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WHEN: Today, Monday, March 11, 2024
WHERE: 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. html, 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-away-at-this-point . HTML.
All references must be from CNBC.
JOE KERNEN: I believe on the “Squawk” news line, we are joined by former President Donald J. Trump, DJ T45 It is good to welcome you. It’s been a while, Mr. President.
FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Good morning. Nice to be with you.
KERNEN: The this is the first interview I’ve been told since you became the presumptive nominee. I’m not I’m not sure that that prior to last week, you weren’t already the presumptive nominee. But I think this is your first interview since the State of the Union as well. So can we just start with with your your vision for this country after watching the State of the Union. How does it differ from what you heard from President Biden, President Trump?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, I heard from a very angry guy who is blowing a lot in the polls, who is in a position to weaponize the government in a way that has never been done in this country. This has happened in third world countries, very occasionally in fact, and they will use the Department of Justice to prosecute warring parties like me, because I am their only opponent besides life, life itself. And, frankly, you know, I saw a very angry situation and boy. I guess he will be the candidate. I think it was probably a terrible performance, but I think it was probably enough to get over the issue, to get over, you know, the barrier of whether or not it’s going to be your ArrayArray candidate. saying that for a long time. I have a hard time believing it, but I think he’ll probably do it and we’ll see what happens. But it was really department and hate speech more than anything else. Start by talking about stickers, you don’t really need to talk about stickers, although it is true that they put a little less than a bag, but you have more attractive examples of inflation and other things that he was looking to point out. He may have many vital issues to communicate about, such as energy, rising prices, and rising food prices. But no, it was probably the worst state in the Union. According to Guyy, this does not comply, although in my opinion it was also, I have not listened to Guyy yet.
KERNEN: There are obviously strong policy differences, Mr. President, but one thing I believe at least is that there’s not much difference between what you think we deserve to do with entitlements or nondiscretionary spending and what President Biden is proposing. . It’s almost a third political aspect. And we’ve gotten to a total accumulated debt of $33 trillion to $34 trillion and there’s not much we can do in terms of cutting spending. Has it replaced your vision of how to manage Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid entitlements, Mr. President?It seems that something has to be done or we will be stuck in a debt of 120% of GDP.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: So, first of all, there’s a lot that can be done in terms of entitlement reduction, but also in terms of entitlement theft and mismanagement, very entitlement mismanagement. There are so many things you can do. So I don’t necessarily agree with this statement. I know that they will end up weakening social security because the country is weak. And let’s look at what’s happening outside of the stock market: We’re going through hell. People are going through hell. If so, that figure is 50%. They say 32 and 33%. We have over 50% cumulative inflation, which means other people have to earn over 50% more in a fairly short period of time to stay on their feet. They were defeated. The middle class of our country has been defeated and the middle class largely built our country and has been treated very, very badly through politics. When I was president I did a task, we are going to start paying the debt. We were doing a bavia exercise. We were generating oil, but we were going to a much higher point for oil and gas. We were, you know, we were third when I started and when they finished we were one behind and we were very close, we are power independent, we are very close to fitting in with the dominant power Joe, we are going to be dominant, so dominant, like twice as much what Saudi Arabia and Russia were doing. And we were on that path. We were going to pay off the debt. We were doing, we were doing a lot of things and then Covid hit us. We have done a fantastic job with Covid. But nobody, nobody wins with Covid. I guess China found out because they were hit hard too, but no one wins with Covid. And then we had to make it happen, we had to do anything else. We had to help. You know, if I didn’t do the analysis that we did on the economy, we would go up into a depression like 1929. And I had to say in the face of that, and we did it, we did a wonderful job there in the most sensible and we did it with all the things that we’re offering with Regeneron doing so many others, getting everything because you know we were empty. When I came in, we had empty cabinets, I call them empty cabinets. We had empty shelves, we didn’t have any equipment, we didn’t have gowns, we didn’t have fans. We had nothing. This country was not prepared for such a thing. And I don’t blame anyone for that. Because, you know, when this happens, no one had any idea that the pandemic would happen again. It turns out like an old challenge, not a challenge you had in those days, you know, in fashionable, very fashionable times. It seemed something old. We, you know, who, who would ever show that I don’t blame anyone, yet we had empty cabinets, and I’ll inventory them and inventory them quickly. And with that we did a wonderful job. I never had credits. They gave me credits for the larger economy. They gave me credits for foreign policy. They gave me the credits for getting rid of ISIS and not going to war. But we defeated ISIS, but they never gave me credit for doing a wonderful task.
KERNEN: Mr. President. . .
PRESIDENT TRUMP: But I think history will give us the credit.
KERNEN: I’m sorry to interrupt you, they gave us Jay Clayton here, he’s here. I know your work with Jay was at the SEC, we want Jay to communicate with you about regulation, etc. But before I turn around. Let’s pass the word to Jay, I just wanted to ask you a question about something very specific when it comes to regulation and that’s Bitcoin and I’ve done that in the past, I don’t know if you remember, but I said you want to. Look at this closely, Mr. Chairman, and you know, the current SEC commissioner, Gary Gensler, despite everything is legal, those spot ETFs and now we’re seeing Bitcoin at almost 72,000. But it’s almost as if this despite some regulatory efforts by the Biden administration. Do you have any thoughts on cryptocurrencies now?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, it cost him his life. You know, I do little things for a laugh and you know, I make money out of it and yet I laugh at 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, it was nice. Before you came, I was saying to Joe: look, your regulatory timeline in a second period would be pro-growth, not anti-consumer, not anti-competitive, but pro-growth. Mainly because, you know, we don’t have much tax equipment left. Need to let us know about the growth timeline that had the last quarter?
PRESIDENT Trump: Yes. First, we have no choice. It has to be this: we have no choice. It would be great to say: let’s be big and conservative and don’t grow. If we don’t grow, we will have 35 trillion dollars there. We want to get ahead more than anything else, but we also want to cut spending and we can cut big unnecessary expenses. Look, we give foreign countries billions and billions of dollars a year and when you want to cut them, you go to levels, it’s crazy. When you want to eliminate some of those foreign countries, many of which don’t like us, many of which are taking credit for almost all of them, they’re all taking credit for the United States and I was given that stopped, however, they are taking a lot of credit away from the United States. I mean China, until I got here, China was killing us, China eliminated three hundred; Just in terms of numbers, you know, we’re only worth $507 billion a year. Now, with Biden, it is worse. Much worse things happened. No country can stand this and we cannot stand it. When a country is ripping us off like China, what I did was price lists and the price lists forced companies to return to the United States. We want these corporations to be identified in China and in many other countries, not only in China; The European Union is tearing us apart almost as much as China, but they do it with a smile. Nobody thinks that way about the European Union, you know, they say they’re wonderful, but they’re giving us credit, and until I got here, they were giving us credit militarily, as you know. NATO was a general crisis for us, we were almost paying – so think about it, the European Union, we were paying almost their entire army, we were paying almost one hundred percent until I got here. I said I wouldn’t do it. You’re going to have to pay, we don’t do that anymore. They said you would protect us if we didn’t, I said if you were antisocial they said yes. I said if you’re antisocial, you won’t be protected. And 400 billion dollars came like clockwork, Obama, Bush and everyone else. They probably didn’t do anything.
SORKIN: Mr. President, I just wanted to ask you, though, you’ve also talked about proposing a 10% tariff, if you will. I wanted to ask you about that because the center right American Action Forum, which is a think tank, said that they thought the plan would quote distort global trade discourage economic activity and have broad negative consequences for the U.S. 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 only $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 is there no concern that China could impose retaliatory tariffs or retaliatory actions that would make doing business in China difficult for American companies, which are dependent on China for growth?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: It doesn’t matter, yes, of course they could.
LEE: So tell Starbucks, tell McDonalds that is going to be all of a sudden maybe more difficult 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 had it done. And then Congress said well they never they ultimately usually fail. They are a good like, extremely political and they’re extremely subject to people called lobbyists who happen to be very talented, very good and very rich. I could have banned TikTok I had his banned just about I could have gotten it done. But I said you know what, but I’ll leave it up to you. I didn’t push him too hard because you know, let them do their own research and development. And they decided not to do it. But as you know, I was at a point where I could have gotten it done if I wanted to. I sort of said, You guys decide you make that decision because it’s a tough decision to make. Frankly, there are a lot of people on Tik Tok that love it. There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it. There are a lot of users. There’s a lot of good and there’s a lot of bad with TikTok. But the thing I don’t like is that without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people along with a lot of the media. what Facebook did was lockboxes with a $500 million Zucker bucks lockboxes that he put in, I mean I consider illegal but you know they, you know they put people in jail when they spend. They put people in jail when they spend more than $5,600 in a campaign. They to jail if they’re $200 Look at Dinesh D’Souza they put him in jail over a couple of 100 bucks. And yet here’s the guy spends $500 million and he doesn’t go to jail.
SORKIN: But do you think TikTok poses a national security risk or not?Because if that’s the case, and I your emergency powers executive order that you had in place at the time reported that that was the case, didn’t you?
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 met recently with Jeff Yass he is s a hedge fund manager has a stake in TikTok. He’s a huge GOP donor Steve Bannon has suggested that you’ve been paid off to switch your view. How did you your view change? How did that come about? And did you have a conversation 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’ve helped him when I was President. I helped him I’ve liked him. We obviously have opposing views on a minor subject called electric cars. I’m all for electric cars, but you have to have all of the alternatives. Also, you can’t just go to electric. I mean, you have a grid system in this country that’s obsolete. And a disaster is one of the things we worked on a lot. Is our grid system that can’t produce the electricity it doesn’t get distribute the electricity and you know the electric cars are not even a possibility to go all electric is Biden. All electric mandate is by very, very stupid people. First of all, they don’t go far. They cost too much and they’re all going to be made in China. And the auto workers are going to vote for Trump. I don’t know about their top union people because they’re just riveted into Democrats they have no idea why they’re like blind sheep. But the auto workers are gonna vote for Trump because they understand look at my numbers in Michigan, I’m leading him by 12 or 14 points. It’s always hard for a Republican but not now. We’re leading in a lot of places that Republicans don’t lead and including with African Americans. We are we have numbers with the African American population. The black population, the Asian population, Hispanics, we have numbers like nobody’s ever seen before. So I think we’re gonna have a very good election and I think that’s probably why Silicon Valley is but I think they’re also with me because, you know, I want to help businesses. They saw what happened. We had and you know, that just prior to this horrible scores coming in and the gift of China, we had the greatest economy in the history of the world. There was never an economy. Blacks were doing the best they’ve ever done. Hispanics, women, Asian men, with a diploma from MIT without a diploma at all, from a high school, every single group, every single group was doing great. And that’s the way it is. And we had the greatest economy ever and we were getting ready to pay off debt. We were drilling. We were doing this think of it. I got Anwar approved. It’s bigger, perhaps close, but probably bigger than Saudi Arabia in Alaska. And one of the first things Biden did is end iy. Reagan tried to get it he couldn’t get it done. Nobody got it done but me and nobody else could have gotten it done. Anwar is the biggest probably the biggest site J if you look remember, we celebrated that when nobody could believe I got it done. And they were getting ready to start drilling and they were doing it it’s going to be great for Alaska. Tremendous economic development for Alaska, but I got it done. And they ended it. We were going to pay off debt. We were going to do things that were incredible. And then we had an election that I will be very nice on this show it didn’t go too well.
CLAYTON: Let me ask you a question about that. Mr. President, I would like you to comment on what I said about this program, which is that we have this tendency to need to import European regulations into the United States, thinking that European-style regulation, whether it be on the environment, whether it is how we approach national security, monetary issues, etc. , can you comment on it? Because I think America is different. And you know, we have to take advantage of our strengths. Can you give us your opinion on this?
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. . .
READ: Mr. President –
PRESIDENT TRUMP: –like three Empire State Buildings laying on their side. These were the biggest plants. I got them done and literally got them done in one day. They were waiting for 14 years for permits. I got them done in one day.
READ: Mr. President, you spoke earlier about the country’s loss of economic power, and some might point to the downgrading of the United States’ credit rating as an example of how we are wasting some of our economic power. When Fitch downgraded the United States to Double A over the summer, he cited in particular the increasing polarization and decline in governance over the past 20 years. But more specifically they cite the January 6 insurrection. Under his presidency, if he is re-elected, what can he tell us about the stability of the United States? Especially since it turns out you’re causing some political division. You had a rally in Waco, Texas, and kind of a gamble on this polarization of teams 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: However, does it matter to you that our score is downgraded, that our score is downgraded, and that our credit score is possibly at even greater risk?Should there be more 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 a country – given how divided it feels this country is, I want to play you just a piece of tape from Ken Langone, who I believe supported you in the last election, who was on “Squawk Box” earlier. About a month, month and a half ago now. And I want to show you what he had to say because I think it represents a lot of voters out there and I’m just curious if you would react to it, and explain sort of how you feel about it to the voters. Look at this if you could for a second.
Ken Langone sound: I’m worried that if Trump wins, it will take him four years to get his revenge. And it’s scary, because we have serious disorders that want to be solved.
SORKIN: What do you think of that, Mr. President? Because I think that there is a feeling that there is still an anger and a frustration that you have 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. Maybe he supported me because I was the only one that he could support because that is the reason. But I’ve never been a fan. I’ve been a fan of Bernie Marcus. A big fan, Bernie Marcus is a big fan of mine. And that was the side that I chose. And, frankly, you know, he’s right in one sense. People think that there’s going to be revenge and I say no, the revenge is going to be success. There’s not going to be revenge in a revenge stance. It’s really going to be success. We’re going to turn our country around. We’re going to bring sense and – common sense, you know, people say you’re conservative. I’m not conservative. You know what I am? I’m a man of common sense. And a lot of conservative policies are common sense. We’re not gonna have open borders. You’re gonna have to come in legally. We’re going to close up the borders. I had the best border – I had the safest border in the history of our country. And it was – all he had to do is he could have gone to the beach like he likes doing, looks good in a bathing suit. If he would’ve left everything in place, including the people that were doing it, I had the best border in history. We built 571 miles of wall. I got Mexico to give us massive numbers of free soldiers. Now there is a case of tariffs. I said, if you don’t give us the soldiers, we’re gonna put a 25% tariff on your cars. They laughed at me when I said I want 28,000 soldiers. And I like, you know, the President of Mexico. I think is a very good guy. He happens to be a socialist, but you can’t have everything. But they laughed at me. I said, I want you to give us 25, 28,000 soldiers on our borders to stop the people that are coming in with the caravans. And they laughed at me. I say that’s okay. You don’t want to do it, right? Yeah. I’m going to put a 25% tariff on all of your products including all of the cars that you’re selling. You know, they stole, they took like we were babies, 32% of our car manufacturing business over the last 30 years. 32% is now being made in Mexico and getting bigger all the time. And now as I told you before, with China going in building plants there specifically to sell into the United States, I would say to China, if you’re building a plant on our border, to build cars in Mexico and to sell them into the United States, I’m putting a 50% tariff on all those cars. And you know what, they would stop building their plants in about two – but we don’t do that. We have stupid people running our government, to be honest.
17 MR. KERNEN: Mr. President, we’ll see. I know there’s a lot going on for you. They gave you the campaign, they gave you the legal problems, other people are wondering how to prioritize and you keep getting paid. . .
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, legal disruptions are not legal disruptions. These are Biden issues. Biden put Fani, the lovely Fani, who turned out to be a corrupt district attorney now, but in my opinion they are all corrupt to the max. The only thing you see is an armed passing government. And the New York prosecutor’s office depends on the Department of Justice. They put their most sensible official in the prosecutor’s workplace. All this and, frankly, I get a lot of credit for it. I think I’m a lot more popular now because they did it and it backfired. They set up our government. Think about it. They put Colangelo, one of his smartest aides, as the top user, in the district attorney’s office to succeed Trump. They’re dealing with Letitia James, a real bully. They put other people with her, they try to pass her off as Trump all the time. They are the Democrats. The prosecutors and judges of New York, our country, could fall for this, the scenario is very serious. And corporations are leaving New York because of what they did to me. And he went on to end up winning the appeal. And if I didn’t win the appeal of those ridiculous decisions, if I didn’t win the appeal, those are the most ridiculous decisions and, to say the least, Ms. Bergdorf Goodman, a user I have never met, I have never met, I have no concept of who she is. she. Except one thing. I demanded. From that moment on I was like, Wow, this is crazy. What is this. I accused him. I won a false accusation and had to pay a bail of 91 million dollars for a false accusation. People don’t move to New York because of the kind of shit they give me. I feel like a pioneer. The thing is that we have to be very careful. You know, we have a very fragile country. People reject it and stare. Normally someone would be absent from duty if such things happened. My numbers are much higher than they would have been if this hadn’t happened. But you have to be able to communicate about it. This is a very harmful thing. What they are doing is something very, very harmful to our country. It is the militarization of the Department of Justice, the FBI, etc.
KERNEN: Well, we appreciate all the time you’ve given us this morning, Mr. President. I look forward to another conversation in the not too distant future.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you very much, Joe. Thank you all.
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