Former President Trump joined me this morning:

Audio:

10-07hhs-trump

Transcript:

HH: Joined now by former and I think future President Donald Trump. Mr. President, welcome back. It’s great to have you. I appreciate very much you joining me on 10/7, the anniversary of that horrible day.

DT: Right. It was a horrible day. It should have never happened. It would never have happened, guaranteed. Even Democrats admit it. I saw some Congressman the other day. He said that wouldn’t have happened. And whether we like it or not, the attack by Russia on Ukraine would not have happened. But it did happen, and it happened as bad as there was, it was just an incredibly bad thing. And it will get straightened out. It’s been amazing to see what’s happening now but it’ll get straightened out, Hugh.

HH: Now Mr. President, when we spoke in April, you said to me that Israel needed to win and win quickly. They are winning, but they’re still fighting, and they’re now fighting in Lebanon. Do you think Biden and Harris have been holding back Israel from winning?

DT: I do. I think everything they do is the opposite. In particular, him. Now she’s a dumber person than him, but he has the worst foreign policy of anybody in history, probably. You know what you do with him? I realized it the other day. You could be one of the greatest foreign policy presidents. All you do is listen to what he says and do the opposite. If you’ve done the opposite for 30 years with this poor guy, this poor, pathetic guy, if you’ve done the opposite for 30 years, you would have been successful. But he’s never gotten it right. And you know, I don’t have to go back into the old secretaries of state and all the people that talk about it.

HH: Oh, Secretary Gates said that, for forty years. Now, it’s up to 45.

DT: You know, he did. And the others, him and others did. Everybody did. Everything is wrong. Everything is wrong. All you’d do is, whatever, he said don’t get bin Laden.

HH: Yes, he did.

DT: Everything is wrong that he’s done.

HH: Now Iran has rained ballistic missiles down on Israel twice.

DT: Yup.

HH: On April 13th and of course, October 1. If Netanyahu told you when you’re back in the White House, and it happened again, I’ve got to hit Iran at X, Y, and Z sites, would you do what Biden did? Well, you can’t hit this, you can’t hit that? I mean, would you try to micromanage Israel?

DT: Well, first of all, he’s the one, Biden is the one, with her, and she was very much involved, that gave us the worst withdrawal in the history of withdrawals of any kind, and that’s Afghanistan. That was the worst, most embarrassing day in the history of our country. And they were saying do it this way. They took the soldiers out first, you know? We had a strong agreement, and if they didn’t do the agreement, and they didn’t, so what we would do is we’d hold them in abeyance, and oh, we did numbers. They were perfect. But when we were out, what he did, Hugh, is incredible. He took the military out first. And you take, remember, I called a child up to the stage one time during a rally, a little kid. He was five or six years old. And I said, I gave him the facts. I said so would you take the military out first or last? Sir, I’d take the military out last. He was five years old. They moved, this stupid Milley, he was a dumb guy. He was the one that said let’s leave all the equipment, all that beautiful, brand-new military, let’s leave it in Afghanistan. We’re going to leave it in Afghanistan so that they have $85 billion dollars’ worth of equipment. He was a dumb guy. I knew that. Early on, I knew that. So what you have to do with them, it’s sort of listen to them, because you always have to listen to a president, and then you have to do whatever you want. Now Bibi was held up a little bit, because psychologically, you have a president. He probably maybe would have been further along, but he’s pretty far along. He’s not listening at all, you know that. They don’t even speak.

HH: Yeah, well, right now, Biden is talking through the media. Don’t hit the oil refinery, don’t hit the nuclear sites. Do you think that’s wise, or would you tell Netanyahu to do what he needs to do?

DT: No, I said don’t hit the nuclear. Did you ever hear of anyone say don’t hit, he says don’t hit the nuclear. They asked him the other day would you hit, well, I don’t think you should hit the nuclear. I thought it was the opposite, okay? I sort of thought it was the opposite. The nuclear is the biggest single problem the world has. Not global warming, where the ocean will rise 1/8th of an inch in the next 500 years. You know, these people are crazy. The biggest problem we have is nuclear warming, not global warming. And the nuclear people can’t have the nuclear. The nuclear is the power. You know, I rebuilt our entire nuclear force. And our nuclear is the best in the world. And Russia is right behind us. And you know what? I’ll tell you, you never want to use it. If you have to use it, it’s obliteration. It’s a dangerous thing. And Iran is very close to getting it. They would have never had it with me. I would have had a deal a long time ago, because they were bust. They were totally busted. They were ready to make a deal. They would have made a deal. And these guys didn’t do anything. I mean, we did, if you think of what we did, the Abraham Accords, Golan Heights, we did so much, there’s never been a president that was so good to Israel or the Jewish people.

HH: I agree with that. Ambassador Freidman was on last week and we talked about all that. Let’s talk about Iran. I saw Doug Burgum come back from Israel, and the governor went on Fox News, and he said the appeasers, the Biden/Harris appeasers have taken it so that Hamas has got $100 million dollars for Iran in the last year of your presidency, and they’re getting $350 million dollars to the military wing of Hamas the year before 10/7. Do you think the American people put that together, that they were broke and out of money and barely able to support their proxies under you, and now they’re flush?

DT: They were out of business. I had them out of business. I put, as you know, big sanctions on Iran. I told China, if you, China was their biggest buyer. I said to President Xi directly, I said look, we’re friends. If you buy any, if you buy one barrel from Iran, one barrel, you don’t do business with the U.S. anymore. We go cold turkey, which a lot of people would like to do anyway. And just one barrel, plus we’re going to put big sanctions on anything that gets through, like 200%. And he said I’ll pass. He passed. Everybody passed. They did no business. They were broke. They had no money. And it was a big story. If you remember in my fourth year, there were stories all over the place that incredibly, during Trump, there was no, you know, we didn’t have one terrorist attack. We had nothing. They had no money. They weren’t giving any money, because they had no money. They had to survive. And I would have made a fair deal with them. I only wanted one thing. You can’t have a nuclear weapon. You cannot let them have a nuclear weapon. Because I know what it is, because I dealt with…

HH: If Israel hits their nuclear sites, will you applaud?

DT: Yeah, I dealt with Kim Jung Un. And he has nuclear weapons. And you tend to speak a little bit differently when they have nuclear weapons.

HH: Yes.

DT: Does that makes sense to you?

HH: Yes, it does. Well, Nixon met with Mao, who was the greatest murderer of the 20th Century, because they had nukes. He met with Brezhnev.

DT: Right.

HH: I noticed you didn’t meet with Khamenei, and he did not have nukes. Can they be allowed to have nukes?

DT: No, they can’t have nukes. No, they can’t have nukes. Nukes, if you would see the power of these weapons that I renovated and rebuilt at great cost, I rebuilt the whole military. And then, you know, they gave $85 billion of it away to the Taliban and to Afghanistan. Can you imagine? They gave $85 billion dollars away. They gave everything. This is the worst group of people, these are the worst negotiators in the history…

HH: Oh, yes. Yes, I agree.

DT: Every time somebody gets kidnapped, they give, you never notice, it’s like $6 billion. Every time, if you catch a mountain climber. How about these kids, they go mountain climbing in Iran, they get caught. We pay $6 billion dollars all the time. $6 billion. I paid nothing. I got 58 people out, and I paid nothing, and I got tough ones out. I got people out from North Korea. That’s a lot tougher, and I paid nothing. I don’t pay, because…

HH: Mr. President, if they…

DT: …once you pay…

HH: If Israel hits Iran and goes after the nuclear sites, will you applaud Israel and back them up?

DT: Well, you want to do what they want to do. Now they may be making a deal with Iran right now. You know, to be honest with you, because Iran’s not looking so good. You know, Iran is not looking like they looked two months ago, if you want to know the truth. They could be making a deal. They could be doing some very smart things right now. There are a lot of things they can do. But the nice thing is they’re entitled to an attack, and nobody will be upset if they attack, because they’re entitled. Because Iran hit them with 187 missiles. And by the way, how good is the shield? And the United States should have a shield.

HH: Amen.

DT: If and when I’m elected, we’re going to have a shield that is going to be built in the United States. You know, despite what everyone says, that was our technology that does that. That was not, that was ours. It was nobody else.

HH: Let me turn to antisemitism in the United States. Your daughter is Jewish. Some of your grandchildren are Jewish. Your son-in-law is Jewish. Jewish students are not safe on many American campuses. Your alma mater, my alma mater, Biden and Harris have ignored this. I mean, they really have ignored it. If you’re president, will you send the DOJ to those campuses, the office of Civil Rights from the Department of Education to enforce the law?

DT: 100%. I mean, the law is being broken. 100%. You wouldn’t think you’d even have this. Did you ever think two years ago, three years ago, that you’d ever have this discussion?

HH: No, I didn’t.

DT: I’m unbelievable what’s happening. And when you see these riots, and you see a lot of people, too. But you know, a lot of the people in that, a lot of those people are Jewish people. You know that. They’re Jewish kids.

HH: Oh, yeah. There are some outliers, but most Jewish students are afraid to be overt on places like Harvard and Penn.

DT: Yeah, but then you have other Jewish students that are afraid. Yeah, that’s true, and they should be afraid. I never thought I would see this in my life with the campus riots and what they’re saying and what they’re doing. And they have to put them down quickly. They really have to put them down quickly.

HH: They need federal help, though, and that’s the Department of Justice.

DT: And what Columbia did was so horrible.

HH: They need a Department of Justice that will prosecute these people that assault Jewish kids…

DT: What Columbia did was so horrible.

HH: …because assault is…

DT: Absolutely.

HH: …that’s real. That’s not a protest. That’s not the 1st Amendment. It’s assault.

DT: No, no, that’s real. That’s real. And they’re being assaulted. But look, let me ask you, Hugh. Did you ever think you would see this? I mean, I thought this was like semi-ancient stuff, you know, from 200 years ago, from 80 years ago.

HH: No, we had demonstrations in the 70s and the 80s, but nothing like this.

DT: But did you ever think you were going to see this again?

HH: No. No.

DT: Pretty incredible to watch.

HH: Now Mr. President, you’re a developer, so I want to talk to you about Gaza. I worked with land use developers for 35 years when I was actively practicing law.

DT: Right.

HH: You know how to build things. Gaza is in ruins. Could Gaza be Monaco if it was rebuilt the right way? Could someone make Gaza into something that all the Palestinian people would be proud of, would want to live in, would benefit them?

DT: It could be better than Monaco. It has the best location in the Middle East, the best water, the best everything. It’s got, it is the best, I’ve said it for years. You know, I’ve been there, and it’s rough. It’s a rough place, before the, you know, before all of the attacks and before the back and forth what’s happened over the last couple of years.

HH: Right.

DT: And I said wow, look at this. I mean, they have the back of a plant facing the ocean, you know. They’d have, there was no ocean as far as that was concerned. They never took advantage of it. You know, as a developer, it could be the most beautiful place – the weather, the water, the whole thing, the climate. It could be so beautiful. It could be the best thing in the Middle East, but it could be one of the best places in the world. And you know, there were other civilizations. I don’t know if you know this. It’s crazy, but that’s been a rough neighborhood. That’s been a rough place. You know, underneath that is, are two other civilizations where they’re, you know, they were wiped out and they started over, and they build on top.

HH: Oh, yeah.

DT: It’s amazing. I mean, that’s been a very contentious area for a long time, I can tell you that.

HH: Do you think your partners…can you get the Abraham Accords going again and get your partners, like UAE, Bharain and possibly Saudi to help you, and Egypt, to help you in Gaza if you’re president again to build it the right way and get rid of the fanatics?

DT: Yeah, yeah, so I’ll tell you, I think not only the Abraham Accords, you know, the Abraham Accords is one of the great things that’s ever happened in the Middle East. That should be loaded up with everybody right now. And you know, I made the statement the other day, people said oh. I would have gotten, in my opinion, 50/50 chance, maybe more than that, Iran would have been in the Abraham Accords. They wanted to make a deal so bad until we had that phony election. They wanted to make a deal so bad that it was…and Biden missed the opportunity. Now, then he pours money down their throat, gives them billions and billions, hundreds of billions of dollars, takes the sanctions off. They wanted to make a deal so badly. I would have had everybody, and I believe I would have had Iran. You would have had real peace in the Middle East.

HH: Well, that would have stunned me, because I think they’re fanatics, and you can’t deal with them. But let me tell some of my affiliates we’re going to a break here.

DT: You couldn’t tell when they had no money, I’ll tell you.

HH: You’re right.

DT: You could have dealt with them when they had no money.

HH: Let me ask you, Mr. President, about the other side of the world, about China. In the two debates, your debate on ABC and J.D. Vance’s debate on CBS, the name Xi Jinping was not brought up. Are those networks compromised by their need of the China market to be open to them?

DT: Well, they don’t bring him up, because Biden is compromised by China. He’s had a lot of, he gets a lot of money from China, or he got a lot of money from China, tremendous amount of money. And he’s totally compromised. And with China, what he’s done with China is amazing. Now my tariffs that they left, you notice that they left my tariffs? You know why? Because they make so much money, and they hold China back from taking our steel industry and other things. You know, we had tariffs on steel. They’ve left almost all my tariffs. They would love to get rid of them, but tariff, to me, is a beautiful world. Now I’m not going to, you’re not arguing it. You said, you know, I stopped wars with tariffs. I had no wars at all other than I finished off ISIS. The nice part, I finished off, I got rid of ISIS. And you know, nobody thought they could do that. You know, the ISIS was supposed to take five years to get rid of, I got rid of it in a month. We have great military. Let me tell you, we have great generals, not the guys you see on television, Milley and Mattis and these guys. They are terrible. They are terrible. They’re just like fronts. But we have great generals, and we have great soldiers. And there’s not, they’re not woke. Don’t think they are. You could put them in a woke machine for two years, and they’d come out, they wouldn’t be woke. They’re not, these are not woke people. They can’t be woke people. Mentally, they can’t be.

HH: But you know, there’s a recruitment crisis, Mr. President.

DT: Yeah.

HH: The only people that made their number were the Marines. Can you fix that?

DT: It’s very easy to fix. They’re ashamed of our military. They’re ashamed of our military. They don’t want to be in our military. They did, you know, the whole mandate thing was a disaster for the military, the mandate where they insisted everybody do this and that. That was a disaster for our military, and I met people over the last couple of days. They left the military because of the mandate was a disaster for us. Our military will be fine once you have a president that’s intelligent, okay? We have dummies.

HH: All right, Mr. President. I want to go back to Xi Jinping.

DT: These people, just so you understand, these people are not intelligent people that are running our country.

HH: No.

DT: But President Xi is extremely intelligent. And you know, when I say that, the press goes oh, he called him intelligent. Yeah, he runs 1.4 billion people. He’s not, and he runs it with a iron fist. These are very smart people. They’re at the top of their game, the leaders of the country. And we have two people that are mentally deficient.

HH: You know, you and I have a friend in common in Richard Nixon, and he went and saw Mao, and he went and saw Brezhnev, and he met with everyone. He didn’t agree with everyone, but he met with everyone. What do you think Kamala Harris would do in a meeting with Xi Jinping or Putin or Kim Jung Un?
DT: Well, it wouldn’t be her. She’s just a front. There are some vicious communists and vicious fascists and Marxists that are involved in our country. Let me tell you, we have the enemy from within. The enemy from within are bad people in our government. And you see them on occasion. And what about Nancy Pelosi? She owns a lot of Visa stock. They sue Visa, the Department of Justice, or injustice, as I call it, sues Visa, and viciously, but she sold her stock. The day, she had it for years, she sold her stock the day before the lawsuit. Nothing happens to her, and it’s hardly a story? She got out. But these are bad people. She’s a bad person. I call her Crazy Nancy. She’s crazy as a bedbug. When you have people coming in…

HH: When you see Kamala Harris, though, go on air and say I’m going to build 3 million houses, I know how to build houses and what goes into it – the EPA, the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

DT: Yeah, right. Right.

HH: The state, the local, you develop all over the world. Does she have any idea what she’s talking about? The government can’t build 3 million houses. They can’t build a Lego set.

DT: No, no. She’s nuts, okay? She’s nuts. She’s worse than him. Now he’s out of it, and he’s been out of it for a long time. And I knew that. I used to talk about that with you, and people said what are you talking about.

HH: Yes, you did.

DT: He was out of it, and he was exposed in the debate. And if I didn’t have that debate, you know, I’d probably be running against him. But I actually think that maybe, he would have been tougher than her, because they’re starting to find out that she’s mentally deficient now. And people don’t want to have another four years of a mentally deficient person.

HH: Well, she also wants to give $25,000 to new homebuilders. That’ll just drive up the price of houses, and then she says…

DT: That’s going to drive the prices up, yeah. Your price is going to be $100,000 dollars more now. No, no, everything they want to do is wrong. First of all, you have to let the private sector do it. You just have to let them do it. She wants to go into government housing. She wants to go into government feeding. She wants to feed people. She wants to feed people governmentally. She wants to go into a communist party type of a system. When you look at the things that she proposes, they’re so far off. She has no clue. How about allowing people to come through an open border, 13,000 of which were murderers. Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they’re now happily living in the United States. You know, now a murderer, I believe this, it’s in their genes. And we’ve got a lot of bad genes in our country right now. They left, they had 425,000 people come into our country that shouldn’t be here that are criminals. And you know one of the worst stats? 325,000 young children are missing. Can you imagine if that was my…

HH: It’s astonishing what’s happened. I can’t believe anyone’s going to vote for them.

DT: Can you imagine if that was Trump?

HH: Now I want to turn to the campaign, and then I want to turn to Jack Smith. On the campaign, Mr. President, it appears to me that you’re going to win Michigan, which is, Michigan has the largest Arab-American population in the country. It’s got a large Jewish-American population as well. You’re winning both groups. It’s like, the Arab-American Institute said you’re tied, 42-41 with Kamala Harris among Arab-Americans. How can that be? Why are they voting for you, and Jewish-Americans in greater numbers than ever before?

DT: Because I want to see everything get worked out. I want peace. I don’t want to see people killed. I want peace, and they know that. And the Jewish people know that. And both sides like it, and know that I can get peace. I’ll get it, just like I did. We had no wars with Trump. You know, there were no wars with Trump. People don’t realize it. I took over ISIS, and I decimated ISIS. They were gone in one month. It was supposed to take five years, according to Mattis. It was supposed to take five years. I went over to Iraq, and I worked with some real generals, general raising Cain. I had some real generals over there. Lucky I went over there. You get out of Washington, and it’s actually a very good, we have great military. Our military is great. Don’t let anyone tell you. It needs help. I rebuilt it, but now we have to do more, because they gave so much of it away. You know, they gave so much of it away.

HH: Oh, we need so many submarines. We need so many ships. Let me close here, Mr. President. I want to wrap up by 9:00. The chief legal analyst for CNN is a leftist, liberal, Elie Honig, former assistant United States Attorney for New York.

DT: Yeah.

HH: Harvard Law, chief legal analyst for CNN. And I want to quote him. “The larger, if less obvious headline is that Jack Smith has essentially abandoned any pretense. He’ll bend any rule, switch up any practice so long as he gets to chip away at Trump’s electoral prospects. At this point, there’s simply no defending Smith’s conduct on any sort of principled or institutional basis.” I agree 1,000% with it. It’s an unconstitutional appointment as the judge in Florida ruled.

DT: Right.

HH: But we’ll, he’s trying to influence the election. Do you think anyone notices?

DT: And the judge is, too, because the judge should have never let that come out. It was all nonsense anyway. It’s just like the other one. Remember the Florida case? They said that’s the biggest case, the biggest case. I won it in totality. It’s done. That was the biggest case. I’m winning these things all over. It’s pure election interference. Here’s the only thing good about it. The public really gets it. My question was will they get it. They have weaponized the Justice Department. Never done before in this country. It’s done in third world countries and banana republics. They’ve weaponized the Justice Department. And the public gets it. And the Supreme Court got it, too. Thank goodness the Supreme Court…

HH: Well, if you would, last time you were on, you said you were going to put out a list of maybe Supreme Court justices and maybe your national security team.

DT: Yeah.

HH: Do you have someone in mind for Attorney General, because DOJ is on its back. The FBI is on its back. And there are great men and women in both places, but they need leadership at every level.

DT: Well, first of all, if you did a poll in the FBI, I’m at 97%. But that one little floor, I’m not doing too well at. But the agents, they love Trump. They love me so much. They want me back so much. They want to straighten out everything, and we’re going to get it straightened out. Look, this is a corrupt administration, the most corrupt administration in history. They’re also incompetent. They’re grossly incompetent. I mean, when you see Tucker, when you see this, think of this. Hunter, Hunter Biden is getting $500,000 for a painting, and he’s sold many of them for half a million. You know, when that one came up, I said that’s too far. Your famous ‘Where’s Hunter?’ He’s selling paintings. That one’s too far. That one, they can’t get away with. They got away with it. Getting $500,000 dollars a painting. He never painted before. He’s painting, and he doesn’t even do it. He has other people paint them. The whole thing is, this is the most corrupt administration. Do you remember in the debate with him, the original when I had that low-life Chris Wallace doing it, and I said why is he getting $3.5 million dollars from the mayor of Moscow’s wife? Why? And Chris Wallace wouldn’t let me ask. He couldn’t answer the question. Chris Wallace stepped in and said well, we’re not going to be talking about that. Three months later, it became a big deal. You know, they were asking the same question. This is the most corrupt administration in history.

HH: Well, they closed it out in time. Let me close with Pennsylvania. We’re on in Scranton and Philly, we’re on in Pittsburgh. We’re on in Erie. I want to focus on Pennsylvania. Kamala Harris wants to pretend that she’s in favor of fracking. I don’t believe her.

DT: No.

HH: Fracking depends upon the EPA, the Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. She will shut it down quietly. She’ll smother it to death. Do you think Pennsylvanians believe her?

DT: I think they don’t believe anything she says. Everything she says is a lie, you know, is a total lie. Look, she had one thing in her resume. It was a big deal. You know, I talk about it a lot, because it’s so simple for people to understand. I worked at McDonald’s, she said. I worked there. Oh, it was so hard. It was so this. I worked there for so long. It was so terrible. She worked over the French fries, okay? It was so terrible, the heat. She never worked there, okay? That was one of many lies. Now that was sort of, you know, it’s a bigger lie than people think. What I like is it’s so simple to understand. You know, a lot of her lies, you know, they go around. Or she doesn’t lie in a complicated way, because her mind doesn’t work that way. She’s not a smart person. She’s a low IQ individual. And this country can’t have a low IQ person doing this for another four years. We had it for four years with him. We can’t have a low IQ person. She’s a stupid person. We can’t have a stupid person as our president. There will be no fracking in Pennsylvania, 100%. They’ll keep the electric car mandate, which is the dumbest thing anyone’s ever heard. All of the things that they want to do, but the worst of all that they’re going to keep, we’ll end up in World War III. Okay, that’s probably number one.

HH: Would you please name your national security team like Grenell and O’Brien and Cotton?

DT: Oh, a lot of the people that you like are going to be there, okay? And I can name all the people that you like and I like the same people. So you’ll have those people, and you’ll have more. And the beauty is what I got through. And I had a lot of great people, Lighthizer, I had so many great people.

HH: Oh, Ashtabula. You bet.

DT: And some of the bad ones, it’s nice, I know who they are. I know the good ones, the smart ones. I know the dummies. I know the weak ones. I know the people. When I got there, remember, I was a developer from New York. I took a crash course. And I have great people. We have great people lined up. You see that.

HH: Last question, Mr. President. A guest earlier told me today you’re going to New York to Brooklyn to the Rebbe’s funeral place. Congratulations. Very smart move on 10/7.

DT: Right. I am.

HH: It’s a somber day. Do you think Israel will recover fully?

DT: I think Israel will recover, and maybe recover much stronger than the past. I think what they’ve done with the pagers, I mean, the pagers, did you ever hear anything like that? But with the walkie talkies and pagers and all of the different things, I mean, I think they’ve shown a level of warfare that’s been pretty amazing, whether you’re for them or not for them. It’s been amazing. Israel would be good, I think that Israel has to do one thing. They have to get smart about Trump, because they don’t back me. I did more for Israel than anybody. I did more for the Jewish people than anybody. And it’s not reciprocal, as they say, not reciprocal.

HH: I think your numbers are rising with Jewish-Americans. They may not say it out loud, but I think they’re rising, Mr. President.

DT: But we should have 100%, and I’ll never hit that, but we should have 100%. But it’s been an honor talking to you. You’re a real professional. You really are, Hugh.

HH: Thank you, Donald Trump. Keep coming back after you’re president again. Good to talk to you.

DT: I will. 100%. Thank you.

HH: Thank you, sir.

End of interview.