[Sharyl Attkisson interviewed Donald Trump at The White House on March 13, 2025. The interview aired on Sinclair stations on March 16, 2025. The following transcript was provided by the show "Full Measure" and confirmed for accuracy. Video and transcript courtesy and copyright Full Measure.]
Thank you very much.
Thank you for joining us.
Thank you.
Is there anything new on the Russia development? Because I understand probably by the minute there are things happening.
I think it's going well. I think it's a tough situation that we're in. You know, I inherited a mess from him in so many ways. Whether it's the wall or the economy or anything you want to talk about. It's tough. This was a very tough one. Ukraine, Russia, should have never happened. It would've never happened, but it did.
And we have to see what we can do to save a lot of lives and to stop paying billions and billions of dollars. Also, it's a massive amounts of money, $350 billion we've spent on that. And, we're gonna try and do something about that. But more importantly, right now, you have a lot of people dying. You are losing probably 2000 people a week in shooting soldiers, Russian and Ukrainian, and whatever we can do to stop it. We're trying to do that.
Are you speaking to Putin in the last days or hours? Personally?
Well, I don't wanna say it, but we are dealing with him and I think, I think it's going reasonably well. It's a very complex situation, you know, it's a bloody terrible war. And I do think it's going well. As you know, we have a ceasefire agreement with the Ukrainian group, and we are trying to get that with Russia too.
And I think thus far it's gone. Okay. We will know a little bit more on Monday, and that'll be, hopefully good.
I'm not understating the complexity of all this, but as a candidate, you said you would have this war settled in 24 hours?
Well, I was being a little bit sarcastic when I said that, what I really mean is I'd like to get it settled and I think I'll be successful.
What's the plan if Putin doesn't agree to a cease fire?
Bad news for this world because so many people are dying. But I think, I think he's going to agree. I really do. I think I know him pretty well and I think he's gonna agree.
It's been a tumultuous week with confusion over tariffs, with the financial markets. A lot of regular people don't understand tariffs and how they work.
Well, they're a beautiful thing, for us.
Can you explain for people who aren't really plugged into this, maybe with a specific product example, how we are supposedly getting ripped off by tariffs and how it can be fixed and when we would, when we would see the benefits of it?
Well, we as a country have been ripped off for years and years, decades and decades. And you've covered it on your show. I've seen it. Canada's a disaster for us. We lose close to $200 billion with Canada. Nobody did anything. Nobody says that with Canada, that they charge, our farmers think of this. They have four dairy products, some dairy products, 270% tariff.
Nobody knows that. Nobody talks..
Can you break that down to like common terms. So our farmers may have a product such as what, and we sell it to Canada?
So we wanna sell milk into Canada, and they throw a 270% price increase on the milk.
Which means we don't have much of a market, in Canada?
Which means we don't sell milk in Canada, it's almost, it's called a monetary tariff. But they have a lot of non-monetary tariffs too. That's things unrelated to, you know, they'll have a standard that they'll say you didn't meet or something that's called a non-monetary
So you put a tariff on what, for example, to try to counter the milk tariff?
Well, I can put a tariff on anything, but in the case of Canada, I put it on steel and aluminum.
Because they wanna sell their stuff to us?
We have a lot of tariffs, that we're going to be putting on. It really hits on April 2nd. And actually we've been very consistent. I think a lot of people are loving what I'm doing. The real business people are loving it. We're gonna make America rich again, but we're gonna have tariffs on automobiles. We're gonna have tariffs on steel, we're gonna have tariffs on aluminum and copper and many, many different things.
And they're gonna be very consistent and I've been very consistent. I did give General Motors and our Big 3 actually, a month of relief because they would've had a very unfair disadvantage over other car makers, which I didn't want. So I did that, and I think it was something I did from the fact that, you know, I want to take care of our car companies.
But you have, and you've been reading about it and seeing it. We have companies moving into the United States at levels that has never been seen before. We have many, many car factories going up.
If I understand it correctly, the benefits that would come from some of that may largely be down the road, which leads
Well, no, I think, I think immediate. Look, when you're building those plants, a lot of money comes in from those plants. You know, you're using companies, subcontractors, contractors, concrete companies and steel companies. And you're gonna see it initially, but you're gonna see it more down the road when they open up. And I would rather have that, by the way that I could get, you get money or you get jobs.
And I'd rather see the jobs the biggest hit is when they move in. So you have the biggest chip maker in the world coming in with $200 billion. You know that you saw that number one in the world by far. Mr. Wei, most respected, one of the most respected people in business. Forget about chips from Taiwan. He's coming in, he's spending hundreds of billions of dollars, and he'll be spending it largely in Arizona.
But these companies are coming in at levels that people haven't seen. And they're coming in because of the tariffs, and they're coming in because of me too. But they're coming in because of the tariffs, the incentive. Because if he doesn't, they're gonna have to pay very substantial tariffs for the privilege of selling their product in the United States.
Well, I simply mean it may take some time, obviously, for the plants to be built
It will.
And the people to be hired.
It will. But remember, the building of the plant is a lot of money also.
Point taken, as a society. I'm positing we've largely been convinced by our political leaders in the past that it's okay to kick the can down the road and not fix a lot of important things. It's very easy to paddle the kayak toward the waterfall with people telling you, you're never gonna hit the waterfall.
Sure.
It's hard to change directions. And I'm wondering, do you think American society today has the guts and the grit to go through any pain that there could be to try to fix big things?
So I think our economy's gonna roar. I think our stock market's gonna do great.
How long would you suggest people may have to wait before they say on a daily basis? "Wow."
Well, look, I think they're seeing a lot of things happening. I think they're seeing the numbers. Look, Apple got up and said, 'we're investing 500 billion', not 500 million. That's a lot of money too, but $500 billion in the United States. They never did that. They built their plants in China. Now they're building their plants in the United States.
And that's because of me, policy also, but also because of me. But you see all these companies, we have news conferences sometimes, and sometimes I just say, announce it. I don't have enough time for the news conferences. But the kind of money being invested in the country, we've never seen anything like it.
I would say the border has to be very early in this administration. The single most tangible, quick impact people saw.
Yeah.
I think 96% or above decrease in illegal border crossings and the mass deportations. I don't know how many of those, are you satisfied with how that's going so far?
Yeah, I think they're doing an incredible job. And it's a tough job too. We have 99% improvement from Biden. And that was his better. You know, he started around the election working a little bit harder, and they got a little bit better, was horrible still. So we're comparing it to his best time, comparing it to the worst time.
It's like, it's not even, you can't calculate it. How much better? So we have now the best border we've ever had, and we did that in a period of five weeks. Pretty amazing actually.
Does that imply that we don't need to add a bunch of money and forces? In fact, maybe you could draw down or reappoint the force and manpower that's down there and we don't need new laws and new money?
Well, you don't need very many new laws, because I did it without new laws. I did it twice without new laws. I had the best border ever. And now I think we're gonna beat those numbers. I actually think these numbers might be slightly better and we're gonna get 'em better yet. And I said, during the speech on Tuesday night, I said that 'you didn't need new anything.
You just needed a new president for that.' I said, 'close the border.' And they closed the border. He could have done the same thing. I think he wanted open borders. I don't know if he did, but somebody in there that ran the operation, nobody really knows who was running it.
[Commercial break]
There's a lot of intrigue surrounding the release of the Epstein files. Martin Luther King files, John F. Kennedy files, some current and former FBI agents are saying, some of them telling me that they feel the FBI establishment came out ahead in the standoff, sort of with the New York FBI field office over releasing the records.
And your attorney general Pam Bondi demanding them, but not getting all that she wanted. Is that process still on track? I think that's one of the most often questions I've been asked the last couple of days to release these records on Epstein, MLK and JFK.
Well, Pam Bondi's done a phenomenal job in every respect. And there could have been some holdback. I haven't heard too much about it, but they could. But the bottom line is the records are getting out. The Kennedy records are getting out. Those are the ones they really wanted to see the most were the Kennedy's. And during my administration, as you know, I released a lot of 'em. But then a lot of people started coming in. People that I respected, people that worked for the administration asked me not to release the rest.
Did they say why?
And I respected that. They gave me certain reasons, but I respected that. And I did say, I must tell you, I said that I probably wish I did release the whole thing 'cause I have no idea what's in there. But since then they found, and we found, 2000 more documents on Kennedy. And the one they want most is Kennedy.
And it's gonna be released. It's, it's moving along and it's moving along pretty rapidly. It doesn't, doesn't go that rapidly.
In weeks maybe?
Yeah, I would say weeks. Yeah I say weeks.
Well, let me switch gears and go to the media next. It's understandable that you would hold the media accountable for its mistakes. And I would argue that nobody has suffered that more than you have in the course of you
Well, you suffered it a little bit in all fairness
Yeah. But, not as much as you
your wonderful career, but you suffered it.
But as a supporter of a robust free press, do you worry sometimes that the settlements you're getting against big press organizations and so on might have a reverse effect and chill the press and make people think that you're doing something to crack down on a free press?
Well, they really lied about me. I mean, in so many ways, you know that and you understand that. And you've had it yourself to a large extent. I mean, you know, larger than most. But they were very dishonest. That's why I came up with a name, fake news, fake news. And you're right, I've had some good luck suing these people.
And I have some others in there that are, and I'm doing that. I'm doing that for the people of this country. We need a free press. A fair press. I said, we need borders. We need a fair press. We need to stop crime and elections have to be perfect. And they're not perfect. They're a disaster.
I tracked medium mistakes when you first came into office the first time, and there were too many really to count. But I tracked him as best as I could. I'm looking at 'em this time. And I'm not seeing as many when we're talking about false reporting and fake information. Not that some of that isn't out there, but I don't see it to the same extent I did in the 2016 time period.
Do you think the media is treating you better now?
No, I think that, I've become more experienced in handling the media. I think the media respects me more. You know, I've done this twice. You know, when I first came in, don't forget, I had never done it. I won this incredible election and I relied on people for recommendations. And now I know everybody in Washington that you'd want to know.
And we have a great staff. And I had a great staff before too. Look, I rebuilt the military and all of the things we did, the great things that we did, the taxes were the biggest tax cut in history. All the things we did. And I had a lot of great people, but I had some that I wouldn't have put in, in retrospect, I think now we have unbelievable people.
But no, the media has, I find it to be that it hasn't changed. What has changed is I think Facebook and Google and a lot of them have become, I think a guy like, Bezos is, I've gotten to know him and I think he's trying to do a real job. Jeff Bezos is trying to do a real job with the Washington Post. And that wasn't happening before.
My first time. I had Google against me. I had Facebook against me, I had Instagram, I had everybody against me. The whole world was against me. But I mean, 97% of it was just like horrible. It was, and it was really crooked. It was really dishonest. And I think I fought them well. And now I'm actually winning awards for the fact that, you know, a lot of that stuff is coming due now.
It takes a long time through the court system. They have CBS as an example. They totally changed the answers of Kamala Harris. They, they took other answers and put 'em into a slot. They'd ask her a question. She gave a horrible answer. They took it just before the election. One day before the election. They took the answer and they put an entirely different answer into the slot.
Nobody's ever seen anything like it.
One quick follow up. There are some people are saying to the extent CBS 60 Minutes was considering some kind of settlement with you, that was almost like a blackmail thing, or that they were doing that because they were afraid now that you're president that there are certain things you could do that would hurt the corporation.
What are your thoughts about that?
I don't think so. I mean, look, they were wrong. Hey, they took an answer from another part of an interview that was much later.
They said it was from the same question, but
Ah, they didn't say that. They even, I'll tell you what, they advertised. The way they got caught was they advertised a little piece of that answer. And then when it was shown on television, that piece wasn't there anymore. So we said, 'well, wait a minute, what happened to the,' the answer was so bad, so incompetent that she would've lost the election just based on that.
It was such a horrible answer. And they took another answer from another part. And, you know, down deep in the interview and they put it into that. They slotted it in. I never even heard of that before. Nobody did. And they admit that they're guilty. So we'll see what happens. I mean, I think, they have problems.
A lot of what you want to do, of course, the big things, it's already meeting up with legal challenges and protests and opposition and a good deal of it would require Congress's help to codify it and kind of get around that.
Yeah, what we're trying to do that, we're trying to do it, we're doing executive orders at the fastest rate that anyone's ever seen. We had our cabinet, as you know, approved at the fastest level. John Thune has done a great job. Mike Johnson has done a great job. The leaders and the Speaker, they've been fantastic.
We have done, you know, really we're going at at breakneck speed. And I think everyone's saying 'they've never seen anything like it.' Now you're comparing it to people that honestly should have never been there, should have never ever been there. What they've done to our country is not even describable.
But, we're doing a good job.
[Commercial break]
But the hard reality, if you wanna talk about the establishment or the swamp members of Congress, and both parties are funded by some of the very interests that you're trying to dial back on, it kind of makes the equation a little bit harder.
Well, it doesn't matter because I'm doing what has to be done and I'm getting the support and I'm doing executive orders. But those, when you say codified, we're trying to get them codified so that they'll be there forever. So that at the end of a term, if for some reason somebody else gets in that has a opposing view, this is the right view.
We have to have borders, we have to have honest elections, fair and honest elections. And we're doing things that even on that front, we're, you know, moving forward and some very serious things. One of the things that's very important that we're doing, 50% of the Department of Education. Now that's a great thing, and it's gonna be higher than that.
These are people that weren't showing up to work, they weren't doing their jobs, or they weren't good at their jobs. But more importantly, we want the states to handle education. If you go to Iowa, if you go to Florida, if you go to, certain states, if you go to, uh, Indiana, I could name, I would say 40 out of the 50 states will do a fantastic job.
Five will be okay, and five will not be so good. But we'll help them and we'll make them good. One way or the other, we'll make them good. We don't wanna run education through DC anymore. I want education to be going. And I think Linda McMahon's gonna do a great job. She's gonna do, I think she's gonna do a fantastic job.
But her job is an interesting job because she's trying to put herself out of a job. She wants to, and I want to get education back so that the states will run education. They can run it at a much more precise level. It won't be such a big monstrous situation. We run it locally. The parents will be running it. The school boards are gonna be given back their power.
Will the federal department shut down entirely?
I hope so. I mean, I expect it will, you'll have a few people left just to make sure they're teaching English. You know, you say reading, writing, and arithmetic, right? In the old days, reading, writing, arithmetic, they wanna teach English. And other language is great, but English is our language and they wanna make sure 'cause you never know somebody goes haywire.
But basically it's gonna be shut down entirely. That's what we want. And we want education to go back to the states. They're gonna run it great. The parents are gonna be running it. The school boards are gonna be given power to run it. And these are school boards where the parents are on those school boards.
Shortly before the election reading the room, I actually published that I thought it was likely you would win the electoral vote, the swing state vote and the popular vote. Do you have a moment that night where you said to somebody and could you tell us about it? If so, 'Wow. Like this is gonna be a clean sweep.'
Yeah, I was with Dana White, the great Dana White. He's a fantastic guy, UFC. And we're friends and we were watching it and we weren't exactly sure 'cause the votes looked like they were not what they should have been. And I believe there was cheating in that election too. But then all of a sudden it just broke.
It was too big to rig. They couldn't stop it. They tried, but they couldn't stop it. Too big to rig. And it started, I looked at the extent of, you know, a lot of people thought I was gonna win, but they didn't know I was gonna win by that much. We won all seven swing states by a lot. We won by millions of votes, a popular vote, which is always harder for a Republican.
And, and some of the numbers like we did very well with women, we did phenomenal with Hispanics. Black male population was incredible. The whole thing was, I mean, we were just getting, we were getting numbers that were so, so good. And it was very nice, you know, to see it was very nice. I worked very hard.
I took a big risk by running a big, big risk, bigger than anyone would understand. I had false prosecutions, I had very crooked courts. I had very crooked judges and, people got it. They really understood it.
[Commercial break]
Last thing, I'm gonna read you a couple of your questions and you can answer any you want or skip.
Okay.
One line maybe. What's the timeline for creating a budget that's lower than the last and for balancing the budget?
I hope we could do that very soon. Maybe even now. I'd love to be able to do it. We had big budget meetings with the Senate and I think that, there's a chance we could do it right now. We're gonna give it a shot.
Can we reform taxes to eliminate the need to file?
Well, it's possible, you know, if the, tariffs work out really well, you wouldn't need income tax. You know that if tariffs work out well, our country at its richest was during, from 1870 to 1913. That was a richest and that was, we were an all tariff nation.
Do you put ketchup on your steak?
Yes, I do.
Is your driver's license expired?
I'll have to check.
Okay.
I'm not allowed to drive. If you can believe it's, a great, I love driving. I miss it.
Because you're president? For security reason?
No, I miss it. I miss not driving.
Sir, thank you for the interview.
Thank you very much.
I appreciate it.
Thank you very much Sharyl.