Interview: Michael Cohen Interviews Donald Trump for His Radio Show - August 20, 2026

[Michael Cohen recorded an interview with Donald Trump on the morning of August 20, 2026. 00:14:41 of the interview was released online that evening. The remainder is set to be released on Sunday, August 22, 2026. The following is a transcript of the segment released by 77 WABC Radio. The full transcript will be updated here when the audio is made available. Interview and audio courtesy and copyright 77 WABC Radio.]

So I wanna go back to 2016 if we can, because you and I have obviously traveled a pretty rocky road together. You remember, [Laughs] do you remember, sir, when I went on CNN with Brianna Keilar and she told me that you were underwater in the polls and I responded with those famous two words, says who, which became [Laughs] some worldwide meme and --

A good advocate, and then they weaponized you like nobody's ever been weaponized, like few have been.

Well, maybe just you and I, sir.

And you --

But [Laughs] --

Yeah. Me too, but I don't consider mine, you know, [Laughs] mine was, mine was at a level that nobody's ever seen before. But they weaponized you, they weaponized a lot of people. And, uh, I respect the fact that you recanted --

Yeah.

-- everything you said. And that's a big, that's a big thing that you did.

Well --

That's a very big thing --

Sir, you may remember --

-- for the coun- -- for the country.

You may remember that following morning, you called me into the office after and then you gave me one of those, um, traditional Trump slaps on the shoulder and you said [Laughs] to me, "F them. You're stronger than them. We've got this." Now the funny thing is that CNN never apologized. They never retracted anything.

And now years later, CNN, MS NOW, and the other left-leaning outlets, they're doing the exact same thing, constantly talking about you being underwater with favorability numbers. Mr. --

Yeah.

-- Mr. President, what do you say to these people who keep bringing up polls when you're not even running for office again? What's the point?

Well, I'm not, and I think that we're doing really well in the polls, the real polls. If I were running today, I think I'd win by 25 points. I think we'd win by a lot. The economy has never been stronger. We're doing numbers that nobody's ever seen before. Uh, you take a look at what's going on with, uh, Venezuela.

It was a one-day deal. It was actually a 48-minute deal. We had, uh, uh, it was an attack where we took a truly bad person out of the country, including the wife, out of the country, and now standing trial. This was a very evil man. And, uh, the country, we are involved very much with the country, taking out millions and millions of barrels of oil.

And that goes right into our treasury. Uh, we've done, uh, the Venezuela was amazing. And now with, with Iran, they will never have a nuclear weapon. Uh, we've, we're controlling, essentially controlling and soon controlling the Straits. We're doing very well with Iran. The press doesn't like to say that, although a lot of the press does say it, you know, because the Navy's gone, the Air Force is gone, the leadership is gone.

Part of the problem is so many of the leaders are gone. It's not easy to make a deal. Nobody knows who's leading. [Laughs] But I think the public sees what we're doing because Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. Very simple. And I think the public sees it, and I think they appreciate it and they respect it. And I tell them, they'll be, uh, a little higher for your energy cost, but they'll be a little bit higher for gasoline.

You know, I had it down to $1.85 a barrel. And then I said, "But we have to make a journey to the Middle East because we can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon." And that's what happened. And, uh, we've been very effective. We've wiped them out, militarily wiped out. Now, they have some missiles. They have some drones.

Their capacity to build them is very low right now compared to what it was five months ago. It was five months ago, they were knocking them out. Now they, it's very hard for them to knock out anything. They're in bad shape. They have inflation that's 300%. Their, uh, their currency is valueless. You know, it's virtually value.

Sure.

Their military's not being paid. And so they're in bad shape. But, uh, the key, the, the reason I did it, and we had no choice, and I would've done it again a hundred times, they cannot have a nuclear weapon, and they won't be having a nuclear weapon.

And why not just then turn around and tell the American people? You know the one thing that you may, you may feel some frustration going on right now economically, the price of gas and so on, but why not just turn around and say to the American people, "You know what you get to do? You get to go to sleep at night with knowledge that there will be no intercontinental ballistic nuclear missile being fired towards the United States." Because if they had it with their theocracy, sir, you know exactly what they would be doing right now.

So I do tell that, the press doesn't get it out. And I say it often. I said it the other day at a big rally I had with the police out on --

I saw it.

-- Long Island. And we have these unbelievable rallies. The rallies are potentially bigger than ever. I mean, if I, if we did rallies, as an example, if we did rallies now, nobody ever had rallies like this. Their potential, I think they're bigger than ever. There's a great spirit for what's going on, especially in light of what's happening with all these crazy, uh, theories and policies and lunatics that are running.

You have lunatics that would destroy the country. And, uh, they're being put in the Democrat Party. I think they'll be wiped out in the election because the people are too smart to allow that to happen. It's never worked. In, in a thousand years, that stuff has never worked and it's not gonna work now, but they're not even smart people.

You know, you watch some of them, half of them can't even speak properly.

[Laughs]

So, uh, I think we're doing very well. We are letting people know about that. We're letting people know that, you know, it's wonderful to say everything's good, but you can't, if you had a country like that, and they're crazy, if you had a country like that, they would absolutely use the nuclear weapon without question.

And so I stopped that and I stopped it called with the B-2 bombers. I also stopped at the JCPOA, that was the Obama deal that was such a disaster that he made years ago. Had that deal, had I not terminated that deal, Iran would have a nuclear weapon. And they would have used it very quickly. They would have wiped out Israel.

They would have wiped out the Middle East. And you saw that because when this thing started surprisingly to everybody, they started shooting, uh, missiles at sort of semi-neutral countries. Th- -- they were going after Saudi Arabia, Qatar, they were going after UAE, uh, Kuwait --

[Laughs]

-- Bahrain, and nobody really knew they were so involved. And they started hitting everybody. If they had a nuclear weapon, they would have used it on everybody. And, uh, look, there would be no Israel if there was a, not a Donald Trump president.

I think there'd be no Saudi Arabia either.

And there would be no Middle East right now. I believe the Middle East would have been entirely wiped out, but Israel definitely would have been wiped out. There's no question. There would be, they tell me that there would be no Israel if there was no Donald Trump.

Hmm. You know, what surprised me was, how did they end up with a thousand pounds of 60% enriched uranium when allegedly, whether it was under Biden, whether it's under Obama, whe- -- whether it was under every president, but how did they end up with literally a thousand pounds of nuclear-grade, well, or soon to be made nuclear-grade enriched uranium?

So when we hit them with the B-2 bombers, which was an amazing attack, amazing, uh, deep into the night with no moon, with no light, no nothing, and every bomb hit its mark and wiped their whole nuclear thing out, and, and it, it was in fact obliterated. But when we did that, uh, people had no idea what to expect.

Uh, no idea. You know, you're going in there, you're going into a very, very dangerous place where these incredible machines and the job they did, the job those machines and those pilots did was, was really amazing. But Obama allowed that to happen. Uh, Biden allowed that to happen. Other presidents allowed that to happen.

This should have been done. This has been going on for 50 years, and this should have been, you know, it's been 47, but we talk about it for three or four years. It's, it's actually, the number is 51 years. But we say 47 because that seems to be the standard number that everyone uses, but this was going on for 50, actually 51 years now.

And it should have been taken care of by other presidents or other countries, and it wasn't. And Iran became the bully of the Middle East. They were bullying everybody around. They were the boss, and bad things were happening. And they would have absolutely taken out Israel and they would have absolutely taken out the Middle East.

And I guess they would have shot at us too. But had they had nuclear weapons, if they had that capacity, it would have been different. Now, when we hit them with the B-2 bombers, they were exactly two weeks away from having a nu- -- nuclear weapon. And that's why I had to do it, because you cannot let them have that kind of a weapon.

And you --

But, you know, Mr., Mr. President, that's a, that's a time period that most people are completely unaware of. That it --

Well, as I said --

The imminence was there.

Well, they knew it, but they forget it. You know, the one thing in politics like --

[Laughs] Yeah.

-- the border. Uh, when I came in, the border, uh, they allowed 25 million people, many of them criminals, many of them murderers, many of them people from mental institutions, drug dealers. They were pouring into our country totally unchecked and unvetted. I solved the problem in 30 days and solved it beautifully in 60. And at the end of 90 days, nobody comes in. In fact, we have now, as you know, because they issue reports and they're not issued by me. Uh, in the last 16 months, zero people came in through our, our horrible, what was horrible Southern border where it was just an open sieve.

It was an open wound and zero people came in. So, uh, what happened though is people forgot about that. They forgot we had a border problem.

[Laughs]

We had, I got elected partially on the border.

Yeah.

By the way, that happened two times. When I ran in 2016, I got elected on the border. It was bad, but it was never bad like this. This was crazy where Kamala was the border czar and she never spoke to the border patrol. She never went there. She was the border, she knew less about the border than a child would know.

So, uh, I solved the border problem and nobody even talks about it. I did things that -- You know, b- -- because in politics I've found, uh, it's got a two-week, week life. A victory has a two-week life. You solve a problem that was, according to most, insolvable, and I did it literally in 30 days. But I solved the problem early on and, and beautifully.

We have a great border right now. I mean, people come into our country, but they have to come in legally and they do come in legally. But nobody comes to our Southern border, nobody, not, I mean, literally, it's hard to believe actually, 25 million people came, including murderers and --

Unbelievable.

-- so many others into our country and we get them out and we're getting them out. But they came into our country and I solved it. I solved the problem. And when I wanna talk about it, experts, you know, the so-called experts, if there's such a thing, they say, "Sir, nobody cares about the border. You solved the problem." They forgot.

[Laughs] Yeah.

They don't talk about it. So when you remind people, they say, "Wow." You know, the border was a real problem. It was, uh, probably the biggest thing talked about during the election. And I solved it quickly and effectively. And everybody admits that, including the Democrats. I watch the Democrats now apologizing.

They're saying, "We should have done that." But, you know, there's a two-week life to things and it's a shame. But when people hear it and all of the things that we've done, we have more money being invested in the United States right now than at any time in the history of our country by a factor of five.

We're building more factories, plants. Uh, we are building factories for cars, are moving in from, as you know, the factories from, from Canada where they left for Canada, they left for Mexico, they left for Germany, Japan, South Korea. They're all coming back. Toyota just announced. Honda just announced billions and billions of dollars.

They're all pouring back. They're coming in, A lot of them are coming in from Mexico. People don't like to write that. They're coming in because of tariffs. We've made a fortune with tariffs, a fortune. And more important --

So, you know, maybe, Mr. President, you know --

-- than making a fortune, Michael --

Uh-huh.

-- it's brought people in.

Yeah.

Because, uh, companies are coming in because they don't wanna make a car in Germany or in Mexico and have to pay a 25% tariff because it doesn't work for them. So rather than paying the 25% tariff, it's very simple. Some people still don't understand it, but they're all building. And in the next year and a half, you're gonna see, uh, buildings open and you already see it in the construction numbers.

The construction jobs in this country are through the roof, and that's because of all the plants and factories being built all over our country. There's never been, it's a renaissance. There's never been anything like it.

So maybe what we should do is then have a press conference and literally put out all of the accomplishments, because what's happening -- [Laughs] boss, you remember when I was by your side, I literally used to analyze the polls, right? And you remember how much attention that I used to pay to that methodology?

I would come in, I would say to you, "Oh, you know, they're claiming that you're 31%, that you're underwater," but I showed you that the sit --

Well, the polls are crooked. The polls are --

Exactly.

So the reporters, as you know, are crooked, but, uh, many of them. You have some great ones too, but for the most part, it's, it's really dishonest this way.

But the sample size is roughly --

When you read, when you read the New York Times, it's so dishonest. When you read these things, and they're not doing well. Look, the reason they're not doing well is because they've lost a lot of credibility.

Mm-hmm.

And now, you do have great journalists, you do have great reporters also. Many people are very good. Very, very good.

S --

I could name them, but I'd be, w- -- by naming them, I'm gonna leave some out.

[Laughs]

But you also have a lot of people that see how good things are, see how good things are with, uh, this, the economy is a renaissance. There's never been anything like it. We had the greatest economy ever in my first term. This is gonna blow it away. This is just gonna blow it away. And when these factories and plants and everything else are finished, but already, if you look at the jobs, we're bringing in chips into our, we had no chips, nothing.

We had zero. They got stolen from us and they were brought to Taiwan. Those companies are now all coming back. We're building the biggest chip plants in the world right now, mostly in Arizona. And we're gonna have chips, we're not gonna have to import chips anymore. It's, uh, amazing what's happening.

Yeah.

Medicine is coming back. You know, we learned that from COVID because we didn't make medicine. We literally had to rely on Ireland and China and other places for the medical and the medicine. And they're all coming back. Eli Lilly is building six major plants. Uh, Merck is building, they're all building, Pfizer.

They're building massive amounts of, uh, medical for, uh, pharmaceuticals and drugs of all kinds. And it's ama- -- and including medical equipment. The medical equipment business is through the roof, because if they don't come back, they have to pay big tariffs --

Sure.

-- if they make it in Germany or other places. So they're building it here. It's a, what's happening now is a miracle. I hope it gets properly reported.