June 16th, 2015, you just showed me a construction project, and I saw as much joy with you doing that as I -- you loved what you did. You had a great life. If you had to do it all over again, would you come down the escalator, because you had a great life before you did?
I had a wonderful life. But, you know, I had a little expression that you may have heard before, "Make America Great Again". So that's called a large scale version of what you just saw outside with the construction of what will be an incredible addition to Washington, including the helipad and the heliport and everything else that we're doing for the White House where they've wanted these things for so long.
But I did that on a very large scale and I loved it. But this is really -- there's just nothing more important. Make America Great Again. It was the first thing I thought of, and I used it as a phrase, and MAGA certainly caught on, as you know very well.
Yes, sir. I watched you out there with the helipad, the ballroom, the whole world will see that. I've also seen you get out of a golf cart and move stakes that no one else in the world will see. I think it was a tee box, and you were out of the cart in the heat moving stakes. Where does that come from?
I'm a perfectionist, and if I see a crooked line, if I see a corner that's not square, if I see something going on that isn't good, if I see dirt, that's one of the things I hate about the radical left. Everything turns filthy, dirty, and then it goes to hell. And then the murders start and the crime starts and everything else.
I don't know if that's natural. I don't know if it's picked up. My parents were very clean people. They were very proud people. But, you know, I'm proud of the country. I want to see it fixed and made better. We've fixed 82 monuments, statues, waterfalls in Washington. Maybe more important, Washington, D.C. was almost the crime capital of the United States and now, it's -- it's a totally safe place.
You know, crime is down. The whole country, crime is way down for the whole country but if you look at Washington, D.C. which is a microcosm but it's our capital, we brought in the National Guard, they're unbelievable. They did a job with the police, with everybody. But one number that I love giving -- 2 percent of the people create 91 percent of the crime --
Yes.
-- because you can handle 2 percent. And with 30 percent, probably can (ph) handle it, right? So you take care of just 2 percent, and your crime rate goes way down. And that's what happened in Washington and Memphis and a few other cities we did. I wish they'd call me from New York, Chicago, and L.A. I would take those numbers down to nothing.
Clearly, you have touched upon the reality that there is real crime and there's the perception of crime, whether or not people perceive themselves to be safe. You have been shot. You have been shot at. You and I both survived Lindsey Graham's bunker play, which is dangerous --
That was very dangerous.
-- in and of itself. [Laughter]
You will have security for the rest of your life. Has that, especially being shot, changed the way you look at life, death, or life after death?
So it's an interesting question. And honest answers, I purposely don't think about it. I don't want to think about it, because if I did, I wouldn't be here. Probably wouldn't have this job. It's a very dangerous job. You know, I saw the race -- Roger Penske had the big race in Washington, which was such a success, 250,000 people came in. They had closed the bridge to so many people.
And it was great and beautiful. What a job. And you see these race cars going in front of you at 200 -- almost 200 miles an hour, and then going around to turn at a ridiculous speed and all. One tenth of one percent die. One tenth of one percent. I think bull riding looks pretty dangerous to me. I wouldn't want to do that.
I think I'd rather be in a race car. One tenth of one percent, same number, just about the same number, die. President, 5.2 percent. Think of it. So many times. It's a dangerous profession. But if you think about it, you're not going to do a very good job.
That's true.
And I really am. I'm surrounded by very good people. Secret Service has been great. Law enforcement's been great. The military's been -- I'm surrounded by a lot of people. The only thing I can say about it, though, is -- and if you look at it, it's true. It's, I guess, a compliment, but a very strange form of compliment.
Only consequential presidents get shot or shot at. And I am very consequential. We've changed this whole world. We've saved this country. This country had our opponent, my opponent gotten elected. Your -- instead of having $19.2 trillion coming into the country, you would have had $10 trillion going out.
Your welfare would have doubled or tripled. And you would have had a country that was a failed country. We were very close. We were right on the tipping edge. And now we have the hottest country anywhere in the world. This is the hottest country in the world right now, Trey. Every country respects us more than any other country.
Nobody's close.
Right. Speaking of the people you surround yourself with, I want you to imagine you're the lead prosecutor, but you've got Marco Rubio and John Ratcliffe sitting at the council table with you, and you are addressing a jury of undecided midterm voters. And their question is, convince us on the issue of Iran, how it is in our best interest?
If you were the prosecutor in that case, what would you tell them?
It's a very easy question. Iran is a number one leading state sponsor of terror. You've heard that many times in the whole world. They cannot have a nuclear weapon. I have numerous people said, "Well, did you have to do it?" And then I say, "Do you think it's OK for Iran to have a nuclear weapon?" A nuclear weapon is massive destruction.
You know, take what you see and multiply it times 100. And everybody says no. I've had people on the other side asking me, were debating me, let's say, on that question. Most people are absolutely fine with it. They were fine with Venezuela. They were all against Venezuela when I did it. And now look how that's turned out so great.
But they were against this, too. And all I say is, is it okay for -- is it okay for Iran to have a nuclear weapon? I've never had anyone say yes. And as soon as they say, "No, it's not okay," I said, "Well, then I'm right." But we're doing a great job. The blockade has been unbelievable. The financial -- the financial hits that we're giving them, we're hitting them very hard.
Never -- nobody's ever been hit like this. And they're a failing nation right now. And at the right point, we'll either win or they'll do something. But, you know, I don't mind winning, just winning. I don't need a signature on a piece of paper. But we're doing very well. Their navy's gone. Their air force is gone.
Their leaders are gone. Their -- all of their anti-aircraft -- I mean, it's all wiped out. They're tough people. They're smart people. But they are very evil. They killed 52,000 protesters as of three months ago. And, sadly, they have added very substantially to that list. Even people that aren't protesting, they go into the houses and they take them and they shoot them.
These are very violent, evil people. And if they had a nuclear weapon, Israel would be gone. If I weren't president, Israel would be gone. There would be no Israel. And there would probably be no Middle East. And the way you know that is people that were sort of neutral got along with them for years -- as soon as the shooting started, they started aiming at Saudi Arabia, at Qatar, at UAE, at Bahrain, at Kuwait.
They were aiming -- everybody was shocked. I was surprised. I thought it was a very good thing because they lost all of the support that they had. They had a certain amount of support. They were, let's say, neutral, largely neutral. That means that if they would have had a nuclear weapon, they would have fired it. So I think the Middle East would have essentially been gone.
But Israel definitely would have been gone. And I guess we would be next, or Europe or someplace. But no, you cannot let them have a nuclear weapon. And they won't have a nuclear weapon.
[Commercial break]
If Democrats take the House or Senate, they're going to investigate and they're going to impeach. They're going to. Let's look at the other side of that. If you defy history, if you keep the House and the Senate or become the third in history to do it, what can voters expect for the last two years of your term?
Okay, when you're president, whether you're Republican or Democrat, or whether you're a good president or a bad president, you lose the midterms. Nobody knows why. So it's been two -- over 50 years, there's been two victories by a president that won and then went on to win the midterms. And one of them was a little bit of a fluke.
And so for some reason, the voters tend to go the other way. I think we're going to do very well because we have communists, we have a party that's been infiltrated by bad thought, by bad policy. I used to talk about socialism, but this isn't socialism, this is largely communism. I look at the people running like in Michigan, I watched this interview the other day with Jesse and I said, wow, this man is out of it, this is -- this is very dangerous for our country.
I'm not saying good guy, bad guy. I'm just saying this is big, big trouble for our country. Likewise, many others. And what's happened is your sane Democrats, of which there are fewer and fewer, are forced to vote in a way that they would not vote, and they don't even believe in their vote. But if they don't vote that way, they lose power.
With all of that being said, I think we're going to do well, and I'm going to go campaign like I did -- you know, I took off when we had the presidential election. I took off 120 days, four months. Every single day, I was on the trail. And if I didn't make one or two or three speeches, I was -- I felt guilty.
And Kamala, when I looked at her schedule, because, you know, they're printed schedules, she was -- she took all this time off. She didn't really campaign very hard. And I said, wait a minute, you're going for the gold ring. You're going to make America great again. You're going to do -- you got to go every single day.
So it's 120 days. So I campaigned for 120 days without missing a day. And if you called up, because your people don't know, you're a very good golfer. We're both good golfers. But he's a very good golfer, that tells you. Who would think, right? Look at him. He's so innocent looking, but very good. But if you called up to play golf, we used to play with Lindsey.
Yes, sir.
He had a lot of other assets, but golf wasn't one of them, right?
It's true.
But we loved Lindsey. It was fun. He was one of the few bad golfers that I loved playing with, right? And you, too. We would joke about it. But if you called up to play golf, I wouldn't play. I didn't play golf. I didn't do anything. For 120 days, I worked. And if I didn't make two or three speeches a day, I felt I was letting myself, maybe letting the country down because I knew how bad these people were.
And she didn't work. She really didn't work. She took days off, days. I'd look at her schedule and say, am I missing something here? You know, you don't -- you can't do it. And I'm going to take a lot of time, and I'm going to help people get elected if I can. There's a theory that I get the vote. You know, I see it all the time -- that when Trump's on the ballot, they win.
When he's out of the ballot, the people don't go to vote. And I'm asking the people through your brilliant show, number one show, I'm asking the people to get out and vote, pretend I'm on the ballot. They tend not to vote. You know, it's not an insult. It's sort of the opposite of an insult. When I'm on the ballot -- if I was on the ballot, everybody was saying it would be a slaughter, but like 35 percent of the people don't vote that would have voted.
And I got to get them to vote. And if we do that, we're going to have a great victory. And I think their ideology is really bad. You know, they want to have men and women's sports. They want to have transgender for everyone. They want to have open borders. They want to have things that are so far off, it's so crazy.
And even if they don't believe -- who could believe in men playing in women's sports? And yet, they say 80/20. I really think it's 99/1, to be honest. I don't think it's an 80/20. I think it's got to be 99 to 1. But we have great policy, and they have bad policy. They vote for high taxes. They want high taxes.
They want to raise your taxes by a lot. What politician says that they want to raise your taxes, and we lowered your -- I just gave you the biggest with the great Big, Beautiful Bill, the biggest tax cut in history. No tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime. I mean, think of it, no tax on Social Security for our great seniors.
They're going to turn that over. They're going to take that and make it so that you have to pay tax on tips, that you have to pay tax on overtime, you have to pay tax on Social Security. Our seniors have to pay tax. And if people are okay with that, I guess it's not a thing you can do. But we've done so much.
If you go out and buy a car and you borrow the money, I got an interest deduction on your loan. So if you're paying interest, you're allowed to deduct it from income tax purposes. Now, a lot of people won't pay any tax because of that. That's a tremendous thing. But only if the car is made in the USA. If it's not made in the USA, no deal, because we want the cars to be made in the USA.
I did not know you before you became president. In fact, I was probably the last member of Congress to meet you because I was doing the Russia investigation. I thought it'd be smart to be able to say I'd never met him. So my mom wanted a picture. You were kind enough to give it to me. So I'm flying a little bit blind here, but it seemed as if when you got to D.C., you did not expect Democrat resistance and opposition to be as strong as it was, that you're used to a world of business where both people can win.
And the media reaction seemed -- I don't want to say to catch you by surprise, but it was hostile.
It was violent.
Yes.
Crazy, actually.
Did you foresee that? Was that a surprise when you became president?
So the media was shocking. Now, I knew there were some problems with the media, but never like this. And I don't think anybody else had it like this either, because I was doing things that they weren't expecting to be done. So, the media was shocking. The fight from the Democrats with very bad policy. Fortunately, their policy was so bad.
You know, we just covered it, their policy is so bad, but the level of resistance was incredible. And yet I had a great first term. We had the most successful first term financially that anybody's ever had up until now. I think we're going to blow it away now because we have factories being built all over the country.
It's amazing. But I think we're going to have something that-- I think when we're finished, we're going to have a term that's been unbelievable. But I never saw the kind of resistance that I have. Even now, I mean, if anything has gotten worse. They want our country to lose the war with Iran, which isn't going to happen because we're absolutely winning easily.
They want our country to lose with Venezuela. When we went into Venezuela, they were hoping we were going to get hit bad. And instead, it was one of the greatest, most lethal, quick attacks. We went in 48 minutes. The whole thing was over. Nobody ever talks about that. Nobody killed. A very brave helicopter pilot was badly wounded on the leg, and we gave him the Congressional Medal of Honor because he landed that big Chinook right on time with a lot of people in it. And a lot of people couldn't have done that, couldn't have done what he did.
And he got the Congressional Medal of Honor. If you remember, they didn't even clap, the Democrats. They didn't clap. They weren't clapping. That's when I said, these people are crazy. We're honoring 100-year-old soldier who we gave a Congressional Medal of Honor to, and the Democrats sat there stone-faced.
You know why? Because they were told to. By the way, by the end of that evening, they were clapping like crazy. They were clapping every time I started, because somebody called them and said, you guys are looking really bad, right? They were clapping like crazy. So I was surprised at the media's dishonesty, very dishonest.
That's where I came up with fake news. I came up with that the first time. I think it's a term I'm very proud of. It's true. It's not strong enough. It should be stronger. That's the only thing. Fake is bad, but outright corrupt is more accurate. And I was surprised at the level of resistance. If I went to the Democrats and gave them something that would be great for the country, great for them, even politically good, they would probably not do it. I mean, it's sort of incredible.
But I have a new way of negotiating with them. Whatever I want, I say the opposite. So let's say I want to build the wall. I used to say, we will build the wall. If I said, we will never build the wall, we will never, they will give me all the money to build the wall. So now what I do is I'll just go opposite and I'll get everything I want.
It's crazy.
This is a question I get back home when I'm in South Carolina. You and I both have referenced Lindsey Graham. In 2016, I would say the relationship was arguably not quite as strong as it wound up being.
To put it mildly.
Well --
He was my opponent.
Yes, sir. He was. And then you wound up eulogizing him in a beautiful eulogy. And you cared very much for him. How does someone get out of Trump purgatory?
So when I ran, we started in 2015, and Lindsey was one of the -- there were a total of 18. 17, including me, or with me, it's 18. And he was pretty hostile. And he was a good politician, you know, pretty effective. And I said, well, got to go after him. We can't take this. And I did. Once I won, and I got used -- you know, I started calling people and asking for support to get something passed.
Tax cuts -- we passed the largest tax cut in history, both times. First, and then we did another one, just now, with the great Big, Beautiful Bill, biggest tax cut in history. But I'd call, and I got to know him a little bit. I said, you know, he's great. He's sort of a great guy, actually. You know, you can't look at somebody doing necessarily competition because they want to win and they do things that are either foolish or correct.
You know, they want to win. I do. I want to win. And I got to know him. He was actually a great politician. And he could go, one of the few, he could go over to the Democrats and make a deal with people that were not dealable with. You know, he could make a deal with some people that I would say, you'll never get.
You understand that better than anybody. And that's a great talent. And I just -- you know, it took a while. It's like a fine wine. It gets better and better with time. It took a while, and Lindsey just became a friend of mine. Really a good friend of mine.
[Commercial break]
You and Grover Cleveland are the only two to have ever done what you have done. Is there something you now know that you wish you had known in your first term, something that would have made that first term -- I mean, there was a cloud over the first term because of Jeff Sessions recusing himself, Adam Schiff, all of that.
I'm not sure what you could have done about that.
Russia, Russia, Russia.
Right.
Had a cloud, but it was an amazingly successful term. When you look at the stock market, I left -- it was the highest stock market in history. The jobs were the highest to that point in history. And by the way, now, as you interview me, we have today, we have the highest stock market in history. And in a short period of time, a year and a half, we've had 81 all-time highs for the stock market.
All of the markets, but for the stock market, 81. And the 401(k)s, which affects a lot of people, the 401(k)s are the highest they've ever been, never even close. And likewise, I think there's a period of 87 days or something on 401(k)s. They hit new highs, new highs, new highs. And this is despite the fact that I'm putting out a fire in Iran, which I had to do. I had to put out a fire.
You know, it was interesting with that, because we had just hit an all-time high in the stock market, an all-time high in employment was the best it was ever. Today we have more people working, by the way, than we ever have in the history of our country, which is another great thing. But we had just hit an all-time high, and I called my people in. This is six months ago.
We just had great numbers. It was a big headline. And I said, I'm sorry, fellas. I had Scott, Howard, and Marco, J.D. and everybody. I said, I'm sorry. We just hit these great numbers, but we have to put a fire out in the Middle East, because they'll be using a nuclear weapon on us. But they'll be using it on Israel and all over the Middle East, and we'll probably be next, so we can't let that happen.
They understood exactly. And we did that. So, you know, it's very interesting. It feels like a more important term -- meaning this particular term. And I think I'm helped by the fact that the people that preceded me, the group -- because it wasn't only Biden. Biden, you know, wasn't the sharpest tack. But he had a lot of sharp tacks there.
But they were radical-left lunatics that weaponized government. And I think when people see -- when you follow somebody that's -- you know, when you follow Babe Ruth or you follow somebody, Michael Jordan, you follow some -- it's maybe harder, but I wasn't following the Babe. I was following Joe Biden. And so, maybe, people allow me to be strong to help save our nation.
As an example, Canada, we're putting very substantial -- we lose $60 billion a year for many years with Canada. More than that, they used to lose, but we lose all of this tremendous money. They think they're a state, but they're not a state. Why should we be subsidizing Canada? And I've said it for a long time, and I would have done it in the first term, but we were doing other things.
And we did have the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax. It was a hoax created by Adam Schiff, Hillary Clinton, and all of these people. It was a total hoax and a very dangerous hoax because, you know, Putin was a different kind of a guy, that could have caused war. That was a really sick hoax, and now it's been totally disproven.
But we had those obstacles. Now, what's happening is we're able to do things that I probably wouldn't have been able to do. The two things that I regret by not having just the consecutive term, I think this is a much more important term than I would have had but there are two things -- you wouldn't have the Russia-Ukraine war, which is very important, and you wouldn't have had 25 million people pour into our country.
Those are very big things. That's the two things. Now, even when you figure that -- I mean, this has been a very important -- all of the things that we've done with the great Big, Beautiful Bill, the biggest tax cuts in the industry, all of the things that we've done. Don't forget, in first term, I did Space Force.
That was a big deal. That's turning out to be a very big deal. We were losing in space. We were third or fourth. And now we're by far number one. That was a big thing. But with all of the things that I've done, this seems to be the term that has maybe more importance. The country is respected again like we've never been respected before.
And you've heard me say the king of Saudi Arabia, I was with him. And he said, it's amazing. After I was in office for about a year, I was in Saudi Arabia. They invested $2 trillion. I was here to get money for the United States to put it in from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, all these countries, and many other countries, too.
You have to be like a traveling salesman because you want money coming because that's jobs. They come in with the money, the businesses, all that stuff. That's good for us. But he said very strongly, he said, you know, two years ago, you were a dead country, a dead country. And it had an impact. And he said, now you're the hottest country anywhere in the world.
And that was a year ago. And now we're much hotter than we were then. So we're respected again. Trey, people were laughing at us. We were a joke. We were an embarrassment. To our founders, we were an embarrassment. To our country, we were an embarrassment to everything we stand for. You know, you talk about free enterprise and all.
We were like an embarrassment. We had no idea. We had no leader. We had a bunch of radical-level lunatics who weaponized government. And for four years, I wasn't in office. They came after me during -- they raided Mar-a-Lago. These are bad people. These are very bad people. They're sick people. And I will say that this is a much more important term, I think, than I might have had.
But you would not have had the war. It just wouldn't have happened. It was never going to happen. And it didn't happen for four years, right? And I used to speak to President Putin about it. I said, don't do it. Don't do it. He was never going to do it. So you wouldn't have had that. And you wouldn't have had the open borders with millions -- 25 million people.
I say maybe even more, but 25 million people coming in. And many of these people should not be here. They came from prisons, mental institutions, drug dealers. It's crazy what happened. And they came in totally unchecked and totally unvetted. They just walked right through our border. And that was big trouble.
And frankly, you know, with inflation, I've largely taken care of inflation. By the way, the gasoline is going to go down, the oil is going to go down like a rocket going in the opposite direction as soon as we win that war, complete the war. Already, you know, we've got total control. I would say almost total.
It could be a nuisance. But we have control of the Hormuz Strait. We've swept it of all the mines. You know, we don't have mines there now. We have all of the international -- we got rid of them, with very little help from other countries. And we help other countries. We spend billions and billions of dollars helping NATO and other countries.
South Korea is an example. We help them, but when it came to helping us, I didn't put on a heavy sell, but I just said, would you like to participate? And they all said, no, thank you. And I said, I'm going to remember that to myself. And so, you could say we're going to make a lot of money because when they're not willing to go for you, you just can't be a stupid person and, you know, help them.
They want our help. We have thousands and -- like in South Korea, as an example, we have 40,000 soldiers over there. And I said, do you mind giving us a little hand with Iran, the Islamic Republic of Iran? And they say, "Well, we'd rather not." I said, "Okay, thank you very much. I appreciate it." But I think you have to remember that stuff. I really do.
[Commercial break]
When your term ends, do you have a plan? What is retirement like? And who will carry the torch for MAGA? You've got some people in your own administration?
I think, you know, if you looked at the endorsements over the last year or two years, I'm at 98 percent. Whenever I endorse somebody, they win almost all the time. And then if I lose a race, oh, headlines. Trump has lost his touch. Actually, it's hotter than it ever was. If you look -- in fact, I'll give you a little list.
You can show it when you show, I hope. But I'm at 97 percent, 98 percent victories. And on the races that count, I'm at just about 100 percent. We'll see what's going to happen in Texas. That's a tough race, but we have a good candidate. If we have a highly underrated -- they have the worst candidate I think I've ever seen.
I think actually Mike Collins has a good chance in Georgia. A lot of people don't know about that, but I think the candidate -- I beat that candidate before. I call him Pee-wee Herman. He's like Pee-wee Herman. I beat him before on a congressional race. I had a candidate running against him and they asked for help.
And I beat that candidate in a total shock. And I think I'll do it again. I think Mike is going to be great. I think that we have some really good candidates running. And what I'm going to do, I was explaining before, I'm going to go out and I'm going to campaign like I did for myself. And I'm going to hope that people think that I'm on. And if I'm not on, if they don't go out and vote, if they go out and vote, we're going to win easily.
But some people like me more than they like the party. I mean, you can't be insulted by it. There's nothing you can do about it. But if they go out and vote, we're going to win. And if we don't, our country's going to be in sad shape because we're going to go through a lot of things. You're going to have the taxes raised.
You're going to have crazy things happening, like the men and women's sports will never end. None of this stuff -- transgender will never end. Open borders -- they'll open the borders immediately. I mean, they'll open the borders. I heard somebody on television, a congressman, we want open borders. We just had that.
And they allowed the worst criminals in the entire world. They emptied jails, entire jails with hundreds and hundreds of people into our country. And I don't think people want that. And, you know, we've done a great job. We're the most respected country right now in the world. We're more respected than we ever were.
And I think people want to keep it that way. So I think we're going to win.
Do you have a dream foursome, and who is in your dream foursome?
I love Jack. OK, Jack is great. I happen to love Tiger. Tiger's a great guy. It's funny. I played one round of golf with my father, and he never played golf before. And I remember how good his swing was. I think my father was -- I think my father had a lot of talent. I'd love to have my father back. I'd love to have my father back.
But I played with a lot of the great pros. You know that. We played a little bit with some of the great pros. Bryson we play with. Phil we play with, and we play with a lot of them. Dustin Johnson.
Did you play with Scottie Scheffler?
We played with Scottie. He was so great. He's number one player now. He's number one player. And they're all great people, too. But there are many of them. They're very talented people. You know, when you need tremendous strength, because you have to hit the ball far. If you don't hit it far, forget it. And then you need great touch.
You have to be able to hit a three-foot chip that goes straight up in the air and lands. That's a rare combination. When you have the big strength, you don't have the chipping. When you have the chipping, you don't have the strength necessarily. So it's sort of great, but it's an interesting game. You learn a lot about people on the golf course.
Yes, sir.
I learned a lot about you on the golf course.
I'm not very long. I can't hit the ball very far, you learn that. You only played one round with your father.
I played one round in Forest Park, which is in Queens, and I just remembered so well. And he had never played. He didn't play golf. And I just remember his swing was great. In other words, if he did play, he would have been a very good player.