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WHEN: Today, Monday, March 11, 2024
Or: CNBC’s “Squawk Box”
Here’s the unofficial transcript of a CNBC interview with former U. S. President Donald Trump on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” (Monday-Friday, 6:00 a. m. )M. A 9:00 p. m. ET) today, Monday, March 11, his first interview from the State of the Union leadership.
Here’s the video in CNBC. com: https://www. cnbc. com/video/2024/03/11/former-president-donald-trump-china-is-right-now-our-boss. htmlArray https://www. cnbc. com/video/2024/03/11/former-president-donald-trump-i-consider-facebook-to-be-an-enemy-of-the-people. html and https://www. cnbc. com/video/2024/03/11/former-president-donald-trump-on-crypto-not-sure-id-want-to-take-it-away-at-this-pointArray html .
All references must be from CNBC.
JOE KERNEN: On the “Squawk” data line, we’re joined by former President Donald J. Trump, DJ T45. It is a pleasure to welcome you. It’s been a while, Mr. President.
FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Good morning. Nice to be with you.
KERNEN: This is the first interview I’ve been given since you became the presumptive candidate. I’m not sure that before last week you weren’t already the presumptive candidate. But I think it’s also his first interview since the State of the Union. So can we start with his vision for this country after the State of the Union?How is that different from what you’ve heard from President Biden and President Trump?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, I heard a very angry man who’s losing badly in the polls, who’s willing to weaponize government like has never taken place in this country. It has taken place in third world countries, quite often actually and they will use the Justice Department to sue opponents like me, because I’m his only opponent other than life, life itself. And frankly, you know, I saw a very angry and confused man. I assume he’s going to be the candidate. I think it probably maybe it was a terrible performance, but I think it was probably good enough to get him over the heap, to get him over the, you know, the barrier as to whether or not he’s going to be their, their nominee. I was saying that’s been it for a long time. I find it hard to believe, but I think he probably will and we’ll see what happens. But it was really a speech on division and hate more than anything else. Starts off by talking about stickers, you don’t want to really talk about stickers even though it’s true that they put a little bit less than a bag but you have you have more interesting examples of inflation and other things that he was trying to point out than that. You could you have a lot of you have a lot of big league things you can be talking at, like energy, prices through the roof and food prices through the roof. But no, it was probably the worst State of the Union ever made. According to many that’s not according to be although according to me, it was also but I haven’t heard too many of them.
KERNEN: There are stark policy differences obviously Mr. President, but one thing that I think that at least the perception is that there’s not a whole lot of difference between what you think we should do with entitlements or non-discretionary spending and what President Biden is proposing. It’s almost a third rail of politics. And we’ve got to what a $33, $34 trillion total debt built up and very little we can do in terms of cutting spending. Discretionary is not going to help. Have you changed your, your outlook on how to handle entitlements Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Mr. President? Seems like something has to be done, or else we’re going to be stuck at 120% of debt to GDP forever.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: So first of all, there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements, tremendous bad management of entitlements. There’s tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do. So I don’t necessarily agree with the statement. I know that they’re going to end up weakening social security because the country is weak. And let’s take a look at outside of the stock market, are, we’re going through hell. People are going through hell. If they have and I believe the number is 50%. They say 32 and 33%. I believe we have a cumulative inflation of over 50%, that means people are, you know, they have to make more than 50% more over a fairly short period of time to stay up. They’ve gotten routed. The middle class in our country has been routed and the middle class largely built our country and they have been treated very, very badly with policy. When I was president, I was doing a job, we’re going to start to pay off debt. We were drill baby drill. We were producing oil but we were going at a much higher level oil and gas. We were doing, you know, we were third when I started and when they ended we were one by a longshot and we were very close, we’re energy independence, we’re very close to becoming energy dominant Joe, we’re gonna be dominant so dominant, like double what Saudi Arabia and Russia were doing. And we were on that path. We were gonna be paying down debt. We were doing, we were doing a lot of things and then we got hit with Covid. We did a fantastic job with Covid. But nobody, nobody wins with Covid. I guess China found that out because they also really got hit very hard also, but nobody wins with Covid. And so we had to get to we had to do other things. We had to help. You know, if I didn’t do the expenditures that we didn’t do the kinds of things we did for the economy, we would add in 1929 type depression. And I had to say out in front of it, and we did we did a great job on that and we did with all of the things we’re coming up with Regeneron doing so much else, getting all because you know we had empty when I came in, we had empty, I call them empty cupboards. We had empty shelves, we didn’t have equipment, we didn’t have the gowns, we didn’t have the ventilators. We didn’t have anything. This country wasn’t prepared for a thing like that. And I’m not even blaming anybody in that. Because, you know, when when it came, nobody thought the pandemic would ever happen again. It sounds like an ancient’s problem, not a problem that you’d have you know at that time, you know, in modern, very modern age. It was like an ancient thing. We you know, who, who would ever show I’m not blaming anybody, but we had empty cupboards, and I got them stocked and I got them stocked fast. And we did a great job with it. Never got credit. I got credit for the greatest economy. I got credit for foreign policy. I got credit for knocking out ISIS and not going into wars. But we beat ISIS, but I never got the credit for having done a great job with that.
KERNEN: Mr. President—
PRESIDENT TRUMP: But history will give us credit for that.
KERNEN: I’m sorry to interrupt, we’ve got Jay Clayton here, is here. I know your work with with Jay was at the SEC we want to I want to get Jay to talk to you about regulation, etc. But before I turn it over to Jay, I just wanted to ask you about something very specific for regulation and that is Bitcoin and I have in the past I don’t know if you recall, but I said you gotta get you got to look at this closely, Mr. President, and you know, the current SEC commissioner Gary Gensler finally allowed for these spot ETFs and now we see Bitcoin at almost 72,000. But it’s almost as if it’s in spite of some of the efforts over regulation of maybe the Biden administration. You have any thoughts now on on crypto?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, it’s taken his own life. You know I do little things sometimes for fun and you know, make money with it and but I have fun with it too.
KERNEN: You mean you bought Bitcoin?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: No, no, but sometimes we let other people pay through Bitcoin, or we let other people get involved in a new, you know, if you think about it, it’s a form of additional currency and I was like, Lo I know, I need a coin, I need the dollar. I don’t want people to abandon the dollar and that’s how I feel, but I tell you it’s about a lifetime. I did anything that made other people smile, but it was crazy. We’ve made a thousand shoes, so the last one is limited edition, and you might stop by our crazy new coins because that’s what I call them. They’re crazy, whether it’s Bitcoin or whatever, and a lot of other people were buying that stuff when finally, the last pair of shoes that sold for like $450,000 was either limited edition or out of style. They were, you know, nice, cute. And we thought it was just a little thing. It was all about branding and I had a great time with it. The last pair sold for $450,000, other people went crazy for those shoes and probably you too. Everyone, all my friends, called me to ask for a pair of shoes. Then it took off. And I found out that a lot of them were getting paid in the new currency, it’s a new cryptocurrency and I couldn’t believe the amount and I’m like, you know this is genuine and other things that I do, other people use it. And you know, I’m very traditionalist, I like to stick to the dollar, you know, I would choose the dollar. I hate when countries abandon the dollar. I will not allow countries to move away from the dollar, because when we lose this popularity it will be like wasting a revolutionary war, it will be a big blow to our country, like wasting a war and we cannot allow that to happen. . produce. and many countries are now struggling to get rid of the dollar and, frankly, I know that Jay feels very strongly about that and Jay has really done a fantastic job in an organization when there are scandals and disorders that Jay has been through for years. There has been no scandal. I don’t know, Jay, maybe you can tell me, but there hasn’t been any scandal that’s the most scandalous because it’s about huge amounts of cash with Jay Clayton, not us. We didn’t have any scandals, or anything at all. So I thought it was wonderful. But I saw that it was used a lot. And I’m not sure I should take it off right now.
JAY CLAYTON: Hi, Mr. President, thank you for that, so kind. Before you arrived, I said to Joe: Look, your regulatory timeline in a second term would be pro-growth, not anti-consumer, not pro-competitive, but pro-growth. Mainly because, you know, we don’t have much tax equipment left. Do you need to let us know about the pro-growth timeline you had in the last period?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah. Number one, we don’t have a choice. It has to be that – we don’t have a choice. It’d be nice to say let’s get nice and nice and conservative and let’s not grow, if we don’t grow you know, we have $35 trillion out there. We have to grow our way out of it more than anything else but we also have to cut spending and we can cut spending massive amounts of waste. Look, we give foreign countries trillions and trillions of dollars a year and when you want to cut them you met with levels it’s crazy. When you want to cut some of these foreign countries, many of whom don’t like us, many of whom almost all of them take advantage of – everybody takes advantage of the United States and I had that very much stopped but they very much take advantage of the United States. I mean China until I came along, China was killing us, China was taken out 300 – just in terms of numbers you know, we’re just it’s $507 billion a year. Now under Biden it’s worse. It’s gotten much worse. No country can sustain when, we can’t sustain that. When a country just rips us off like China then what I did is that the tariffs and the tariffs were forcing companies back to the United States. We want those companies that go to China and many other countries, not only China, the European Union rips us almost as bad as China, but they do it with a smile. Nobody thinks that the European Union that way, you know, they say oh, they’re wonderful, but they really take advantage of us and until I came along, they took advantage of us militarily, as you know. NATO was a total disaster for us, we were paying almost – so think of it, European Union we were paying almost all for their military we were paying close to 100% until I came along. I said I’m not doing it. You’re gonna have to pay, we’re not doing it anymore. They said would you protect us if we don’t, I said if you’re delinquent, they said yes. I said if you’re delinquent, you’re not going to be protected. And $400 billion came in like clockwork, Obama, Bush, everybody else. They did absolutely nothing.
SORKIN: Mr. President, I just wanted to ask you, however, you also talked about proposing a 10% tariff, so to speak. I wanted to ask you about this because the American Action Forum, a center-right think tank, said it believed the plan would distort global trade, discourage economic activity and have far-reaching consequences. negative for the US economy.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, they’re wrong. This would distort foreign trade. We have companies, if you take a look at India, China and many other countries, they are smart, much smarter than our country. We were in a position to do this and I was about to prepare it.
SIRKIN: But don’t you think that would lead to increased costs for American families?By some estimates, this could be as low as $2,000 per family, according to the economist.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: No, I think it’s possible that taxes could just be reduced, I think other things could happen beyond that. But I’m strongly on price lists for two reasons. First of all, I totally agree with them economically when other countries deserve it. For example, China was taking over us in the metal sector, they were destroying our entire metal industry, which never performed well in the last 25 years anyway, but you know, because foreign competition ate them alive and They were dumping. metal. I imposed a 50% tax on incoming Chinese metal and everyone in the metal industry, when they saw me, started crying. They had to hug me, they would kiss me, sir, you stored our industry. I put a very high 50% tariff on dumped metal, on dumped metal. And besides, nothing was perfect. Frankly, the costs deserve to have been higher. I really was in a position to do it, but the costs deserve to have been higher. It stockpiled an entire industry, but let me say one thing beyond economics: it gives them the strength to deal with other countries, because China would step in and say no, no, no more taxes. It was absolutely appropriate for me to deal with them. because they were petrified that I would enforce more fees. And we don’t use that, lately China is our boss. They are the bosses of the United States, almost as if we were a subsidiary of China and this is due to the weakness of the Biden administration.
MELISSA LEE: Mr. President, are you concerned that China will simply impose price lists or retaliatory measures that make it difficult for American companies whose expansion depends on China to do business in China?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Okay, yes, of course they could.
LEE: So tell Starbucks, tell McDonalds that it’s suddenly going to be harder to do business there.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Sure, but they didn’t do it with me. You know, we spent years and they didn’t do it with me. And they never brought up that case. This is a vital cause for them. But even if that were the case, let American corporations return to America. If you want to sell a car in China, you may not agree, you pay a big tax or customs duty. If we manufacture our cars we cannot sell them in China, they impose gigantic customs duties. Well, they are very intelligent. They say, come to this country. Look at Apple. I had a wonderful relationship with Apple and everyone there was fine. But I said you have to build your factories here. They built a giant factory in Texas. I’ve been working very, very hard on this with corporations that build in China, because if they build in China, they don’t have taxes, so they build it in China. I said we need you to come here. They came back, they did. They came back with a very giant factory and said I’m not going to do this unless you. . . the thing about stock lists is so undeniable to me. First of all, it’s economically wonderful for us and it brings our businesses back because if you put stock in China, they will go on to build their automotive projects here and they will go on to employ our people. They are building big factories lately thanks to Biden. They are building large factories in Mexico. So they build giant factories in Mexico and then sell them across the border with very few taxes. It’s ridiculous. We need them to build their projects in the United States. We don’t need to buy cars from China. We need Chinese-made cars in America to use our workers, but that also gives us wonderful political power. Tariffs are incredibly difficult to prevent wars, because they don’t require lists of values. And, frankly, I blackmailed them, I blackmailed the other countries with the risk of paying customs duties. And if you don’t have lists of values, we don’t have anything about it. We missed that opportunity when I saw if they were looking to build a Harley Davidson as an example. I said: How are things in India? They were in the White House. How do you harm an Indian? Why do they have a one hundred percent tariff, but even more than that? And that’s how we understand it essentially because you have to double and triple the value in India. It’s just, then what are you going to do? Well, they need us to build a factory in India that way, so they go ahead and build a big factory in India. We started under me, we started doing the same thing here. And we already have the passld boat. We have the most productive passage reserve, but in the end we will not have it because our country is in decline and we will not have it. We are wasting our economic power.
SORKIN: Mr. President, we’re talking about China. I want to ask you about perhaps one of the biggest business stories and policy stories of the moment and that is TikTok. You have called TikTok a national security threat. At one point you said that they are quote, “data collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans personal and proprietary information.” And yet it appears that you’ve now reversed your view on banning TikTok. Why is that?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: So I did. And then Congress said they never fail after all. They are smart people, incredibly political, and they are very sensitive to other people called lobbyists who happen to be very talented, very smart, and very rich. I may have banned TikTok, I practically banned it, I may have just done it. But I said, you know what? But I’ll leave it to you. I didn’t push it too much because you know, let them do their own studies and development. And they decide not to do it. But as you know, I was at a point where maybe I would have done it if I wanted to. I sort of said that you make the resolution to make this resolution because it’s a difficult resolution to make. Honestly, there are plenty of other people on Tik Tok who love it. There are a lot of little kids on TikTok who would go crazy without it. There are many users. There are a lot of smart things and a lot of bad things on TikTok. But what I don’t like is that without TikTok we can make Facebook bigger and Facebook be an enemy of others, like many media outlets. What Facebook did was vaults with Zucker vaults of half a billion dollars that they put in there, I mean, I’m illegal, but you know, they, you know, they put other people in jail when they spend. Other people who spend more than $5,600 on a campaign are jailed. They go to prison if they charge 200 dollars. Look at Dinesh D’Souza, they put him in prison for about $100. And yet, here the guy spends 500 million dollars and doesn’t go to prison.
SORKIN: But do you believe that TikTok is a national security threat or not? Because if it is, and I believe that your emergency powers order that you had put in place at the time suggested that it was was that not true?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: I think so, and we want to take a look at privacy and make sure that we protect the privacy and knowledge rights of the American people. And I agree, but you know, we also have this challenge with others, you also have this challenge with Facebook and many other corporations. I mean, they get the data, they get a lot of data, they deal with China, and they’ll do whatever China needs. You know, if you take a look at some of our American corporations, when you talk about highly complicated corporations that you think are American, they’re not so American that they do business in China and if China needs something from them, they’ll give it away. , so it’s also a national security threat, but when I look at it, I’m not looking to double the length of Facebook. And if you ban TikTok, Facebook and others, especially Facebook will be a huge beneficiary. And I think Facebook has been very dishonest. I think Facebook has been very bad for our country, especially when it comes to elections.
SORKIN: Mr. President, you recently met with Jeff Yass, a hedge fund manager who owns a stake in TikTok and a massive donor to the Republican Party. Steve Bannon warned that he was paid to replace his mind. How was his vision replaced?And did you have a verbal exchange with Jeff Yass about it?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: No, I didn’t I met with him very briefly I made a speech and I said hello to him and his wife was lovely. And actually, her primary thing was on education. She wants choice, as I do. And she mentioned to me more than anything. You know, we talked about education. It was a meeting that lasted for a few minutes. Now the only one I met was I met them both and I never I don’t think I ever met him before. But he never mentioned TikTok. She did mention her school choice and that’s what her whole in fact she said my whole life is based around school choice was a very important thing to her and I agree with it.
KERNEN: Mr. President I think you also had a meeting with Elon Musk recently, I saw a piece written that Silicon Valley, uncharacteristically, I’m not saying it’s you know, 100% behind your candidacy, but certainly, there seems to be a sea change to some extent this time around. What did you what an Elon Musk tell you? You think you eventually get his support in some way whether it’s just verbal or monetary?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: I don’t know. Look, I’ve been friendly with him over the years. I helped him when he was president. I helped him, I enjoyed it. It is evident that we have contrary opinions on a minor issue: the electric car. I am in favor of electric cars, but we will have to have all the alternatives. Also, you can’t just go electric. I mean, you have a network formula in this country that is outdated. And a crisis is one of the things we have worked a lot on. It is our grid formula that cannot produce electricity, it does not distribute it and you know that electric cars are not even an option to become fully electric, it is Biden. Any electrical mandate is given to other very, very stupid people. First of all, they don’t pass very far. They charge too much and they will all be made in China. And the auto industry workers will vote for Trump. I don’t know anything about his union leaders, because they are just stuck with the Democrats and have no idea why they are like blind sheep. But auto workers are voting for Trump because they sense that, if you look at my numbers in Michigan, I’m ahead by 12 or 14 points. It’s complicated for a Republican, but not now. We lead in many spaces that Republicans don’t, including African Americans. We have figures on the African-American population. The black population, the Asian population, the Hispanics, we have numbers like no one has ever realized before. So I think we’re moving towards having really smart elections and I think that’s probably why Silicon Valley exists, but I think they’re also with me because, you know, I need to help companies. They saw what happened. We had and you know, just before those terrible scores and China’s profligacy, we had the largest economy in the history of the world. There has never been an economy. The other blacks were doing the best they could. Hispanics, women, Asian men, MIT grads with no degrees, top-notch school backgrounds, every single organization, every single organization was doing very well. And this is how. And we had the largest economy in history and we were able to pay our debts. We were drilling. We were doing that, think about it. They gave me Anwar’s approval. He is bigger, maybe close, but probably bigger than Saudi Arabia in Alaska. And one of the first things Biden did was finish the year. Reagan tried to get it, but he may not get it. No one has done it, but it is possible that I and no one else have done it. Anwar is probably the biggest site. If you look, remember, we celebrated it when no one could believe we had achieved it. And they were in a position to start drilling and were doing so; It seemed wonderful for Alaska. Huge economic progress for Alaska, but I did it. And they put an end to it. We passed to pay off the debt. We were going through incredible things. And then we had an election that I’ll be wonderful at this show that didn’t go very well.
CLAYTON: Let me ask you about that. Mr. President. Something that I want you to comment on that I that I’ve said on this program is that we have this tendency to want to import European regulation to the US thinking that European style regulation, whether it’s around the environment, whether it’s around how we deal with national security, financial matters, and like, can you comment on that because I think the U.S. is different. Ad you know, we have to play to our strengths can you give us your thoughts on that?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, the last thing we deserve to copy – yeah, I think you’re right, I think that, you know, they – we have a tendency to stick to them a little strangely in regulations because they go so wrong. They do it so bad. They have become a socialist state. And you know, they’re not doing very well. And if you take a look at what happened, I happen: Believe it or not, I was very friendly with her, but I didn’t agree with her allowing 2 million illegal aliens, we would say Array or immigrants or you call them wherever you want. Lately there are 19 other calls and both become obsolete in about two weeks. But Sheila made it imaginable for another 2 million people to come; now they like to call them neighbors, you know, the new call from the Democrats is that we would like to call them neighbors. That is why they want to denounce the other people who flock to our country and, in many cases, kill other people, neighbors. But, you know, Europe, what she did, what Germany did to itself between that and her power politics was a crisis for Germany, no one communicates about it. And they have a completely opposite direction, surprisingly, they have a completely opposite direction. That is why we deserve not to become attached to them. We have to get through alone. We wish guys like Jay Clayton and others. Jay has done a fantastic job of deregulating so many things in the SEC and many of you know what he has done. It was a wonderful deregulation. And again she did it with him: it was a beautiful thing to see. This company worked like this: You know, it had a lot of other wonderful people. We never communicate about those other people and I think that’s natural. We communicated about some of the ones I didn’t like and some of the ones I had there that I didn’t like, but most often I had other great people because, you know, we had, and you can check both. and both recording and no one was there. Even close: I got the most relief in regulation. We have achieved the largest tax cut in history and the largest regulatory cut in history. We have granted tax relief, which is also coming. I think this is going to be very bad for Democrats, but it will be very bad for this country if Trump’s tax cuts don’t trend. But those are the biggest tax cuts in history. The other is that we have imposed the biggest regulatory cuts in history. Jay was a part of this because of what he did. But we gave them to the environment. We gave them many other things. We built factories in Louisiana, refineries that had been absolutely dead for 14 years. And they approved them in one day. I have two factories in Louisiana, big factories. . .
LEE: Mr. President –
PRESIDENT TRUMP: – like three Empire State buildings lying on their sides. These were the largest factories. I made them and made them in one day. They waited 14 years to obtain permits. I made them in one day.
LEE: Mr. President, you mentioned earlier about the country losing economic power, and some might cite the downgrade of the United States credit rating as one example of how we are losing some of our economic power. When Fitch downgraded the U.S. to a double A over the summer they specifically cited the increasing polarization, declining governance over the past 20 years. But more specifically, they cited the January 6 insurrection. Under your presidency, if you are reelected, what can you tell us about how stable the U.S. will be? Especially as it appears that you’re stoking some political divide. You held a rally in Waco, Texas, and you’re sort of playing to this polarization of groups here.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, when I organized the rally in Waco, there were another 100,000 people there, and that’s where they sought the rally. You know, I’m like a business politician. You go to where the other people are and I go to sales; We had a wonderful collection this weekend. We have demonstrations in Michigan, the demonstrations are bigger than ever. We have – as soon as the season gets a little warmer when we can move outdoors – right now there is no stadium that can hold so many people –
LEE: Does it matter to you, though, that we are downgraded, that we’ve been downgraded, and that our credit rating could be at further risk? Should there be further political polarization?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Sure, but it’s not because of January 6. We are demoted because of other incompetent people, other very incompetent people who do incompetent things. And when it comes to the dollar, we are wasting countries. We’re wasting Iran, we’re wasting this one. We have Russia, it’s over. We have many countries that we exclude from the formula, and we cannot lose this formula. This formula is very. . . dollar. This formula is very vital for the energy and strength of our country. If we ever lose this, they take out Russia, China would love to be, you know, the leader of the group is Janet. Because they would love to get it back. And it will be imaginable to recover it if we are not strong. We have to stop countries and if countries need to get out of it, we will have to say: Well, if they need to get out of our formula and move to, say, a Russian edition or their own edition, then we will do that. not do any business with you. And they’re passing to return in about two seconds. But it depends on who does this to the leader, as if it were Macron or the leaders. You have to be able to communicate with them correctly. Our other people don’t know how to communicate with him. Our other people are like we walk around hat in hand like beggars. Our country is no longer respected. The others who constitute us are not respected. I just had Viktor Orban, a tough guy from Hungary. He was in my space in Florida and I got along very well with him, friendly, but I have respect for him. He made this Array. I thought it was a glorious Array. He said we will solve the world’s disorders if Donald Trump comes back. He said Russia was afraid of him and China was afraid of him. We had no unrest under Trump, and now Israel is under attack, which would never have happened. Ukraine and Russia are fighting. This would never have happened. All those deaths in the destroyed cities because Ukraine is now like a demolition site, what they did to Ukraine. None of this would have happened. All those other people would be alive today if the election effects were, well, right.
SORKIN: Mr. President, given how divided this country feels, I need to play you just a piece of tape from Ken Langone, who I think supported you in the last election, who was in the Squawk Box. ” before. About a month, a month and a part ago. And I need to show you what he said because I think that represents a lot of the electorate and I’m curious if he would react and write what he thinks about the electorate: watch this if you can for a second.
Sound from Ken Langone: I worry if Trump wins, that it’s going to be four years of getting even. And that’s scary, because we’ve got serious issues coming up that need to be addressed.
SIRKIN: What do you think, Mr. President? Because I think there’s a sense of anger and frustration that you feel about certain issues.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, look, I’ve never been a fan of Ken. I never – I don’t know if he supported me. He maybe he supported me because I was the only one he could support, because that’s the reason. But I was never a fan. I’m a Bernie Marcus fan. Big fan, Bernie Marcus is a big fan of mine. And that’s the look I chose. And, frankly, in a sense he is right. People think there is going to be revenge and I say no, revenge is going to be a success. There will be no revenge in a position of revenge. This is going to be a success. We will remodel our country. We’re going to bring meaning and a meaning that’s not unusual, you know, other people say you’re conservative. I’m not conservative. Do you know what I am? I’m a common sense guy. And many conservative policies don’t make sense. We will not have open borders. You will have to enter legally. We will close the borders. It had the most productive border, it had the most secure border in the history of our country. And so it was: all she had to do was go to the beach as she loves to do, looking for something elegant in a swimsuit. If he had left everything in its place, adding to the others who did it, he would have the most productive frontier in history. We have built 571 miles of wall. I asked Mexico to provide us with a large number of loose infantry soldiers. Now there is the case of customs duties. I said, if you don’t give us the infantry soldiers, we’re going to put a 25% tariff on your cars. They laughed at me when I said I was looking for 28,000 soldiers. And I love, you know, the preaspect of Mexico. I think he’s a very intelligent guy. He happens to be a socialist, but you can’t have it all. But they laughed at me. I said: I need them to give us 25, 28,000 infantry soldiers on our borders to prevent the others from arriving with the motorhomes. And they laughed at me. I say it’s fine. You don’t need to do that, right? Yes. I will impose a 25% tariff on all your products, including all the cars you sell. You know, they stole, took away like we were babies, 32% of our automobile production business over the last 30 years. 32% are now manufactured in Mexico and continue to grow. And now, as I told you before, since China builds factories there in particular to sell to the United States, I would tell China, if it builds a factory on our border, to manufacture cars in Mexico and sell them in the United States. . In the United States I impose a 50% tariff on all those cars. And you know what, they would prevent the construction of their factories in about two years, but we don’t do it. To be honest, we have other stupid people running our government.
KERNEN: Mr. President, we will see. I know you’ve got a lot going on. You’ve got the campaign, you’ve got the legal issues, people sometimes wonder you know how to prioritize and you just keep charging –
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, the legal issues aren’t legal issues. They are Biden issues. Biden put Fani, beautiful Fani, who’s turned out to be now a corrupt District Attorney, but in my opinion, they’re almost all corrupt. All of the stuff that you see, is weaponized government. And the DA in New York is being run by the DOJ. They put their top person into the DA’s office. All of this stuff and frankly, I get a lot of credit for it. I think I’m much more popular now because they did it and it backfired on them. They’ve weaponized our government. Think of it. They put Colangelo, one of their top people – like the top person – into the DA’s office to go get Trump. They deal with Letitia James a real lowlife. They put people with her, they’re dealing with her all the time to go get Trump. These are the Democrats. The prosecutors and judges in New York – our country could fall because of it, that’s how bad it is. And companies are moving out of New York, because of what they’ve done to me. And I’m gonna end up winning on appeal. And if I didn’t win on appeal on these ridiculous decisions, if I didn’t win on appeal is the most ridiculous decisions and putting the Miss Bergdorf Goodman, a person I never – I never met, I have no idea who she is. Except one thing. I got sued. From that point on I said, Wow, that’s crazy. What this is. I got charged. I was given a false accusation and had a post a $91 million bond on a false accusation. People aren’t moving into New York, because of the kind of crap they’re pulling on me. I feel like I’m a pioneer. What’s happening is we have to be very careful. You know, we have a very fragile country. People are rejecting it and they are watching. Normally somebody would be out of office if stuff like that happens. My numbers are much higher than they would have been had this not happened. But you have to be able to speak about it. It’s a very dangerous thing. Very, very dangerous thing for our country, what they’re doing. It’s the weaponization of the DOJ, the FBI, etc.
15 LORD. KERNEN: Well, we appreciate all the time you’ve given us this morning, Mr. President. I look forward to verbal exchange in the not-too-distant future.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you very much, Joe. Thank you all.
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