President Trump returned to the program today:

Audio:

05-07hhs-trump

Transcript:

HH: Mr. President, welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show. Thank you for spending time with me today.

DJT: Well, thank you.

HH: I have just finished reading Matt Continetti’s review of your speech at the University of Alabama.

DJT: Ah, thank you.

HH: It sounds like it was a big success, and Continetti, who I think is at least as influential as any other conservative out there, loved it.

DJT: He’s great.

HH: Did you expect that?

DJT: He’s a great guy, by the way. And I was, we had a good time. Amazing people. Amazing crowd, and amazing people.

HH: Well, I would recommend to everyone they get the Free Press’ assessment of that. I wanted to start light, because I was so surprised when Commissioner Roger Goodell of the NFL showed up in the Oval. You know he’s not really very popular with a lot of your base.

DJT: Yeah.

HH: And you really rehabbed him pretty quickly. Did he offer you to make the announcement of the first selection in 2027, something he normally does?

DJT: I think he did, actually, and they’re going to have a, I think it’s ’26, actually, the ’26 Draft, 2026, and it’s going to be exciting. It’s great for Washington, D.C. We needed it a little bit. And we’re, folks…

HH: Oh, it’s going to be wild. There are going to be a million people there. It’s a great big party.

DJT: Take the time, and all the different things. The city is really, the city, by the way, the city is really a lot safer today than it was three months ago before we started here. But it’s, so it’s going to be exciting having the NFL do that.

HH: So you rehabbed him pretty quickly. Now I want to know, because I’m a Browns fan, season ticket holder…

DJT: Right.

HH: Why did you intervene on behalf of Shedeur Sanders during the draft?

DJT: I watched a couple of games, or pieces of games, and a number of things. His father is a big Trump fan, and I like people that are Trump fans, like you like them when they’re Hugh Hewitt fans, right?

HH: You bet.

DJT: His father said great things about me over the years, really, really nice. And number one, number two, genetics. You believe in genetics, and so do I. He has good genes for a football player. And I watched him play a little bit. And to me, you know, what do I know, but I pick talent. And I thought he was a very talented quarterback. I really thought he was good. I like his gene pool, and I liked his talent. And I really think that he’s going to do well. I think, I don’t know, I just felt they treated him very badly, if you want to know the truth.

HH: Oh, it was very humbling. Do you think it’s good to be humbled at a young age?

DJT: No.

HH: Or is that harsh?

DJT: No, I don’t think it’s good. I think if it happens, you have to handle it. But I don’t think it’s good. I was surprised. You know, he was, people were saying he was going to be the number one pick, and he ends up in the, what, fourth round or something.

HH: Fifth round, yeah. Fifth round.

DJT: It’s, no, I don’t think it’s good, but sometimes you have to do it. He’ll handle it. He’s now going to Cleveland. It’s not because it’s very cold, and you know, I wouldn’t say it’s an ideal throwing…

HH: Best fans in the world.

DJT: It’s not the best…

HH: Best fans in the world.

DJT: Yeah, they have great fans. We love them. No, we love them. But it’s a hard place, it’s a hard place to throw a football, but it’s, you do have great fans.

HH: Oh, gosh, yeah. December in…let’s get to the serious stuff. Last time I talked to you, you were the President-Elect and we talked about General-Secretary Xi being very, very tough.

DJT: Right.

HH: You were very clear-eyed about him. And you told me you were going to try and get Jimmy Lai out. Secretary Rubio has told me he’s going to try and get Jimmy Lai out. That would be a really great start to any kind of thaw. Any progress to report on Mr. Lai?

DJT: Well, we haven’t started, yet, because we’re meeting, actually, for, you know, we’ve been talking back and forth. Look, they want to make a deal so badly. That, I can tell you. But we’ve been talking, it’s not a question of, like the pride. Somebody said oh, who made the call? Who made the call? It doesn’t matter. I will tell you, you would have been happy if you, if I gave you the answer to that. But it doesn’t matter. The conversation matters, not you know, how it got set up. But I think talking about Jimmy Lai is a very good idea. We’ll put it down, and we’ll put it down as part of the negotiation.

HH: All right, that’s terrific. Now I want to talk to you about your executive order from April 9, Restoring America’s Maritime Dominance. I thought that’s the best of the executive orders other than closing the border which you got done, and no one seems to remember you got that done in a week.

DJT: Right.

HH: The Columbia class submarines are behind by about 18 months.

DJT: Right.

HH: Have you talked with Secretary Phelan about that, about catching up?

DJT: Oh, I have. And he’s very good. He’s tough. He’s a great business guy. You know, I’ve known him, and I put him in there because he’s got great toughness. And you know, it is behind. It’s the greatest submarine every built. It’s the most lethal weapon ever built by far. It’s not even a contest. And they’re behind. Now they’ve always done a great job, that particular group. You know that, and they’ve always been great, but they’re behind. And usually, they’re not behind. So we have a lot of them are behind. Boeing’s behind, a lot of them are behind.

HH: So when it comes down to brass tacks time, do you tell Phelan fire the bunch or hire a new bunch, because you don’t it to be like President’s Obama’s library. You were talking about that yesterday. We’ve got to get those ships in the water.

DJT: Oh, that’s the worst. By the way, his library is a total disaster. You know that. It’s like stopped, I guess. They, he didn’t want to use construction workers. Can you believe it? They didn’t, and that’s what you got. You’ve got a building that’s probably never going to get built. I don’t know. I don’t know what they’re going to do with it. It’s a mess. But in this case, we have a company that, you know, the submarines, and they are the greatest submarines in the world. The one thing, we are way advanced on submarines. It’s the greatest in the world, and they’re behind a little bit, and maybe a lot, but maybe it’s not going to matter that much as long as they get them done and quickly. Also, I’m looking at costs. You know, I just got here. Remember, don’t forget…

HH: Oh, yeah.

DJT: I’m the one that complained about the aircraft carrier, the Gerald Ford.

HH: Yes.

DJT: And I complained about a lot of aspects about the, you know, the elevators being run by magnets, okay, as opposed to hydraulic. I campaigned about, and it was part of my campaign. We talked about the catapults, you know, what throws the planes out. I said why not…

HH: The Ford class are behind, too. The next two Ford class are behind schedule.

DJT: Yeah, no, it’s…

HH: It’s a mess.

DJT: And I’m not a big fan of the Ford class. I don’t like the tower being in the back, okay? You know, the tower on the aircraft carrier, you look at the Roosevelt and the various aircraft carriers, I like it in the middle where it’s the widest. I like it hanging over the side. You know, the hardest thing to do is land a plane, if you’re a pilot, even a great pilot has a hard time if they have at all a little bit of the claustrophobia thing going. And when you move the tower to the back, it makes it that much harder to land the plane. I don’t like a lot of aspects of it, and I let it be known, but they decided during the four years to start a couple more like that.

HH: But one of the things you told the kids in Alabama, in Alabama, you told the kids don’t lose your momentum.

DJT: Right.

HH: And I think we’re losing our momentum on the fleet. It really does seem to be slowing, slowing, slowing. Can you juice it?

DJT: Well, I’m going to juice it a lot, and we were getting ready to really start, and then we had an election that was very unfortunate. Think of what would have happened. You wouldn’t have happened, the least of which is inflation, but you wouldn’t have had the border, 21 million people coming in, many, many, many criminals from all over the world. You wouldn’t have had Russia-Ukraine. You wouldn’t have had October 7th with Israel. You wouldn’t have had the most embarrassing moment in the history of our country. You wouldn’t have had a thing called Afghanistan.

HH: Correct.

DJT: What a disaster. And I don’t mean getting out. Getting out was good. They should have kept Bagram, which they didn’t keep. You know who’s occupying Bagram right now? China.

HH: China.

DJT: China’s occupying Bagram. And the reason to keep it wasn’t Afghanistan. It was because it was one hour away from where they make their nuclear missiles, China. And that would have been a big, that was a big one. That’s among the…

HH: It would not, that, I don’t I’ve heard anyone argue you’re wrong on that. It would not have happened. You would have had Mike Pompeo and Robert O’Brien and you, you would have figured that out.

DJT: Nothing would have happened. You would have been very happy with what we did. I was all set. We were getting out, but we were getting out with dignity and pride and strength, not the way we got out there. That was, what a horror…

HH: Well, you mentioned…

DJT: And we lost 13 soldiers. And you know, the thing nobody ever talks about it, Hugh, you do, but nobody talks about them, is the 42 people that were so horrifically injured. And then if you add it all up, you probably lost 600 people, you know, on both sides. A lot of people died.

HH: A lot of Afghans died. A lot of them died.

DJT: A lot of people died.

HH: A lot of controversy. But you mentioned 10/7, so I want to go to Iran. It’s the most important thing I’m going to ask you about today. The first question is have they stopped trying to kill you and Mike Pompeo and a whole bunch of people, because I don’t know how you negotiate with someone who’s trying to kill you?

DJT: Yeah, well, I don’t want to be foolish enough to answer the question, because you can never really answer a question like that. But let’s just assume, and I put out the strongest of orders, and this is not about me. This is about any president. If anybody does it, they’re going to be harder than anybody’s ever been hit in the history of our country. You can’t do that. You can’t do that, period, but you can’t do that to presidents.

HH: Good, good. Now last night, I was on Sean Hannity, and Sean asked me what I thought about your Iran statements. And I said the one thing that President Trump has done I think every day since he got back is tell Iran they have a choice. They can turn over the centrifuges and the uranium, or they can get bombed.

DJT: Good.

HH: Is that as explicit as you’ve made it to them – either/or?

DJT: It’s very simple. Yeah, it’s very simple. And I’d much rather make a deal, you know, a really verified deal. We want total verification. We can do that. We have some very brilliant people up at MIT and various other places. We could do that very, very solidly. But I would much prefer a strong, verified deal where we actually blow them up, but blow them up or just de-nuke them. But the other alternative, there are only two alternatives there – blow them up nicely or blow them up viciously. And…

HH: Yeah, there’s no half-measure.

DJT: No, you’ve got to get them out.

HH: That’s what I wrote for the Washington Examiner.

DJT: You’ve got to get them out. You can’t do it. Can’t do it.

HH: Let me turn to politics, Mr. President, because I’ve seen you talk about Trump Derangement Syndrome and do so with humor. But it’s getting worse. In fact, I’ve got the new issue of the Atlantic right here, and the cover is “It’s Later Than You Think” – Anne Applebaum, David Brooks, Aziz Hug, and George Packer – fighting autocracy, dominoes falling. This is silly. It’s stupid. But it’s there. What is it about you that deranges them so much?

DJT: Well, I win. You know, they were losing for so long. They’re losers, the names you mentioned. And many others, most others. But I win, and when I win, it drives people crazy. And I win a lot. And you know, they have a hat that was made, that Trump was right about everything. If you look, if you go back, I don’t think you could find anything I was wrong about. Right about China, right about trade. You know, we had China making a trillion dollars, think of it, a trillion dollars under Biden, a trillion dollars, more, actually, six billion dollars a day, we were losing on trade.

HH: You have the measure of Xi. You have the measure of Chairman Xi. Do you think, I know you can sit down with him. I know you’re very respectful in public and private. I know it’s a tough negotiation. Do we get along with them for the next four years? Or is it going to be toe to toe for four years straight?

DJT: I can’t tell you that. It depends on if they’re going to treat us fairly. They, like every other country, practically, that you could name, including our so-called friends, ripped us off on trade, and on the military. You know, until I came along, NATO was bust. NATO wasn’t going to be able to make it. And you know, I said we’re paying almost 100% of this thing, and they treat us badly on trade. So we save them on military, and they kill us on trade, mostly the same countries with the European Union. I said can you imagine? But I can’t tell you that. I mean, we’ll see how it goes. We have a big meeting on Saturday in Switzerland with some of the guys going over there – Scott, some other guys, very good guys. We’ll see.

HH: They’re very impressive, by the way. The Secretary of the Treasury is very impressive.

DJT: But we want to have fair trade deals.

HH: So I want to go back to the political establishment. You broke it. You broke their system. You broke their credentialing. Can they ever reassemble that? Are they ever going to put Humpty Dumpty back together again where you’ve got to go through this gate and then that gate? I mean, you came from the sidelines in sort of at the 50 and won. Can they ever put it back together again?

DJT: So I use a phrase over the last few months, because I’ve been watching them very closely. They’ve lost their confidence. Guys like David Brooks, who is supposed to be like Republicans, they’re not Republicans. They’re bad guys. The other character that’s writing for the New York Times, they call him the Republican. He’s not a Republican. He’s just a flunky for the New York Times. And these people have lost their confidence, because they lose all the time. And we have a movement the likes of which nobody’s ever seen. You know it better than anybody. You covered as well as anybody, and…

HH: It’s a realignment.

DJT: Make America Great, the MAGA movement, it’s Make America Great Again. It’s very simple.

HH: It’s a realignment, but realignments sometimes fail. Richard Nixon had a realignment going in 1972. It all fell apart. Can you keep this one going? It usually means moving to the center, not moving to the right. If you want to realign, you’ve got to take the center and hold it. Can you do that?

DJT: Well, I think so. I’ve never seen spirit like we have. You know, you mentioned the speech in Alabama. The place was packed with, you know, big arena. They’ve never had a crowd like that. And it was, you know, University of Alabama, incredible people, by the way. The whole place was, everybody was beautiful. It was like the most wonderful-looking arena, both the arena itself and the people. And no, we have a great, we have a great country. We have some people that are sick, frankly. They have, they have just, I don’t know, there’s something wrong with them. And you talk about Trump Derangement Syndrome. And it probably makes them every crazier.

HH: Oh, it does, but you won seven swing states.

DJT: But these people, they haven’t won, and they’ve lost their confidence, totally.

HH: You won seven swing states. Can another Republican pull that off, because seven for seven is the inside straight on seven card poker. It’s just not done.

DJT: Yeah, no, I won all seven. Yeah, it was, I felt I was going to win all seven. You know, I campaigned in all seven. Every arena was packed. We were doing great everywhere. That was, you know, we ran that last three month period, you know, you figure 90 days, but that last three to four month period, that was a flawless campaign. We were just running flawlessly. And then they put her in. He was losing by 30 points, and they put her in. We didn’t know was she good, was she bad. Nobody knew too much about her. Most people didn’t know the name Harris, right? They knew Kamala, they didn’t know Harris. But she got up, and she turned out to be a total disaster for them. But I’m telling you, it just, if you look at their, hey, we have a big bench. We have a beautiful bench with a lot of very talented people. Look at the people they have. They have somebody named Crockett. And somebody was telling me she’s the future of the party. And I figured oh, this will be good. I look forward to watching her. And I watched her, she’s a low IQ person. She’s a very low IQ person.

HH: AOC is the future of the party. She has charisma. Do you think she can win? Do you think she’s going to be their nominee in ’28?

HH: I think she, I think you’re right about the charisma. I don’t know about her speaking ability. I don’t know about her debating ability. I don’t know how she is, you know, in an interview, because you rarely see her being interviewed. Rarely, and that’s a bad thing, because usually, that means something, you know? It’s like Kamala. They didn’t want…

HH: You spent an hour with Kristen Welker this weekend, and I was listening to a podcast today of the National Review editors, and they’re, no one doubts your availability. Joe Biden never spoke to anyone on any side of the aisle.

DJT: Yeah.

HH: He just, he was hidden away. Do you think he was competent for more than a year or two years?

DJT: No. Well, I don’t think he was competent 40 years ago. He is a very average guy. Look at his credentials academically. Look at his, you know, look at his whole life. He was a gladhander, you know, hale and hearty. He had a good personality. I mean, he had sort of a good look other than the hair was weak. You know, hair was very weak. The look was pretty good. He was a hale and hearty and well met guy, but he was not a smart guy. But he was a vicious guy. You know, you saw that here. He knew enough to know to go after his opponent. He went after his political opponent. And I’m in the White House.

HH: When you came out on the stage for debate, when you did that, did you know immediately he had lost it? I mean, he had lost the capacity to actually debate? At one point, you said, and it probably ended his campaign. I don’t know what he said, I don’t think he knows what he said, either. And it crushed him right there, but did you realize it at the time?

DJT: Well, when that, when I gave that answer just before that, you know, the answer was in reference to the way he was acting and talking. I was sort of saying that’s sort of a strange thing going on here. He also was very white. I mean, they had the whitest makeup. I can say this. Whoever his makeup artist is, don’t use them again. And they had a very big makeup person, and maybe they wanted to set records by trying to make somebody the, he was the whitest. So when I walked out, I looked across, because I didn’t see him before. I didn’t meet him before the debate. And I walked on, and for whatever reason, they put him on first. Normally, if you’re the President, you go on, you know, you go on second like a fighter. You know, they put the champion in the ring second. They put the challenger in first. And so I was very honored by that, actually. But I went into the arena, so to speak, and I looked at him, and I said man, is he, there’s something wrong. And I think it was more makeup than anything else. And when he started talking…

HH: Well, makeup got Richard Nixon in 1960.

DJT: Yeah.

HH: Yeah, makeup killed Nixon in the Kennedy-Nixon debate.

DJT: Yeah. Well, it didn’t help him.

HH: Let me ask you, I want to go back to Israel. You’ve had Prime Minister Netanyahu to the White House twice, and I’m very happy to see that.

DJT: Right.

HH: Because in this country, anti-Semitism is taking off. How do we, how do we crush that? And how do we make sure it doesn’t get into the Republican Party?

DJT: Well, I think I’m crushing it more than anybody ever, and I think nobody’s been better to Israel as a president than me by a factor of about 20. In fact, I could say maybe nobody’s ever been better than me on Israel. And I am shocked to see what I’m seeing, because if you look back at the old days of the Holocaust, you’re seeing the same kind of thing happening now as you saw many, many years ago. And you would have thought that that could never happen, right? I mean, wouldn’t you think, I mean, that that’s not something…

HH: Right.

DJT: If you go back a few years, you would say that could, you know, it’s never…when I was growing up as a young guy, I would say without question the most powerful lobby, most powerful without question was Israel in terms of the Congress, in terms of the Senate and the House.

HH: Sure. AIPAC.

DTJ: The most powerful, the most powerful lobby was, if you ever said anything bad about Israel, your political career was over. Today, and the Senate’s hanging pretty tough, but the House is, you look at some of these people, including AOC plus three and all of these different people that are now, I mean, look at Schumer. He’s become a Palestinian. I think he’s a Palestinian, actually. You should give him the garb. But I can’t believe that Schumer, of all the people, you look at the guy. I think he’s a wreck, first of all. I don’t know what the hell happened to him, but he’s being beat up pretty good. You know, when I wrote him the little note, thank you very much for your this and that, that was not meant as a wise guy note. That was meant sincerely. I appreciated that he did what I considered to be the right thing with his vote.

HH: Right.

DJT: And a couple weeks ago. And they got ahold of that letter, and they just creamed him on that letter.

HH: Well, the left is out of its mind.

DJT: Well, the real question is, is he going to be challenged by AOC? Is he going to be challenged by somebody else, because I think he’s pretty weakened right now. He looks like hell.

HH: Well, I think she can be their nominee for president if she wants. I don’t know if maybe Josh Shapiro can beat her. I don’t think so. I think she’s unstoppable because of her charisma and because of the left-wing sort of lurch of the Democratic Party.

DJT: I just don’t know about her speaking ability, and I don’t know about her, you know, she still has to answer questions. And I haven’t seen that, yet. She goes on very rarely. You don’t see it. And you know, Kamala was a disaster with answering questions. Before that, she was doing all right. And then when she started opening her mouth, she started losing rapidly, really rapidly. And I don’t know, and I don’t know about, you know, I don’t know about her speaking ability. You have to be able to speak in front of large crowds. Her voice is a little different. I don’t say it’s bad, but it’s a little squeaky. And is a squeaky voice, I’m not sure how that sounds, you know, but we’ll see.

HH: We’ll see.

DJT: A lot of things, you never know, right. You know the expression, you never know.

HH: Now let me go back to the anti-Israel…well, never say never. I believe I’m quoting you. Never say never.

DJT: Never say never. That’s true.

HH: Let me ask you about Harvard, my alma mater. I hope you pull their tax exempt status. I want it pulled.

DJT: Well…

HH: It’s, they don’t deserve it, and it’s, by the way, it’s not illegal, for the audience. It’s not illegal for the President to request that review. He cannot order an audit, but he can certainly asked for tax exempt status to be reviewed. Are you going to push that for every university where the anti-Semitism gets out of control?

DJT: I think so. Yes, we’re going to look for that, and where we find them. Sometimes, it’s out of control but you don’t see it. You know, it’s not so obvious.

HH: Right.

DJT: With Harvard, it was very obvious. You look at it, totally anti-Semitic. And when look at where they had 3% conservatives, and you know, the rest of them were mostly radical left. A couple of things I put in, I had them put this in. I said you hired at a tremendous salary Lori Lightfoot, right, the mayor of Chicago, one of the worst in history.

HH: Chicago.

DJT: And then you hired the worst mayor in the history of New York by far, a man who started the downfall of New York, de Blasio, Bill de Blasio, a total disaster. And they hired these two people. They don’t hire a Rudy Giuliani or somebody that could actually, you know, who was actually a great mayor. And but think of it. They hired these two people, paid them a fortune, and they’re talking about municipal management. It’s ridiculous.

HH: I want you to keep the pressure on, because it’s gone off the rails, like the left. I want to wrap up, Mr. President, because you’ve been very generous with your time. Your team is always very generous. Let me ask you, will you issue a veto threat on funding that involves NPR, PBS or CPB, because we’ve got to get out of that business.

DJT: I will do everything we can to make sure they’re not funded. They’re horrible. And I watched them just because I have to watch the enemy sometimes. I don’t watch them often. I watch MS-DNC sometimes. I hate it. I hate watching it, but I feel I have an obligation. They are so bad and so corrupt. They’re a disgrace. This guy, Brian Roberts that runs that company, he should be, they should look into the whole thing, because first of all, CNN and MS, I call it DNC, Democratic National Committee, the, those things are political arms. That should be, you know, that should really be campaign finance violations at the highest level. They don’t say anything good about, and me in particular, but any Republican. And they are so dishonest. You could do, you could come up with a cure to the worst disease known to man or woman, and they would say he did a terrible thing. They are just horrible people.

HH: I don’t want them to get any more of my money. I worked for PBS for ten years. They were bad back then in ’92 to 2002.

DJT: No, they were bad, and they’ve gotten worse. And they’re worse now, probably, than they ever were, yeah.

HH: They’re worse. Two last questions. 2028 Convention…

DJT: We’re going to try, we’re going to try, and look, you know, they may get the funding. They may get the funding from lunatics on the left. And these are lunatics. These are sick people. But the government should not be providing funding.

HH: Amen. Now 2028 Republican convention, you get to pick the city. Do you want to go back to Cleveland where it all began, because you had a good convention in Cleveland.

DJT: Well, we do actually, have, I haven’t really been giving it a lot of thought, but I will get to pick the city. That’s true. That’s true.

HH: Keep in mind that…

DJT: I’ll get to pick a lot of things, okay, if you want to know the truth. But I get to pick the city.

HH: Now are you going to participate in the GOP 2026 primaries? You’re going to pick favorites like the Ohio governor race – Dave Yost and Vivek, and there are Senate races all over the place.

DJT: Yeah, yeah.

HH: Are you going to get involved?

DJT: Well, I am. I’ve already endorsed Vivek. I mean, I will be very much involved, because we have to win. It’s very important that we win, and we should win. There’s an amazing anomaly. It doesn’t make sense to me, actually, that if you’re president, you sort of almost always lose in the midterms. Now if you look, it’s crazy. I think we’re having a great presidency. I think we had a great 100 days. You know, the people that are legit say this was an amazing 100 days, the things that we’ve done. We’ve practically gotten rid of woke. I mean, it’s virtually, I mean, people are, if they believe in that nonsense, they’re afraid to do it. But so many different things we’ve done.

HH: Oh, the most impressive thing, Mr. President, the most impressive thing, the Democrats said they could not close the border unless you passed a bill.

DJT: Yeah, the border is fixed.

HH: And you closed it in a month.

DJT: Right.

HH: And I don’t know how it happened, but I think I’ll be waving that flag in every election from now until I retire, because you did it in a month, and I’m grateful for that. I hope you will achieve immigration reform. Regularize the people who are here who are good people.

DJT: We’ll be looking at that, Hugh. We’ll be looking. No, but we did a great job, and I’ll tell you, Tom Homan was great, Kristi was great. We have a lot of good people, great people in this administration. And we’ve accomplished a lot, and you know, it’s 100 days. It’s not very long. We have a long way to go. We have almost four year, so we’re going to turn this country around so fast.

HH: You’ve got to get that tax bill. We’ve got to get the tax bill.

DJT: Say it again?

HH: We’ve got to get the tax bill done. I don’t know if…

DJT: Yeah, that’s a big thing. The one big beautiful deal. That’s what we want. And it’ll be the largest tax cut in history. Now the alternative is you’ll have a 68% jump if the Democrats get their way. Now who’s going to vote for that? But you’ll have a 68 point, taxes will go up like at a level never seen before if they don’t.

HH: They want…

DJT: I think there’s a lot of pressure on Republicans, even.

HH: Very last question…

DJT: Because we don’t need grandstanders.

HH: No, we don’t. Last, very last question, Mr. President. There’s a rumor going around that on the movie business side, Tom Cruise called you up and tried to lobby you. True or false?

DJT: No, it’s false. He did call me up, but he called me up for another reason, very nice, innocent reason. He’s sort of the last of our great movie stars, if you think about it. You know, he’s a nice guy. He couldn’t have been nicer. I don’t believe I ever spoke to him, but others have. Jon Voight has. Jon Voight, I love Jon Voight.

HH: Great man.

DJT: And he has, and others have also. And I love the idea, the concept of the tariff. If you make your movie in another country, you know, they make them all over the world now, and they don’t make them here. And if you make your movie in another country and you want to sell it here, that’s okay. You have to pay a tariff.

HH: I don’t know how you make it work, but that would kill Canada, because Canada makes a lot of movies. A lot of movies.

DJT: Yeah, they do. They took a big chunk of our movie business. They took a lot of our businesses, but they’re all going to come back.

HH: Do you believe the prime minister, bonus question, Prime Minister Carney said he was going to step up on NATO. If he does, that will be a great thing. I’m not really sure I believe that Canada’s going to step up on NATO.

DJT: Well, they have started paying more, but we basically defend Canada.

HH: Right.

DJT: We lose, we subsidize Canada to the tune of $200 billion dollars a year. And I say why. Why are we doing that? Because we want to make our cars. They make a lot of cars. We’re going to take that business back, and you do that with tariffs. Lumber, we have all the lumber in the world. I’ve already, I’ve taken care of the environmental situation. You know, we’ve opened up forest areas that were ridiculously closed. But we have as much lumber as anybody almost in the world. We have more energy than anybody in the world. We don’t need their energy. We don’t need their lumber. We don’t need their steel, their aluminum. We don’t need anything they have. With that being said, I had a very good meeting with him yesterday.

HH: Well, they’re very nice people. We want to get along with them.

DJT: Yeah.

HH: But I hope they pay their NATO share. Mr. President, thank you for the extra time. Thank your staff for me. They’re always great to work with, and I look forward to checking in with you again soon.

DJT: Thank you very much, Hugh. Great honor.

HH: Thank you, Mr. President.

DJT: Thanks. Bye.

HH: Bye bye.

End of interview.