Former President Donald Trump joined me this morning:

Audio:

04-04hhs-trump

Transcript:

HH: Joined by our very special guest, former President Donald Trump. Mr. President, welcome back. Always great to have you on the show.

DJT: Well, thank you very much.

HH: I want to begin with Israel, Mr. President, because Sunday marked six months since October 7th. And you gave an interview recently to Israel Hayom, which was characterized by many on the left as being critical of Israel. Then Jonathan Tobin writes this morning, wait a minute, that’s not right. Trump was the friendliest president ever for Israel. Have you been mischaracterized in your advice to Israel?

DJT: Well, you know with the fake news, you never know what you’re going to get. You can say something very plainly, and they’ll turn it around. They’ll turn around everything. That’s why they’re fake. And that’s why they’ve been discovered. That’s why they’ve been found to be so, you know, if you look at approval ratings, they’re lower than Congress now, the news. They used to be in the 90s when I started, and now they’re lower than Congress. So I’m very proud of that fact. They’re bad news. Look, Israel should have never happened. If I were president, it would not have happened. Iran was broke. They had no money. They had no nothing. And we would have worked, a deal with Iran would have been made already. In the meantime, they’re going to have a nuclear weapon within probably 45 or 60 days. And then, it’s going to be a little tougher to talk to them. But October 7th would have never happened. They never, ever would have been attacked. But it is what it is, and this horrible thing happened. And what I said very plainly is get it over with, and let’s get back to peace and stop killing people. And that’s a very simple statement. Get it over with. They’ve got to finish what they finish. They have to get it done. Get it over with, and get it over with fast, because we have to, you have to get back to normalcy and peace. The whole world is blowing up with this idiot president we have. He’s an idiot. He’s the dumbest president we’ve ever had. He’s the most corrupt, and he’s the most incompetent. And he’s the worst president we’ve ever had by a factor…you know, I say, and you’ve listened to plenty of them. If you add up the ten worst presidents in history, they haven’t done the damage that this guy’s done to our country. What he’s done at the border with allowing probably 15 million people by this time into our country, and plenty more coming, it’s just insane. What they have done to our country in three and a half years is unbelievable.

HH: But you are still standing 100% with Israel? You achieved the Abraham Accords, which was the first peace deal since Sadat.

DJT: Right.

HH: And so are you still 100% with Israel? And what’s your advice to Netanyahu beyond get it over with in a hurry?

DJT: Well, that’s all the advice you can give. I mean, that’s the advice. You’ve got to get it over with, and you have to get back to normalcy. And I’m not sure that I’m loving the way they’re doing it, because you’ve got to have victory. You have to have a victory, and it’s taking a long time. And the other thing is I hate, they put out tapes all the time. Every night, they’re releasing tapes of a building falling down. They shouldn’t be releasing tapes like that. They’re doing, that’s why they’re losing the PR war. They, Israel is absolutely losing the PR war.

HH: That’s how I read your interview. I read your interview as saying they’re losing the PR war. They’ve got to stop releasing bad video and win the war by going into Rafah.

DJT: They’re releasing the most heinous, most horrible tapes of buildings falling down. And people are imagining there’s a lot of people in those buildings, or people in those buildings, and they don’t like it. And I don’t know why they released, you know, wartime shots like that. I guess it makes them look tough. But to me, it doesn’t make them look tough. They’re losing the PR war. They’re losing it big. But they’ve got to finish what they started, and they’ve got to finish it fast, and we have to get on with life.

HH: All right, Mr. President, last night, your former Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, was on with Laura Ingraham. And they went over the numbers, and it’s really startling. In the last year that you were president, 342 Chinese nationals crossed our Southern Border. Last year, 24,000 did, and this year thus far, 22,200. 46,000 Chinese nationals in 18 months. What do you think they’re up to?

DJT: That’s right. Well, we had the safest border in history, and you saw that chart that was released a couple days ago where literally the day I left office, we had the lowest number in history. And then it looked like a rocket ship right after that. Everybody started pouring into our country. He took all sanctions off. What this guy did to our country, and we have not only Chinese, we have them coming from all over. We have Congo, and in the Congo, the normal address is prison. Where were you in Congo? Don’t know address, they say. We think it’s this location. It was a prison. They were in prison for murder, and we’ve taken these people in, and we’ve taken them in from lots of other countries. Not just South America, we’re taking them in. We’re equal opportunity. We’ve taken them in from all over the world, Hugh. All over the world, they’re coming in. And they’re coming in from countries where there are big problems. And they’re tough people, too. These are tough people. These are very, very tough people.

HH: What do you think the Chinese nationals are doing? You don’t get out of China without permissions, according to Secretary Pompeo. And there might be one or two can slip…

DJT: No, they’re probably building an army. They’re probably building an army from within. I mean, you look at what’s happening, because they’re very healthy young men for the most part. And it’s up to over 30,000 now. That’s a lot of people. It’s up to over 30,000. They’re young, and they’re healthy. I see the pictures of them. I see them on television tapes, also. I mean, these are young, healthy people.

HH: They’re building an army.

DJT: And you say what’s going on.

HH: I think that’s a takeaway line. Let me turn to the Chinese Communist Party. They are building ship after ship. They’re at 395. They’re going to be at 425 in a couple years more.

DJT: Right.

HH: We’re going to go down to 280. If you’re president again, are you going to go back to the shipbuilding plan of 345 or 355?

DJT: Yeah, we were going to, we were on track to do that. We had unbelievable talent, unbelievable ships getting ready to be made. And then this guy came in, and he cancelled it. First of all, it’s jobs, okay? It’s very important, because it’s jobs, great jobs. But you know, I rebuilt the entire military, and the one thing was, the ships are, you know, they take longer to do. We were set to do something great. We started the process. We gave, as you know, the destroyers, we gave Wisconsin a tremendous yard in Wisconsin.

HH: Oh, yeah. The new frigates. Yeah.

DJT: A very big contract to do frigates. They look, I mean, they were beautiful. They look like, yeah, because I’m into beauty, to be honest with you. They look like yachts with lots of weapons on them, lots of weapons. But, and they’ve really come out good. But we were giving out a lot of ships, and then this guy came in, and he has no idea what he’s doing. No idea whatsoever. China is on a shipbuilding, China is on a shipbuilding message like nobody’s seen before.

HH: I agree, and we’ve got to get that turned around. Let’s turn to politics. First of all, just off the cuff, you gave a line in Wisconsin about Christian visibility day on November 5th that had me laughing out loud. Was that in the teleprompter? Was that impromptu? Where’d that come from, because it was very funny?

DJT: No, that wasn’t in. That was not in the teleprompter. I was thinking about how insane this was with the transgender day on Easter. And now, he’s going around saying oh, he didn’t know that. For three days, he knew about it, and now all of a sudden, he didn’t know about it. This guy lies. What he lies most about is his golf handicap. Not only is he not a six, he’s not a 36. 36 is the worst handicap you can have before, you know, to qualify. He does not qualify for 36.

HH: Yeah, I think I’m in the same category.

DJT: And he lies about everything.

HH: You never want to play golf with me.

DJT: If truckers are in, listen to this, if truckers are in there, he’s a trucker. If jet pilots are in there, I flew jet pilots. The guy is just, we’ve got to get him out of there. We’ve got to get him out of there. Besides that, he’s weaponized the Justice Department.

HH: Now you have said you’ll debate him anywhere, anytime. Do you think he’ll agree to any debates?

DJT: Yeah, anywhere, anytime.

HH: Do you think he’ll agree?

DJT: I don’t think so, but I hope he does. I think what happened is you know that white stuff that they happened to find, which happened to be cocaine in the White House, I don’t know, I think something’s going on there, because I watched this State of the Union, and he was all jacked up at the beginning. By the end, he was fading fast. There’s something going on there. I want to debate. And I think debates, with him, at least, should be drug tested. I want a drug test.

HH: Mr. President, are you suggesting President Biden’s using cocaine?

DJT: I don’t know what he’s using, but that was not, hey, he was higher than a kite. And by the way, it was the worst, it was the worst address I’ve ever seen, the State of the Nation. I’ll tell you, State of the Union, that’s not State of the Union, because he doesn’t represent us properly. That, I can tell you. But he’s obviously, he’s being helped some way, because most of the time, he looks like he’s falling asleep. And all of a sudden, he walked up there and did a poor job. But he was all jacked up.

HH: All right, Mr. President, let’s turn to vice president. For the first time in years, the vice president might actually matter, because people are going to weigh that into their calculation. It’s not going to get you a state, not going to get you a demographic. My short list is Cotton or Ernst or Mike Pompeo, or maybe Doug Burgum. Have you made, have you got down to a list that you can put out there of people you’re thinking about? Are those four on it?

DJT: I have. I mean, I have a list. I think really, you know, it’s a question I get so much. The first question is how do you take it? How do you do it with all these fake investigations. How do you do it. The second question I get is vice president, who’s it going to be? Who’s it going to be? And the third question, and usually it’s actually the second, will they do it again, meaning cheat? And that one’s a simple one. They’re going to try like hell. And we think we’ve got them checkmated, but we’ll see what happens. But it’s a disgrace. One way you win is if you just swamp them, you know? You swamp them, there’s nothing they can do. And that’s what I think is going to happen with this election.

HH: Well, that was the title of a book I wrote 20 years. If It’s Not Close, They Can’t Cheat. So just don’t make it close. But the vice president figures into that. So who helps your ticket the most, do you think?

DJT: Well, I mean, I have some very good people. You know a lot of the people. They’re on your show all the time, and they’re very good. I have very good people. But I’m just not prepared to say. I have some excellent, and we have some great people. And I’m going to pick somebody that’s going to, most importantly, they, you always have to say good president, you know, if something happens. It’s got to be somebody that can be a good president, which Biden doesn’t have. Biden has one of the worst people. People can’t even believe it. And I think it’s going to end up being a big part of the campaign, because it would be, it’s surprising to me if he makes it to the gate. But if he does, how long is he going to stay? I don’t know. I think she becomes a very big part of the campaign.

HH: That’s why I think your vice president is going to be compared to her a lot, and so it’ll be very interesting.

DJT: I agree. Yeah. I agree with that.

HH: I’ve got to ask you about, you just mentioned conspiracy. Watergate scholar Geoff Shepard has unearthed via FOIA a bunch of documents showing unlawful collusion in 1974 and leading up to President Nixon’s resignation 50 years ago. Unlawful collusion between prosecutors, the judge, partisan Democrats, some press. No one’s paying much attention to these documents that Shepard found. Do you think Nixon was the first victim of lawfare?

DJT: Well, in many ways, and you know, I was a fan of his in many respects, okay? And so were you. But in many ways, he was his own worst enemy. And he did things that were, he didn’t treat people, some people well, and those people ended up coming back to get him. And, but in many ways, he was his own worst enemy. He was certainly, I mean, they went after him like they’ve never gone after anybody. He made some mistakes, to put it mildly. The firings were a mistake. You notice the way I kept people that I couldn’t stand?

HH: Yup.

DJT: I learned that from Nixon. I said let me just live with these people for a little while before I get rid of them. But I had some people like, ah, why do we want to mention names for? But I had some people that were terrible, and I had some people that were phenomenal. And the good news is I know them all now. And you know, when I went to Washington, I had never done that before. I never stayed overnight in Washington. I didn’t know the people. I had to rely on people to give me recommendations. And some of the recommendations come from RINOs. And by the way, some were great. I had some unbelievable people. But I also had some people that I wouldn’t have picked had I known the way they were. But Nixon, it’s going to be very interesting. I’m looking forward to seeing that information, by the way, just out of curiosity.

HH: Well, Geoff will probably send it to you. But has President Biden’s family business, because we compare Nixon in ’72-’74, and then the investigations you’ve been subject to, has President Biden’s family business received the Checkers or the Watergate or the Whitewater or the Russia, Russia, Russia treatment at all?

DJT: No, I think, you know, they get a pass. If you look at it, now they tried to give Hunter a pass, but a very good judge refused to accept it. Hunter was free and clear, and he was sailing like a bird, and a judge looked at it and said has this ever been done before, and they said no. And they’ve never done that before, what they did to him, meaning in a positive way for him. And she said well, we’ve got to look into this. And then she made it, well look, she brought out some facts that were startling. So they had it rigged beautifully, and that didn’t work, and I don’t know where that is right now. But it’s obviously not as good as it was. He had it, they had that whole thing rigged just like they had it rigged with Biden on the documents hoax. I mean, they gave him a free pass. But I have to go through it, and I come under the Presidential Records Act, which he doesn’t, because he wasn’t president. So I come under the Presidential Records Act, which gives you total protection from all of this stuff. It’s a case that should have, I have a deranged prosecutor. You know, we have these people, whereas you know, frankly, Biden had a very nice prosecutor, because he was guilty of everything, and I’m not. He was not Presidential Records Act. And he took stuff when he was a senator 45 years ago, and people can’t even believe it.

HH: Yeah, Special Counsel Hur’s report is pretty damning. That will come up, I’m sure, in a debate.

DJT: Oh, yes.

HH: Let me talk to you about the polls. You’re ahead in almost every poll in almost every state, and often by a lot. You get better when RFK is in. But RFK said Biden, Robert Kennedy, Jr., said Biden is worse for democracy than you. And polls continue to show that effectively, some polls show you’re tied. Do you think RFK is going to help you being on the ballot? Or is he going to help Biden being on the ballot?

DJT: I think he actually hurts Biden. He’s very liberal, and I think he probably hurts Biden. Biden is, you know, I don’t know if he’s liberal, but he’s certainly playing a game better than anybody’s ever played it from the standpoint of that. I mean, he’s so far left, he’s become so far left, he’s a laughing stock, Biden, because he can’t believe it. But I don’t think he even understands what’s happening to the country. I think he has no awareness. It’s the people that surround him in the office. That includes the DOJ. I don’t think he knows what the hell’s happening. He’s destroying our country.

HH: There was another migrant murder in Cincinnati this week in a town called Hamilton, where I’m on right now, where you’re talking to them right now. 10 million people have come over that border. What are you going to do about that if you’re elected president again?

DJT: We’re going to have the largest deportation effort in history, larger than Dwight Eisenhower. Eisenhower was very big as a deporter, as you probably know. People don’t know that about him. And he was tough. And we’re going to have it, because no country can sustain what’s happening to us at the border. There is no country ever in history that can sustain it. And we have people coming from jails and mental institutions. We have people coming in as terrorists. You know, if you look at 2019, they actually did a report. There were no terrorists that came in. Now I don’t even believe that. But they have down zero. This is Homeland Security. No terrorists were spotted coming into our country. They had to go through hell with me. And if you look at the map that came out literally the best day ever for illegal immigrants coming into our country, meaning in a positive way for the country, meaning not coming in, was my last week in office, my last days in office. They were the best, those numbers were down to, we had it down. You know, when this guy went to the beach, if he would have just gone to the beach every day and left it alone, we had the border wired. I built 571 miles of wall. I was going to put up another 200 within weeks. You know, it was all manufactured and all set. I had to get the military through the military. I called it an invasion, because you couldn’t get it through, frankly, some of the Republicans. Now some of them have now recently endorsed me, like Mitch McConnell. Can you believe that? Mitch McConnell endorsed me. I’m so happy. But Mitch McConnell endorsed me, and John Thune, and Cornyn, a lot of people endorsed me that a lot of people said wow, that’s nice. So I must be doing very well.

HH: Well, the polls show that. But I want to, the President tried to use your bloodbath comment against you, and it backfired. It brought a lot of attention to the border.

DJT: Yeah.

HH: Do you think they’re going to keep trying to mischaracterize what is quite obviously not what you’re saying, because it happens all, I mean, you must have run over Joy Behar’s dog or something, because she always goes after you on the View. I play her clips whenever she does that. I mean, did you ever get along with her?

DJT: Yeah, very, very much so. In fact, I remember I was at Radio City Music Hall, and she came over. Oh, please do the show. You know how many times I did the View? I must have close to a record. I did the View so much. It’s a lousy show now. It’s terrible. Do you know, that Whoopi Goldberg called me and she said would you be in my movie. She did a movie on basketball. She said will you do a cameo? Please, please? I said I just don’t have the time. She said please, and I ended up doing a cameo in Whoopi Goldberg’s movie. She said you’re so great. There’s nobody like you in the world. There’s nobody like you. Joy Behar said please to the show. I’m sitting there with my wife, sitting there with Melania. Please, please do the show. You’re so great. You’re the best person on television. Please do the show. And then when I run for office, all of a sudden, it’s like you have the Plague.

HH: Oh my, I’ve got to tell you, she does kind of lose control when she starts talking about you. I’m going to get calls from your team pretty soon, so I want to wrap this up, Mr. President. But I want to ask you a couple of fun questions like I always do, because I want to add to the biographer’s material. When you were growing up in New York and Queens and you had a day off from school or you were sick, what did you watch? What kind of junk TV did you watch?

DJT: I loved sports, and I actually loved the news. I mean, I like watching the news, but I love watching sports. I’ve always liked sports. I’ve done well at sports, very well at sports. And I’ve always loved watching sports. So I would say largely that, at that time, pretty much. Loved history, anything with history, but we didn’t have it like those days. You know, you used to have three networks.

HH: No.

DJT: It wasn’t the same deal. But yeah, very sports-oriented.

HH: So no I Love Lucy, no Mayberry, RFD, nothing like that?

DJT: A little bit, but not so much. No, not so much.

HH: Now I’ve never seen a picture of you on a yacht. It seems like billionaires love yachts a lot, or sailing.

DJT: Yeah.

HH: And you’re not on them. Why is that?

DJT: Well, I had a yacht, and I bought Khashoggi’s yacht, the Nabila, it was called. It was an incredible yacht. But the problem I had is I play golf, and you can’t play golf and have a yacht, because you want to play golf, then you’re supposed to go on the yacht. You’d rather play golf. So I used to have that yacht sitting around for months, and I’d never even see it. And I ended up selling it. It was a beautiful yacht, but yachting wasn’t for me, because I liked, if you’re a golfer, you can’t be a golfer and a yachter.

HH: All right, so that brings me back to President Biden. I call him infirm. And people say well, he’s roughly the same age as Donald Trump. I say well, chronological age is not physiological age.

DJT: He’s not. He’s four years, no, he’s not.

HH: Yeah, you, how often do you play golf, because I want people to understand you’re out there working, exercising all the time. How often do you play?

DJT: And I do it as a form of exercise. I play 3-4 times a week. I run through the course. I play fast. I play well. I win club championships, which is sort of like our major, our major is winning club championships. I just won the regular club championship, which you’re playing 25-year-old kids in some cases. But I just won the regular and the senior club championship at a big course in Florida. It’s a very good course, Trump International. It’s a great course with a lot of great players. I won both. I play well. I mean, it’s so, I watch Biden’s swing. He couldn’t break 200. In my opinion, he could not break 200. But I watched him challenge me. Oh, I’ll give him three strokes a side. This guy couldn’t give anybody three. If you take a person that never played before, they’d beat him. And you know, it’s sad, because he can get away with it. He’ll say I’ll give him three strokes a side. He can’t play. He knows he would never play, Hugh, so he can talk that way.

HH: Yeah. Do you think he can actually…

DJT: But no, I play golf, and I do it for exercise, because in my way, it’s a pretty good form of exercise.

HH: Of course. Yes, it is. Do you think the President, if he agreed to a debate, would have to have it seated? Or could he actually stand up for 2 ½-3 hours debating you?

DJT: I don’t think he could stand up. I don’t know. I would hope that he could, but hey, look, I would rather have him be a great president and not even be doing this. I would rather, he’s the worst president in the history of our country. I would rather, which should be good for getting elected, okay? It should be. I’ll tell you what. I ran twice, I did great twice. I got millions more votes the second time than I did the first time, and a lot of bad things happened. But I’ll tell you what. There has never been spirit like I’ve seen for this time. The people, the spirit, the love and the crying and the laughter, there has never been the rallies, you see the rallies. I did Michigan. I did, you had to see…

HH: Wisconsin, yeah.

DJT: Michigan was unbelievable. Wisconsin was unbelievable. And you know, we’re still six and a half months away, right? The level of love and the spirit, and the love of our country, I’ve never seen it. The flags with my picture on it, and the American flags all over the place, I’ve never seen anything like it. Bigger than ’16, and bigger than ’20, and you know that, because you see it, too.

HH: I do. That’s why I called you up for this. Thank you for joining me, Mr. President. Last question. The Afghanistan debacle. Would you take any advice, if you were Israel, from Lloyd Austin, Joe Biden, or anybody connected with that – Tony Blinken? Would you take any military advice from them?

DJT: No, I wouldn’t. I think they’re grossly incompetent. You know, I had it set that we were going to get out of Afghanistan with dignity and pride, and we were going to keep Bagram, which now is occupied by China, because it was one hour away from where China makes their nuclear weapons. One hour. Think about it. And it was a massive base. You know, it was one of the biggest runways, most powerful runways anywhere in the world, and we gave it up for nothing. We should have kept it, not because of Afghanistan, but because of China. And we should have kept it, and he didn’t do it. But I was all set to get out. I’m the one that got it down to 2,500 troops, and we were going nicely. And we would have been out on the same schedule, ahead of him, I believe, even, but with dignity and strength. And this is what happened. When we got out so badly, he moved the soldiers out first. You move the soldiers out last. A child would know that. I wouldn’t listen to them. I wouldn’t take any instruction from them. Israel knows what they’re doing. To listen to these people, what they’ve don’t in not only Afghanistan, but I actually happen to think Afghanistan was the lowest point in the history of our country. I don’t think there’s ever been a more embarrassing moment in the history of our moment than what happened in Afghanistan. Between losing $85 billion dollars’ worth of equipment, 13 great soldiers, who I know the families and the parents of every one of them, 13 unbelievable, and by the way, nobody talks about this, 38 soldiers that were decimated with the arms and the legs and the face. 38. Nobody mentions them. And leaving hundreds of people behind. We don’t even know what number, but we have a lot of people that are probably going to turn out to be hostages at a certain moment. No, no, this was the worst, most embarrassing moment in history. And if that didn’t happen, I don’t believe that Russia would have gone into Ukraine. I even think it had an impact on October 7th.

HH: I think you’re right.

DJT: But Russia, with me as president, would have never gone into, 100% sure, and even Democrats admit that. Putin never would have gone into Ukraine if I were president.

HH: Well, since you bring up Putin, would you have called, personally, Putin? We knew that the Moscow attack last week was going to happen. Evidently, we warned somebody. I don’t think President Biden called Putin. Would you have personally called him, even though he’s just a terrible person?

DJT: Hugh, I would have called him. I would have called him. I would have let him know. It’s a country. If you find out information that, you know, what I did with, if you look at ISIS, I knocked out 100% of the caliphate. 100%. But it reforms if you’re weak. And it can reform. And these people don’t stop. You know, they’re like a bad disease. You can’t get rid of it. And frankly, they just don’t stop. But knocked out 100% of the ISIS caliphate. You know that.

HH: Yeah.

DJT: And I’m knocked them out fast, too. They told me it would take four years. It took me like three months, and we have, I just have to leave your viewers with this. I realized then how great our military is. We went in there, and I let them do their job, and they did a job like nobody. We have a great military, and it’s not woke. They want to try and turn it woke, but they’ll never be able to turn these people woke. These people are great patriots. They’re strong people, and they’re great fighters. I wiped out ISIS so fast, nobody could, I was told it would take four years. And you know, I did it in like a couple of months.

HH: Three months. Yeah. Your support of the military is going to matter, and your support of the police. Thank you for attending the officer’s funeral and wake in New York. I thought that was appropriate.

DJT: Well, thank you. No, that was a big thing. That was a big thing. These are great people. You had to meet the wife, Stephanie. So incredible. The family was incredible. The father is a policeman. The uncles are police. You know, so many policemen in the family. Thousands of police were there. It was both tragic, and in many ways beautiful to look at the love. The love was incredible. They had 11,000 police there, but over the course of that weekend, I think 50 or 60,000 police showed up, not just from New York, from all over the country. The wife is an incredible woman. I spoke to her for a long time. We stood over the casket together. And they really appreciated what I did for the police. They did not appreciate other people, I can tell you that.

HH: Mr. President, I know I’ve taken you twice as long as we promised, so I’m going to let you go.

DJT: That’s alright.

HH: You’re still the best interview in America. Keep coming back during the campaign.

DJT: I will. I will. Thank you very much, Hugh.

HH: Thank you, Mr. President. Be well.

End of interview.