Here is the full transcript of Elon Musk’s live interview with former President and Republican Presidential nominee Donald Trump on the social media platform X (formerly Twitter). This event took place on August 13, 2024.
Listen to the audio version here:
TRANSCRIPT:
Introduction and Technical Difficulties
ELON MUSK: All right, hello, everyone. So, my apologies for the late start. We unfortunately had a massive distributed denial-of-service attack against our servers and saturated all of our data lines, like basically hundreds of gigabits of data were saturated. We think we’ve overcome most of that, and so it’s now time to proceed.
But as this massive attack illustrates, there’s a lot of opposition to people just hearing what President Trump has to say. But I’m honored to have this conversation. I want to emphasize it’s a conversation, and it’s really intended to just get a feel for what Donald Trump is just like in a conversation. It’s hard to catch a vibe about someone if you just don’t hear them talk in a normal way.
And when there’s an adversarial interview, like no one’s themselves in an adversarial interview. And this is really aimed at kind of open-minded, independent voters who are just trying to make up their mind. And so you can understand, like, what is it just like to have a conversation? So, Donald, great to speak.
We had a great conversation yesterday. As you mentioned yesterday, if we could just record that conversation and post it, it would have been excellent. And I hope we can have something like that today.
Record-Breaking Audience
DONALD TRUMP: Well, I think we will. I’m pretty sure we will. And congratulations, because I see you broke every record in the book with so many millions of people. And it’s an honor. We view that as an honor.
And then you do want silencing of certain voices. Usually those are voices that have something to say that are constructive, oftentimes constructive. And so we have to consider it an honor. But congratulations on breaking every record in the book tonight. That’s great.
Discussing the Assassination Attempt
ELON MUSK: Well, thank you. Well, maybe we could start off with, I mean, the assassination attempt, which was an incredible thing. And I have to say that, you know, your actions after that assassination attempt were inspiring.
You know, instead of shying away from things, instead of ducking down, you were pumping your fists in the air and saying, fight, fight, fight. And I think that’s, I mean, you know, the President of the United States represents America. And I think that is America. That is strength under fire.
And so that’s, you know, a big, you know, part of the reason why I was excited to endorse you as the President of the United States, for having us come here, is that was just incredibly inspiring. But, I mean, what was it like for you?
DONALD TRUMP: Not pleasant. Not pleasant. There was blood. I didn’t know I had that much blood. The doctors later told me that the ear is a place that is a very bloody place if you’re going to get hit. But in this case, it was probably the best alternative you could even think about, because it went at the right angle.
And, you know, it was a hard hit. It was very, I guess you would say surreal, but it wasn’t surreal. You know, I was telling somebody, you have instances like this or like a lot less than this where you feel it’s a surreal situation. And I never felt that way.
The Moment of Impact
DONALD TRUMP: I knew immediately that it was a bullet. I knew immediately that it was at the ear. And because it, you know, it hit very hard, but hit the ear.
And I also heard people shout, “bullets, bullets,” you know, “get down, get down,” because I, you know, I moved down pretty nicely, pretty quickly. And we had bullets flying right over my head after I went down. So I’m glad I went down. The bigger miracle was that I was looking in the exact direction of the shooter.
And so it hit me at an angle that was far less destructive than any other angle. So that was the miracle. That was, for those people that don’t believe in God, I think we got to all start thinking about that. You have to, you know, I’m a believer.
Now I’m more of a believer, I think. And a lot of people have said that to me. A lot of great people have said that to me, actually. It was amazing that I happened to be turned just at that perfect angle.
The Immigration Chart
DONALD TRUMP: And all because I put down a chart on immigration that showed that the numbers were so great. I love that chart even more now.
ELON MUSK: I mean, maybe it’s a sign. Maybe that’s a sign. It’s an immigration sign. You highlighted a serious issue. And at that moment, the bullet missed your, you know, hit your ear, but, you know, missed your head.
DONALD TRUMP: Well, the amazing thing is that the sign, I said, bring down that sign on immigration. And it was literally about an eighth of a second where it would be good. And after that, it was going to be a disaster no matter which way you were facing. But it just had that perfect angle, which was exactly at this shooter. Very sad situation.
Remembering the Victims
DONALD TRUMP: Such a sad situation. As you know, we lost somebody that was great, Corey, who, a firefighter, a great gentleman, a great, a great trumper. He was just a fantastic family and a fantastic man. And a friend of mine came up, Elon, and said, “I’d like to give the family some kind of help.”
And I said, “That’s great.” He said, “Do you mind?” I said, “I don’t mind at all.” And he wrote out a check for a million dollars, gave it to the wife.
You know, she said, “This is really nice, but I’d rather have my husband back,” which is a nice thing for somebody to say, to be honest.
The Injured and Medical Care
DONALD TRUMP: They were hit really badly. They thought they were not going to make it. And they did. The doctors in the Butler area, I tell you, they were incredible. They saved the two. And they were really hit tough, both of them equally.
And my first question was because I heard bullets flying over me. I said, “How many people were killed?” Because we had a massive crowd there, a tremendous, thousands and thousands of people. And there was no land. I mean, it was all people. So I said, “How many people have been killed?”
Because I knew there were other shots being fired. And they said, “We don’t know yet, but some people have been badly hurt.” And I have to give the Secret Service sniper, they call him, or sharpshooter, but sniper, because he didn’t know there was a problem. He’s been — he’s an extraordinary shot, obviously.
The Secret Service Sharpshooter
DONALD TRUMP: And he didn’t know there was a problem. And he was able to pick it all out within five seconds. And he used one bullet from very far away, I guess, probably about 400 yards. The shooter was 130.
But he was on the opposite side of the field and the podium. And he saw the smoke and the flame from the gun, immediately recognized it, and immediately took a shot. And it was one perfect shot from very far away. And if he didn’t do that, Elon, he would have, I mean, if he would have, a lot of people, a lot more people could have been badly hurt and killed.
So I have to take my hat off to him, because that’s also a surreal. You know, he’s been with them for 23 years. And he’s never had anything like this. And all of a sudden, he has to act.
The Sharpshooter’s Quick Action
DONALD TRUMP: And it’s a very tough thing to act and to be shooting somebody. But he saw the gun, saw the smoke, saw the flame from the gun, very far away. Obviously, he has very good eyes. He’s got very good vision, which I assume you have to have in that particular work.
But he took aim very quickly. And they say it was approximately five seconds from long range, one bullet. That didn’t happen, because the shooter had a lot of bullets. He had a lot of cartridges up there with him.
ELON MUSK: Well, I mean, that’s clearly, you know, he was very competent in taking that shot to stop the attempted assassination. But there does seem to be, I mean, some pretty significant failings elsewhere in the system. Like, there’s just no way that, like, how on earth does a shooter get on a roof 130 yards away? That seems crazy.
Security Concerns
ELON MUSK: I think most people are wondering how on earth could such a thing happen.
DONALD TRUMP: Well, you know, I view it as two ways. There should have been nobody on the roof. There were people, because there were so many tens of thousands of people there.
There were people that were seeing him. And there was one woman with a red shirt and Trump all over it. And she’s screaming, “That guy’s got a gun.” You know, you saw it probably. “There’s a guy up there with a gun.”
ELON MUSK: I mean, it’s like, I guess, I mean, for my part, and I think probably many members of the public are wondering, how the heck are, you know, basically people wondering why, pointing out there’s a guy on the roof with a gun. They’re seeing it, but somehow it’s not being addressed. That does seem crazy.
Learning from the Incident
DONALD TRUMP: Well, they’re going to learn from this. The communication between the local police, who sort of had an idea, and then ultimately a man lifted himself up to the roof, could barely do it because, you know, he was pulling himself up. And he saw the man with the gun. The man with the gun pointed the gun at him.
He thought he was probably going to get shot. But, you know, he was pulling himself up. And because of that, he couldn’t get to his gun. And he fell down, actually very badly hurt his leg, his ankle, I hear, very badly.
But he fell down. And he did, you know, from what I understand, he did say there’s a guy up there with a gun. And the shooting started very quickly after that. I think it forced the shooter to go maybe quicker.
The Shooter’s Accuracy
DONALD TRUMP: You know, it was supposed to be a very good shot. My sons, Don and Eric, they can’t believe what happened. But they said from 130 yards, a bad shot would hit that target almost every time. They said it’s like in golf, sinking a two-foot putt.
ELON MUSK: Yeah, it’s not a tough shot.
DONALD TRUMP: No, it’s not a long shot. The Secret Service person had the long shot. He had a, you know, triple distance, actually. So, you know, it was a terrible thing. Look, it’s hard. I have to say this about the Secret Service.
The Crowd’s Reaction
DONALD TRUMP: When I went down, and, you know, I went down based on I think their screaming. But other people also because people saw this happen. You know, you had so many people. One of the miracles was that nobody ran.
I mean, if a gun goes off, the crowd control people showed us this. When guns go off, and it does happen in stadiums at a soccer match or some kind of a match, everybody flees. They call it a stampede, like cattle. And a lot of people get killed with those stampedes.
We had more people than you’d have at, you know, some of these matches or these games. And nobody left. You know, you had a small group behind us in the grandstand. And that was full.
The Crowd’s Loyalty
DONALD TRUMP: And you look at it as it was taking place. And normally they’d be running. They didn’t leave. They saw that I was hurt. They saw a lot of blood. And they saw that I went down. And it’s almost like they wanted to be with me. Well, out front, you had thousands, tens of thousands of people.
As far as the eye could see, you had people in Butler. As far as the eye could see. And a lot of press, too. You know, many cameras on watching this. It’s what makes it so different, because normally things happen that aren’t good, but you never have a picture of it. Here we have all these cameras shooting it. So, you know, sort of amazing. But one of the interesting things was that you didn’t have anybody flee.
The Courageous Crowd
DONALD TRUMP: You didn’t have anybody stampede. Nobody. And there were some people behind me. They stood up, and they’re looking like, you know, I mean, I say, you want to have them in a foxhole with you.
I want to meet some of those people. Because it’s so different from what you heard. So I was down. But the Secret Service guys, there were bullets flying right over my head. You could hear them go whizzing. And these guys came jumping on top of me. And a young lady, Kate, would jump. They moved so fast.
And let me tell you, that took tremendous courage. Now, there was a lack of coordination. You know, obviously, everybody understands that somebody, that building should have been covered.
Security Oversight
ELON MUSK: I mean, look at the aerial views. That building would be, like, the number one spot for a sniper. If you were to pick, like, what is the favorite place? So if the goal is to assassinate, what’s your favorite spot? That building.
DONALD TRUMP: You’re right.
ELON MUSK: That building would be number one.
DONALD TRUMP: That would have been the spot.
ELON MUSK: You can ask for a better location.
DONALD TRUMP: No, that would have been the spot. You know, what people think is when the local policeman, who, by the way, you know, he really, he did what he was supposed to do. He couldn’t hold on any longer.
And then when he got his head just peeking above, this guy standing there with a gun at his head. And when he fell down, again, hurt his ankle very badly. But he was making the calls. But what happened is the firing took place very soon.
The Shooter’s Actions
DONALD TRUMP: So what they think is that this guy ran to his site, which he had all planned out with a gun. He ran to the site and he started shooting fast. And maybe that’s why he, well, he sort of missed. I mean, you know, he got me. But it could have been a much bigger problem.
ELON MUSK: But he totally would have hit if you hadn’t turned your head. It was a very near thing.
DONALD TRUMP: It was a miracle. If I hadn’t turned my head, I would not be talking to you right now, as much as I like you.
ELON MUSK: Exactly.
DONALD TRUMP: I would not be talking to you.
ELON MUSK: You may be talking to me from another realm, perhaps.
DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, that’s right. We’d be talking from a different place. But it was a very terrible experience. The Butler Hospital, they did such a great job. The doctors were so good. Everybody was so good. There was a mistake. If somebody knew, because people were hearing.
Security Concerns and Coordination
DONALD TRUMP: You know, there was just a bad feeling that somebody was around. You know that story now.
ELON MUSK: Yeah, yeah.
DONALD TRUMP: And if somebody could have said. Because they’ve oftentimes said, you know, like there’d be a lightning storm or something. Because I’ve done, I think, over 300. I think I did a lot more than that. But we did a lot.
And oftentimes they’ll say, “Sir, could you wait 10 minutes, please? Sir, could you wait 20 minutes? There’s a storm overhead or lightning or something,” right? And that happens often. And this would have been a perfect time for that to have happened. But it didn’t get coordinated. That was the problem.
Courage Under Fire
ELON MUSK: Well, it was, I think, your actions in the heat of fire. And, you know, what I find honorable there was that you can’t fake bravery under such circumstances. The courage is instinctual or it is not. It’s not a rehearsed action. And so I just want to say that I think a lot of people admire your courage under fire there. And, yeah.
DONALD TRUMP: Thank you very much. I appreciate it. I didn’t think of it. I just wanted to get up. And I wanted to stand up. I wanted to let people know, you know, I felt I was good.
When they were on top of me, covering me, actually, very much covering me and very bravely. But I wanted to get up. I said, “I want to get up.” And they wanted, you know, they have everything there. They have, they wanted stretcher.
The Aftermath
DONALD TRUMP: I didn’t like the stretcher. And I knew I was hit in the ear, but I knew I wasn’t hit anywhere else. They felt I was hit someplace else. It was such a lot of blood. And they were sure that I was hit someplace else. And they were saying, “Sir, you were hit more than the ear.” I said, “Nope, I was hit in the ear. I want to get up.”
“Let me get up.” And so I got up. And the crowd didn’t know what to think. I mean, this was so, so many people. And you could see they were confused. They didn’t know what to think. And I wanted to let them know I was okay. It was very important for me to let them know that.
The Crowd’s Reaction
DONALD TRUMP: And they went wild. You’ve seen the after. They didn’t go wild when I got up because they didn’t know, was I alive? You really couldn’t tell.
When I stood up before the hand, before the, you know, the fist in the air, they didn’t know if I was alive. Nobody did. And when I put the fist up, they were just relieved and happy and thrilled. And the place went crazy. It was pretty amazing. It was a terrible thing, but it was incredibly moving.
The Immigration Slide
ELON MUSK: Well, and I mean, speaking of the sort of slide that got you to turn that saved your life, really, was the illegal immigration slide.
DONALD TRUMP: That’s right.
ELON MUSK: Maybe we’re talking about that. That slide saved your life.
DONALD TRUMP: The illegal immigration saved my life. You’re right. But it had to be at that exact angle.
ELON MUSK: I mean, that’s a great one. Saved by illegal immigration.
DONALD TRUMP: You know, the incredible thing, though, when you talk about the odds, you had to be exactly at that angle. But the incredible thing is that the chart, I used it less than 20% of the time. It was just a moment. It’s always on my left, never my right. And it’s always at the end of the speech.
A Series of Coincidences
DONALD TRUMP: So here we have it. It’s on the right, not the left. It’s at the beginning, not the end. And even the people that put it up, they were unprepared. And they did a great job. They got it up immediately, fortunately. But I looked to the right, and the bullet came whizzing by, hitting my ear. So it was amazing.
But when you think of the odds of that, and, you know, that normally you wouldn’t use it. Normally I wouldn’t have the thing. And then, you know, it would have been a very different story. It’s very much, I say an act of God. It’s a miracle that it happened. And I’m honored by it. I’m honored by it.
Returning to the Topic of Immigration
ELON MUSK: Well, what were you about to say about illegal immigration before you were rudely interrupted?
DONALD TRUMP: Well, I was going to say how good the numbers were. By the way, we’re going back to Butler. And we’re going to go back in October. We’re all set up, and the people are fantastic in Butler.
It’s a great area. These are incredible people. Like the three that, in the case of Corey killed, the other two, the families, I got to know them a little bit. But we’re going back to Butler. And I think I’ll probably start by saying, as I was saying, prior to being so horribly interrupted.
The Immigration Chart
ELON MUSK: Yeah, so rudely interrupted by an assassination attempt.
DONALD TRUMP: No, but the chart.
ELON MUSK: Some people have no manners.
DONALD TRUMP: Elon, the chart was just a chart that, in my last week, we had the best illegal immigration numbers, meaning stopping. It was at the lowest. You’ve seen the chart. It’s become quite a famous chart.
But that was the lowest point ever recorded. It was really, I mean, I was very proud of those numbers. And then you see what happened with these people, Kamala and Joe. You see what happened.
Immigration Policies
DONALD TRUMP: They just let it go. I had Remain in Mexico policies. I had all these different policies that were so good. Guys like Tom Homan and Brandon Judd from Border Patrol. These are all people that they’ve been on television. They said it’s the best numbers we’ve ever had. We had so many different checks. Catch and release in Mexico, not the United States.
We had catch and release in the United States. We had it in Mexico. We had so many things. We had things where if people, many people come in there, they have contagious diseases. We had everything passed. If you have a contagious disease, I’m sorry, but we cannot allow you into the country. So we were setting literally records. And all I was doing is showing that.
The Importance of the Chart
DONALD TRUMP: And I used it sometimes. And in this case, I’m glad I used it. I can tell you that. But they were fantastic numbers. But I’m going to sleep with that chart always. I’ll be sleeping with that chart. That chart was very important, very important for a lot of reasons.
ELON MUSK: Well, I mean, would it be accurate to say that you’re supportive of legal immigration, but we also need to shut down illegal immigration and especially unvetted illegal immigration?
And that’s not the same as saying that everyone who is an illegal immigrant is bad. In fact, I think most people who are illegal immigrants are actually good, but you can’t tell the difference unless there’s a solid vetting of who comes across the border. Does that accurately represent your position?
Trump’s Position on Immigration
DONALD TRUMP: I say it very simply. They have to come in legally. They have to be checked. Because look, Kamala was the border czar. Now she’s denying it. Everything that I do, she’s saying she was strong on the border. We’re going to be strong. She doesn’t have to say it. She could close it up right now.
They could do things right now. It’s horrible. No tax on tips. And all of a sudden she’s making a speech and saying there will be no tax on tips.
Criticism of Current Administration
DONALD TRUMP: I said that months ago. And by the way, they had just the opposite. You know, they had not only tax on tips, but they hired 88,000 IRS agents, and many of them were assigned to go get waitresses and caddies and all of this on tips. They have a policy.
They had a policy that we’re really going to go after you, and we’re really harassing people horribly. And then all of a sudden for politics, she says, you know, she comes out with what I said, which I think is terrible, and I think it’s also hitting them very hard. These people are fake. Now they’re also saying they did a good job on the border.
We had the worst numbers in the history of the world, not of our country. There’s never been a country in history that has had a catastrophe like this. We’ve had, I believe, and I think you believe this, too. I believe it’s over 20 million people came into our country, many coming from jails, from prisons, from mental institutions, or a bigger version of that is insane asylums, and many are terrorists.
Global Nature of Immigration
DONALD TRUMP: And I’ll tell you what. They’re coming not just from South America. They’re coming from Africa. They’re coming from all over the world.
They’re coming from Asia. They’re coming from the Middle East. They’re coming from countries that are stupidly and horribly bombing Israel, October 7th. They’re coming from all over the world. And, you know, you look at it’s so sad, October 7th, because it should have never happened. It’s so sad when you look at Ukraine. It should have never happened. We have a defective government.
Criticism of Current Administration’s Competence
DONALD TRUMP: These are defective people, and they’re not people that could be running it. But where you see it the best is the border, because you have millions of people coming in a month, and then she gets up, and she tries to pretend like she’s going to do something. She had three and a half years. And, by the way, they have another five months that they can do something, but they won’t do anything.
It’s all talk. She’s incompetent, and he’s incompetent. And, frankly, I think that she’s more incompetent than he is, and that’s saying something because he’s not too good.
ELON MUSK: Yeah. No, I think it is essential to have a secure border. I mean, you’re really not a country unless you have a secure border.
DONALD TRUMP: Correct. And secure elections.
ELON MUSK: You know, absolutely secure elections. And so it’s just essential to have a real border, or we can’t function as a country, and our central services are being overwhelmed in a lot of cities.
Legal Immigration Process
ELON MUSK: But as we were talking about earlier, I think having a legal immigration process that is smooth and efficient and done well, and, you know, speaking as someone who is a legal immigrant, and I think that, I mean, like one way to think of it is who do you want on your team? You know, like who do you want on Team America?
And I think we want to just say, okay, we want to let in people who are going to, you know, be great contributors to our society and to our economy, and, you know, and who do you want on the team? And it’s not to say that, like, in my opinion, actually, I’d say, like, probably most of the illegal immigrants actually are good, hardworking people. That’s my opinion. But some are not.
And you just have this sort of adverse selection process where, you know, if somebody is, you know, if somebody is like a, you know, has a career in theft or robbery, I don’t understand what’s taking them so long to get here because we’re in such a target-rich environment. I mean, you know, why don’t more people who have a career in, you know, bad things come in here sooner?
Concerns About Criminal Elements
DONALD TRUMP: You have a lot of people that just shouldn’t be. I think it’s a much bigger number than you think. They’re allowing people from their jails. And if you were running one of these countries where they’re coming from, you would have had all of them. As an example, Venezuela, their crime is down 72 percent. They’re taking their drug dealers.
They’re taking, frankly, their prisoners. They’re emptying out their prisons. They’re taking their criminals, their murderers, their rapists, and they’re delivering them.
ELON MUSK: That’s what Castro did.
DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, well, he did on a much smaller scale. It was a much smaller scale. But this is a massive scale because this is being done worldwide. But here’s what’s happening. Crime all over the world is down. And wait until you see the numbers that we have. You know, this is migrant crime. This is crime that’s going to be.
Recent Incidents and Concerns
DONALD TRUMP: And I saw it today in New York where somebody was knifed, where they raped the girlfriend of a man that stood there watching in New York in one of the shelters and started pulling out the knives. And bad things happened today. But this is happening every day. These are rough people.
These are people that are in jail for murder and all sorts of things. And they’re releasing them into our country. And they’re telling them, if you come back, we’re going to kill you. We’re going to give you the death penalty or kill you. So they don’t want to come back. But these are rough people. These are criminals that make our criminals look like nice people. And it’s horrible what they’re doing.
Criticism of Vice President’s Role
DONALD TRUMP: And she’s in charge of it because, you know, now she’s trying to say she had nothing to do with it. And she’s such a liar because she was called the Border czar the first day. And it was on the headlines of every newspaper. She’s the Border czar.
And she never even went there. She went to one location, which had nothing to do with where the problem is. You know, she went in and out, I guess, because she was getting a lot of press. But it had nothing to do with the problem.
But she was the Bordezar. And people can’t allow them to get away with their disinformation campaign. Now she’s trying to say that she wasn’t really involved. And the whole thing is horrible.
Trump’s View on Administration’s Competence
DONALD TRUMP: She was totally in charge. She could have shut the border down without him. He didn’t know what he was doing anyways. He wouldn’t have even known what happened. You could shut the border down. He wouldn’t even know the difference. But the fact is that she was Border czar. But you don’t have to call her that. The fact is you could just call her. She was in charge of the border. And the border was the worst ever.
ELON MUSK: It’s simply not working.
DONALD TRUMP: No, it’s horrible. Whether it’s a question of intention or competence, either way, we don’t have a secure border. And we have people streaming over like it looks like a World War Z zombie apocalypse at times. And sometimes you’ve got to sort of wonder, is it real or not?
Musk’s Border Visit
ELON MUSK: Because you see things and you’re like, is it real? So I went to the border at Eagle Pass and I saw for myself in Texas. And I was like, okay, it’s real. I’m seeing this in real time.
I actually posted the video just live. I just flew there one day to see, hey, is this made up or real? And I’m just seeing people stream across the border. And I have to say, at least the people I saw did not look friendly. So people can look at my video and say, hey, these people look friendly. I don’t look super friendly.
Trump’s Perspective on Immigrants
DONALD TRUMP: These are people that Elon would not be the same man if he had to walk across the street and look these people in the eye. These are rough people. These are really rough people coming across. And I know rough people. And these are people that we don’t want in our country. And, you know, the caravans are coming in and they’re putting – and who’s doing this are the heads of the countries.
And you would be doing it and so would I. And everyone would say, oh, what a terrible thing to say. The fact is it’s brilliant for them because they’re taking all of their bad people, really bad people. And I hate to say this.
The reason the numbers are much bigger than you would think is they’re also taking their nonproductive people. Now, these aren’t people that will kill you. We have enough of them. But these are people that are nonproductive.
Nonproductive Immigrants
DONALD TRUMP: They are just nonproductive, I mean, for whatever reason. They’re not workers or they don’t want to work or whatever. And these countries are getting rid of nonproductive people in the caravans in many cases. And they’re also getting rid of their murderers and their drug dealers and the people that are really brutal people.
And they’re coming into our country at levels that have never been seen before. And I saw an ad just before I got on the air. I’m walking over here. And I saw an ad by Kamala saying how she is going to provide border security. Where has she been for three and a half years? For three and a half years, we have 20 million people. It’s terrible.
ELON MUSK: Yeah, I think this is a fundamental existential issue for the United States. And if we have another four more years of open borders, and it’s going to be even worse. With another four more years, it’s going to be even worse than it’s been for the past three and a half years. I’m not sure we’ve got a country.
DONALD TRUMP: You don’t have a country, Elon. Elon, if they get in, you will have 50 to 60 million people from all over the world, not South America only. We think of South America. We think of Honduras and El Salvador, Guatemala, and Mexico, the four. But it’s not that. It’s everywhere. They’re coming in from everywhere. And I had to stay in Mexico.
Global Immigration
ELON MUSK: This is a super important point. Basically, when I went down there, I was like, where are people from? It’s like almost no one was from Mexico.
DONALD TRUMP: No, Mexico less than the others.
ELON MUSK: It’s just the border with Mexico. It’s the people coming in. It’s Earth, the rest of Earth. And America is only about four or five percent of the population of Earth. It would only take a few percent of the rest of Earth to overwhelm everything in the world.
DONALD TRUMP: We’re already overwhelmed, Elon. We’re overwhelmed. You had to see the news tonight about New York. And I love that place. And what they’re doing to it is horrible, what they’re doing to it. And all the courts do is they try and focus on Trump. They say, let’s focus on Trump, who did nothing wrong. I complain about a rigged election.
Elon, what’s happened is unbelievable. You have from Africa, from the Congo, they’re coming, from the Congo. And 22 people came in from the Congo recently. And they’re murderers.
Criminal Elements in Immigration
DONALD TRUMP: And they’re dropped. They drop them. They take them out of jails, which is very expensive, you know, to maintain the jails, although they don’t do too much maintaining, I can tell you. But they take them out of jails, prisons.
They take them out and they bring them to the United States. They deposit them in the United States and say, don’t ever come back or you’re going to be executed. And they don’t want to come back. But they won’t come back.
But they’re coming from Africa. They’re coming from Asia. They’re coming from the Middle East. They’re coming from South America. They’re coming from everywhere. And there are a lot of really bad ones.
ELON MUSK: It’s just an everywhere on Earth thing. And it’s just not possible for the United States to absorb everyone from Earth or even a few percent of the rest of Earth. It’s just not possible.
Proposed Deportation
DONALD TRUMP: Well, Elon, we’re going to have — just to finish this up. We’re going to have the largest deportation in history of this country. And we have no choice. Otherwise, we’re going to have a country what they’ve done to our country. Think of it. You know, in Venezuela and in some of these other countries, crime is down 50, 60, 70, 80 percent. And you would be the same.
I’ll tell you what. Venezuela has not gotten rid of all of them. They’ve gotten rid of about 70 percent of their really bad people. Their jails are about 50 percent put into the United States. Same with other countries. Some are at 30 percent. Some are at 50 percent. They’re all different. But the bottom line is they’re all going to be at 100 percent. Why wouldn’t you put 100 percent?
ELON MUSK: Yeah.
Criticism of Current Administration
DONALD TRUMP: And they’re doing it right now while this third rate phony candidate. Don’t forget, I beat — I beat Biden. He failed in the debate miserably. And, you know, some people said, oh, geez, too bad. It’s too bad he did so badly or I did well in the debate.
You know, the first night they said, wow. One of the people at CNN said that was the greatest debate performance I’ve ever witnessed. And then two days later, they didn’t talk about that. They just said he was bad.
But that’s OK. That’s the way I get treated. And I don’t mind that at all. What I can tell you is this. We cannot have a Democrat. We cannot have her. She’s incompetent. She’s as bad as Biden in a different.
ELON MUSK: Yeah.
DONALD TRUMP: She hasn’t done an interview since this whole scam started. And say what you want. This is a coup. This was a coup of a president of the United States. He didn’t want to leave. And they said we can do it the nice way or we can do it the hard way.
ELON MUSK: Yeah. I mean, they just took him out back behind the shed and basically shot him.
DONALD TRUMP: Oh, what they did with this guy. And I’m no fan of his. And he was a horrible president, the worst president in history. And one of the reasons he was so bad. First of all, the Israeli attack would have never happened. Russia would never have attacked Ukraine and we’d have no inflation. And we wouldn’t have had the Afghanistan mess.
If you think of it. Well, and we wouldn’t have had Afghanistan. But we think of it. We – you take a few of those events away and we have a different world. We would also have no — inflation was caused by oil.
The Importance of a Strong President
ELON MUSK: Yeah. No, no. I think you make an excellent point here, which is that when other countries can, you know, that that are thinking about invading or doing bad things when they’re thinking about that, they’re thinking about, OK, what’s the American president going to do?
And do they fear the American president? Or is there someone they do not respect and do not fear? And I think they do. They do. They would rightfully be. I mean, you know, look at the footage of the assassination. They’re like, OK, you know, President Trump is like, don’t mess with me. I mean, that’s like whereas I think people are not going to be.
And they obviously have not been at all intimidated by Biden. And they certainly will not be intimidated by Kamala. And you have to really think about in the context of global security. That’s that if the American president is someone someone that like, you know, evil dictators are scared of, that makes a huge difference to the security of the world.
Trump’s Relationship with World Leaders
DONALD TRUMP: So I had a good relationship with Putin, despite the Russia, Russia, Russia hoax that lasted for over two years. Just a hoax created by Hillary Clinton and Adam Shifty Schiff. Some just bad people, you know, just sick people, frankly. I mean, Schiff is a sick person.
He’s going to end up probably being a senator. It’s hard to believe the whole thing is hard to believe. But, you know, they put our country in danger with that stuff, too. They actually when they make up stories and you have to fight your way out of it for a long time.
But I know Putin very well. I got along with him very well. He respected me. And it’s just one of those things. And we would talk a lot about Ukraine. It was the apple of his eye. But I said, don’t ever do it. Don’t ever do it.
Nord Stream 2 and Keystone XL
DONALD TRUMP: You know, I shut down Nord Stream two. That was the big oil pipeline, the biggest, I think, the biggest pipeline in the world going all over Europe. I shut it down. Biden came and then they say, you know, I loved Russia.
I was a friend of Putin and I loved Russia. Now, he actually said to me one time, he said, if you’re my friend, I’d hate to see you as an enemy. I shut down his pipeline. The biggest pipeline they were looking at that front.
And this pathetic president gets in there. And the first thing he did, one of the early things he did is he shut down. He shut down Keystone XL pipeline, which is our pipeline that would have employed 48000 people. Pipeline workers — shut it down. That was a massive job that Obama refused to allow. I allowed it in my first week because it was jobs that have moved oil. And by the way, in a much more environmentally friendly way, it’s underground. It’s not a truck that catches on fire or a train that catches on fire.
But think of it. He shut down the XL pipeline, the Keystone XL pipeline. He shuts that down and he approves the Russian pipeline.
ELON MUSK: Yeah, it doesn’t make any sense. It’s like it’s inconsistent. Certainly. But I mean, I think it’s just worth emphasizing to listeners that the immense importance of whether the United States president is intimidating or not intimidating and how much that matters to global security, because there’s some real tough characters out there. And if they don’t think the American president is tough, they will do what they want to do.
Trump’s Relationships with World Leaders
DONALD TRUMP: I know every one of them.
ELON MUSK: And that puts the whole world in danger.
DONALD TRUMP: Elon, I know every one of them and I know them well. I know Putin. I know President Xi. I know Kim Jong Un of North Korea. I know every one of them. And let me tell you, people say, oh, this is terrible.
He said, I’m not saying anything good or bad. They’re at the top of their game. They’re tough. They’re smart. They’re vicious. And they’re going to protect their country. Whether they love their country, they probably do. It’s just a different form of love.
But they’re going to protect their country. These are tough people at the top of their game. And when they see a Kamala or when they see Biden, Sleepy Joe, they can’t even believe it. They can’t believe this happened.
Global Conflicts and U.S. Leadership
DONALD TRUMP: All this stuff that you’re seeing now, all the horror that you look at Israel, they’re all waiting for an attack from Iran. Iran would not be attacking. Believe me. You know, when I was there and I say it with respect, because I think we would have been good with Iran.
I don’t want to do anything bad to Iran. They knew not to mess around. Iran was broke because I told China, if you buy from Iran oil, it’s all about the oil. That’s where the money is.
But if you buy oil from Iran, you’re not going to do any business with the United States. And I meant it. And they said, we’ll pass. They didn’t buy oil. Other countries likewise. You want to buy? You’re not doing business with the United States. And they were at a point where they were.
They had no money for Hamas. They had no money for Hezbollah. They had no money for any of these instruments of terror. And it was amazing.
U.S. Respect and Foreign Policy
DONALD TRUMP: In fact, there were articles when I was leaving, which is hard to believe, actually, especially when you look at what’s happened to our country. Our country is so bad right now. It’s such a different place. We were respected.
Think of it. Four years ago, we were so respected to a point where when I said don’t buy oil, they didn’t buy oil. But they had no money. And Israel would have never been attacked. Zero chance. And again, I said to Vladimir Putin, I said, don’t do it. You can’t do it, Vladimir. You do it. It’s going to be a bad day. You cannot do it. And I told him things that what I do. And he said, no way. And I said, way. And, you know, it’s the last time we ever had the conversation. He would never have done. I got along well with him.
I hope to get along well with him again. You know, getting along well with them is a good thing, not a bad thing. I got along well with him with Kim Jong Un, when I met with President Obama just before anything. You know, it’s sort of a ritual.
North Korea and Nuclear Threats
DONALD TRUMP: And I sat down with him and we talked. It was supposed to be for a very short period of time and turned out to be a long period of time. I said, what’s the biggest problem? He said, North Korea. I had that problem worked out very quickly. It was nasty at the beginning with Rocket Man and, you know, all the different things.
ELON MUSK: Yeah.
DONALD TRUMP: All of a sudden, I got a call —
ELON MUSK: with some epic tweets, by the way.
DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, there were. No, they were everything. He said, he said that he has a red button on his desk. I said, I have a red button on my desk, too, but my red button is much bigger and my red button works.
And then I called him the Rocket Man of Little Rocket Man. Anyway, here’s the bottom line. All of a sudden, I got a call from him and they said they want to meet. They want to meet me. And we met.
ELON MUSK: Yeah.
DONALD TRUMP: As you remember, we met in Singapore. We met also in Vietnam. And I got along with him. Great. We were in no danger. But President Obama thought we were going to end up in a war, a nuclear war with him. And let me tell you, he’s got a lot of nuclear stuff.
ELON MUSK: Exactly.
DONALD TRUMP: He’s got plenty of nuclear. He can do plenty of damage.
Responding to Strength
ELON MUSK: I mean, it’s because, you know, I mean, people like, like, you know, Kim Jong-un, they respond to strength, not weakness.
DONALD TRUMP: Well, he and I had a good relationship. Remember, I met him and we walked onto his land. Nobody ever walked onto his land before. I wouldn’t say let’s bring up the Secret Service again. I wouldn’t say they were thrilled when I did that. I walked onto his land and it was an amazing period.
But we were not in danger with him because of me. You know, I always say that we have enemies on the outside and we have enemies on the inside. We have some really bad people in our government and people that are and controlling of the people. I mean, I mentioned names, but I don’t — I really don’t want to give the credit, but we have some really bad and I say they’re more dangerous than Russia and China.
The Importance of a Smart President
DONALD TRUMP: If you have a smart president, a president that gets it, we are not in danger from those countries because they need us and they need our help. I mean, we forced Obama. If you think about it, Obama and Biden and Bush, to a certain extent, in all fairness, forced Russia and China together. And if you’re a history student, the first thing you learn is you cannot let Russia and China align.
But then they also got if you take a look, Iran and they have North Korea. That’s, you know, they call it the axis of evil. In the old days, you had the axis of evil. Here we have a modern day axis of evil.
These are powerful countries, very heavy nuclear, which is the biggest threat. You know, the biggest threat is not global warming, where the ocean is going to rise one one eighth of an inch over the next 400 years. The big and you’ll have more — you’ll have more oceanfront property. Right.
The Nuclear Threat
DONALD TRUMP: The biggest threat is not that the biggest threat is nuclear warming, because we have five countries now that have significant nuclear power and we have to not allow anything to happen with stupid people like Biden. You know, Biden did something with Russia. There was no chance of him ever going in. And when I left and then after I left, they started forming big armies on there on the border with Ukraine.
Right. And I looked at that and I thought he was doing that because Putin’s a good negotiator. I thought he was doing that to negotiate. But then Biden started saying such stupid things.
For instance, he said that it can be a NATO country. Now, Putin’s Russia for for as long as there’s been NATO has said we’re never going to agree to that. And we go right up front and say that. And we did things and said things through this president with a low IQ, very low IQ.
Criticism of Biden’s Intelligence
DONALD TRUMP: He had a low IQ 30 years ago, by the way, but now he might not even have a IQ at all. There is no — there’s nothing on the board that goes as low. He said things that were so stupid that — that war would have been — that war had zero chance of happening if I were there. Zero chance.
He was saying everything the opposite, everything the opposite. And it’s so sad because many more people have been killed in Ukraine than you read about. You don’t read about how bloody it is and how does it look just in the two armies? You lost a half a million people.
And, you know, Ukraine’s having a hard time. Ukraine, I don’t know if you saw the article recently and it’s true. You don’t hear the true story. But if you think about it, Russia’s gone.
Historical Context of Russia’s Military Power
DONALD TRUMP: You know, Russia defeated Germany with us and they defeated Napoleon. You know, they’ve been around a long time. They’re a big fighting for it. And it’s very unfair.
And Ukraine now doesn’t have enough men. They’re now using young men and very old men to fight. And it’s we’re in a very bad position. And I’m not going to blame exclusively, but I can tell you, I could have stopped that. And a smart president could have stopped that. It wouldn’t have happened. But we had a man that actually made it. It made it more prevalent.
It was so bad. The words that he was using, the stupid threats coming from a stupid face that he was using. I said, this guy’s going to cause us a war. He’s going to cause this.
The Risk of World War III
DONALD TRUMP: And let me tell you, it can lead to World War Three. That can lead to World War Three. The Middle East can lead. We have numerous places that could end up in World War Three right now for no reason whatsoever.
ELON MUSK: I think you’re right. I think people under underrate the risk of World War Three. And it’s just that, you know, when looking at the risk of global thermonuclear warfare, it’s game over for humanity. And, you know, it’s something that people have, I think, after the end of the Cold War, people have become complacent about.
But they actually have forgotten that there are currently a lot of nuclear missiles that have targeting parameters for the United States.
Proposal for an Iron Dome
DONALD TRUMP: And one of the things we’re going to do is we’re going to build an Iron Dome over us. You know, Israel has it. We’re going to have the best Iron Dome in the world.
We need it. And we’re going to make it all in the United States. But we’re going to have — we’re going to have protection because it just takes one maniac to start something. We’re going to have protection and we’re going to have — why shouldn’t we have an Iron Dome? Israel has one. Some other places have one that nobody even knows about, frankly. But Israel has it. We’re going to have an Iron Dome.
Focus on the Economy
DONALD TRUMP: But, you know, with all of that being said to me, that’s so important, the most important. But with all of that being said, the elections coming up and the people want to hear about the economy and the fact that they can’t buy groceries because they don’t have enough money to buy groceries. The inflation has killed them. Food prices are up 50, 60, even 100 percent in some cases.
And this stupid administration allowed this to happen. And it’s a shame. And that’s the thing that people most care about. In my opinion, they care about the border a lot. And we discuss the border at great length. And it’s nice to have a forum like this where I can discuss something at length. And by the way, you think Biden could do this interview? Do you think that Kamala could do this interview? They would take a pass. No, they could not. They don’t need Elon. They don’t need Elon screaming out questions.
It’s pretty sad when you think that somebody that does this for a living can’t answer a question or is afraid to do an interview. And in her case, with a very friendly interview, she’s got all friendly interviewers. It’s pretty.
ELON MUSK: Yes.
The Economy as a Key Issue
DONALD TRUMP: But the big thing now is the economy, Elon. And as much as. I mean, I viewed nuclear as the single most important thing. But a lot of people, a lot of people don’t understand that. But it doesn’t have to. If I understand it, that’s all you need, because if I was president, you’re not going to have that kind of a problem. But the thing that they really is making them angry is what Kamala and Biden have allowed to happen to the economy.
It’s a disaster with inflation, the inflation. It doesn’t matter what you make. The inflation is eating you alive. If you’re a worker or if you’re a just a middle income person, you can’t afford, you know, four years ago, five years ago, people were saving a lot of money.
Today, they’re using all their money and borrowing money just to live. It’s a horrible thing that’s happening. And we’ll end that.
Understanding Inflation
ELON MUSK: I think a lot of. Yeah. A lot of people just don’t understand where inflation comes from. Inflation comes from government overspending because the checks never bounce when it’s written by the government. So if the if the government spends far more than it brings in, that increases the money supply.
And if the money supply increases faster than the rate of goods and services, that’s inflation. So. So really, we need to have we need to reduce our government spending and we need to reexamine. I think we I think we need like a government efficiency commission to say, OK, where are we spending money?
That’s sensible. Where is it not sensible? And we need to live within our means. We’re currently adding, I think, a trillion dollars to the deficit every roughly every hundred days. And, you know, the interest payments on the national debt have now exceeded the defense budget. It’s on the order of a trillion dollars.
Military Spending and Afghanistan
DONALD TRUMP: I rebuilt our military, largely rebuilt our military, did a great job on it, which was so important. You know, we had jets. We had fighters that were and bombers that were 70 years old. And we did a great job in that.
Then we by the way, then we gave eighty five billion of it back to Afghanistan. You can believe it. We gave them eighty five billion. You know, they’re one of the largest sellers of military equipment in the world. They’re selling what we gave them. That was one of the most embarrassing days in the history of our country. But if you think about let’s go back to the the economy, we have to bring energy prices down. Energy started at the price of gasoline.
Energy Prices and Electric Cars
DONALD TRUMP: Now, your cars don’t require too much gasoline. So, you know, you’re you have a good and you do make a great product. I have to say I have to be honest with you. That doesn’t mean everybody should have an electric car, but these are minor details.
But your product is incredible. But the gasoline, Elon, is the the cost of energy, not only gasoline. It’s the cost of heating your house and cooling your house. That has to come down. It’s gone up 100 percent, 150 and 200 percent. And that has to come down when that comes down. And we’re going to drill baby drill. You know, they stopped drilling and then they went back to drilling because they went back to the Trump policy.
Energy Policy and AI
DONALD TRUMP: But if they won the day after they get into office, we’re going to — this country will go out of business because they’re going to go to an energy policy that’s not sustainable. Wind and different things. You’re not going to have any. And I know you’re a big fan of the A.I.
And I have to say that A.I. and this is shocking to me, but A.I. requires twice the energy that the country already produces for everything. So what you’re going to have to build, we’re going to have to build a lot of energy if our country will be competitive with China, because that’s our primary competitor for this on the A.I.
You’re going to need a lot of electricity. You’re going to need tremendous electricity, like almost double what we produce now for the whole country, if you can believe it.
ELON MUSK: Sure. Well, just going back to this, like the basic thing, which is that people try to make it sound complicated, but it’s not. But inflation is caused by government overspending. Would you agree that that we need to take a look at government spending and have perhaps a government efficiency commission? That just tries to make the spending sensible. And so the country lives within its means, just like just like a person.
Government Waste and Negotiations
DONALD TRUMP: The waste is incredible. And it’s nobody negotiates prices. You used to have a lot of people making jets and you end up with two companies and they’ll probably try and merge at some point. I mean, I went through it like air for just a thing like Air Force One.
One of the first documents they asked me to sign a general and sir, would you please sign this document? And what is it? Air Force One. That’s with Boeing, which is basically two planes, two 747s.
And the price was five point seven billion dollars for two planes. Now, they’re highly sophisticated, even nicer than your plane. OK, but much more sophisticated. They’re very I won’t say what’s on it, but they got a lot of stuff on it anyway.
But it’s five point seven. Crazy number. But I said, I’m not going to pay five point seven. I’m not going to do it.
Negotiating Air Force One
DONALD TRUMP: I said, who made the deal? Obama and his people. I said, well, then I know the deal is no good. I’m not going to do it.
And over the course of about four weeks, by my saying, I’m not going to do it. I got the price reduced by one point six billion dollars for the exact same plane. Other than we had a nicer paint job, if you want to know the truth. But for the exact same plane, I got a safe word.
And I said to Boeing, man, you guys must make a lot of money if you can reduce the price by that. But now what I do here is that they’re going back to the Biden administration and wanting big cost overruns, you know, because they see these dopey suckers in there and they’ll end up getting some of the money back. But I saved it by one point six billion dollars for the exact same plane. And you can now take that and multiply that out times thousands of other items.
Multiply five billion. The numbers are astronomical.
ELON MUSK: I agree with you. Well, I mean, if so, so I mean, I mean, I think it’d be great to just have a government efficiency commission that takes a look at these things and and just ensures that the taxpayer money, the taxpayers hard earned money is spent in a good way. And I’d be happy to help out on such a commission.
DONALD TRUMP: I’d love it. Well, you you’re the greatest cutter. I mean, I look at what you do. You walk in. You want to quit? I won’t mention the name of the company, but they go on strike and you say, that’s OK. You’re all gone. You’re all gone. So every one of you is gone and you are the greatest. You would be very good. Oh, you would love it.
But, you know, if you look at our.
ELON MUSK: Well, I’d be happy.
Congratulations on the Interview
DONALD TRUMP: Congratulations. I just looked at the number of people that are listening to you and I chat. We’ll call it a chat. But congratulations. This is perfect. I mean, it’s great.
And you’re an interesting character. You know, the new head of a place called Argentina. And he was — he’s great. And he’s a big MAGA fan. You know that he ran on MAGA and he took it to an extreme to he ran on MAGA. And I hear he’s doing really a terrific job. It’s called make Argentina great again. It worked out perfectly.
He came and they bought a lot of hats. He brought over. But he’s doing a big job. He really cut.
Argentina’s Economic Situation
DONALD TRUMP: And I’m hearing you’re starting to do pretty well. Inflation’s getting down. You know, they had like a thousand percent and they had inflation like not normal inflation. They had the real deal.
But we’re going to have that pretty soon. We have — I think we have the worst inflation we’ve had in 100 years. They say it’s 48 years. I don’t believe it. I think we have the worst. They don’t include a lot of the items that should be included. You know.
ELON MUSK: Yes.
Government Overspending and Inefficiency
ELON MUSK: Well, it’s just from government overspending and just not spending taxpayer money. Effectively. And having, you know, just the part like so many departments, you can’t even name them all.
And what Milei is doing is, you know, he’s cutting government spending. He’s simplifying things. He’s having you’re putting in regulations that make sense. And Argentina overnight is experiencing a giant improvement. Prosperity. But it’s also a lesson for the United States, which is that. Argentina used to be one of the most prosperous countries in the world, you know, in the 30s, 40s. And because of bad government policy, it ruined the country.
Lessons from Venezuela
ELON MUSK: And if you take Venezuela, for example, Venezuela should be incredibly prosperous. They have, you know, phenomenal reserves of everything, all everything. And it should be prosperous. But if the government’s wrong, it impoverishes the people.
And so I think we should not be complacent in the United States and thinking that and taking our prosperity for granted, because with bad government policy, we can run the country to the ground. And that’s just something people should bear in mind. Don’t take prosperity for granted.
Education Rankings and Spending
DONALD TRUMP: Well, think of education. So we’re ranked at the bottom of every list of the top 40. We’re ranked number 40, number 38. Norway, Switzerland, Sweden, different countries are ranked good. Actually, China is pretty close to the top. They’re a top six or seven. But we’re ranked at the bottom, almost at the bottom, 38, 39, 40. In other words, horrible. And yet we spend more per pupil than any other country in the world.
We spend more. And what I’m going to do, one of the first acts. And this is where I need an Elon Musk. I need somebody that has a lot of strength and courage and smarts.
Proposal to Close Department of Education
DONALD TRUMP: I want to close up Department of Education, move education back to the states where states like Iowa, where states like Idaho, you know, not every state will do great because states that basically aren’t doing good. Now, you look at Gavin Newsom, the governor of California. He’s terrible. He does a terrible job.
So he’s not going to do great with education. But of the 50, I would bet that 35 would do great. And 15 of them or, you know, 20 of them will be as good as Norway. You know, Norway is considered great.
You can name them. I mean, just they’re so good. Some of these countries are so good. But if you go into some of these really well run states, you know, we have states that don’t know what debt is. We have states that have low taxes, no debt. Everybody work. You know, they’re really well run.
ELON MUSK: Sure.
State Advantages and Education
DONALD TRUMP: And maybe they have certain advantages in terms of location, in terms of, you know, the land or the the sun, the sun and the water and the whole thing. You know, there are a lot of advantages to some people. But if you moved education back to the 50, you’ll have some that won’t do well, but you’ll have. But they’ll actually be forced to do better because it’ll be a pretty bad situation.
If you think about it. You’ll have some of these states. I’ll bet you’d have 30, 35 states. It’ll be much better. And you know what? It’ll cost less than half what it is in Washington. And these people don’t care about students in these, you know, faraway states. And it will be unbelievable.
ELON MUSK: Yeah. I think you’re making a good point in that. If the states have — if each individual, if each state has to compete against other states, then people will naturally move to states where it’s better.
Poorly Run States
DONALD TRUMP: Well, like California, you know, as we said, it’s a badly run state. I could go through. I got so many friends that are in those states, even if they’re Democrats. I hate to mention certain states, but Illinois is badly run with Pritzker. He’s a real loser. But, you know, some of these places are just badly run. But, you know, it’s almost going to force them to run better and they won’t do a good initially. But you’re not going to do worse than you’re doing right now.
And I would say, of course, you would cut your cost by 50 or 60 percent and you’d have a little monitor. You know, you want to make sure they’re teaching English as an example. You know, give them a little English. Right.
ELON MUSK: Sure. Right. No, but I mean, I mean, some of these governors are doing so badly. I mean, they got so many people moving out of their state. They should they should get you wholesale for the year award because they’re driving so much. You will. It’s actually amazing. People, people move it out.
State Survival and Business Migration
DONALD TRUMP: Isn’t it amazing to you as a businessman that they can even survive like Illinois? So many people are leaving and you wonder how do they survive? I mean, how do they survive? I saw where you left California and you moved to Texas.
Texas does a great job. But, you know, I mean, I just wonder how do these states survive when big businesses, a big oil company just left California, as you know, and they moved to Texas. How do these big states survive when they lose so many businesses and their taxes are already really high? You know, the taxes are among the highest.
You almost wonder how do they continue on? And in many cases, the governors don’t do a good job in their crime ridden places. You wonder how do they continue to just go on? It’s not a good situation.
ELON MUSK: I mean, I think the thing — that’s the only thing that’s going to force some of these states to change is if they risk bankruptcy and they’re not getting bailed out by the federal government.
DONALD TRUMP: Right.
ELON MUSK: Well, that’s the only thing that’s going to get them changed.
California’s Example
DONALD TRUMP: You remember the area in California where they had that, where I guess somebody had sticky fingers and a lot of money. And they went into a form of chapter and it was very nasty for a period of time. But now it’s probably the most popular place in all of California. So so, you know, at some point, something like that may have to happen.
But the problem is you can’t penalize people that loan money to the state when you have incompetent people like a Pritzker. Look, the family didn’t want him in the family business. And then he ends up being governor of Illinois. So, you know, what is he going to be? Is he going to be a great governor? And, you know, you have people I could name every one of them. I got to know every one of them. And some are very good and some are just horrible.
Inflation and Government Spending
ELON MUSK: Well, I think that I mean, the larger point here, as you’re saying, you know, a lot of people are concerned about the economy. A lot of people concerned about inflation. Inflation is effectively a tax on people that save money. And for people that are working day to day, it’s just a form of taxation.
And if we can solve the government spending problem, we’ll solve the inflation problem, which means people will have a better standard of living. That’s a really big deal.
DONALD TRUMP: The people that got hurt worst are the people that did it the way they were taught to do it all through, you know, their younger life and their their young life and their whole life. The people that saved money and then they got no interest on their money and inflation destroyed them.
And frankly, they were almost better off if they didn’t do anything like that. I mean, those people have been absolutely decimated. And we’re going to bring those people back and help those people. We’ve got to get the prices down.
The Impact of Inflation
DONALD TRUMP: You know, when I look at bacon costing five, four or five times more than it did a few years ago, when you look at some of the food products and groceries, those people go, they can’t believe it. They used to be able to buy a whole cart and today, you know, a lot of people just don’t have the money. They go in and they can’t buy anything. They look at, yeah, it’s ticker shock, they call it ticker shock, right?
ELON MUSK: I think it really just comes, like I said, I think it just comes down to really, I guess really two things, which is, is that if you solve a government overspending, you solve inflation, which improves living standards of the average person. And then if you deregulate, like have sensible regulations, because a lot of the regulations are nonsensical and cause the cost to be extreme for no reason, but unless you’ve got effective deregulation, like Reagan did a great job on deregulation in the 80s, but it’s been 40 years since we had anyone really. I mean, during your administration, we made some progress, but I think this change is an opportunity to make, I think, radical progress with sensible regulation and if you…
DONALD TRUMP: Well, Elon, we…
ELON MUSK: Those two things. Yeah. Those are the big deals.
Trump’s Deregulation Efforts
DONALD TRUMP: We set a record. We set a record. We did more deregulation and more restrictions on all of the different businesses than any other president.
I remember I had the rule for every one we put in, you have to get rid of at 10 or 12 and we did radical cuts on all of that. And a lot of that’s being put back by this administration. And we did radical cuts on things that weren’t necessary, but we were all set. We had the best economy ever, maybe in the world, and then what happened is COVID came in and we had to focus on that and nobody knew what it was.
And I always say I got good marks on economy, good marks on military. We knocked out ISIS. We did so many different things. We rebuilt.
COVID-19 Impact
DONALD TRUMP: But I never got the credit that we really deserved on what we did with COVID. We never got the credit, but we were… Had that not happened, the gift from China, from Wuhan, came in from Wuhan, the Wuhan labs, and I always said it and it turned out to be right. But had that not happened, we were set to start reducing debt.
We’re going to reduce taxes further. I gave the largest tax cuts and we were going to reduce taxes still further for middle income people, not only businesses, but we did it for businesses because they’re the ones that… That’s why we had the great job numbers. But we were set to really start reducing debt.
And we were sitting on the biggest pile of liquid gold anywhere in the world, bigger than Saudi Arabia, bigger than Russia. And we were going to drill and we were going to make so much money. We were going to supply Europe with oil. I had stopped the Russian pipeline and we were going to supply them with oil and gas.
Economic Plans Disrupted
DONALD TRUMP: We were going to make a fortune. And then the COVID came in and we really had to divert. Then what happened is when they came in, we kept a lot of businesses alive. If I didn’t do what we did, we would have had a 1929 type depression.
But the problem is when Biden came in, he got trillions of dollars and just started spending it stupidly. You didn’t need it anymore. We got over that bad period where it was everybody was dying and, you know, it was just not a good period. Interestingly, you know, during his administration, many more people died during his administration of COVID than during my administration.
And we really got the brunt of it. But people don’t realize more people died during his administration than ours. But it diverted us from doing what I wanted to do. We had the greatest for, you know, almost three years.
Economic Success Before COVID
DONALD TRUMP: And you know that probably better than anybody. So many of your friends said to me, the best years we’ve ever had in business were during the Trump years. And also said that African-American, Hispanic-American were so incredible. They were having the best Asian-American women, men, young people without a diploma, young people that graduated from the best colleges, from MIT, from the Wharton School, from all of the great colleges, Harvard.
They were doing better. And people without a diploma were doing better. And everybody was was happy. And then COVID came and we had — the problem is they spent trillions and trillions of dollars. They wasted. They shouldn’t have taken any money. And we wouldn’t be having inflation right now, which is killing our country.
ELON MUSK: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Musk’s Views on Climate Change and Energy
ELON MUSK: I want to say something about, like, you know, maybe my views on climate change and oil and gas, because I think it’s probably different from what most people would assume, because my views are actually pretty, I think, moderate in this regard, which is that I don’t think we should vilify the oil and gas industry and the people that have worked very hard in those industries to provide the necessary energy to support the economy. And if we were to stop using oil and gas right now, we would all be starving and the economy would collapse.
So it’s you know, I don’t think it’s right to sort of vilify the oil and gas industry. And the world has a certain demand for oil and gas, and it’s probably better if the United States provides that than some other countries. And it would help with prosperity in the US. And at the same time, obviously, my view is, is like, we do over time want to move to a sustainable energy economy, because eventually you do run out of I mean, you run out of oil and gas.
Climate Change Concerns
ELON MUSK: It’s not there. It’s not infinite. And there is some risk. I think it’s not the risk is not as as high as, you know, a lot of people say it is with respect to global warming.
But I think if you just keep increasing the cost of a million in the atmosphere long enough, eventually, it actually simply gets uncomfortable to breathe, people don’t realize this. If you go, if you go past 1000 parts per million of CO2, you start getting headaches and nausea. And so we’re now in the sort of 400 range, we’re adding, I think, about roughly two parts per million per year. So I mean, still gives us what it means, like, we still have quite a bit of time.
But so there’s not like we don’t need to rush and we don’t need to like, you know, stop farmers from farming or, you know, prevent people from having steaks or right basic stuff like that. Like, leave the farmers alone.
DONALD TRUMP: How crazy is that? Where I mean, you have farmers that are not allowed to farm anymore and have to get rid of their cattle and the whole, the whole world.
Fossil Fuels and Electric Cars
DONALD TRUMP: But it’s largely taken its lead from us. I do say, though, I’ve heard in terms of the fossil fuel, because even to create your electric car and create the electricity needed for the electric car, you know, fossil fuel is what really creates that at the generating plants. And, you know, so you sort of can’t get away from it at this moment. I mean, someday you might be able to.
But I do hear we have anywhere from 100 to 500 years left. You know, much of it hasn’t even been found yet.
ELON MUSK: Yeah.
ANWR and Oil Reserves
DONALD TRUMP: But there are tremendous like ANWR. I got ANWR in Alaska approved. Ronald Reagan couldn’t do it. Nobody could do it. Everybody tried. Nobody could do it. I got it approved. The first thing that Biden did was unimprove it to get rid of it. He ended it; his secretary went in and she ended it.
And what a disgrace. That’s ANWR. That’s bigger or they think it could be bigger than Saudi Arabia in Alaska, could be bigger than Saudi Arabia. But they went in and they terminated it.
And I’ll get it going very quickly, because not only is it big for Alaska, I mean, you talk about economic development that for the United States. I mean, that that is they say bigger than Saudi Arabia or the same size and pure, really good stuff. And, you know, they end it. So I think we have, you know, perhaps hundreds of years left. Nobody really knows. But during that time, something will come around that will be very good.
Musk’s Perspective on Climate Change
ELON MUSK: Well, I mean, my estimate would be, you know, a little more aggressive than that. But it’s not the sort of like we’re all going to die in five years stuff that that’s obviously BS.
But I mean, my view is like if you just look at sort of the past million that increments every year, you know, you get sort of two or three past million every year of CO2. I mean, I think some of that it’s problematic if it accelerates, if you start going from two or three to, say, five. And then there may be some situations where you get a step change increase in the CO2. And I think we don’t — we don’t want to get too close to a thousand PPM because like that’s that’s actually makes it uncomfortable to agree, like just existing in a thousand PPM CO2 is on top of that’s like a that’s considered like an industrial hazard.
So so, you know, that’s you start getting headaches and stuff. So even without global warming, it’s not comfortable. So you don’t want to get too close to that.
Transitioning to Sustainable Energy
ELON MUSK: But I mean, I think we’ve got I think we want to just move over and like and if if I don’t know, 50 to 100 years from now, we’re I don’t know, mostly sustainable. I think that’ll probably be OK. So it’s not like the house is on fire immediately, but I think it is something we need to to move towards and on, you know, on balance, it’s probably better to move there faster than slower.
But like I said, without vilifying the oil and gas industry and without causing hardship in the short term, I think this can be done without, you know, people can still have, you know, a stake and they can still drive gasoline cars and, you know, it’s OK.
It’s like it’s not — I don’t think we should vilify people for it, but I think we should just just generally lean in the direction of sustainability. And I actually think solar is going to be a majority of of us energy generation in the future and certainly trending that way. And so you get the solar power, mind that with with with batteries. So because obviously the sun doesn’t shine at night and and they use that to charge the electric cars and you have a long term sustainable solution.
Tesla’s Approach to Environmentalism
ELON MUSK: And you know, that’s what Tesla is trying to move things towards. And I think we’ve made a lot of progress and progress in that regard. But when you look at our cars, we like we don’t believe that environmentalism, that caring about the environment should mean that you have to suffer. So we make sure that our cars are beautiful, that they drive well, that they’re fast, they’re, you know, sexy.
I mean, they’re cool. I mean, the sexy joke Model S, Model 3, Model X and Y spells out sexy is probably most expensive joke out there. But, you know, I just I don’t know, I like cheesy humor, you know, so and but I’m I’m a big fan of like, let’s have an inspiring future and let’s let’s work towards, you know, a better future and would do so without demonizing. Right.
Climate Change Terminology
DONALD TRUMP: I’m OK. You know, it’s very interesting. You use the word global warming and today they use the word climate change because, you know, you have some places that go up and so they were getting themselves in a little trouble with the word global warming because not every place is warming. Some places are going the opposite direction.
But, you know, I’m sort of waiting for you to come up with solar panels on the roofs of your cars and on the trunks of the cars. And it just seems like something that at some point you will come up with. I’m sure you’ll be the first. But it would seem that a solar panel on the roof, you know, on flat surfaces, on certain surfaces might be good, at least in certain areas of the country where you have the or the world where you have the sun.
Nuclear Warming Concerns
DONALD TRUMP: But I would think and I have no idea because that’s not my world. But I would think that this would be something that would be interesting. But, you know, the one thing that I don’t understand is that people talk about global warming or they talk about climate change, but they never talk about nuclear warming. And for me, that’s an immediate problem because you have, as I said, five countries where you have major nuclear and, you know, probably some others are getting there and that’s very dangerous.
That’s where you need a strong American president because you just you don’t want to have this proliferation. But you have five countries and getting where, you know, China is much less than us right now, but they’re going to catch us sooner than people think. They’re way lower. Russia and us are number one and we’re sort of tied.
And China is far behind, but they’re developing at a level that, you know, you’re not surprised to hear very fast. It’s going to they’ll end up catching up, maybe even surpassing. But to me, the biggest problem is not climate change. It’s not and everything’s a problem.
Nuclear Power and World War III
DONALD TRUMP: But to me, the big problem is the nuclear power. The power of nuclear is so great. And when I talk about I’ll prevent World War Three, I will. But the truth is that you have to, because this is no longer army tanks going back and forth and shooting at each other. This is a level of destruction and power that nobody’s ever seen before.
ELON MUSK: Yeah, actually, there’s a bad side of nuclear, which is a nuclear war, very bad side. But there’s there’s also, I think, nuclear electricity, absolutely underrated. And it’s actually, you know, people have this fear of nuclear, nuclear electricity generation, but it’s actually one of the safest forms of electricity generation.
It’s just a huge misunderstanding. And if you look at the injuries and deaths, you know, caused by, say, I mean, I’m not going to pick on coal mining, but just any kind of mining operation. And there’s a certain number of injuries and deaths per year, and you compare that to nuclear. Nuclear is actually way better.
Nuclear Energy Regulation and Perception
ELON MUSK: So it’s underrated as an electricity source. And I think it’s something that’s worth reconsidering. But there’s so much regulation that people can’t get it done. So that, you know, —
DONALD TRUMP: Maybe they’ll have to change the name — the name is the rough name. There are some areas like that, like when you see what happened in Japan, the brand that we have to give it a good name, we’ll name it after you or something, you know. No, it has a branding problem.
You know, when you see what happened, you have a branding problem. When you see what happened in Japan, where they say you won’t be able to go on the land for about 3000 years, did you ever see that? And in Russia, where they had the problem with a, you know, there’s a lot of bad things happened and they have a problem. And they say that in 2000 years, people will start to occupy the land again.
Fukushima and Nuclear Safety
DONALD TRUMP: You know, you realize it’s pretty bad,
ELON MUSK: But it’s actually not that bad. So like after Fukushima happened in Japan, like people were asking me in California, you know, are we worried about like a nucleic cloud coming from Japan? I’m like, no, that’s crazy. It’s actually it’s not even dangerous in Fukushima. I actually flew there and ate locally grown vegetables on TV to prove it. And I donated a solar water treatment, solar powered system for a water treatment plant.
DONALD TRUMP: And yeah, but you haven’t been feeling so well lately, and I’m worried about it.
ELON MUSK: No, no, but —
DONALD TRUMP: I’m only kidding, you know, —
ELON MUSK: It’s like, you know, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, but now they’re like full cities again. So it’s really not something that, you know, it’s not as scary as people think, basically. But let’s see.
I mean, I mean, there’s some other topics we should touch on, you know, like lawfare. I think, you know, we need to be concerned about —
DONALD TRUMP: What they’ve done to this country. Obviously.
Lawfare and Political Prosecutions
DONALD TRUMP: Well, we just won the big case in Florida. This was a — Biden administration did something that’s never been done in this country. And that’s go after their political opponent, me, with this nonsense and just nonsense. And the big case in Florida, we won.
But they’ve always — they always pick a judge and a jury and they use local DAs. They use the local attorney generals like Fani, you know, Fani, spelled F-A-N-I, Fani. And it’s all a big hoax. And it’s all run from there.
Like in Manhattan, one of the top people from the Justice Department went in, ran Manhattan, ran the state. The Letitia James deal was run by a person from the Department of Justice, Biden. They’ve never done this before. And they set up a very bad precedent. It is called lawfare, warfare. It’s a terrible thing and never happened in our country. It does happen in banana republics and third world countries, but it’s never happened.
And the incredible thing is it actually drove my numbers up because people see, you know, fortunately, I have a platform like you or, you know, in all fairness, like a conversation like this where I can talk about it and people understand.
Election Integrity and Indictments
DONALD TRUMP: I mean, you you fight for election integrity and you end up getting indicted because you’re fighting for election integrity. And when the day comes that you can’t fight for election integrity, you don’t have a country anymore. So what happens? What happens is they went after their political opponent, me.
Now Biden’s, you know, close to vegetable stage, in my opinion. OK, I looked at him today on the beach and I said, why would anybody allow him? The guy could barely walk. Why would anybody allow him? Does he have a political advisor that thinks this looks good? You know, he thinks this looks good because it looks so bad and it’s ridiculous. I mean, and he’s been doing that for a long time. You know, he can’t lift the chair.
The chair weighs about three ounces. It’s meant for children and old people to lift. And he can’t lift it. The whole thing is crazy.
ELON MUSK: It’s clearly I mean, it’s clearly like we just don’t have a president.
DONALD TRUMP: You don’t have a president. And she’s going to be worse than him because she is a San Francisco liberal who destroyed San Francisco. And then as attorney general, she destroyed California.
Kamala Harris’s Political Background
DONALD TRUMP: You talk about location and we’re talking about the sun and the water and all. There’s nothing better than California. She has destroyed that. She was the original D.A. She was the original — in San Francisco. She was the original attorney general in California. What she has done to California is, well, you know better than I do. You just left California for a lot of those reasons.
And what she’s done with crime, with cashless bail, where you kill somebody. I mean, we have states say you kill somebody and they let you out right away. I mean, you don’t have to even put up. And then they never find the people unless they kill again and then they let them out again.
Our country is becoming a very dangerous place. And she is a radical left San Francisco liberal. And now she’s trying to protect. Now she’s looking like she wants to be more Trump than Trump, if that’s possible.
Kamala Harris’s Policy Shifts
DONALD TRUMP: I don’t think it’s possible, but she wants to be more Trump than Trump. I want a wall. You know, you want to release all the prisoners that are in detention. And some of these guys are really bad.
That just came out today. She wants — she doesn’t want to build the wall, even though the walls work…. walls and wheels. You know, in your business, everything you do is obsolete, not the tunnels, but everything is obsolete. Even your rocket ships are like a month later, they’re obsolete. You find a better way. The only thing that’s not obsolete is a wall and a wheel.
And the wall — you know, I built hundreds of miles of wall, and that’s why we had such good numbers. I was going to add 200 miles. We bought it. We could have flipped it, flipped it up in three weeks, and they sold it for five cents on the dollar. That meant I said, wow, that means that they actually do want to have open borders. She wants to have open borders. And now she’s going like she’s tough on the on the border. It’s such a lie.
ELON MUSK: Yeah, it’s simply not true.
DONALD TRUMP: This is something that everybody knows. It’s a disgrace that you can say it.
ELON MUSK: No, I mean, obviously, what’s happening sort of overnight is they’re they’re rewriting history and and making Kamala sound like a moderate when in fact she is far left, like far, far left —
DONALD TRUMP: Worse than Bernie Sanders.
Kamala Harris’s Political Stance
DONALD TRUMP: She is considered more liberal by far than Bernie Sanders. She’s a radical left lunatic. And if she’s going to be our president, very quickly you’re not going to have a country anymore. And she’ll go back to all the things that she believes in.
She believes in defunding the police. She believes in no fracking, zero. Now, all of a sudden, she’s saying, no, I will. I really want to see frackets — that if they got in the day she got in, she’ll end fracking.
And by the way, if people didn’t think that the lunatics that that really believe in that they won’t vote for, you know, like the Palestinians and Israel. She is so anti-Israel and she’s bad for both. Biden actually did something that was impossible. Both sides hate him. You know, both sides. That was a hard thing to do.
ELON MUSK: Yeah, no, no. I mean, I mean, you know, Netanyahu came to give a talk to a joint Senate and House sitting and I was there and and Kamala stood him up. You know, what does that say?
DONALD TRUMP: I think it’s highly disrespectful. And I say, if you’re a Jewish person or if you believe in Israel, if you’re a person that, you know, is a very pro-Israel, if you vote for her, it’s worse than Biden.
And Biden was bad. But if you vote for her, you ought to have your head examined. And you see tonight, I mean, as we’re doing this, I’m seeing reports coming that they expect an attack tonight or tomorrow from hundreds and maybe thousands of rockets. You know, their Iron Dome, as they call it, as we all call it, but their shield that they built, that can be swamped.
Concerns About Israel’s Security
DONALD TRUMP: We’ll use a term that’s appropriate. Swamp. But they swamp it by shooting enough missiles. You know this better than anybody.
By shooting enough missiles, they can’t defend themselves. You know, they just obliterate the whole place. And that’s what some people think they’re looking to do. And we have no leadership. There’s no respect for the United States of America with these people. And I’m telling you, you’ll be worse than him because he’s a believer in being radical left. And he wasn’t.
ELON MUSK: I think you’re right. I mean, it really is important for the public that may be listening to this to say to look at Kamala’s track record, you know, before the last like month and say, is that a track record you agree with? And I think if you’re an independent moderate, you definitely would not agree with it because her behavior has been far left. And we’re seeing just an overnight propaganda attempt to rewrite history and make it sound like Kamala is moderate when she, in fact, is not moderate.
Controversial Policies
DONALD TRUMP: Well, her running mate approved, signed into legislation, tampons in boys’ bathrooms. OK, now that’s all I have to hear. Tampons in boys’ bathrooms. And that means she believes in that, too. I mean, she picked this guy because he was the closest to her.
A lot of people thought she’d pick sort of the opposite, but she picked an anti-Israel radical left person. But she is far worse, they say, than Bernie Sanders. If we have her as a president, if we have a Democrat at this moment as a president, I don’t think our country can survive.
ELON MUSK: I think it’s a massive, I think we’re in massive trouble, frankly, with a Kamala administration. And that’s my honest opinion. And I think really it’s essential that you win for the good of the country this election. And I mean, that’s understating my opinion.
EU Commission and Censorship
ELON MUSK: Now, you know, you may have seen this, but I got a letter from the EU Commission. The EU Commission, like saying, you know, to not have disinformation on during this discussion that we’re having, like, and, you know, there’s like there’s a lot of attempts to do censorship and to force censorship, even on Americans from other countries. And, you know, what do you think about that?
DONALD TRUMP: Well, I know the European Union very well. They take great advantage of the United States in trade, as you know. We, through a different form, NATO, we protect them. And yet, if you build a car in the United States, you can’t sell it in Europe. You just can’t sell it. It’s impossible.
The same thing with our farmers. Our farmers find it very difficult to do business. You know, we have a deficit with them of $250 billion, which people don’t know. It sounds so nice, the European Union.
Trade Imbalances with EU
DONALD TRUMP: But let me tell you, they’re not as tough as China, but they’re bad. And I let them know it. And that’s probably why they notified you. No, they don’t treat our country well.
We defend them, you know, with Ukraine. So we’re in for $250 billion, and they’re in for about $71 billion. And they have the same size. If you add up the European nations that, you know, in terms of an economy, it’s about the same size, wouldn’t you say, as us.
And they’re in much greater risk. They, they’re right there. We have an ocean separating us from, in this case, the enemy would be Russia. It used to be for the Soviet Union, but let’s assume they’re close enough.
NATO Funding Disparities
DONALD TRUMP: And what happens is they’re in for $70 something million, I think, I think even less than that, billion. And we’re in for about $250 billion, and it could be a lot higher than that. And I say, why aren’t you going to equalize? Why aren’t they paying what we’re paying?
And they’re in much more, you know, they’re, it’s much more important for them because of the fact that, you know, they’re right near there. I mean, they’re all sort of in that location. We’re not. But they should, they should, and I did it with NATO.
We were, there were only seven countries that were paid up in NATO out of 28 at the time. And the United States, the United States was subsidizing NATO, tremendously subsidizing NATO. And I said, I went in and I said, you got to pay up. If you don’t pay up, we’re not going to defend you any longer.
I took a lot of heat. But you know what happened? Billions and billions of dollars came flowing in. And —
ELON MUSK: Yeah — I think a lot of the public isn’t aware of the fact that the United States pays a disproportionate share of the NATO expenses.
DONALD TRUMP: And then we can take an advantage of on trade. So think about well, —
ELON MUSK: I mean, the point of NATO is defending Europe. And it’s, you know, it’s like, okay, well, why, why is the United States paying disproportionately more to defend Europe than Europe? That doesn’t make sense. That’s unfair. And that that is an appropriate thing to address.
Ukraine Situation and Impeachment
DONALD TRUMP: Well, you know, when you talk about cost cutting and savings and everything else, I mean, honestly, look, there’s nobody that feels worse about the Ukraine situation than I do, because I know it would have never happened. I know Zelensky. He was very honorable to me, because when they went with the Russia hoax, and they said, I had a phone call with him. He said it was a perfect phone call. It was a great phone call. He could have grandstanded and, you know, said, Oh, he, he was very threatening.
He said, No, it was a very nice phone call. I called him up to congratulate him on his win. And you end up getting impeached, because these people are lunatics. You know, I was talking about the difference from the people within and the enemies on the outside.
In many cases, the people from within are more dangerous for our country than the Russia’s and the China’s. If you have a smart president, you’re not going to have a problem with them. You’re going to make — you’re going to do things.
ELON MUSK: Yeah.
DONALD TRUMP: Now, they’ve taken advantage of us incredibly, but you’re going to do things with the right person.
Free Speech and Media Attacks
ELON MUSK: Yeah, well, I think it’s obvious that you’re a believer and an advocate of free speech, because during your first term as president, you were attacked relentlessly every day, often very unfairly with, you know, with false attacks. And you didn’t try to shut down the media. You didn’t try to inhibit their freedom of speech. And I think that says a lot.
DONALD TRUMP: Well, the good thing is that you and I have and some people, very few, we can get the word out. Although sometimes it’s hard because they don’t want to print it, you know, like, like we’re having a great conversation right now. Kamala wouldn’t have this conversation. She can’t because she’s not. You know, she’s not a smart person, by the way. She can’t have this conversation. And Biden, we don’t even have to talk about it.
I mean, he couldn’t have this conversation. He would have given up on the first half of a question. He would have walked out. He would have said, where am I? Where am I going? So anyway, but yeah, no, he wouldn’t have this.
ELON MUSK: That’s true.
DONALD TRUMP: Not a lot of people would have this conversation.
The Importance of Open Dialogue
DONALD TRUMP: But, you know, we cover a lot of territory. But the beauty is that we can have a conversation. And yeah, I’m able to get it out without because —
ELON MUSK: I get a really big point. You can actually have a conversation with you. It’s nice, isn’t it? And you can have a conversation with Biden or Kamala. It’s like not it’s not possible. Yes, it’s like talking to an NPC. Now, it’s just impossible.
DONALD TRUMP: But think of it. We need a man or person who’s unbelievably sharp in order to stop all the nuclear danger and all the dangers that I’m talking about. And I got along with all that.
Trump’s Relationship with World Leaders
DONALD TRUMP: You know, I got along with Kim Jong Un. We had dinner. We had everything. And he really liked me. And I got along with him really well. By the way, he’s the absolute boss over there. You know, a lot of people said, oh, do you think he will? Let me tell you, I saw things that you don’t want to know about. He is the boss. But we had a good relationship. And he doesn’t like Biden. He considers him a stupid man. He said he’s a stupid man.
Well, at least he speaks his mind. But, you know, in this country, you’re not sort of allowed to say it. But I guess you are. You should be allowed to say that’s true. But we need really we need smart people. And we need people that have an ability to lead. And she doesn’t have that ability.
Can you imagine? Now, you know Chairman Xi very well. Can you imagine her and him negotiating or even standing together? It is the whole concept is ridiculous.
Media Portrayal of Kamala Harris
DONALD TRUMP: She is terrible. She’s terrible. But she’s getting a free ride. I saw a picture of her on Time magazine today. She looks like the most beautiful actress ever to live. It was a drawing. And actually, she looked very much like a great first lady, Melania. She didn’t look — she didn’t look like Camilla. That’s right. But of course, she’s a beautiful woman. So we’ll leave it at that, right?
ELON MUSK: Yeah, well, you know, maybe like I think part of what, you know, people in America want to, you know, people in America want to feel excited and inspired about the future. We want to feel like the future is going to be better than the past. And that America is going to do things that are greater than we’ve done in the past, reach new heights that make you proud to be an American and excited about the future.
The American Dream
DONALD TRUMP: They want the American dream back. You know, they want the American dream back more important than anything else. It’s like, you don’t have that today because the people — they’ve been just sucked. They see incompetent people running our, you know, the Biden thing is very interesting. People just found them to be incompetent. And when I debated him, I was like, is this for real?
ELON MUSK: It was. Yeah, it was just absurd. But, you know, I think there are like, you know, some some, you know, grand projects that we could do. I mean, I think, like, you know, we could build a base on the moon.
We could send American astronauts to Mars. We could build high speed connections that are more advanced than anything else in the world between our cities. So people have fast transport. You know, it’s possible to solve traffic with tunnels.
You know, we already made great progress in Vegas doing that. And, you know, and just do things that are exciting, inspiring, make the future feel like it’s better than the past.
Vegas Tunnel Project
DONALD TRUMP: Well, I saw what you did in Vegas, and I’ll tell you, it was amazing. I got to see I took a big glimpse at it. And it’s incredible what you know, it’s incredible. And you could do that all over. You could do that all over. It’s it’s deep.
ELON MUSK: Yeah.
DONALD TRUMP: You don’t even need much structure, you know, assuming you’re in the right area.
ELON MUSK: No, it’s straightforward. It’s amazing.
High-Speed Transportation
ELON MUSK: So and I think we could do some some things that like like China’s got incredible high speed rail between its cities. But I think it’s actually possible with tunnels. It was deregulation with an ability to actually — was like legal to to to actually do the tunnel thing. You could have high speed tunnels that are actually better than than anything else in the world for high speed transport between cities.
And that would be something that, you know, Americans could say, wow, OK, we’ve got something that’s cooler than anyone else in the world. That’s that’s kind of thing that makes you proud to be —
DONALD TRUMP: much safer than surface trains where there is a danger there, you know, with people with crazy people. It’s much safer, much better.
And, you know, it’s sad because I’ve seen some of the greatest trains. I find it fascinating. And I’ve seen the systems and how they work and the bullet trains, they call them, I guess. And they go unbelievably fast, unbelievably comfortable with no problems. And we don’t have anything like that in this country, not even close. And it doesn’t make sense that we don’t — doesn’t make sense.
Regulatory Reform
ELON MUSK: Yeah, I think also like there’s, you know, I just I’m kind of hopping on the excess regulation. But I think something that I think people can generally understand is that what happens with laws and regulations is that — there’s more and more of them every year. And unless there’s a process to clean them up, eventually everything becomes illegal.
And that actually it slows down the development of new technologies. I mean, if you take the sort of like I think there’s room for some reform at the at the FDA for improving the speed with which we approve drugs that could help save lives and improve people’s lives.
DONALD TRUMP: And I worked very hard on that. You know, we got that down to the lowest number ever. And we got therapeutics approved in the FDA that people can’t even believe the speed. But I took them on. I don’t think they like me too much, but I got things approved in the FDA at numbers that they wouldn’t believe. And, you know, it’s a very bureaucratic group.
Actually, it’s a fine group of people in many cases. I got to know a lot of them, but I was pushing them really hard for regenerants for so many different things that that were really pretty amazing. But the FDA takes too long. They would — it’s 12 years to get a product approved. I got it down to four. And I got some things done very quickly. But it’s really something that is going to have to be worked on because it takes too long. Just takes too long.
ELON MUSK: Yeah, it just takes too long. And you end up in the same with the approval. But it just it just, you know, it takes years instead of something that I think could potentially take months that improves people’s lives. I think, you know, but I just wanted to hop on this point that like there has to be an active process for reducing rules and regulations, because otherwise they just keep building up every year to get like hardening of the arteries.
And eventually everything’s illegal or takes forever. And then we just ossify as a society. We just we can’t make any progress. And that’s it’s a really big deal.
Right to Try Legislation
DONALD TRUMP: You know, just getting back to the FDA for one second, I got something done called right to try. This is where you can go in and if you’re terminally ill, you can use a space age medicine or whatever it may be. We have the best doctors, the best labs in the world. We really do.
And people would go to other countries because you couldn’t use this product, even if they thought it worked because it’s going through the FDA. I got it approved where you can. Look, nobody wants the doctors didn’t want it because of the liability. The country didn’t want it. Our country because they didn’t want to get sued. These are people terminally ill.
The insurance companies didn’t want it. And the pharmaceutical companies, nobody wanted it. I got everybody into a room and we came up with an agreement that you won’t get sued. And also, they didn’t want it on their record if somebody’s terminally ill and they die after taking a drug. They didn’t want that on their record.
So we set a second, a separate list if somebody was — so it wouldn’t count as a negative. OK. And as you know, we got it done. We have saved right to try. They’ve been trying to get this done for 58 years. And it sounds simple, but it wasn’t because, you know, I mean, you know, the insurance companies, nobody wanted it, but we got it done. Somebody signs. You sign a document that you’re not going to sue the insurance companies, the country.
You’re not going to sue anybody. And we got it done. And we’re saving tens of thousands of lives right to try. Hopefully, you never need it. But if you do, you don’t have to travel to Asia. You know, people, if they had money, they go to Asia. They go to Europe. If they don’t have money, they go home and die. That’s what happened. They’d go home and die.
Drug Approval Process
ELON MUSK: Yeah. Well, I mean, actually, to give you some props here, it’s like if a drug is approved in Europe, which has a crazy amount of regulations, it should obviously be approved in the US. I mean, they have more regulations than we do. So what why would a drug be approved in Europe and not in the US? That’s crazy.
DONALD TRUMP: Well, we did it. We did something that really — they’ve been trying to do it for 50 years and they just couldn’t get it done. And I got it done. And it’s really something. But you’re right. Some people go to Europe because a drug isn’t approved here, but it’s approved in Europe. And it’s a drug that, generally speaking, would work. It’s pretty crazy.
ELON MUSK: Absolutely right. And I think as long as people are properly informed of the pros and cons and like these are the risks, you know, this is a risk. And like you make your own decision. That makes sense.
Closing Remarks
DONALD TRUMP: Well, I think just, you know, in sort of closing up and by the way, I’m looking at the numbers, you’ve got a lot of people listening. I hope you don’t get nervous because you got a lot of people listening to you right now, like 60 million or something. What is that number? It’s crazy.
It’s amazing how you can see that right away. How many? What is the number? Wow. What is it?
ELON MUSK: Well, I think that’s a big —
DONALD TRUMP: That’s bigger than you said. You said 25 and you’re more than much more than double that number. 25 million. I think you’re going to be 60 or 70. And I guess over a period of time. Hey, that’s I congratulate you. Do I get paid for this or not?
ELON MUSK: Well, I think actually in terms of the number of people that will hear this conversation over the next few days, weeks, it’s going to be a hundred.
DONALD TRUMP: That’s what they say. Yeah, that’s good. Well, look, it’s an honor. But I just ask this. Are you better off now or were you better off when I was president? Nobody’s better off now. We put out polls on that and nobody’s better off now. Inflation has killed it. And, you know, they also feel very unsafe. You look at what’s going on with a lot of different things. You look at the riots we had at the colleges over. I mean, it’s ridiculous, but all of the right.
They just feel unsafe. And now they really feel unsafe because you have a new form of crime. It’s called migrant crime. I call it Biden migrant. Maybe I’ll call it Kamala migrant crime.
Crime in New York
ELON MUSK: But, you know, I mean, with all these things, I always try to, like, try to get to the ground truth by just asking people. And, you know, my mom lives in New York. And I was like, you know, mom, you know, do you know, have any of your friends, you know, been attacked or assaulted?
And she said, yeah, three of her friends in three separate incidents were assaulted. Just just just in recent months, just walking around the streets of New York. And I said, well, what happened to the people that — ? Oh, nothing. They got away.
DONALD TRUMP: Like and they just always get away.
ELON MUSK: Nothing. And they don’t even bother reporting it because there’s not — people are going to get prosecuted. They just let, you know, violent criminals out in New York.
DONALD TRUMP: The only one that gets prosecuted is Donald Trump. They don’t get — they prosecute Trump.
ELON MUSK: Yeah. I mean, it’s it’s just obviously messed up. Violent criminals are being are being getting off scot free. And meanwhile, the New York is spending massive resources prosecuting you. And it’s like, what’s this?
You know, and I think the sort of sensible public said looks at this and said, what the heck is going on here? This is obviously abuse of the legal system. You know, the legal system is supposed to be protecting the public from violent criminals. And it should be obviously allowing the public to make their own decision about who should be president as opposed to, you know, some, you know, legal case.
Concerns About Legal Precedent
DONALD TRUMP: Once they start this precedent, because this can go on with the next one. I mean, this is a very bad precedent what they’re doing in terms of, you know, going after their political opponent. And that’s all it is. It’s going after their political opponent.
And then you get a judge who’s, you know, a strong Democrat. And I’m being nice when I say that in many cases crooked as hell. But you get a judge and you go into an area where a Republican gets three or four percent of the vote. And, you know, you’ll have a jury pool with people that hate Republicans or hate.
It could also be the other way, of course, because it could start the other way in areas where they hate Democrats. And you get into a Pandora’s box; it is a very dangerous thing for this country and a very dangerous thing even for the state. New York City and state lose a lot of business over what they did to me because these people say, we don’t want that to happen to us. That’s no justice system.
You have an unfair system of justice and it’s costing New York State a tremendous amount of money. People are leaving and companies are leaving and they won’t come back. So, you know, all of that stuff is important. But the economy now is the big thing.
Economic Recovery
DONALD TRUMP: And we can turn that economy up so fast and people are going to be back again. We’re going to get rid of. I think there’s a lot of right.
ELON MUSK: Absolutely.
DONALD TRUMP: So and I just want to congratulate you. You’ve done an amazing job. You have definitely got a fertile mind. You know, we can talk. You and I can talk about rockets. It’s kind of you to say, well, we can talk about tunnels and rockets and and electric cars, so many things. And now you’re into the A.I. And that’s going to be another beauty. I would say. So it’s yeah, it’s an amazing it’s an amazing thing you’ve done, Elon. It’s an amazing thing. And I congratulate you.
ELON MUSK: I mean, thank you. And well, I mean, I just say, you know, here’s to an exciting, inspiring future that people can look forward to and be optimistic and excited about what happens next. And that’s the kind of future that I think you will bring as president. And that’s why I endorse you.
Make America Great Again
DONALD TRUMP: Well, I appreciate that. That endorsement meant a lot to me. Not all endorsements mean that much, to be honest. Your endorsement meant a lot. And, you know, we have a phrase, make America great again. It’s pretty simple, but it really says that we want to make America great again. And we can do it. We can do it now.
But if we were going to suffer another four years like we’ve suffered for the last four years, I’m not sure the country can ever come back. That’s how bad it is. It’s so bad. We have to — we have to do a lot.
ELON MUSK: I think that’s a very real. It’s a big risk. It’s a very real risk. And, you know, I’d like to note to people listening, I’ve not been very political before.
Musk’s Political Background
ELON MUSK: And just if you look at my record, it’s I’ve actually been I’m not like somebody tried to paint me as like a far right guy, which is absurd because I like making electric vehicles and, you know, solar and batteries, helping the environment. And I actually I, you know, I supported Obama. I stood in line for six hours to shake Obama’s hand when when he was running for president. And, you know, so it’s not like I’m like some sort of dyed in the wool long term Republican.
I’m actually I call myself, you know, historically a moderate Democrat. And but now I feel like we’re really at a critical juncture for the country. And, you know, I think a lot of people thought, you know, the Biden administration would be a moderate administration, but it’s not. And obviously, we’re just going to see an even further left administration with Kamala.
That’s my honest opinion. I mean, her dad is literally I mean, she was brought up as an — her dad is like is a Marxist economist. That’s you can Google it. I mean, it’s not a — we’re not making this up.
America at a Crossroads
ELON MUSK: You know, that’s how she was brought up. So and we just — we want to have a future that is prosperous. And I think we’re just at this critical juncture. And I think this is a case of the America is going to at a fork in the road. And I think it will take — it will take the path like you are the path to prosperity. And I think Kamala is the opposite. Then that’s my — I mean, that’s my opinion. I’m going to — I’m going to get attacked like crazy.
And, you know, I’ve also experienced quite a bit of lawfare myself. And but I’m just trying to tell people my honest opinion. And I haven’t been active and really active in politics before. And I’m just trying to point out that my track record historically has been moderate, if not moderate, slightly left.
And so this is the people out there who are in the moderate camp to say, I think you should support Donald Trump for president. And I think it’s actually a very important junction in the road. And we’re in deep trouble if it goes the other way.
San Francisco and California’s Decline
DONALD TRUMP: Well, I want to thank you. And, you know, I actually always did think of you as somewhat left. I must say that. So it’s even more of an honor to have your endorsement. I know how strong you feel about it.
But, you know, when you think of her, San Francisco, 15 years ago, I had a great friend, Bob Tisch. He said it’s the greatest city in America. And now it’s not — it’s almost not livable there. And California, likewise. And she was involved in the destruction of San Francisco and the destruction of California. And she will be involved in the destruction of our country if people are so unwise as to elect her. And I hope that doesn’t happen. And I hope the elections are going to be run honestly.
Addressing Crime and Immigration
DONALD TRUMP: And we’re going to turn this country around. We’re going to — we’re going to do things that and we can do it fairly quickly. And we have to get rid of the criminals that have been given to us by other countries as they laugh. They laugh at us. They think we’re stupid to accept these people. These are radical stone cold killers in many cases, and terrorists. And they’re in our country by the hundreds of thousands.
ELON MUSK: Yeah.
DONALD TRUMP: And we have to take them out.
Common Sense Policies
ELON MUSK: Yeah, I mean, if I could summarize it, perhaps, you know, I think these are issues that I think most people in America would agree with, which is that we want safe and clean cities. We want secure borders. We want sensible government spending.
We want to restore both the perception and reality of respect in the judicial system. Just, you know, stop the lawfare. And I think that’s like and how are those even right wing positions? I think those are just — that’s just common sense. And that’s I mean, would you agree with that?
DONALD TRUMP: A hundred percent. I don’t understand, you know, the whole they call it progressive. They don’t like the word liberal anymore, but call it liberal or progressive. I don’t understand how somebody could say that it’s OK for them to empty prisons into our country. And again, I told you that crime rates all over the world are going way down, which makes sense. In fact, the next time what we’ll do is if something happens with this election, which would be a horror show, we’ll meet the next time in Venezuela because it’ll be a far safer place to meet than our country. OK, so we’ll go.
You and I will go and we’ll have a meeting and dinner in Venezuela because that’s what’s happening. Their crime rates coming down and our crime rates going through the roof. And it’s so simple. And you haven’t seen anything yet because these people have come into our country and they’re just getting acclimated and they don’t know about being politically correct law enforcement or lack of law enforcement.
Support for Law Enforcement
DONALD TRUMP: And our police, I have to just end with this. We have great police. We have great law enforcement, but they’re not allowed to do their job. They have to be able to do their job without being destroyed.
ELON MUSK: Well, absolutely. And it’s obviously demoralizing if you’re a police officer risking your life to, you know, to, you know, to arrest violent criminals who could kill you and do kill you sometimes. And then you arrest the violent criminal and then the the D.A., you know, doesn’t prosecute and that’s let the guy out. Well, then, like, why?
Why should a police officer risk their life to arrest a violent felon?
DONALD TRUMP: Well, even worse, nothing’s going to happen. Even worse. They prosecute the police officer. They go after and they prosecute the police officer and they take away his pension. They take away his job. He loses his family. He loses his house.
Recent Incidents of Violence Against Police
ELON MUSK: Well, I thought it was very telling, like incredibly telling that, you know, when that there was a case where, you know, sort of a gang of thugs beat up police officers. I think it was in Times Square in New York. And then nothing happened to those guys. They were they were let out. Zero bail. And I think a bunch of them were given free tickets to California.
Well, what is I mean, that is a gross indignity against the United States. And that’s how I mean, this is insane. Like, have we lost all pride? What that how can such a thing be allowed to occur?
DONALD TRUMP: I’ve never seen anything. You know, we see where they get shot. It’s a very dangerous profession, but something they’re very proud of and they want to be able to do their job. But I’ve seen them get shot. I’ve seen a lot of it, but I’ve never seen where these guys are standing in the middle of a big street, everybody watching them. And they’re literally boxing, like punching, stand up fighting a police officer.
There were two of them and yet about six of these guys. And they’re punching the hell out of them. And in their own country, they would be dead if they did that. They’d be shot. They would be shot instantly. And, you know, they come from these countries and it’s taking them a while to realize that we don’t do that in this country. But in their own country, if they stood on a street and had a fight with a police officer, they would be shot. There’s no political correctness.
And it’s such a sad. It’s such a sad thing to see. And that’s the reason you have time, by the way, because we don’t do anything about it.
ELON MUSK: Yeah, we just cannot have a situation where our police officers be beaten up on camera by, you know, a gang of illegal immigrants. And then nothing happens to the guys that beat up the cops. I mean, and they’re let out. This is unacceptable.
Deporting Criminal Immigrants
DONALD TRUMP: We’re going to change it and we’re going to get them out of the country. You know, when I first got involved, they said you couldn’t get them back to these countries. You couldn’t take them back. In the case of Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, some others, you couldn’t get them back. And I said, really?
Oh, you can’t get it back? Because under Obama, he couldn’t get him back. They’d fly him in and they’d put planes on the runways in these countries. He couldn’t land the plane. They’d bring him back. And the general told me, the generals told me, sure, we can’t bring him back. The countries won’t accept MS-13 gang members. They won’t accept them.
And I said, really, how much do we pay these various countries in terms of economic aid, which is also somewhat ridiculous? And the answer was $750 million. I said, good. Tell them they’re in default. They’re delinquent. We’re not going to do it. We’re not paying them anymore because they won’t accept it. And you know what happened?
They all called me, every one of them. They said, we would be honored to take them back, sir. We would be honored. It was so easy. But it’s one of those things. And we got it back. We took in so many. You know, MS-13 is probably the worst gangs in the world. They’re the most vicious violence. We took them out of here by the thousands and got them out of here. And their countries took them back. And because I said, you’re not getting any more economic aid.
And once I said that, they were nice. They wouldn’t take them back for Obama. They wouldn’t take them back for anybody. And now we have a problem because we have this guy. And again, they don’t take them back anymore with Biden because they don’t respect him.
ELON MUSK: Yeah, yeah. So it’s just got to be done. We just can’t have, whether they’re citizens or not citizens, we can’t have. Because they won’t prosecute citizens either, not just illegals. So you can’t have repeat violent offenders that don’t get incarcerated. Because they will obviously, by definition, continue to hurt people. And I think where part of this comes from is that this, and I do sort of consider myself liberal in some ways.
Empathy for Victims vs. Criminals
ELON MUSK: I mean, it’s just that you want to have empathy for people. Obviously, you want to have empathy for people. I totally agree with that. You want to have empathy. But you also have to have empathy for the victims of the criminals. And if you just have empathy for the criminals, it’s actually shallow empathy. It’s not real. You’re not thinking.
You have one layer deep empathy. You’ve got to say, if you don’t incarcerate this person, who are they going to hurt? They might kill someone. They might rape someone. If you don’t incarcerate them, you have to have empathy for the victims. And there’s a lack of empathy for the victims of the criminals and too much empathy for the criminals. It doesn’t make sense. That’s why you want to have deep empathy for society as a whole, not shallow empathy for criminals.
Supporting Law Enforcement
DONALD TRUMP: And we have to give our police officers the dignity and the respect that they deserve. And we have to let them do their job. They can do a great job. But we have to let them do their job.
And if we don’t do that, it’s going to all disappear. There’s never been a society like this where you’re allowed to do anything you want and nothing happens. And I’m talking about violent crime. And it’s going to get more violent because these are really, really violent people.
And we’re going to get them out of our country. And we’re going to get them back to where — because they were sent here by the presidents and by the various people that run those countries. And I know every one of those guys. And they’re smart people. And they’re streetwise people. And they really think that the USA is stupid. They think we’re run by stupid people. And they happen to be right.
Addressing Gang Violence
DONALD TRUMP: But when I was there, we had no problem. We got them out. We took out thousands of MS-13 gang members. We brought them back. And now, again, it’s the same old story. We don’t do it. And they actually gave them a big increase in aid. They raised it up to billions of dollars.
And they get nothing for it. So, you know, I hope everybody’s going to vote for Trump. And we’re going to get this country. And I didn’t need this.
Trump’s Personal Sacrifice
DONALD TRUMP: I’m like, I didn’t need this. I had a very nice life. I didn’t need to go to court systems and go through all the other stuff and run at the same time. I have to run. I have to go through fake trials with, in some cases, corrupt judges, totally corrupt judges. I didn’t need it. I had a nice life. I have great locations.
I have beautiful oceans that I have places. You know, this was but I felt it was important. And if I had — if I had to do it over again, you probably think I’m crazy for doing it, actually. But if I had to do it over again, I would have done it over again because this is so much more important than me or my life.
Saving the Country
DONALD TRUMP: This is — we’re going to save this country. This country is going down. And these people are bad people that we’re running against. And they’re liars. They make statements. They do things that are so bad. They say they’re going to make a strong border. They say they’ve been great on the border. And they’ve been the worst in history. They say they’re going to stop crime.
ELON MUSK: The facts speak for themselves.
DONALD TRUMP: It’s so incredible.
ELON MUSK: Because so it’s gotten to the point where people just don’t even bother reporting crime in a lot of that’s right, because they know nothing is going to happen. You know, that’s what I hear anecdotally from people all the time.
Musk’s Vision for the Future
ELON MUSK: So, you know, it’s just, you know, my values, I’m just saying to people out there like my you know, the things I think are important for the future is like, we’ve got to have safe cities. We’re going to have secure borders. We’re going to have sensible spending. And we have and we’re going to have deregulation.
And so we can have a prosperous future. And then we want to have some exciting, you know, sort of moonshot projects that people can get fired up about. And, you know, that’s the future I’m looking for. And, you know, I’m pro environment, but I’m not against, you know, I’m not like I don’t think we should vilify the oil and gas industry because they’re keeping civilization going right now. And but I do think we want to move, you know, you know, a reasonable speed towards a sustainable energy economy. Those are my values.
And I think, you know, and so I mean, that’s why I’m supporting you for president.
DONALD TRUMP: Well, I appreciate
Economic Incentives and Job Creation
DONALD TRUMP: We’re going to make — we’re going to give incentives to companies to come into our country, not to leave our country. We’re going to be giving tremendous incentives. We want companies to build here, not to build in other locations.
And we want to create jobs. And again, it’s about the American dream. You don’t hear about the American dream anymore, Elon. You don’t hear — you’re the American dream in the truest sense, but you don’t hear about the American dream anymore.
And you’re going to hear about it. People, they need that incentive to go out and do it. And they’re going to love their lives. I mean, they’re going to love — they’re going to look forward to getting up in the morning and going to, you know, going to a job that they love, not a job that they can’t send or not any job at all where they have no money, where they literally have no money.
And then they end up with violence and lots of other problems. Now we’re going to do — we’re going to do some great things. And I learned a lot in the first. We had a great economy and all of that.
Learning from Experience
DONALD TRUMP: We rebuilt the military. We did so much. But I also learned and I also learned the best people. I learned the good people, the smart people, the dumb people, the people that can do things that, you know, you learn.
When I first came in, I tell people I was in Washington, D.C., only 17 times, according to the fake news media. I was in 17 times. I never stayed over. And you don’t know people. You rely on other people to give you names. And then you realize the people you relied on weren’t so good. Now, we had great people, but we also had some where I wouldn’t have used them had I known. Now I know everybody.
Closing Remarks
DONALD TRUMP: And I think we’re going to really turn things around fast. We have no choice. Otherwise, we’re not going to have a country. And I really appreciate this has been — to me it’s been a lot of fun being with you. You’re an amazing guy. You’ve done an incredible job and a great inspiration to people, a great inspiration. And I hope you keep going and just continue to do well.
And we’re going to have a big election coming up. And I think November 5th will be the most important day in the history of our country. I think that election will be the most important election and I think it will end up being maybe the most important day in the history of our country because if we don’t win, I just feel so sorry for everybody.
ELON MUSK: No, I think we are at a fork in the road of destiny of civilization and I think we need to take the right path and I think you are the right path. So I think that’s what it comes down to.
DONALD TRUMP: Thank you very much Elon. It’s a great honor and we will do it again sometime and it’s been really fun and I hope you get a lot of viewers and I hear you got a lot.
So I appreciate it. I will see you soon.
ELON MUSK: Yeah, thank you.
DONALD TRUMP: Thank you Elon. Thank you very much. Bye.
Related Posts
- Tucker Carlson Show: w/ Ken Silva – Attempts on Trump’s Life (Transcript)
- Pod Force One Interview: w/ Donald Trump – June 2, 2026 (Transcript)
- Jimmy Dore’s Interview on Tucker Carlson Show, June 5, 2026 (Transcript)
- Transcript: Trump Remarks on American Agriculture at Wisconsin Roundtable
- President Trump Remarks on Beautiful, Clean Coal – June 4, 2026 (Transcript)