[Donald Trump called in to the Hugh Hewitt Show at approximately 3 p.m. Eastern on January 8, 2026 for a live interview. Audio courtesy and copyright The Hugh Hewitt Show.]
Morning glory and evening grace, America. I'm Hugh Hewitt, proud to welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show, President Donald trump. Happy New Year, Mr. Trump, good to have you back.
Well, thank you very much, Hugh. Thank you very much.
I don't want to waste your time, so I'm going to dive right in and begin with Iran. Michael Doran of the Hudson Institute says, the regime there is failing, they have fuel shortages, electricity shortages, a water shortage. Karim Sadjadpour at Carnegie is posting the videos of the spreading protests. Mark Dubowitz, and this is a quote, if President Trump brings down the Islamic Republic of Iran, he will cement his place as the greatest foreign policy president since Ronald Reagan.
I think it would actually --
I thought I already did that.
I was just about to add, with Midnight Hammer, you did that.
How much more can I do? You know, we just had Venezuela, we just had Midnight Hammer.
Yeah.
We settled eight wars.
Eight and a quarter.
But I'm willing to accept that. You know, I'm willing to accept it.
What about Iran? Is the aim with Iran, the collapse of that awful 47-year tyranny?
Well, I don't want to say it, but I will tell you, they're not doing well, as you know, probably better than anybody. They're doing very poorly and I have let them know that if they start killing people, which they tend to do during their riots. They have lots of riots. If they do it, we're going to hit them very hard.
Now, dozens have been killed. I know you don't do red lines, but have you communicated to them what that limit of your patience is?
Well, some have been killed by, you know, problems of crowd control and other things. We're watching it very closely. The crowds are so large, there's been a stampede. There's been three stampedes and people have been killed in that. And I'm not sure I can necessarily hold somebody responsible for that, but they know.
And they've been told very strongly, even more strongly than I'm speaking to you right now, that if they do that, they're going to have to pay hell.
Do you have a message for the people of Iran, President Trump?
All I can say is you should -- you should feel strongly about freedom. There's nothing like freedom. You're brave people. It's a shame what's happened to your country. Your country was a great country. I remember years ago, when I was a young real estate developer, a friend of mine went to Iran and they did great.
They built buildings in Iran. They're still up, barely, by the way, but they're still up. I see pictures of them, apartment houses, and they did very well in Iran. Iran, they -- and I -- they've passed away. They were very successful developers. They were great people, mostly New York developers. But they went to Iran and they built some pretty good jobs in Iran.
And, uh, I remember they were saying, the people are great, the whole place was great. It was a tremendous, uh, market. And now you look at it, look -- look what's happened.
I sat in the office of former President Nixon with Ray Price on a couch with RN, watching the -- the fall of the Shah and he just kept shaking his head. He couldn't believe Jimmy Carter was letting it happen. Would you meet with Crown Prince Pavlos -- Pavlos, who is the heir to the constitutional monarchy?
He doesn't want to rule. He would be a -- you know, a symbolic ruler, like King Charles.
Well, I've watched him and he seems like a nice person, but I'm not sure that it would be appropriate at this point to do that, as president. I think that we should let everybody go out there and we see who emerges. I'm not sure, necessarily, that I -- it would be an appropriate thing to do.
All right. Let me switch to China, Mr. President. Last time we talked, and I always ask you this, I asked you about Jimmy Lai who is dying in real time. He's been convicted.
Right.
Have you talked to Xi Jinping? I know you get along with --
I have. I have, I have. I talked to him and I mentioned Jimmy Lai. I don't know Jimmy Lai. I know of Jimmy Lai. And he was an activist to put it mildly, but a positive activist. But if you're President Xi, he wasn't a positive activist. I spoke to President Xi when I was in South Korea and we had a great talk about it, and I left it with him.
He didn't give me an answer one way or the other, but obviously, so far, it hasn't been -- I got a lot of other answers that turned out positive. I haven't heard back on that one. Not yet.
If -- if Jimmy Lai was freed, would you consider that to be a very significant gesture by China?
I would. I think it would be a great thing. I think -- I told President Xi that he's an old man who's very sick. I met his son, who was a very nice young man, who loves his father a lot. His son is his primary -- the primary person that's working very hard to get him out and I felt I owed it to the son. I like the son.
I mean, look, I don't know him, but I met him fairly briefly, but I love that he was fighting hard for his father. I thought that was -- I like to see sons that fight hard for fathers, and he was certainly doing that. And I mentioned it during my meeting, early on in my meeting, as a list of things that I'd like to talk about, but we have not heard back on that one.
All right. Let me turn to Cuba, Mr. President. For 67 years, that police state dictatorship has sucked the lifeblood out of the people of that island. Is it time to increase the pressure there, maybe even quarantine it as you have Venezuela?
Well, I don't think you can have much more pressure, other than going in and blasting the hell out of the place. Look, they are -- their whole lifeblood, their whole life was Venezuela. They got their oil, they got their money from Venezuela. And as you know, when our great soldiers went in, we had nobody killed.
They lost many Cuban fighters during that battle, many. Amazing job that the American soldiers did, led by a man who happens to be sitting right next to me, General Caine.
Ah.
What a job -- what a job he did and Pete Hegseth did and the whole group. What a job they all did. It's amazing, actually. John Ratcliffe is walking in. Marco Rubio is walking in. We have a whole group of people here. They're all fans of yours. They're not walking in to listen to this call, they just happen to be walking in for the next meeting.
I got a little advice for you, Mr. President, don't play golf and give strokes to Director Ratcliffe. Don't do that. Don't give him any strokes.
He's a good golfer and he's a very -- he's a very good guy too --
Back to Cuba. Miguel Díaz-Canel, do you think he could fall like Khomeini in Iran might fall?
Yeah, I think -- look, I think that Cuba is hanging by a -- by a thread. Cuba is in big trouble. Look, Cuba got all of its money for protecting. They were like a protector. They're tough, strong people. They're great people. Marco has a little Cuban blood in him. I think Marco is not doing a bad job, right?
What do you think? Can I ask you one question?
Sure.
How is Marco Rubio doing?
The equal of any secretary of state in my lifetime. And I'm glad he's not taking the Dolphins job. He should work for the Browns if he leaves your administration.
That's right. Yeah.
All right.
Where he goes will be successful, but -- but, uh, no, I think that -- I think that Cuba is really in a lot of trouble. But you know, people have been saying that for many years, in all fairness, about Cuba. Cuba has been in trouble for the last 25 years. And you know, they haven't quite gone down, but I think they're pretty close of their own volition.
All right. I want to try and define the Trump doctrine, Mr. President. I've been trying to do it on the air. It's down to this, don't kill or threaten Americans or our property, or American security in general, or we will hit you very, very hard. Is that succinct?
That's true. And included in there is, don't send drugs and don't send things that are going to kill our people. But you can sort of -- you can sort of make the statement that you've indirectly said that. But it's a pretty direct statement, don't send drugs into our country.
It's a great doctrine. Now, the next question, I'm a Salem host, a Fox contributor, so this is a bit unusual. Bret Baier does the best interviews with you. I'm exempting myself from consideration. But I think you ought to give Tony Dokoupil a chance, over at CBS, to see if they've really changed their ways.
Is that on the agenda?
Well, it hasn't been on the agenda, but if you recommend it, I would do it. I have a lot of respect for you, as you know, and I think you're doing a great job and you've done a great job. You went a little bit liberal on us for a while when you were at --
NBC.
NB -- I can't believe -- I couldn't believe you sitting on NBC, trying to answer questions that you didn't believe in. You only gave them partial answers. You were never fully there, but you couldn't get out fast enough. It was very -- it was fun to watch.
I am happy with Salem and Fox.
No, I hear good things -- I hear good things about Tony, and I can tell you that David Ellison is -- is a fantastic guy. And his father, Larry, is one of the greats, been good friends of mine, both of them. But David is doing a fantastic job, and they feel very strongly about Tony.
Yeah. I don't want Barry Weiss and Tony to overtake Fox and Salem, but I would like you to give him a shot to see if he's got the chops to do this.
Yeah. Well, if it's important to you, I'd do it. No, I hear good things about Tony.
Now, you gave two hours to the New York Times yesterday. I appreciate you're the most accessible president to the -- to the media in -- in history, actually, but I would like to see you sit down with Matt Continetti, Guy Benson, Spencer Brown, Mary Katharine Ham, the Mandels, Philip Wegmann, all of our superstar youngsters, people are under 40, 45. Is that on the agenda sometime, to sit down with our people.
Yeah, it would be. I mean, they have to ask and it would be. I certainly like all the names that you mentioned. And I will say that I think the times treated me pretty fairly yesterday, which is --
Oh, interesting. I haven't read it yet. The transcript isn't out, so I'm waiting for the --
-- pretty shocking. It's a little hard not to. We have the greatest potential economy in history. We have $18 trillion coming in. The record is three and that was from many, many years ago. We have something that just took place with Venezuela that everybody considers one of the most brilliant attacks they've ever seen.
And you know, we had -- we lost no people in the middle of a fort. Don't forget, that house was built in the middle of a fort with thousands of soldiers. They lost quite a few people, I hate to say it --
Yeah. I talked to an active duty naval officer yesterday, who was very jealous that they were not there because it was such an extraordinary mission. Our military is amazing.
It was an extraordinary attack, but you know what, we had an extraordinary attack a few months ago in a place called Iran.
Yep.
We knocked out the Iran nuclear threat, and it was obliterated. And we also took out Soleimani and we took out al-Baghdadi. So we've had some good attacks so far. We haven't had the Afghanistan disaster. That was the lowest point, I think in the history of our country, Biden. But if you look also, the Jimmy Carter disaster, that was a disaster with the hostages.
And you know, when we were --
Every Democratic president is a disaster.
-- going in there with all those men and 152 planes, I said, I hope it's not a Jimmy Carter deal. But our people --
No Carter, Clinton Obama, Biden, they've all been disasters in national security. Let me ask you about --
I haven't had -- I haven't had any disasters.
Not yet and I hope it stays that way.
I hope -- I hope the word yet is going to disappear.
Yeah, well, we got to talk about the Golden Fleet because this is important. I want to take my hat off to you on the Golden Fleet. We need guided missile frigates and attack submarines and the Columbia class in the worst way.
Yeah.
Is there going to be enough money in the budget to get everything built that we need, including new shipyards?
Well, we are going to have plenty of money and if you notice what I did yesterday, I told all defense companies, there's going to be no more buybacks. You're going to put the money into building new plant and equipment and there's going to be no more stock options and there's going to be no more salaries of $50 million a year.
You're going to put the money in -- we're going to have it capped at $5 million and that's effective immediately. And all that money that they're sending out is going to have to be -- and you know what, their stock prices went up. The reason is, I also put out a statement, a secondary statement saying that next year we expect to have $1.5 trillion in defense budget.
And we're also building battleships. You know, we're building great battleships. We have 25 on schedule, but we're going to start with 10 and then we'll see how that all goes. But we're going to build battleships. And you know, I thought you remember from Victory at Sea, you take a look at the -- those great gorgeous ships, the Iowa, the Alabama, the Missouri, those great ships.
And -- and if you see, you know what I'm talking about --
Oh, yeah, provided they got lots of missile tubes on it, I'm all for them. The more missile tubes at sea, the better.
Yeah. Well, let me tell you. So I said, why don't we take some of them out of mothballs? The new ships will be 100 times more powerful than those battleships that we so admire.
Now I know you're up -- up -- upping the construction at Philadelphia shipyard and enhancing its capacity --
And numerous others.
Yeah, I was wondering, are you going to build new ones?
We're going back into the shipbuilding business.
That is great. That's the best news. Do people understand how important that is to the economy, do you think?
Well, I think they know, but the Philadelphia yard is one of the yards that's going to be opened up, and we have numerous yards that are opened up. Some of those yards have been built up by housing projects. You know, they're all on the water, so they tended to be in nicer locations. But we have many yards opening up and we're going to be very much back in the shipbuilding business.
And in some cases, we're partnering with South Korea and others initially, because we have to get -- you know, we used to make almost a ship a day during World War II, and then we just totally got out of that business, stupidly. But we're back in the shipbuilding business. We have to be all right.
All right. Now I want to switch to one of my other favorite topics with you, Mr. President, the Supreme Court. I know you don't expect a retirement in the spring, but if one happens, you've appointed 60 appeals court judges. Would you expect to take either a runner up from last time like Judge Kethledge, or one of your appointees?
Judge Rowe is 53 on the DC circuit. Judge Rushing on the fourth is 43. Judge Stras on the eighth is 51. Amul Thapar is 56. Don Willett, 60. Then you got Senator Cruz, who's 55. And you got District Court Judge Aileen Cannon. I think she did a good job in the Florida case. She's 45.
Not good job, she did a great job. She's a great judge.
Yes, she did and she came to the right constitutional conclusion about the illegality of the appointment.
Right. She was highly respected. Yeah.
So --
No, those are all great names. Every one of those names is a great name. Now, Ted Cruz, the nice part about him is we'd get a 100 percent approval. Every Democrat would vote yes, and every Republican would vote yes, because they would love to get him the hell out of the Senate, all of them. So he's the only one that would be a guaranteed confirmation.
And he's a smart guy. He's a good guy. And I say that jokingly, but I always say, Ted would get a 100 percent approval. The Democrats want him out, the Republicans want him out and he'd do great, and he's smart. But -- but all of the names that you mentioned are great names, every one of them. I know them all.
Who is advising you on judges this term, as Leonard is not and the Federalist Society is not?
Well, I'm using some people, actually, that you know. I'd rather tell you on a personal basis --
All right.
-- not on a phone call. But I have some very good people that are advising me, people that you know and respect.
All right. And on the legislative agenda for this year, I know -- I watched your talk to the Republicans at the Trump Kennedy Center and I know you talked about health care. That would be great, but it would be easier to get done if you bundled it with, for example, the Dreamers Act, the AM Radio in Every Car Act.
Both of those have got supermajorities.
Do you think that's the strategy, bundle health care with very popular laws, get them to the floor and move them?
Well, I think health care is so big and so important that it probably supersedes some slightly less -- you know, a very popular thing, but less important. Uh, I like the AM in Every Car, the AM radio in every car. I like that. I'm in favor of it. Uh, it's interesting, a lot of people don't know about that, but it's actually a very big subject.
But I like it.
Oh, it's a huge deal. It's a huge deal.
We're going to be -- we're going to be doing something on that. Uh, all of the things you mentioned, I like, but I think health care is so big and so powerful, it's going to really -- going to have to stand on its own weight.
All right. So --
What I want, you know, with health care is pretty simple. I want -- because if you take a look -- I don't know if you study insurance companies, but these guys have made literally trillions of dollars. I want the money to go directly to the people and let the people buy their own health care, and everybody loves it.
I do too. I think that would be a genius -- I just think to get Democratic votes, you might have to put the Dreamers Act in or the radio act in along with it.
The problem with the Democrats is they're totally in bed with the insurance companies. And what -- you know, what I'm doing is the exact opposite. I'm giving the money to the people. They're giving the money to the insurance companies. It's hard for them to vote against the insurance companies who have made a fortune because of the Democrats.
Now, Mr. President, when we have that sit down, that private talk about judges, I would like to talk to you about Richard Nixon, because I believe your understanding of American power projection is very similar to his. And I think he also liked to keep people guessing. Some people call it the madman theory.
I just thought it was strategic sense. Do you think that comparison is apt?
Well, look, I don't know. We're just respected. We're respected again as a country and I'm respected and -- but we're respected. We had a president who shouldn't have been there. It was -- first of all, it was a rigged election and that's now coming out loud and clear. But we knew that -- I knew that four years ago.
But it was just a rigged election. And that's what we got. We got a man that allowed millions of people into our country from jails and mental institutions and drug dealers. And what a shame that -- Biden was just a horrible president. And you know, if she would have won, which is the equivalent, if she would have won, our country would have been, right now, Venezuela on steroids.
A disaster, a disaster.
Would have been a disaster.
And Tim Walz would have been the vice president instead of Vice President Vance. I can't believe it. Let me turn to politics in my last couple of minutes, Mr. President. I want to honor your time. Uh, you crushed the debates in 2015, '16. The last one was just Secretary Rubio, Senator Cruz, who we've talked about, Governor Kasich and you.
And then there were no more. You skipped the debates in '25 -- '23 and '24. You will control, you will, whether or not the GOP has debates in 2027-2028. Do you think they are a good thing for the party or a bad thing? Do you want to have them or do you not want to have them?
Well, I always liked him for me. I love debating. But I think I did the right thing. I had, you know, 10 people, they were all smart people, you know, governors and Senators. And I figured, why should I allow myself to be whacked by all 10 people at the same time. I think I did a very smart -- a lot of people said, you have to be in the debates.
I said, I don't think I do. And then I had the debate with Biden, which turned out to be a good debate. I don't think I got enough credit for that debate because I made him choke, but he didn't do well in that debate. And the interesting thing is, without that debate, would he have been allowed to continue running --
Yes, he would have been and that would have been a disaster for the party, even worse than Kamala Harris, because you can't hide the fact he was infirm. He was infirm. He wasn't there.
Yeah. Well, he didn't do too well. I would say that --
So let's talk about the Democrats to wrap up.
He's not the greatest. Go ahead.
Who is the strongest Democrat in 2028, Gavin Newsom, AOC, Jasmine Crockett, Jared Polis in Colorado, Chris Van Hollen, Wes Moore, Andy Beshear? Who's their best choice?
You know, as you rattle off those names, I'm just seeing -- isn't it amazing, with 350 people -- of course, we have no idea, that Biden led in so many, nobody knows, but with, let's say, 350 million people, that that's the best they can do. It's pretty sad. I think Newsom is hurt because he's done so badly in California.
He has.
He's done so, so badly. I just -- you know, look, he's sort of a good politician, but he doesn't get the job done. I think people are going to -- people aren't going to stand for that. There's nobody -- I do have a couple of people that I think would be really tough candidates, but I don't want to name them because I hope they're not chosen.
Well, that -- that does make some sense to me. OK. Let's close with Mr. Mayor Mamdani, and you decide when to conclude the interview, Mr. President. I know you love New York City. It's going to be a nightmare. I've only lived there once. I've only lived there in 1980. It's going to be worse than 1980, which was damn bad.
And I left and went to law school because it was so bad. Will the city be able to recover after Mamdani?
Well, it's going to be interesting. You know, I've met him. He came to the Oval Office.
Yes.
And we've had some nice conversations, very good. And then he hit me a little bit on the tremendous victory, and you would say it was a tremendous victory on Venezuela. And I said, gee, I thought he would have at least waited a month. I was surprised that he hit me on that, but he did. So what are you going to do? I expected it. I just thought it would be maybe three or four weeks instead of immediately, because I do get along with him.
He's got a great personality. He's a nice guy. His policies are not good, but maybe he changes. You know, that's what I would view. Because I want to do everything I can to help New York. So I don't know. I hope -- I hope you're wrong. I hope New York is thrive -- will thrive. But typically, those policies -- maybe you say not only typically, in history, those policies have never worked.
They never work. The last thing I'll say to you, Mr. President, Golden Dome is the most important legacy you're going to leave, if it gets built. I've read some studies that say Ravenna, Ohio is where the hub ought to be for Space Force to control that because of the polar ice cap. Have you decided where the central location of Golden Dome will be yet?
No, but I love Ohio. I can tell you that. And I've won Ohio big every single time.
Every time.
And everybody I've endorsed from Ohio has won, and you know, it's been great. But I've heard that one of the people -- one of the places very much being considered.
All right. Mr. President, thank you for the time. I appreciate it. Come back again soon and I look forward to talking to you again. Congratulations on a great first year and your second term.
Thank you very much, Hugh. You take care of yourself. Thank you.
Bye-bye.
Bye.