Eric Trump joined me today to discuss his new book “Under Siege: My Family’s Fight to Save Our Nation”

Audio:

09-29hhs-erictrump

Transcript:

HH: I begin with Eric Trump, executive vice president of the Trump Organization. He is the author of a brand-new book, Under Siege: My Family’s Fight To Save Our Nation. I’ve posed the link over at X so you can order Under Siege. Eric, welcome. I want to know first, I understand you’re donating portions of the proceeds from Under Siege to Turning Point USA. What was your relationship with Charlie, and why are you doing that?

ET: Listen, Hugh, Charlie was a great man. I met him when he was 21-years-old. He came into the Trump Organization, and he told me all the plans that he had for Turning Point, and man, did that guy ever make them materialize. We hear about a lot of B.S. in our lives, and you know, a lot of lofty goals and aspirations. And he did every single one of them, and he did it better. And listen, the whole book, Under Siege, the whole concept is exactly what they tried to do to my father, what they’ve tried to do to me, what they’ve tried to do to the MAGA movement. They’ve tried to kill us. They’ve tried to bankrupt us. They’ve tried to censor our voice. They’ve tried to gag order us. They stripped us off of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. They debanked us. They deplatformed us. They impeached my father twice. They went after his Supreme Court justices, as you know. They raided our homes. They tried to take him off the ballot in Colorado. They tried to take him off the ballot in Maine. You know, I mean, they did everything that they could to try and take down my father. They weaponized the FBI. They weaponized the Justice Department. I got, you know, 112 subpoenas. Every A.G. case, every D.A. case – Alvin Bragg, Letitia James, they put our family under siege. And when that didn’t work, they tried to kill my father not once, but twice. Not only in Butler, Pennsylvania, but also in Palm Beach County. And then, they tried to kill, well, you know, they tried to kill Steve Scalise. They tried to kill Kavanaugh, and then they did kill Charlie Kirk. So you know, why donate the proceeds of this book? Because I never want any conservative to get off that stage. We have to be on that stage. We have to be willing to fight. And I’m damn committed to doing that, and I’m damn committed to making sure that everybody, the great people at Turning Point continue to be able to do that.

HH: Now Eric Trump, I’m going to walk through some of the things I expect to see in Under Siege. I am curious at the beginning, though, why relive this? This has been a nightmare since he won in 2016. The establishment has been coming after him and your family. Why sit down and write a book about it?

ET: You know, because I think it’s got the greatest ending of all. And Hugh, that is the fact that we won, right? The fact that against unthinkable odds, we won. It’s the law of unintended consequences. They thought by putting me in a courtroom every day, by putting my father in a courtroom, by sending me so many subpoenas, you know, I lost track of them, you know, by trying to bankrupt our family, by trying to censor us and laugh at us and weaponize the entire mainstream media against us. They wanted my father would say, you know what? This isn’t worth it. I’m not going to do this again. And they were wrong. They were wrong. It was the law of unintended consequences where America saw through the sham. There was only so many times you could cry wolf. And frankly, everything that they did, everything they did to torture, the American people saw, and we won the greatest political victory of all time. I mean, we won every swing state. We won the popular vote. We won 11 extra counties in California. We won Miami-Dade by 11 points, you know, a county that hasn’t gone Republican in 37 years. And every single state in the stations tacked further to the right. And so it was the greatest victory of all time against all unthinkable odds. And so I think it’s actually a very inspirational book and an inspirational theme. And the story had to be told, especially the behind-the-scenes story. Every one of the stories, every one of the interactions with my father, every one of the attacks that no one saw that weren’t reported in the news, how we got through them, what they tried to do, and how we ultimately triumphed.

HH: Now Eric, I retired from the practice of law in 2016, so I’m not practicing anymore. One of my last partners was Robert O’Brien, so you know that we charged a little bit. Can you give me some sense of how much you personally had to spend on lawyer bills?

ET: Well, that’s a great irony, right? I mean, for all these soundbites coming from, you know, the far left – Trump ‘profits’ off of government, you know, we probably spent $400 million dollars in legal bills to protect ourself from absolute shams. You know, I was the guy, Hugh, that got the call from the FBI, from the New York Times, and the Washington Post saying hey, I hear you have secret servers in the basement of Trump Tower communicating directly with the Kremlin. And I go, excuse me? Secret servers where? You know, first of all, we don’t have any servers in basements, because basements flood. Second of all, we’re a largely cloud-based computing company. And yet, and you reported on it better than anybody, Hugh, every day for what was it, three years? You know, they painted the greatest nuclear powers against each so some greedy woman could get an extra couple votes? I mean, they knew it was a sham. And despite that, hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars protecting ourselves, protecting our employees for something that was totally made up. It was made up and paid for by Hillary Clinton. And so that’s the great irony.

HH: I will want you to come back after I’ve had a chance to read every line in Under Siege, but I want to start on January 6th, 2017. That’s when FBI Director Comey, CIA Director Brennan, the head of the DNI, James Clapper, and then-Mike Rogers of the NSA came to Trump Tower. Comey asked to speak with your father alone. I think it was an ambush. I think it was planned from the start. Do you agree with me?

ET: It was absolutely an ambush. Hugh, I mean, just back to kind of Russiagate for a second, they knew day one that there was no Russia collusion. I mean, they knew that there was no servers in Trump Tower. They knew that there was no communication with the Kremlin, and yet they perpetuated it for three years in order to hurt my father. You know, they all lied. All of those same characters, including Garland, lied. When they raided Mar-A-Lago, you know, they said it was done on behalf of the National Archives. Give me a break. It wasn’t done on behalf of the National Archives. Later on, it became very clear that Biden actually approved the raid at Mar-A-Lago, right? And so it was always a lie. They were doing anything they could to get my father. They wanted my father in prison. They wanted me in prison. They wanted our company gone, and we won every single lawsuit ever since. But you know, I mean, Comey was a crooked cop. There’s no question about him. He is the worst of law enforcement in this country. The FBI is the greatest institution, and by the way, if there’s one thing you learn from the Charlie Kirk assassination is how good the FBI can be. They found the guy in, what, 31 hours? 32 hours? Whereas under my father’s administration, under Biden, They spent more time raiding Mar-A-Lago. I was the guy that got the call when they raided Mar-A-Lago, where one of my guys tells me that there’s 30 people at the gate and they’re demanding that Mar-A-Lago turn off all of its security cameras. And I go, I’m not turning off my security cameras. I’ve got no legal obligation. Why am I turning off my security cameras? And then we find out, Hugh, as you know better than anyone, that they were planting classified folders all over my father’s office, laying them on the ground, doing the little photoshoots after they raided Barron’s room, after they raided Melania’s room. This was the siege. Try and impeach him. Try and bankrupt him. Try and kill him. Try and get his family. Try and get him divorced. Try and humiliate him. Try and get his kids to turn on him. Go after his employees. Make his life absolutely hell. And when that didn’t work, as I said before, that’s when they tried to kill him in Butler. And that’s when they tried to kill him in Palm Beach. It’s unthinkable what they did, and America can never relive what we dealt with as a family. And again, the good news behind all of this…

HH: I want to go back to the…to the ambush…

ET: The good news is we won.

HH: …that Comey orchestrated. As soon as Comey left the office, he had a special assistant by the name of Josh Campbell, who works for CNN now. Josh Campbell wrote a book in which he said, “Once safely back in the car, I immediately handed Comey the secure laptop. Comey didn’t say a thing, the first time we had ever climbed into a vehicle without exchanging words, but began typing. He paused every so often to stare out the window as we navigated the city, and he went back to writing. After about 20 minutes, following a thorough proofread, he handed me the computer, pointed to a place on the screen where I should begin reading. I was now learning Comey’s version of a meeting that would spell the beginning of the end of his career, and one that would mark the start of a veritable hurricane, a torrent of attacks on the rule of law that would risk threatening the viability of our national institutions of justice.” And I almost laughed when I read that, but I do like the idea that a special assistant confirms he got in the car and started making up a story. Do you think he’s going to be convicted?

ET: I do. I mean, Hugh, one of the great ironies of everything that Comey’s gone through over the last couple days is no one’s focused on the fact that the FBI Director, listen, a guy that’s supposed to be keeping terrorists from running planes into buildings like we saw happen on 9/11, somebody that’s supposed to be keeping our home front safe from unthinkable amounts of threats that we have, both foreign and domestic, is literally taking the time to leak damaging things about Donald Trump to the New York Times. Like I can safely say that everybody watching the show, including you and I, would actually much rather have the FBI protecting our home front, and protecting our nation, and protecting our citizens, you know, than playing these political sham games. And I saw it all the time. You know, one of the stories I tell about in Under Siege is I got called down to FBI headquarters in New York, and Eric, we’d like to brief you on a threat to the company. So I go down there. No one knows about it, Hugh. I get there. You know, there is a cyberthreat against the company coming from Iran, but you can’t tell anybody. You can’t tell anybody you were here. You can’t tell anybody you were ever here. Literally, Hugh, I am leaving the parking garage, a friend of mine from ABC News calls me. Eric, what were you doing down in FBI headquarters?

HH: Oh, my goodness.

ET: I have no idea what you’re talking about, John. He’s like I know you’re down there right now. I go, John, I have no idea what you’re talking about. I had to sign my life away. I’d done everything. Eric, don’t B.S. me. I know exactly where you are. John, I have no idea what you’re talking about. How would you even know? Because the FBI called and told me.

HH: Of course, they did.

ET: This is the organization that we were dealing with.

HH: Don’t go anywhere. I’m going to take a break, and we’re going to talk during the break, America. I’ll play it later in the program, and Eric will be back on the other side. The book is Under Siege. You can preorder it at Amazon right now. Stay tuned.

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HH: I’m back with Eric Trump. Eric, your father has had two special counsels appointed against him pursuant to 28 CFR 600.1. Do you want a special counsel to investigate Merrick Garland and the conduct of the Department of Justice in waging lawfare against your father and your family?

ET: There’s no question. I mean, Merrick Garland raided our home, as we talked about before the break. Merrick Garland was bitter that he didn’t get the Supreme Court job, and he did everything he could to make my father’s life absolutely hell, and that of our family. Frankly, I’d love a special counsel to investigate the auto-pen as well. I mean, another great scandal of our time that the mainstream media doesn’t want to talk about, but you know, it was signing executive orders every day for a president of the United States who wasn’t fully functional, who wasn’t there, who wasn’t…

HH: Oh, he was nominating judges who he didn’t know their names. I would love to see a special counsel. What kind of special counsel, you don’t want a Jack Smith. You want a real lawyer, don’t you?

ET: I mean, how about somebody who just, not doing this for weaponization as they were clearly doing to my father? I mean, there was nothing there. I mean, there was nothing there on Russiagate. There was nothing there in the boxes hoax, and they lost both of those. But you know, I think everybody realizes that Biden didn’t have his faculties, right? I mean, it doesn’t take, and by the way, the entire mainstream media realizes that, and they threw him out in embarrassing fashion, and they had the greatest coup in the history of politics where Kamala happened to get every single Democratic delegate in, what, a period of 24 hours? I mean, you couldn’t have orchestrated that better in the history of the world. But you know, Hugh, yeah, I want real accountability, and I think America needs real accountability.

HH: Now you know, Pam Bondi works for your dad. Your father can order the Attorney General to appoint a special counsel pursuant to 28 CFS 600.1. Will your recommend that he do that?

ET: Listen, Hugh, you know, I love it. It’s not my job to recommend that kind of stuff. I run the Trump Organization, and I stay the hell out of Washington, D.C. I’ve never been more proud to stand on that stage for a 12-year period of time, and you know that there’s no one that fought as hard as I did, other than my father. I was there next to him every second, every single day, giving thousands of speeches, hundreds of media appearances. You know, listen, it’s not my job to recommend special counsels, but I think this country wants accountability. I think they see a one-way street in this nation. I mean, even as it pertains to Comey, you see all these Democrats, oh, this is illegal lawfare. I’m like, what about when they came into Mar-A-Lago? What about the multiple impeachments? What about when they raided Melania’s closet? What about the 112 subpoenas that I got for, you know, as a guy who’s never gotten so much as a speeding ticket in my entire life, because they wanted to destroy our family. They wanted to destroy our legacy., You know, and so listen, I think they need to face justice.

HH: Well then, pass along for me. I’m a DOJ alum. I worked for Bill Smith and Ed Meese. I think we need a special counsel to find out what Merrick Garland was doing, because when we come back from break, I’m going to ask you about Jack Smith and Fani Willis and Alvin Bragg and Merchan and the other crazy judges. This nightmare has to be unpacked by a serious lawyer who doesn’t have a partisan bone in their body, but will go after it as a matter of justice. Stand by, Eric Trump. The new book is Under Siege. I’ll be right back with him.

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HH: Eric, some names and your quick reaction. Jack Smith?

ET: Jack Smith? I mean, he planted documents at Mar-A-Lago. He was an absolute phony. And you know, him, like all the others, we beat in court, and I’m very proud of that.

HH: Fani Willis:

ET: Fani and her boyfriend, Nathan, that case didn’t work out too well for them. They dug so deep that they ended up finding themselves, which is always a great irony. That kind of reminds me of Hillary Clinton, but yeah, they dug so deep, they found themselves.

HH: Alvin Bragg?

ET: Well, Alvin Bragg, he’s a crook. We also beat Alvin Bragg, as you know. All those charges were ultimately kind of set by they side. But Alvin Bragg was a bad guy. I mean, here’s a guy who promised to not prosecute white collar crimes and this and that, and released half the people out of Rikers Island. And all of a sudden, he’s going after my father for $130,000 dollars, and he’s shutting down New York for, how many months on end was that? Four months? He shut down all of Lower Manhattan at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. He’s another political operative.

HH: Now you drew the two judges that may be the worst judges. I practiced law for 30 years. The two worst judges I’ve ever seen are Juan Merchan and Arthur Engoron. What do you make of both of them?

ET: Well, Merchan was conflicted and just a bad guy who was assigned every Trump case whether it be Allen Weisselberg, or if it was Steve Bannon, or my father. His daughter worked for the Democratic Party, you know, doing email solicitations. He should have been recused. He should have been thrown out. Engoron, I was in front of him, might have been the dumbest guy I’ve ever seen in my entire life. He worked for the Democratic Party. It’s just that simple. I mean, it was a case that was front and center in. A $560 million dollar verdict against Trump for never missing a payment. Never, you know, when every one of our banks went in and said that Trump is the greatest lender that they’ve ever had, that we had never violated a loan covenant, that we had never missed a payment, that we had made the banks hundreds of millions of dollars. And yet, he values Mar-A-Lago at $18 million dollars and ends up fining us $560 million dollars which the Appellate Court of New York just threw out about a week ago in a 5-0 decision, including the presiding judge of New York.

HH: Yeah.

ET: So Engoron’s another hack. He’s another, you know, enemy, in my opinion.

HH: Judge Bozo and Judge Bozo.

ET: Yeah.

HH: I want to switch completely, Eric. You’re a land developer. You’re good at it. I’ve seen your golf courses. Are you in charge of finding where your father’s presidential library is going to be?

ET: I very well may, Hugh. I am, and I think I have the greatest site in the world. I can’t quite tell you where it is and what it is right now, but it’s going to be announced very soon. And I can tell you this will not, Hugh, this will not be Barack Obama’s library where the thing looks like a jail in the middle of Chicago that costs about $4 billion dollars and you know, looks like hell. It’s like literally scaring the residents of Chicago. They’re all laughing at the thing. This will be the most beautiful building our country’s ever seen, and will be the greatest monument to a former president in the history of our nation.

HH: Now you know, Eric, I built the Nixon Library for President Nixon in 1989-1990, and I went back and ran it once when they needed some supervision. They’re very difficult with land use authority, so you’ve got to pick the right land use authorities. Are you confident of your land use authorities before you go in there? And you’re going to need a lot of land, because there’s going to be a lot of parking, and it’s going to be a big building.

ET: Hugh, the one thing you don’t need to worry about with that, is I do that stuff a lot better than I even do politics. So yeah, our land use is going to be perfect. Our building is immaculate. The initial designs, I can’t wait to show the world. But it’s good as it comes anywhere on Earth, this building. And listen, it’s a testament to a father that I love. It’s a shrine to, I think, somebody who’s going to go down as the greatest president in the history of our nation, somebody who dealt with the unthinkable, beat the unthinkable, beat the deep state, beat the mainstream media that’s just corrupt as hell. And honestly, I’m going to turn it into the greatest museum in history. And I’m so proud of it, and I’m so proud of him. I love him, and I love being a part of this for him.

HH: Are you fully aware that the National Archives Record of Administration hates Republicans? They do good deals for Democrats and terrible deals for Republicans? Are you aware of that?

ET: Well, offline, you and I share a couple of the same good friends, and I know the people over there very well, and yes, I do. And hopefully, that’s being cleaned up like the rest of the Swamp right now. But yes, they’ve done everything they can, NARA’s done everything they can to Republicans over the years. And I can promise you that’s not going to happen. That’s not going to happen again. I will assure you of that. I am all over it, and I understand the pitfalls of that organization as well as any, and I will not fall into them.

HH: All right, completely unrelated to anything else, I’ve asked your father about this a couple times. He became friends with my old boss, Richard Nixon, when R.N. moved back to New York in 1980. Did you ever meet R.N?

ET: I don’t know if I ever met R.N.

HH: Do you think your father and he share some things in common? They couldn’t be more different in terms of their background, but they’re both resilient as can be.

ET: Yeah, there’s no question about it. And by the way, even what they tried to do to they Nixon Library, I know the inside story there, where they tried to hijack it and they tried to make the entire thing about Watergate, and they tried to delete, effectively, the guy’s entire life and entire history. And yeah, listen, Hugh, I understand the games very, very well. And I think it’s going to be very hard for them to rewrite Donald Trump’s history, especially now. I mean, this is the greatest presidency I think we’ve ever seen. My father’s throwing so much lead in the air that they can’t catch it. They can’t counternarrative it. You know, the media is weak. The media’s ineffective. The people don’t trust the media in this country anymore. They love Donald Trump. He won in a spectacular fashion. And you know, I think he is fully writing his own history right now, and I’m very proud of him for that.

HH: Now last two questions. Victor Davis Hanson, maybe the country’s greatest historian and classicist, just finished a 150,000-word manuscript on your father. Is your father cooperating with any biographer? And do you want him to?

ET: Listen, I think the more, you know, and I obviously know Victor very, very well. He’s a brilliant man, and a great person, and somebody I’ve sat with several times, and somebody I have immense respect for, and by the way, somebody that gets it, I mean, somebody who’s just been a voice of reason through so much of this. So I can’t wait to read it. But I think he should. At the same time, Hugh, you know how many political hacks are going to be out there that are going to be paid by one of the publishers to write kind of crap stories about my father. How many of those have we seen over the last ten-year period of time, you know, people who weren’t involved who otherwise attest to the fact that they were involved, who make a couple bucks writing some bad, poorly-written manuscript. And I can tell you, that won’t be the case for Victor. So I can’t wait to read it.

HH: Last question. Your dad is by far the most accessible president, far more than anyone else, I mean, by an order of magnitude, exponentially so. Does that worry you in an age of spiraling violence? Charlie was available, too. The Mormon Church was open this weekend. All sorts of crazy people are running around this country. Are you worried about that?

ET: Absolutely, I’m worried about it. Absolutely. I mean, I was on Sean Hannity’s show that said six weeks before the Butler attempt that I worry that they’ve tried everything and they’ll stop at nothing. And so they’re going to resort to physical violence. I got killed for saying that, but I meant it with my heart and soul, and then six weeks later, you see what happened. So yeah, listen, my father’s the biggest target in the world, and frankly, we are as a family. I very much worry about his safety. There’s no one I love more. And you know, you pray that Secret Service has their act together, and I know many of the great men and women. They’re phenomenal. You can’t allow another Butler to happen. That much, I can tell you.

HH: Bonus question, then. Have you talked to Director Patel about Thomas Crooks? We don’t know anything about Thomas Crooks. I can’t believe we don’t know anything about Thomas Crooks.

ET: And it pisses me off, Hugh. Hugh, I can’t tell you how much it pisses me off as a son, right? My father said he’s at ease. I’m not at ease. I’m not at ease. We know more about every single grandmother who walked into the Capitol on January 6th than we know about Thomas Crooks, than we know about, and frankly either of the shooters, either, obviously Butler or Palm Beach. I’m not satisfied at all. They somehow have gotten into every phone of every person who walked into the Capitol, but they can’t get into this guy’s multiple phones? I call B.S. I want to know the truth. This entire country wants to know the truth, and I spend a lot of time talking about exactly that in Under Siege.

HH: Have you talked to Patel about it? The Director is the one that can make that happen.

ET: Yeah, I know Kash very well, and I think he’ll ultimately get to the bottom of it.

HH: Eric Trump, thank you for the half-hour. I look forward to talking to you once I’ve had a chance to read Under Siege. Under Siege can be preordered at Amazon right now. It’s going to sell and sell and sell, because I think one of the Trump’s is finally going to open up and tell us what they think. Eric Trump, thank you.

End of interview.