us are not respected. I just had Viktor Orban, a tough man from Hungary. He was at my place in Florida. And I get along with him very well, friendly, but I have respect for him.
He made this statement. I thought it was a wonderful statement. He said, "We will solve the problems of the world if Donald Trump comes back." He said, "Russia was afraid of him, China was afraid of him.
We had no problems whatsoever under Trump." And now, we have Israel being attacked, which, by the way, would have never happened. We have Ukraine and Russia fighting. That would have never happened.
All of those dead people in blown-up cities -- because Ukraine is now just like a demolition site, what they've done to Ukraine. None of that would have happened. All of those people would be alive today if the election results were, let's say, correct. It'd be nice.
Mr. President, given how the country -- given how divided it feels this country is, I want to play you just a piece of tape from Ken Langone, who, I believe, supported you in the last election, who was on Squawk Box earlier about a month, month and a half ago now. And I want to show you what he had to say because I think it represents a lot of voters out there. And I'm just curious if you would react to it and explain sort of how you feel about it to the voters.
Look at this, if you could, for a second. [Begin videotape] I worry if Trump wins that it's going to be four years of getting even. And that's scary because we've got serious issues coming up that need to be addressed. [End videotape] What do you think of that, Mr.
President? Because I think that there is a -- there is a feeling that there is still an anger and a frustration that you have about certain issues. Well, look, I've never been a fan of Ken. I've never -- I don't know if he supported me.
Maybe he supported me because I was the only one that he could support because that is the reason. But I've never been a fan. I've been a fan of Bernie Marcus, a big fan, and Bernie Marcus is a big fan of mine. And that was the side that I chose.
And, frankly, you know, he's right in one sense. People think that there's going to be revenge. And I say, "No, the revenge is going to be success." There's not going to be revenge in a revenge stance.
It's really going to be success. We're going to turn our country around. We're going to bring sense and common sense. You know, people say, "You're conservative.
" I'm not conservative. You know what I am? I'm a man of common sense. And a lot of conservative policies are common sense.
We're not going to have open borders. You're going to have to come in legally. We're going to close up the borders. I had the best border -- I had the -- all he had to do is he could have gone to the beach like he likes doing, looks good in a bathing suit.
If he would've left everything in place, including the people that were doing it -- I had the best border in history. We built 571 miles of wall. I got Mexico to give us massive numbers of free soldiers. Now, there is a case of tariffs.
I said, "If you don't give us the soldiers, we're going to put a 25 percent tariff on your cars." They laughed at me when I said I want 28,000 soldiers. And I like, you know, the president of Mexico. I think he is a very good guy.
He happens to be a socialist, but you can't have every -- but they laughed at me. I said, "I want you to give us 25,000, 28,000 soldiers on our borders to stop the people that are coming in with the caravans." And you know what? They would stop building their plants in about two -- but we don't do that.
We have stupid people running our government, to be honest. Mr. President, we will see. I know you've got a lot going on.
You've got the campaign, you've got the legal issues. People sometimes wonder you know how to prioritize, and you just keep charging -- Well, the legal issues aren't -- Joe? Yeah. The legal issues aren't legal issues.
They are Biden issues. Biden put Fani, beautiful Fani, who's turned out to be now a corrupt district attorney, but, in my opinion, they're almost all corrupt, all of the stuff that you see is weaponized government. And the DA in New York is being run by the DOJ. They put their top person into the DA's office, all of this stuff.
And, frankly, I get a lot of credit for it. I think I'm much more popular now because they did it, and it backfired on them. They've weaponized our government. Think of it.
They put Colangelo, one of their top people, like the top person, into the DA's office to go get Trump. They deal with Letitia James, a real lowlife. They put people with her. They're dealing with her all the time to go get Trump.
These are the Democrats. The prosecutors and judges in New York, our country could fall because of it. That's how bad it is. And companies are moving out of New York because of what they've done to me.
And I'm going to end up winning on appeal. And if I didn't win on appeal on these ridiculous decisions, if I didn't win on appeal, the most ridiculous decisions, including the Ms. Bergdorf Goodman, a person I never -- I never met. I have no idea who she is, except one thing, I got sued.
From that point on, I said, "Wow, that's crazy what this is." I got charged. I was given a false accusation and had to post a $91 million bond on a false accusation. People aren't moving into New York because of the kind of crap they're pulling on me.
Unlike -- I feel like I'm a pioneer. What's happening is we have to be very careful. You know, we have a very fragile country. People are rejecting it, and they are watching.
Normally, somebody would be out of office if stuff like that happens. My numbers are much higher than they would have been had this not happened. Right. But you have to be able to speak about it.
It's a very dangerous thing, very, very dangerous thing for our country, what they're doing. It's the weaponization of the DOJ, the FBI, etc. Well, we -- we appreciate all the time you've given us this morning, Mr. President.
I look forward to another conversation in the not too distant future. Thank you very much, Joe. Thank you, everybody. Thank you.
Yeah, OK. Thank you.