Interview: Haley Hetrick of News9 Oklahoma City Interviews Donald Trump - October 1, 2026

Mr. President, Oklahomans overwhelmingly have supported you from the beginning. What do you say to those tonight who are struggling to pay for gas, groceries, diesel? When can they see some relief?

So we have the greatest economy in the history of our country. We inherited tremendous inflation from Biden, the Biden administration. We brought the prices way down, including oil is less than Biden. And we have Iran, who will never have a nuclear weapon, and they're ready to fold any day now. Uh, frankly, I think maybe before, maybe right after, but oil prices are gonna be tumbling down, gonna be lower than they were even before the war started.

We had no choice. We had to stop Iran from having a nuclear weapon. Almost everybody, when they see it, almost everybody agrees. It had an impact on oil, but not nearly as much as people thought, frankly, less than I thought. And very shortly, oil will become really tumbling down.

Speaking of that, Oklahoma's Harold Hamm was one of the first to answer your call for U.S. oil companies to tap into the Venezuelan market.

Right.

At the same time, Oklahoma is kind of leading the nation in nuclear energy as well.

Right.

How do you leverage federal and state partnerships to stay ahead in energy?

Well, Harold is a fantastic guy, a friend of mine, a supporter. He's been with me from the beginning, and he loves Oklahoma, and I love Oklahoma. You know, I won it three times in all 77 counties, and I think maybe Ronald Reagan was second at 56 or 57. But I love Oklahoma. In fact, I drove here going very, very fast because the planes couldn't -- you know, the weather's a little bit shady, a little bit not so good.

Right.

And they said, "Oh, I think maybe you could skip." But I said, "There's no way I'm leaving Oklahoma." They've been with me from the beginning. So it's been, uh, very, just a great experience. Oklahoma's doing really well. Our policies have helped them tremendously, uh, whether it's oil, and you're actually one of the leaders in nuclear, which is sort of pretty amazing.

You don't think of Oklahoma for nuclear, but you're one of the leaders. But we've made that possible with our policies. And I think it's one of the reasons that I have the highest vote in the history of Oklahoma, and the people I endorse, like your gubernatorial candidate, as you know, was not expected to win and he won very handily.

So we're very happy about that.

Absolutely. What are your immediate legislative priorities for the remainder of this congressional session?

It's all about jobs. It's all about the success of our country. It's the success of, you know, Oklahoma's unusual because we've all done so well together. But Biden really hurt, the Biden administration really hurt our country with the open borders where 25 million people came in illegally. Uh, we've worked to get them out.

We've gotten the worst of them out. 11,888 murderers were allowed in our country. We're getting them all out, and we've got most of them out. And now, we have the most secure border in the history of the United States. And when I inherited it, we had the worst border by far in the history of the United States, maybe frankly in the history of the world, because a third-world country wouldn't have had a border like we had.

So we've done a lot of things. We seem to be doing very well. And we have a lot of good candidates. We just hope we can win the midterms. You know, typically a president, Republican or Democrat, doesn't win the midterms. We're gonna try and change that around. It's very important. Otherwise, we'll go back.

We gave you the largest tax cuts in history, and the Democrat want, the Democrats want the highest tax. They want the biggest increase in taxes in the history of our country. That would throw us into a very bad economic position. We're not gonna let it happen.

What is your message to Oklahomans tonight? We have very low voter turnout in this state. What do Oklahomans need to know?

Well, you may have low turnout for some elections, but you're gonna have high turnout for this, for the midterms because I want them to pretend that I'm running, okay? And if they do, we're gonna do great. Uh, I looked outside. There are tens of thousands of people outside that can't get in tonight. So we're gonna have a good time in a few minutes, and it was nice to do an interview with you, and I hope you're gonna stay around.

But when you look at the crowds, I mean, I just, I made a very special effort. We had to get here. We drove. We're supposed to take a plane, but the weather was so bad. We drove, and I looked at the tremendous crowds outside. It was incredible. To see it was incredible. And I think you're gonna have a very high turnout.

What I'm asking people to do is get out and vote. Pretend I'm on the ticket. When I'm on the ticket, everybody votes. We do great. I'm not on the ticket, but in a way, I want you to pretend that I am.

Well, Mr. President, thank you so much. I appreciate your time.

Great job. Thank you very much.

It was great to meet you.

Appreciate it.

Thank you.