Mr. President, how are you tonight?
Hello, Bill, how are you?
I'm the same, which is tragic for everyone. [Laughter] You know, people hope that I improve, and I never do. So I'm going to ask you a few questions and Cuomo's got a few then Stephen A., are you ready to go?
I think he hung up on you. [Laughter]
Oh, is that it? [Laughter] That's the interview. [Laughter] Mr. President, can you hear me all right?
Yes, I can.
OK. So, um, a series of rough polls this week. And I'm wondering how you process that. Do you -- does it hurt your feelings when you see numbers come in that are not what you'd like them to be?
Well, first of all, they're fake polls. And if you take a look at the polls, they interviewed more -- for the most part, they interviewed more Democrats than they did Republicans, which is ridiculous and unfair. And Democrats aren't voting for Trump. And you look at them, John McLaughlin, who's the most respected pollster said I'm at 50-55 and maybe even higher than that.
And he said that these polls are largely fake. When you look at The New York Times, when you look at the Washington Post, ABC, they predicted I was going to lose Wisconsin by 17 points. And I ended up winning Wisconsin. They predicted I was going to lose the election. And I ended up winning the election.
They are fake polls, number one. And I think it's a very important thing to know that and to understand it. And because polls are no different than fake writers or journalism. And it's not a pretty thing when you watch. So when you say am I bothered by it, uh, if I was, I'd be really helped by the fact that in the election, we won in a landslide.
We won the popular vote. We won the swing states. We won the districts, 2750 to about 505. And the election took place just a short while ago, November 5th. I think was the --
But what's different now, Mr. President --
Of the country.
What's different now is the tariffs. And that's what's driving your numbers down. That some people are panicking because the stock market is so up and down, in and out. Would you agree that that has been a perception problem, the tariffs?
Yeah, but I'm an honest guy and I -- we have to save the country. We were losing $5 billion a day with this man that we had as a president, the Autopen President. Nobody even knows who the president was. We were losing. Think of it. We're losing $5 billion a day and a big chunk of it was from China. Now China is sending its boats back.
The boats are not being unloaded because they have a 145 percent tariff, which is, you know, a record setting type tariff. And they can't sell their product here. And because of that, think of it, if you're losing all of that money, maybe you're better off not doing business with them. But I took $5 billion a day and cut it way, way down.
Way, way back. And I did that within a very short period of time.
When do you think, though, it's going to turn around economically so that people aren't frightened? Do you have a timeline on it?
Well, yeah, I mean, it's a very fair question. Uh, building plants, building equipment, building so much right now, you probably heard it could be $8 trillion, it could be more than $8 trillion of new investments. Outside in one of my offices waiting for me is the president and chairman of Eli Lilly, and I had -- I just left -- uh, you take a look, IBM was here.
Today, IBM was here. They're spending billions of dollars. I had some of the biggest -- the biggest. Apple, as you know, is spending $500 billion. They're building their plants, and they've already started in the United States. As you know, they built most of them in China. We had the biggest companies in the world.
I had a conference here just about an hour and a half ago and some of the people are still here. They remain. Some of the people are watching your show tonight. But they're spending, it could be close -- I think we're over $8 trillion of new investment. That's unheard of. There's never been anything like that in this country.
But most people -- but they want to know a timeline.
They're doing that to avoid the tariffs, Bill.
OK.
They're doing that to avoid the tariffs.
But do you have a timeline yourself? Do you say look, it's got to stabilize by this time? Fall. Because remember, if it doesn't stabilize this time next year, Democrats may win the midterms so there is risk here, big risk.
That's true. It is true. And I just think that I'll be able to convince people how good this is. This is what other countries have done to us. We've been the laughing stock, and the whipping post. We've been -- we've been ripped off by every country practically in the world, just ripped off on trade. And by the way, ripped off with NATO on the military, too, because we supported NATO to a tune that was almost -- at one point, until I became president, it was close to 100 percent we were spending.
So we're spending on NATO to protect Europe and then on Europe, they're ripping us off on trade. But if you look at the European Union, they've been brutal to the United States. We lose $300 billion, $350 billion a year to Europe. They don't take our cars. We take 10 million of their cars.
But that's getting better though.
They don't take our farm products.
Right.
We take their farm products. And it has to change.
All right.
So, you know --
OK, but --
I'm willing to be -- I'm willing to be the one that does that, but it has to change. And I've been given a lot of credit. I got an editorial today by a group that I won't mention, but a group that's a very sort of a semi anti-Trump group. And they said, whether you like it or not, he's the most consequential president that we've ever had because he's doing things that if you don't do it, we won't have a country left.
OK, and that's a -- that's a legitimate point. One more question from me, then Cuomo, then Stephen A. Um, you signed a deal with Ukraine to harvest minerals today.
Yeah.
What were you and Zelenskyy talking about when you were nose to nose in the Vatican?
I was telling him that it's a very good thing if we can produce a deal that you sign it. Because Russia is much bigger and much stronger. Russia is just chugging forward. It's a big, strong country. By the way, not nearly as strong as the United States because I rebuilt our military in my first term. They gave a lot of it away in Afghanistan.
And Afghanistan is one of the reasons, the incompetent -- we had an incompetent president -- [Laughter] Grossly incompetent. He should have never been president. But we had a man that didn't know what the hell he was doing. And Afghanistan showed the stupidity of our -- our leader, and -- and the weakness of the military.
We have a great military. I knocked out ISIS in three weeks. They said it was --
All right, but you got the deal -- [Laughter] You got the deal with Zelenskyy on the minerals. That means the United States is going to have a presence in Ukraine. Is that going to inhibit Putin do you think?
Well, it could, but we -- the reason I did that is that we're in for $350 billion or close to it, whereas Europe is only in it for $100 billion. That's not --
All right, so we get some of our investment back. All right, Cuomo --
I felt very foolish. You know, they -- they loaned the money. And Biden handed them $350 billion in between cash and military equipment. $350 billion and we got nothing. And I felt very foolish being the head of the -- a country where Europe gets their money back and it's a much smaller amount and we get nothing.
So I went to them and said look, we got to get rare earth. They have great rare earth, meaning certain minerals, materials. They have things that a lot of places don't have. It's a big asset that they have. And we made a deal today where we get, you know, much more in theory than the $350 billion. But I wanted to be protected.
I didn't want to be out there and look foolish. And this is not my war, this is Biden's war. I'm just trying to stop it.
OK.
But the reason I want it stopped is they're losing -- they're losing 5000 young soldiers every single week, on average. Russian and Ukrainian. They're not American, but they're human beings. And it's -- so it's so sad to see it. So I want to stop the war.
All right. Let's get Cuomo in here.
Mr. President, it's Chris Cuomo. Thank you for taking the opportunity.
Hi Chris. [Inaudible]
I appreciate you doing it.
Great.
Um, a couple of points of uncertainty. You're talking about -- you just said a moment ago that you believe you can convince the American people about what you're doing. One of the things that keeps coming up in polling is that they don't know what you're doing and why you're doing it. That there doesn't seem to be a plan.
What does that mean to you in terms of how you have to make the case to the American people to have them deal with the period that it takes for a turnaround?
Well, the problem is -- I have, Chris, is I have to be flexible. Because as you do things in life and in business, you need flexibility. You can't just be hard line and I'm going to run right through a wall and I'm never going to go over it or around it. I'm going to go straight through it. You have to be able to dodge and move and be flexible and especially in business.
Now with the cars, I'm getting a 25 percent tariff for the people. We're taking in billions and billions of dollars, but they're hurt because they can't switch over 100 percent of the content of the car within a very short period of time. So they came to see me. I understood their problem. And I gave them a period of a year where I brought it down.
And then another year. So, I gave them a short period, two years, where they have to be switched over 100 percent where every single part in the car is made in the USA. Now if I didn't do that, it would have been very, very tough for them. And so what I -- what -- what I am is flexible. And if I didn't do that, it would be very tough for these companies.
And these companies, it's a transition period, Chris. And transition is an important word. Because as you do things, you'll say, well, it's like being on the battlefield. You're on the battlefield, sometimes you're going to move to the left flank, but then you end up moving to the right flank. And it's very much like that in business.
And frankly, it's very much like that in life. But we're taking in hundreds of billions of dollars. And if you look at China now, they're not -- look, we lost $1 trillion on trade with this Biden that China was just taking us to out to lunch. There's never been anything like it the way we were ripped off.
We were ripped off by China. We were ripped off by everybody, but really by China. They were the king of ripping off the United States.
So --
-- Now they're not doing any business here.
Right.
Because I don't want them to do business so I set a high tariff. I don't want them to do business now. Will we make a deal? There's a very good chance we're going to make a deal, but we're going to make it on our terms.
OK, Mr. President --
-- Eyes got to be fair.
Mr. President, in the upcoming budget negotiations, another point of uncertainty is what happens to entitlements, whether or not, not waste fraud and abuse, I think everybody is in favor of seeing that identified and exposed, but that Social Security benefits or the adjustments or the application of it may be compromised or Medicaid may be compromised in terms of who gets how much in benefits.
Do you have a commitment for the American people in terms of how much you will protect those programs?
We're not doing anything with entitlements. And if you look at Social Security -- and by the way, I think I'm better to say this than anybody because I did nothing with entitlements that would hurt people for four years. I could have done that. If I was going to do that, I would have done it five years ago, six years ago or seven years ago.
I'm not doing anything. The only thing is, you know, you say don't talk about waste, fraud and abuse. There is a lot of waste, fraud and abuse. There are a lot of illegal aliens that are getting Medicaid that shouldn't be getting it. And nobody objects to taking people off Medicaid that aren't allowed to be there.
But we are doing absolutely nothing to hurt Medicare, Medicaid or Social Security, nothing at all.
Stephen A?
Mr. President, how are you, sir.
Hello, Stephen.
How are you?
I remember you from a long time ago, Stephen.
Yes, sir. [Laughter]
How have you been?
He's the same, Mr. President. He hasn't changed at all. [Laughter]
I'm -- I'm -- I'm --
I think that's just trouble morning, night and afternoon. [Laughter]
Congratulations, Mr. President, honored to talk to you.
Hello.
Here's the deal. You talked about, um -- obviously, you've in -- you've introduced aggressive tariffs and significant budget cuts aimed at federal spending. Many critics say these policies disproportionately impact lower income Americans. How do you address concerns that your economic policies primarily benefit wealthy Americans while harming working class Americans?
It actually creates jobs for the middle income. It's going to be better for the middle income. It's going to save our country because we're going to become rich again. Stephen, we lose so much money on trade, it's unbelievable. And instead of losing a lot of money -- and they did -- they did to us for years, what I'm doing to them right now.
They charged us tariffs. They wouldn't let us build anything in our country. They said you want to sell a Ford or you want to sell a General Motors car or anything, you come to China and build your plant in China. You come to the European nations and build your plant in Germany, you build it in France, you build it where we have no interest in letting you -- As an example, we don't sell any cars, virtually, in China.
We don't sell any cars in Europe. Any. And yet, Europe sells millions of cars, Mercedes, BMW, Volkswagen, millions and millions of cars. They won't take our agricultural product. It's great product. They won't take almost anything for us. But we take their cars. We take their agriculture. Those days are over.
We have to have fair trade. We're losing billions and billions of dollars, hundreds of billions of dollars. And it's not fair. And it's time for the American people to be properly protected by somebody that knows what he's doing. And I know what I'm doing perfectly. It's a little complicated subject. I've got to explain it. I've got to have people that can explain it. But I can tell you that right now we have over 100 -- 100 countries that are calling us like morning, noon, and night, dying to make a deal.
We're in a great position of strength. We'll make great deals. And where we don't make deals, Stephen, we're just going to set the deals. We'll say that country is going to pay a 20 percent tariff. That country is going to pay 15 percent. Another one is going to pay 30 or 40 percent. Because we have a big, you know, deficit with a certain country, they're going to pay 30, 40, 50, 60 percent.
Um --
So we'll just set those deals. I could set those deals tomorrow and do away with negotiating, but we're negotiating with South Korea. We're negotiating with Japan. We're negotiating with uh, a lot of different -- many, many -- India is a very big -- they want to make a deal so badly.
OK.
I'm not telling anything out of school. We're going to make great deals for America instead of bad.
Well --
And if I didn't take this hard line, India, as an example, had no interest in negotiating with anybody in Biden or frankly, anybody with us. They had no fear. They were ripping us really badly. One of the highest tariff nations in the world. They were taking advantage of us. Now they're calling us and they're saying please let's make a deal.
When are you going to announce it?
We're in a position of strength.
When are you going to announce -- I understand you have a deal with South Korea, Japan and India, you already got it. When are you announcing it?
Well, we have potential deals with them, yeah, but I'm in -- OK, I'll tell you this, I'm in less of a hurry than you are. We are sitting in the catbird seat. They want us. We don't need them --
All right, remember the folks are nervous though.
But they've been ripping us -- let me just tell you, they've been ripping us off for years.
We got that. But the folks --
South Korea has been ripping us off. We pay for their military. You know, when I was there, I got them to pay billions of dollars toward the military. We pay for their military. We take -- they take advantage of us on trade. Now, these are friend and foe, we often do better with foe, meaning the enemy than we do with the friends.
The friends have been brutal to this country on trade.
But remember, once you announce the stock market is going to go up 2000 points and people will relax a little more.
That's OK, it can wait two weeks.
They can wait two weeks. All right. OK. [Laughter]
Mr. President -- [Laughter] Mr. President, an additional question that might require an explanation. Your administration has issued executive orders dismantling DEI initiatives across federal agencies, including revoking equal opportunity mandates and slashing funding for minority owned businesses. Critics argue these actions reversed decades of civil rights -- civil rights progress, so how do you justify these measures and what message do they send to the marginalized communities in this country?
Well, it was won at the civil -- as you know, it was won at the Supreme Court. And what we're doing is we have a country that's based solely on merit now. And that's the way it is. If somebody is out there doing a great job, and this includes getting into colleges, if you've worked really hard and we don't look at race, we don't look at color, we don't look at height or shortness or weight.
If somebody is doing a good job and they worked and they got great marks and they got great board numbers and they get rejected at this -- this Harvard which has been so disgusting, so horribly -- [Laughter] I mean, so think of it. They hired Bill De Blasio and Lori Lightfoot, the two worst mayors in the history.
[Laughter] They pay them a fortune. They're teaching --
But that was the course though.
They are teaching management. Let me just tell you --
The course was --
It's based now, Stephen --
That the course was --
On merit. Everything --
The course at Harvard though, Mr. President was how to be a bad mayor. That was the course, so they had higher those two.
Well, that would be good, then they would be terrific. [Laughter]
Look, I got a question -- I got a studio audience question from Lee Shapiro. Lee's a tough guy. Lee says what's the biggest mistake you think you've made in the first 100 days?
Great.
I'll tell you that's the toughest question I can have because I don't really believe I've made mistakes. [Laughter]
You made any mistakes. [Laughter]
We're in a transition period. [Laughter] We're -- we're in a transition period.
I think Lee is reassured.
I think -- I think you're going to see tremendous economic victories over the next period of a year. Like, far greater than I ever imagined. Right now, as I said, we're losing billions and billions of dollars on trade.
We're going to make billions and billions of dollars, but it takes a little while. That doesn't happen overnight, but it will happen much faster than people understand.
All right, Cuomo's got one more.
All right, let me get Steven Smith in here and then I got a question for you, Mr. President.
Well --
I appreciate your time.
Mr. President, thank you for your time. It's interesting that you brought up Harvard. Because when people think about Harvard, what they're basically talking about is they're asking what do you say to those who view your actions as an attack on academic freedom rather than the defense of fairness? What do you say to that?
Well, I say this, we had riots in Harlem -- in Harvard. And frankly, if you look at what's gone on and people from Harvard went up and they protested, Stephen, and they protested very strongly against Harvard. They happened to be on my side. You know, I got a very high black vote. You know that, very, very high black vote.
It was a very great compliment to me.
[Inaudible]
I did criminal justice reform. I did uh, opportunity zones for one of the greatest economic deals ever for the black and Hispanic community. I got tremendous -- they agree with what I'm doing with respect to Harvard. Harvard gets $4-$5 billion a year from the United States government in the form of grants.
Um-hum.
And they have $53 billion and yet they don't treat the people right. They take foreign students nobody knows where they come from. And they viciously hate our country. And I'm saying if we're going to give grant money, we want people in that school that are going to love our country --
Mr. President --
Not people that are going to hate our country. They run a bad operation up there. And -- and we have to get to the bottom of it. On top of that, they said they want to teach their students remedial mathematics. That's basic math. Two and two is four. And you say well Harvard is supposed to be so great. Why do people have to have remedial?
That's -- that's basic very simple mathematics. [Laughter]
Got it.
So we're looking into Harvard. But we give them billions of dollars a year and that may very well stop. And that's up to the president. It's up to our government. We don't have to grant them money. We can grant that money to people that really need it. And frankly, people that you'd rather have me give the money to, Stephen.
Um-hum. Mr. President, I'm -- as a graduate of Winston-Salem State University, which is an HBCU, I'm fully aware of the contributions that you've made to HBCUs in the past.
Yep. Thank you.
There is a concern however, that with all the things going on in this day and time that they will -- there will be a cut in federal contributions to HBCUs. Should HBCUs be very concerned about you making cuts in that regard?
Not at all. And let me just tell you, I'm glad you brought it up. Historically, Black colleges and universities, I saved them, Stephen. They were going out of business. They came to me, about 50 people that head it up, and they came to me the first year and I took care of them. I took care of the black colleges and historically black HBCU.
I took care of them.
You know that better than anybody. Then they came to me the second year and I said, well wait a minute why do you keep coming back? I saw you guys. And they were great guys, some of them to this day are still really friendly. And -- and by the way, they love Trump every one of them. [Laughter] They came to me the second time --
Well, you're giving them money. [Laughter]
They came to me the second time -- [Laughter] They came to me the second time and I was surprised to see them.
I got it. Mr. President!
Yeah, just to finish it. [Laughter] They came to me the third and I said, fellas, you need long term. I got the HB -- I got the historically black colleges and universities, I got them more money than they ever dreamt possible. And they're in great shape now. And they have long term financing.
I got you.
And nobody did that, but Donald Trump.
OK. Stephen A. Smith may run for president, as you know.
Oh, boy. [Laughter]
I hope --
Um, do you have any advice for Stephen A.? [Laughter] You know, if he -- if he launches the run? [Laughter]
No, Stephen A. is -- uh, he's a good guy. He's a smart guy. I love watching him. He's got great entertainment skills, which is very important. Uh, people watch him. You know, a lot of these Democrats I watch, I say they have no chance. I've been pretty good at picking people and picking candidates. And I will tell you, I'd love to see him run.
All right, there you go!
Not --
Have you got one more?
Not me, I like him too much. Mr. President, we're going to -- we're going to let you go. Thank you very much. I just wanted to ask you something because I know that for you, legacy matters.
Right.
You talk about it in house, you talk about it out of house. Um, when you got shot, I reached out through family. I wanted to talk to you, and I wanted to tell you a couple of things. One was that I hope that you were OK and that your family was dealing with it, all right? And the second one was that I was embarrassed by how it was being covered as if maybe it didn't happen.
Yes.
And I told my audience that I spoke to you. I didn't talk about the details of the conversation because they didn't matter. But the -- the -- there was a lot of heat that came my way as if I shouldn't have been making a comfort call to Donald Trump. We're very divided, you know this.
Yes.
You want to be remembered as one of the greatest presidents in America. You know our history, every president who's considered great was seen as a unifier. What do you need to do to be remembered as someone who could bring this country together?
Well, I think I will be a great unifier. That's what I want to be. And it's very important to me. Hispanic vote, I got the highest Hispanic vote maybe I think ever for a Republican candidate. If you look at the border between Mexico and Texas, I got -- I won every single border state and it was all Hispanic vote.
I won Miami. I won Florida. I won -- I -- you know, I think I am a unifier. I think I have votes that Republicans have never gotten before. And that's why I was able to win the election in such a big fashion. With all of that being said, what I have to do is save the country. The country was going down the tubes.
This country was in big trouble. You had a border where millions of people were pouring in from jails, from prisons. They were pouring in at levels from mental institutions, gang members, terrorists. And we're getting them out. You can't have a country with these people there. These -- we had 11,888 murderers.
Many of these people killed more than one person, more than 50 percent of them killed more than one person. We got to get them out of our country. I don't know if that's unity or disunity, but I have no choice. You know, some things you have no choice. But I do remember your call. I appreciate your call.
And I actually appreciate your family. I've known your family for a long time. You know that.
Mr. President, I want to thank you very much for taking the time on a very busy day.
Thank you.
Our audience there. And --
Thank you.
It was very kind of you to do it. And I think people got a lot out of it. Thanks again.
Thank you much. Thank you very much everybody.