FULL TRANSCRIPT: Trump on Joe Rogan Experience Podcast

JOE ROGAN: What was it like?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, the concept, it was really like two different lives, you know, I had a very wonderful life, but I wanted to do this, the Apprentice was still going very strong, we had 12 seasons, and we had actually 14 seasons, 12 years, over, they had a couple of them.

JOE ROGAN: Well, they canceled the Apprentice when you were running for president, correct?

DONALD TRUMP: No, they had Arnold Schwarzenegger do it, I was involved in that, and I had enough of it, and we did great, it was doing great, but they wanted me to stay, they all came to see me, they said, “We’re going to give you a contract,” they wanted to extend my contract, Mark Burnett is a great guy, and they wanted to extend the contract. Mark said, “You’re crazy, don’t run, don’t run, nobody gives up prime time,” they said, you know, it’s one of those little things, which is probably true.

Giving Up Prime Time for the Presidency

JOE ROGAN: Nobody gives up prime time, though, for being president?

DONALD TRUMP: For running, well, for running against 20-some odd people, you know, turned out to be 18, 18 professional people, you know, mostly politicians, they said, “Who would do this,” I mean, it’s a long shot, actually, the heads of NBC came over, Paul Telegdy, all the top people came over to see me, try and talk me out of it, because they wanted to have me extend. The Apprentice was doing well, so it was 14 seasons, it was 12 years, we had one, two seasons where we had a double, which rarely happens, it was just a hot show.

And I said, you know, “I want to do this,” what happened is, previously, like, three years, four years before that, they did a poll, they had Mitt Romney, and somehow they put me in a poll, and I blew everybody away, I blew him away, which isn’t that hard, frankly, but I blew everybody away. And I said, “That’s interesting,” because I never really gave it that much real thought, I thought about it, but never real thought.

But I saw these polls were very good, and so I was thinking about doing it then, but I had a contract with the Apprentice, plus I was building two big buildings at the time. And I wanted to make sure they got finished up properly, and it was one of those things, the kids were just sort of getting involved, they’re very capable kids, but they were getting involved early on. So I did that, I got them done, I had some very good successes, and I came on, and then I thought about it for the next one, after the Romney disaster. And I ran and I won, against Hillary, and it was quite an experience, but it was a different life, because, you’re right, the view, I was in the view many, many times, and they loved me.

JOE ROGAN: Just the way people would talk, I mean, even if people had criticisms about you, people that didn’t like you, there was always feuds and stuff like that, but the reality was, the thing turned on you, when they found out that you were going to be president, it was very coordinated. And some people are catching on to that now, there’s a lot of people that were long-time Democrats, like Elon, and Bill Ackman, and all these different, very intelligent people.

DONALD TRUMP: And they support me now, Bill Ackman supports me, he’s been very supportive too.

What It Was Like Getting Into Office

JOE ROGAN: This is what I wanted to ask you, what was it like, when you actually got in, because nobody really can prepare you for that, when you’re running for president, you don’t really know what it’s going to be like when you actually get into office, what was the, what did you think it was going to be like?

DONALD TRUMP: When I was in office, or when I decided to run?

JOE ROGAN: No, when you got in.

DONALD TRUMP: Oh, when I was in, so when I was in, and won, and was in the White House, essentially.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, first of all, it was very surreal, you know, it’s very interesting, when I got shot, it wasn’t surreal, that should have been surreal, when I was laying on the ground, I knew exactly what was going on, I knew exactly where I was hit. They were saying, “You were hit all over the place,” because there was so much blood from the ear, you would know that better than anyone, when they get the ear torn out.

JOE ROGAN: Ears bleed a lot, yeah.

DONALD TRUMP: Ears bleed, anyway, so, and I was thinking the other day, when that happened, I really knew where I was, I knew exactly what happened, I said I wasn’t hit anywhere. With the presidency, it was a very surreal experience, okay?

The Inauguration Experience

JOE ROGAN: And what’s day one like? You win?

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: You get inaugurated, holy shit, I’m the president.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, that’s what happened, so I’m driving down Pennsylvania Avenue, I just built a building on Pennsylvania, you know, the hotel, the old post office it was, we called it Trump National Hotel. And we sold it to the Waldorf Astoria, and it was a wonderful thing, but I’m driving down, I’m passing the hotel, you’ve never seen so many motorcycles, police, military, you know, it was a major thing. I got off, really the first time I used Air Force One, and we’re coming down, and it was very beautiful, I mean, it was incredible.

And we’re going down Pennsylvania Avenue in the opposite direction, you know, normally you’re used to going one way and all of a sudden you’re going the other way, the street was loaded up, and I wanted to go out, and I wanted to wave to everybody, but that wasn’t smart, you know, a little bit dangerous, right? I mean, when you watch, like, Kennedy and some others, right?

But I really felt, I don’t know, the love was so crazy, and so I did get out of the car for a brief, you know, just for a very short walk. I thought it was very important to do, and Melania got out with her beautiful dress on that became sort of a staple, people loved it, and Barron, and we’re walking down the street, but where it really got amazing, we get to the White House, and now it’s a little bit before dark, beautiful, and we went up to the president’s quarters, they call them the presidential quarters. And I’m standing in this beautiful hallway, you know, it’s funny, nobody ever talks about the White House as being beautiful inside, you know, you think it’s going to be, everything’s going to be all metal doors and stuff, it’s not, it’s so beautiful.

I made my money largely on luxury, the hallway is like 25 feet wide, the ceiling heights are, it’s so beautiful. But I was standing there, and I said to the guys, “I want to see the Lincoln Bedroom,” I had never seen the Lincoln Bedroom, I’d heard about the Lincoln Bedroom, and I was standing with my wife, I said, “Do you believe it, this is the Lincoln Bedroom,” I mean, it was like, it was amazing. Because it’s, look, if you love the country, but here you are, the Lincoln Bedroom, and the bed, you know, he was very tall, he was six foot six, which then would be like, like Barron, would be like Barron Trump, he’s six nine, but six foot six, he was very tall, then on top of that he wore, he wore that.

Yeah, there it is, it’s a long bed, elongated bed, and because very, you know, people were shorter than, you see some of the chairs are very, very low to the ground, actually, but he had the long bed, and they had, you had the Gettysburg Address right on that, right under that, you can’t see it here, but right there, the original version of the Gettysburg Address, and this is the original.

And I’m looking, and I just looked around, I said, “Do you believe this,” because I was never a, first of all, even if you were a politician, but I was never a politician, it just, I sort of just started, right, and all of a sudden I’m standing at the White House. And it was very, very surreal, that room was so beautiful to me, much more beautiful than it actually is, you know, to me, when I looked at the bed, and the bed, you could see it was a little bit longer, had to be a little bit longer, he lost his son, and they suffered, the two of them suffered from melancholia, they didn’t call it depression, they called it melancholia. And they suffered from it, he was a very depressed guy, and she was a very depressed woman, more so than him, and on top of that, they lost their son, whose name was Tad, Tad, and it was, just seeing it in the little picture, the little tiny picture.

I mean, you can’t see the details there, little tiny, everything in the way it was, a little tiny picture of Tad, who he lost, and it was devastating. And he was, you know, he was, look, he was in a war, and he was having a hard time, because he couldn’t beat Robert E. Lee, Robert E. Lee won like 13 battles in a row, and he was getting like a phobia, like a fighter, you know, not about the fight stuff. But like, I went to a UFC fight, and it was a champion, who was 14 and 1, about a year ago, you would know the names, 14 and 1, and the only guy he lost to was this one guy, but the guy that he was fighting was like, almost just an average fighter, lost numerous times, but he beat this one guy.

So I said, “Okay, I will figure it out,” but about a year ago, but the point is that he lost, he wasn’t nearly the fighter, but the one who was not nearly the fighter had beaten, he’s the only guy that beat the champ, like five years before, and I said, “I’ll take the guy that won the other fight,” and that’s what happened, he beat him a second time.

JOE ROGAN: Psychological advantages.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, it was this crazy thing, Lincoln had a, I don’t know, I’ve never read this, I heard it from people in the White House, who really understand what was going on with the whole life of the White House. But Lincoln had the yips, in a way, as the golfers would say, he had a phobia about Robert E. Lee, he said, “I can’t beat Robert,” because Robert E. Lee won many battles in a row, he was just beating the hell out of, you know, they tried to get Robert E. Lee to be on the North. But he said, “No, I have to be with my state,” you know, and the state was his whole thing, and he went to the South, and he was, I’ve had generals tell me, we have some great generals, the real generals, not the ones you see on television, the ones that beat ISIS with me, we defeated ISIS in record time, it was supposed to take years, and we did it in a matter of weeks.

These are great generals, these are tough guys, these are not woke guys, but their favorite general, in terms of genius, was Robert E. Lee, in terms of strategy, strategically, he took a war that should have been over in a few days, and it was, you know, years of hell, a vicious war. And so, here I am standing there, and again, I had never really done this before, you know, I ran, I ran a number of months before I won, I probably, I guess if you figure, max it out, it would be a year, something like that, so, I had never run for office. And I did well, I mean, I went into debates, we had 18 people, including me, and then, slowly but surely, they started to disappear, we had debates, good debates.

JOE ROGAN: Everyone’s aware of all this stuff, but what I want to get to is, like, what was the experience once you got inside, like, what did you think it was going to be like, in terms of, like, your ability to govern, like, this is your first experience governing anything, you’ve never been a governor, you’ve never been a mayor, private stuff, business, but now all of a sudden, you’re inside the White House.

The Experience of Being in the White House

DONALD TRUMP: The biggest thing was just that first moment of being in this hallowed, really hallowed place to me, it was beyond, to me, that was the experience, it was a surreal experience. And then, with time, that wears off, with time it becomes, you know, your place where you stay, and I was doing a lot of, I had two things that I really focused on, governing the country and survival, because from the moment I won, before I got to office, all of a sudden, I mean, they came down, I mean, nobody has ever been treated that way.

And you see that, I mean, you see we’re in the Washington Post very early on, they said, “Well, now the impeachment stuff starts,” and it did, I mean, it literally started from the beginning, so I had survival and run the nation, I had a combination, most people don’t have the survival, they get in.

JOE ROGAN: What did you expect, though, in terms of, like, once you got inside, you had to appoint all these people, like, how many appointments did you have to make, in a very short amount of time?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, you have actually 10,000 appointments, now, they’re different, you know, you have big ones, and then they appoint 100 people, and 200 people, but the president really is involved with approximately 10,000 appointments. So you’ll appoint a secretary of state, and he will, he or she will appoint a lot of people, so it’s a lot, but in terms of major ones, you probably have, like, 100, but they’re big ones, treasury, state, military.

JOE ROGAN: And how did you know who to appoint?

Appointing People with No Washington Experience

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I didn’t, I had no experience, I was there 17 times in Washington, and I never stayed over, according to the press, which I think is probably right, over the years, I was only there 17 times, I never stayed over. So now I’m sitting there, I’m saying, “This place is gorgeous,” but, you know, I don’t know anybody, it’s like you, you know, you go to certain areas, and other areas, they may be great, Washington was great, Washington’s not so great right now, they’re gonna, we gotta fix it, we gotta make it better, a very dangerous place, very badly maintained place, we’re gonna make it great, we’re gonna make it better, we’re gonna bring it back. But I wasn’t a Washington guy, I was a New York guy. I was a New York builder, and I built buildings in New York, and I knew that whole world, but I didn’t know the Washington world too well. And all of a sudden, you’re supposed to be appointing top people, so…

JOE ROGAN: What did you think it was going to be like, versus, like, did you have any ideas of what it was gonna be like, and what was different?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I was always involved in politics, but usually from the standpoint of a donor, I was a donor, you know, I was a big donor, I gave money to politicians, I enjoyed politics.

JOE ROGAN: You were a Democrat, right?

DONALD TRUMP: Both, really, pretty much both, I actually have pictures of Ronald Reagan in me when I was very young.

JOE ROGAN: Were you a Democrat until, like, what year?

DONALD TRUMP: I was a Democrat, I could get you the exact, but the early 90s, the early 90s, I switched over eventually, actually, they had a reform party, I was thinking about doing that for a little while. But then fortunately I didn’t, because it’s very hard, you know, it’s a two-party system, and any time you hear third party, I know you like RFK Jr., and so do I, he’s a fantastic guy.

JOE ROGAN: I do, but I thought that being an independent was nonsense.

DONALD TRUMP: It doesn’t work, it doesn’t work because even if you do great, you’re not gonna get Congress, in other words, you need now to say, “Okay, now I’ll get half of Congress,” it’s never gonna vote for you. So even if you got there, which is very hard, and I know how you feel about Bobby, and I feel the same way, and he’s now with us. But it doesn’t, it’s pure and simple, it’s a two-party system, and somebody, I won’t mention his name, but somebody spent $250 million trying to get the nomination as a reform party candidate or whatever, and they got just nowhere.

DONALD TRUMP: You get eaten, you just get eaten, the system eats you alive. So, so it was, it was really somebody that not only was new to Washington, but was new to politics. So, in, in the office of the presidency, over the years, all those presidents, you’ve had 92% were politicians, and 8% were generals, General Eisenhower, General Washington, right, General George Washington, you had generals, so it’s 8% generals, no admirals, 8% generals, and 92% politicians. You know, they’re politicians and they go on, so they never had a business guy, or they never had a guy that wasn’t elected to an office, they were all, like Ronald Reagan was really, he was a movie actor, but he became the governor of California for, I think, two terms, and then he ran.

So you never had a thing like this, but I, you know, in terms of me, and sometimes I use it as an excuse, and I don’t like having excuses, actually, but I use it as an excuse, I had to rely on people that I respected or liked, but that I didn’t know that well, because I didn’t know them that well. Some of those people I campaigned against, because, you know, when you have 18 people, we had mostly politicians running in the election, you know, running in the primaries, and they got knocked out one by one, but I got to like some of them. Some of them I didn’t like at all, and I don’t like them now, and I’d rely on them, and I’d rely on other people, so all of a sudden, people would come in, “I’d like to recommend so-and-so to be Secretary of State,” and I’d have three or four people recommend, one thing I can tell you, Joe, everybody wants the position.

JOE ROGAN: Of course.

DONALD TRUMP: No, no, but sometimes I’ll hear, “A lot of people don’t want to work with Trump, because Trump is tough to work with,” let me tell you, everybody wants to be any one of these positions, they’d die for it.

JOE ROGAN: Of course.

DONALD TRUMP: Now, they don’t want to be known, I mean, there’s a particular guy in New York, primarily, very big, very big, very successful, very strong, very political, although he’s not a politician, he’d give anything to be Secretary of State, but if they ask him, “No, I don’t think I would do it,” but in the meantime, begging for it, okay, begging, they all, everybody, look, everybody wants it, by the way, no matter what you do, but it’s very dangerous to pick somebody outside of a politician, because a politician’s been basically vetted for years.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

DONALD TRUMP: You pick a business guy, and they’ve never been vetted at all, and they’re, you know, the head of a big company or something, but they’ve never been vetted, you know nothing about his personal life, you know nothing about where he’s been. When you put them in, it’s a little bit dangerous, because all of a sudden, they get checked up, and you hear things that you’re saying, “Wow, this is not going to work out too well.” So it’s very dangerous, picking, picking people that are outside of politics is somewhat dangerous.

JOE ROGAN: So you’re kind of stuck in a position, we have to pick established people, and then the problem with established people is established people are already indoctrinated into the system.

DONALD TRUMP: And they’re stiffs, in many cases, they’re survivors. I find that, you know,

JOE ROGAN: What do you mean by stiffs, when you say stiff?

DONALD TRUMP: Stiff, they don’t, they don’t have nothing, they have nothing, or they’re smart and survivor.

The Story of the Congressman Survivor

DONALD TRUMP: One little thing. So there was a congressman, years before I ran, and I was very close to him, and I needed a license on something, and he was very important in getting the license, but it was a little bit controversial, the license, this particular thing that was being licensed.

But I was close to this guy, and helped him and everything else. And I went to him, I said, “I’d like to have your help,” and he said, “Let me take a look at it.” I said, “Oh, that’s not too good, but I really hope you’re going to help.” Anyway, he tapped me along for a long period of time, and ultimately didn’t do it.

And I said, “You are a stiff, you could have done this thing so easy, etc.” But it was controversial. He was in congress for many years, like 28 years. And you know, there’s a reason, when somebody’s there for 28 years, you’ve got to be sort of smart.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

DONALD TRUMP: You know, you have all the scandals.

JOE ROGAN: A survivor.

DONALD TRUMP: And I realized he was a survivor.

JOE ROGAN: And so they never do anything controversial, they never take any chances, or speak their opinion that’s outside of the, yeah.

DONALD TRUMP: And yet, I don’t disrespect him for it. I actually respected the guy more in a certain way, I said, you know what, he’s been there like for 28 years, and he made it through. A lot of people don’t make it through.

JOE ROGAN: It’s a good way for non-exceptional people to survive.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, it is.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. I mean, it certainly is.

The Biggest Mistake: Picking the Wrong People

JOE ROGAN: So you’re in there, you have 10,000 appointments you have to make, so you’re getting advice from people. And at one point in time, did you have a moment in time where you realized, like, these are bad choices? Like, some of these people I shouldn’t have had in there?

DONALD TRUMP: Oh yeah, I think, so the one question that you’ll ask me, that I think you’ll ask me, people seem to ask, and I always come up with the same answer, the one mistake, because I did, I had a lot of success, great economy, great everything, everything was great. The military, we rebuilt it, biggest tax cuts in history, all this stuff, we did it. We had a great presidency, three Supreme Court justices, most people get none, you know, you pick them young, this way they’re there for 50 years, right?

JOE ROGAN: Right.

DONALD TRUMP: You know, even if a president is there for eight years, oftentimes they never have a chance, I had three, it was sort of the luck of the draw.

But I will say that it always comes back to the same answer. The biggest mistake I made was I picked some people, I picked some great people, you know, but you don’t think about that. I picked some people that I shouldn’t have picked, I picked a few people that I shouldn’t have picked.

JOE ROGAN: Neocons?

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, neocons, or bad people, or disloyal people, or…

JOE ROGAN: People that were just bad? People that were into the… You got bad advice?

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, I mean, look, I mean, reading about them a little bit today, a guy like Kelly who was a bully, a bully, but a weak person, you know, you know more about bullies than anybody probably around, because you deal in a certain sport where the bullies are exposed very quickly.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

DONALD TRUMP: But, you know, he’s bad, Bolton was an idiot, but he was great for me, because I’d go in with a guy like a John Bolton, you know John Bolton, a friend of mine called me up, I was picking Bolton, he’s a very smart guy, his name is Phil Ruffin, he’s a very rich guy from Las Vegas, he’s a great card player, he doesn’t play cards, but he’s a great player, you know, he’s just a natural, he’s got poker sense, right, you know, good old poker sense. And Phil Ruffin is a very, very wise kind of a guy, and very, one of the richest people around, and has had great success and understands people.

So, it was in that I was picking Bolton, or I picked Bolton, he called up, he said, “Don’t pick him, he’s a bad guy,” now he wasn’t in politics at all, he was in various businesses. He said, “He’s a bad guy, he’s just, it always works out bad with that guy,” and I said, “Oh man, I wish you’d told me this two weeks ago, I already hired him, you know, he’s here,” and he was right. But he was good in a certain way, he’s a nut job, and every time I had to deal with a country, when they saw this whack job standing behind me, they said, “Oh man, Trump’s going to go to war with us,” he was with Bush when they went stupidly into the Middle East, they should have never done it, I used to say it as a civilian. So I always got more publicity than other people, and it wasn’t like I was trying, in fact, I don’t know exactly why, maybe you can tell me why.

Why Trump Got So Much Publicity

JOE ROGAN: Oh, I can definitely tell you.

DONALD TRUMP: Maybe.

JOE ROGAN: You said a lot of wild shit. You said a lot of wild shit, and then CNN, in all their brilliance, by highlighting your wild shit made you much more popular, and they boosted you in the polls, because people were tired of someone talking in this bullshit, pre-prepared politician lingo. And even if they didn’t agree with you, they at least knew, whoever that guy is, that’s him, that’s really him. When you see certain people talk, certain people in the public eye, you don’t know who they are, you have no idea who they are, it’s very difficult, and you see them in conversations, they have these pre-planned answers, they say everything, it’s very rehearsed, you never get to the meat of it.

One of the beautiful things about you is that you free-ball, you get out and you do these huge events, and you’re just talking. We’ve highlighted you on the show many times, when you did this Biden impression where he’s walking around, he doesn’t know what he’s doing, it’s funny, it’s stand-up, it’s funny stuff. But it’s like, you were making fun of Elon one time, you were doing an Elon impression, it’s great! You have comedic instincts.

Like when you said to Hillary, “You’d be in jail,” that’s great timing. But it’s like, that kind of stuff was unheard of as a politician. No one had done that.

DONALD TRUMP: It’s funny, you need at least the attitude of a comedian when you’re doing this business.

Being President is the Most Dangerous Job

DONALD TRUMP: This is a very dangerous business, first of all, it’s a very tough business.

JOE ROGAN: It’s the most dangerous business.

DONALD TRUMP: For a job?

JOE ROGAN: Yes. I mean, other than going to war and being a firefighter or being a cop, it’s the most dangerous business.

DONALD TRUMP: It’s the most dangerous. Being president is the most dangerous.

JOE ROGAN: Especially you. I mean, you haven’t even got to the election, there’s been two assassination attempts. And they’ve brushed those out of the news like it was nothing.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, they’d rather not talk about them.

JOE ROGAN: Imagine if there was assassination attempts on Biden, how hard people would be attacking the right. How they would be trying to get guns taken away from people, they would try to ramp up gun laws, they would try to figure out some way to blame you. If there was attacks on Biden, if Biden got shot in the ear, we would have never heard the end of it.

Being a Consequential President

DONALD TRUMP: But I think he’s in good shape because it’s only consequential presidents. If you take a look at what’s happened, look, I’m for having countries pay us billions and billions and trillions even dollars. I took in hundreds of billions of dollars from China, nobody took in 10 cents, not one other president. I do things that make it, I mean, that don’t necessarily make me so popular. I just do what’s right. And when you do that, you know, you’re more, look at, look at Iran.

We would have never had the attack on Israel at all. Iran was broke. I told China, “If you buy, you can’t do business in the United States under any circumstance.” I was going to, we’re going to go cold turkey with China. Some people think that would have been a good idea anyway. But if you buy any oil, one barrel of oil from them, you’re not doing business. I said that to many countries. Iran was broke.

The Dangers of Being a Consequential President

DONALD TRUMP: They had no money for Hezbollah, they had no money for Hamas, they had no money. But I make myself, you know, I mean, I understand what I’m doing. You make yourself a target and it’s a very dangerous business. But if you just look at statistically, so I said, I said a thing, I don’t know if it’s right, but one 10th of 1% for a race car drive.

Yeah. It’s pretty dangerous business. One 10th of 1% for a bull rider. I tell you, to me, these guys that ride the bulls is worse than UFC. These guys, you see these big monster bulls and you see it in slow motion where the foot is like, you know, an inch away from the head of it hits him, the guy’s gone. But they die. You know, they die.

JOE ROGAN: So one 10th of 1% die.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah. One 10th of 1% die.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

DONALD TRUMP: And they certainly get hurt badly. Really. I mean, they can’t walk after a certain period of time. But with a president, if you look at the amount of assassination and attempts to attempt, no, it’s a very dangerous position. I never thought of that, by the way, when I did it, you know, you don’t, you don’t tend to.

JOE ROGAN: I don’t think. Because people loved you on The Apprentice. They were going to love you as a president.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I figured it would be so easy. You know, it’s very interesting.

JOE ROGAN: Well, it probably would have been if the media didn’t attack you the way they did.

The Media’s Attacks on Trump

JOE ROGAN: If they didn’t conflate you with Hitler, I mean, even today, like Kamala was talking about you and Hitler. You’re, they’re going to take what you said about Robert E. Lee. Oh, Donald Trump.

DONALD TRUMP: Oh, he loves Robert E. Lee.

JOE ROGAN: Which is the south one.

DONALD TRUMP: That’s right.

JOE ROGAN: He loves Robert E. Lee. They love to take things out of context and distort things.

DONALD TRUMP: But they, they don’t even have to take them out. They make them up entirely. It’s interesting when you mentioned the, I was very popular and, and all those people loved me. I mean, this, some of these, these women, they’re so, they’re so stupid and joy. She would, every time she’d see me, like I’d be in the theater or something and she’d say, “You have to be on the show again. Come on, come on. Let’s go. We have to.”

DONALD TRUMP: She loved me.

JOE ROGAN: That episode. People should watch that episode just to see what we’re talking about. Like I said, we don’t want to get a copyright strike, so we’re not going to put it up.

DONALD TRUMP: Okay.

JOE ROGAN: But if you watch the episode, it’s bananas. It’s like an alternative universe and it’s only nine years ago.

DONALD TRUMP: Whoopi loved me.

JOE ROGAN: Loved you. Gives you a hug and a kiss.

DONALD TRUMP: And how about that other one? The new one on there? The, the one from my administration. She writes me a letter. “You’re the greatest president.” She leaves. You know, she worked as a, like an assistant press secretary. I hardly knew her, but she leaves and she writes me this gorgeous letter. What’s her name? She was, I don’t even know. You know, anyway, she was in the administration.

She’s on now currently, sits in the far right-hand side, whatever the hell her name is. And she writes a letter, the most beautiful letter. She’s quoted in the paper. “He’s a consequential. He was the greatest president, blah, blah, blah.” Then all of a sudden she goes to the viewers. She’s not hitting the hell out of me because they won’t hire her unless, I’ve had many people go on CNN and they call and said, “I don’t know what to do. They want to pay me a lot, but I have to be negative on you.”

I said, “Be negative. That’s okay.” But these guys on like CNN, they won’t hire them. Sean Duffy is a, you know, congressman and he retired. He got a good job with CNN, but he was only positive about Trump. So they kept him, but they would never put him on. I mean, I respect what he did. He could have gone, you know, negative. I tell people, “Go negative. Let my friends make the money.”

JOE ROGAN: Well, it’s just so crooked.

DONALD TRUMP: The press is so crooked.

The Press’s Loss of Credibility

JOE ROGAN: It’s crooked, but it’s also, they’re diminishing themselves. They are, they’re killing all their credibility and it’s opening up the credibility to new media. It’s opened up the credibility to independent media.

DONALD TRUMP: All the worst I’ve ever seen, though, and I’ve seen the worst, I mean, I’ve been a part of it. I’ve been, I’ve seen the worst Kamala goes on 60 Minutes, gave an answer that a child wouldn’t give. It was so bad and 60 minutes took the answer out. They took the whole, and they put another answer in, which didn’t make sense either, but it was better. They took the, well, it wasn’t editing.

It was fraud. This was not editing. You know, editing is where I’ll give an answer and they’ll take a couple of words and change around or they might even take a sentence or two off, which is very bad, but that’s sort of bad. You know, I’d give an answer, which was a very good answer. I always talk about, you know, I like to give long the weave, you know, I like to,

But when you do the weaves and you have to be very smart to do with, when you do the weave, look at this, just in this one thing, we’re talking about little pieces, but it always ends up, no, no, it comes back home for the right people. For the wrong people, it doesn’t come back home and they end up in the wilderness, right? But, but they can take my answer and you know what? They may take a little piece of it out or something and they use the term, “Yes, we want to save time.” Well, it’s not, but I’ve never heard, I think it’s the biggest scandal in broadcast history.

The 60 Minutes Scandal

DONALD TRUMP: What happened to CBS? So you have CBS 60 minutes, that’s a news program. It’s not an entertainment program. It’s under their news. It’s the head of their news thing. She gives an answer that was, that shows that she’s essentially incompetent and they took the answer. Could you imagine them doing that for me?

JOE ROGAN: We can show it if you want people to see it. Can we show it? No? We get in trouble? We’ll get copyright strike?

DONALD TRUMP: Okay. I’ll indemnify you.

JOE ROGAN: Listen, anyone can find it, but it’s, it’s drastic, but what was interesting was the other full version was available initially. It was like a preview. Somebody made a big mistake. Some kid put that preview out there.

DONALD TRUMP: Some kid put the preview out. And then the bosses did this or that and then all of a sudden they said, “We got a problem.” And then they got caught by mistake.

Well, but don’t you think that’s a big, to me, and don’t forget, this is election interference and fraud and it’s 60 minutes. It’s their news division. So it’s a big deal. They give those licenses out Joe for free. They should pay a fortune. They’re worth a fortune. They give them out for free because they’re using the public airwaves. With cable, you don’t have that.

Cable’s different, but you know, it’s just a different deal. But with the networks, they give those license, they’re worth billions of dollars. They give them out free, but you have to be honest and all. That was bad. I think that David Muir and that woman that was a side, I never even heard of her, but they kept interrupting me. It was like, I said, “How many people am I debating here? I got this one and I got you two.” He went after me 11 different times. You know, it’s interesting. I always thought he was a nice guy, but he’s just like the rest of them, you know?

JOE ROGAN: Well, that’s his job, unfortunately. And I’m sure when they want, you’re right.

The Biased Fact-Checking in Debates

JOE ROGAN: Well, the problem was they fact check you and they didn’t fact check her. And one of the most egregious examples of that was when she said that there is, there are no troops right now deployed in war zones. There’s a very famous viral video that went online of troops in a war zone saying, “Well, what the fuck are we then?” Because there’s thousands of them.

Dan Crenshaw, the Congressman, posted on his Instagram, all of the various examples of too many troops that are deployed, thousands and thousands of troops that are currently deployed, stupidly deployed. But the point is, if this is going to be an actual real debate and not a propaganda exercise, it’s going to be a real debate. You have to fact check everybody. So if someone says maybe she thought there was no, which is also a problem.

So it’s one of two things. It’s either it was not true. It was a lie on purpose, which is terrible. Or it was the opposite. It was ignorance, which is also terrible.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, Joe, when I said crime is soaring, he said, “No, no, crime has gone down.” I said, “Where did you hear that one? Crime has gone down.” I mean, I’m debating with this guy, but I’ve had that.

JOE ROGAN: Well, there was amended FBI statistics that came out after that that showed that crime had gone up substantially.

DONALD TRUMP: And by the way, the statistics were a fraud because when they put out the statistics, they didn’t include some of the worst places. They didn’t include some of the worst cities, some of the most deadly places. But when the real numbers came out, I turned out to be right.

JOE ROGAN: You turn out to be right. But then there’s another problem.

The Impact of Defund the Police on Unreported Crime

JOE ROGAN: Unreported crime is way up because people have lost the morale that the police department has in a lot of these cities where they’ve done this defund the police bullshit. These the morality for cops. It’s fucking horrible. It’s the dumbest idea of all time.

But what they’ve done is they’ve made these cops feel terrible, like good cops. I think cops are just like everybody else. Most of them are great. It’s like everybody else. But if you run into one carpenter and he does a shitty job in your house, you say “Carpenters fucking suck.” But they don’t suck. Most of them are great. And that’s the key thing with cops.

But the point is, like, they they did all of these things in this very foolish way. And these cops are suffering the consequences of it. And so subsequently, what happens is a lot of crime is unreported. A lot of crime, like you call the cops. They’re too busy. They can’t even get you. They’re too far broken into. “Sorry. You know, it doesn’t even make a report.” There’s a lot of people that they just give up.

DONALD TRUMP: It’s so sad what’s happened. And I’ll tell you what. I go to police funerals and we went to one in Long Island that visited the family in Long Island. A very big deal. It’s so dangerous. People don’t realize the car, dark windows pull over. He’s a gentleman. “Please pull over.” Door opens. Guy comes out firing. Even if they were allowed to pull out their gun, which they’re not, they can’t, you know, put it in time. They still wouldn’t have time.

JOE ROGAN: Every cop’s first nightmare.

DONALD TRUMP: They open a door and he was killed and his partner was hurt. He was killed. And you don’t I mean, you don’t even have an eighth of a second to think. And it is such a dangerous job that in particular, think of it. You go up to a car. You don’t know who’s sitting there with a gun. And if they have a gun, you really don’t have a chance. You’re not allowed to have your gun out, by the way.

JOE ROGAN: Yep.

DONALD TRUMP: They’re very strict rules. So, number one, they’re in it. But even if you could have your gun out, the door opens and a guy and bullets start firing out, you know, and especially where they have the dark windows, where they have the darkened windows. It is such a dangerous profession.

And it’s very hard to get cops now because they’re not given any backup. And you’re right. You could you know, they have like an eighth of a second to make a decision that’s going to change their life. If they make the wrong decision, they’re going to end up on the front page of every newspaper in the country and they’re going to lose their house and their pension and their job and their wife is going to be gone and everything.

The Mental Health Toll on Police Officers

JOE ROGAN: And there’s another thing that people don’t talk about. How many of them have PTSD? Probably most of them.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: These guys are seeing people shot all the time. You know, I’ve talked to a ton of cops about it and, you know, a lot of cops commit suicide. A lot of cops are deeply depressed. A lot.

DONALD TRUMP: We have to give them back their dignity. We have to. We can’t. We just have to give it back. You said so good. You never hear anybody say that you’re never going to have it perfect. You’re going to have a bad apple in everything, in every profession. But every time there’s a bad apple, that gets massive publicity and it it taints everybody.

The Irresponsibility of Defund the Police

JOE ROGAN: But it’s also this very irresponsible thing where people say defund the police, get rid of the police. You know, even Kamala Harris was a part of that, that it’s a it’s a very stupid way to look at it. What you should do is fund the police. You should have better training. You should have cops that feel more appreciated. You should have some something that helps mitigate this PTSD that all of them suffer through.

DONALD TRUMP: Right. She was a big part of defund the police. That was a big thing for her, defund the police, always defund the police.

JOE ROGAN: Well, it’s a political idea.

DONALD TRUMP: But any anybody with that political thought, I don’t think should be running for president. And I think people are getting wise to it. You know, we’re doing pretty well now. I don’t know. Maybe in a week from now, say sorry about that. I was wrong.

But we’re leading everything. And I think we’re going to have a very good election. But I tell people because people are starting to get to know her. But she was defund the police. She was all these transgender operations. You know, if you wanted a sex change and you were in detention and you demanded a sex change, they would give you a sex change.

JOE ROGAN: Well, the wildest one is this idea of giving free sex change to illegal immigrants.

DONALD TRUMP: That’s right.

JOE ROGAN: That is the wildest thing. Is that the biggest problem you have? You just walked here from Guatemala. You need to become a girl.

DONALD TRUMP: But she was in favor of it.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. So.

DONALD TRUMP: So think of it. She was. Now she changed. She changed 15 policies. In fact, I’m going to send her a MAGA cap.

JOE ROGAN: She stole your idea about no tax for tips.

The China Car Plant in Mexico

DONALD TRUMP: I came up with this idea that honestly, nobody ever heard of. And now it took her two months. But you know what? All of us caught fire and she just put it into a little speech.

Well, I think we still have that issue. I think that issue is a good one. But now we have a lot of good issues. You know, we had the other day. Think of how simple some of these things are. We’re trying to get cars built in the United States. Detroit has been really tough. It’s been a disaster. They have a huge factory, a huge car auto plant being built by China in Mexico. Make cars, sell them in the United States, put everybody out of business.

Here we go again. I said, “If that plant is there when I’m president, I will put 100 or 200 percent tariffs on every car.” They’ll be unsellable in the United States. And they just announced they’re not going to build the plant because they think I’m going to win. Think of it. They’re not going to build the plant. This was the biggest plant in the world. It would have more than all of Michigan makes. That’s how big you know, this is what we’re getting to. And I said, “If that plan goes up, I want them to understand if I win, I’m going to tax those cars at the rate of 100 or 200 percent apiece so that you won’t be able to sell them in the United States.” They just announced they’re not going to build the plant.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, I read that.

DONALD TRUMP: And they did a big favor for our country by doing that. And I’m not even there yet.

The Beauty of Tariffs

DONALD TRUMP: To me, the most beautiful word, and I’ve said this for the last couple of weeks in the dictionary today and any is the word tariff. It’s more beautiful than love, more beautiful than anything. It’s the most beautiful word. This country can become rich with the use, the proper use of tariffs.

JOE ROGAN: Did you just float out the idea of getting rid of income taxes and replacing it with tariffs?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, OK.

JOE ROGAN: We serious about that.

DONALD TRUMP: But why not? Because we ready. Our country was the richest in the — relatively in the 1880s and 1890s. A president who was assassinated named McKinley. He was the tariff king. He spoke beautifully of terrorists. His language was really beautiful. “We will not allow the enemy to come in and take our jobs and take our factories and take our workers and take our families unless they pay a big price.”

And the big price is tariffs. And he’d speak like that. But he was right. And then around in the early 1900s, they switched over stupidly to, frankly, an income tax. And you know why? Because countries were putting a lot of pressure on America. “We don’t want to pay tariffs. Please don’t.” You know, they believe me. They control our politicians. If you look at the kind of numbers that these guys make then and now. But we had a commission meeting in the eight I think it was 1887.

Think of this problem. We were so rich. We had so much money. We didn’t know what to do. So they set up a blue ribbon commission on tariffs. And the sole purpose is what to do with all the money we had. We were so rich because we were taxing other people for coming in and taking our jobs. And China does it.

That’s what China did. If you want to open a factory and sell cars, if you build a factory here or have a factory, they don’t take our cars. They wouldn’t take our cars. But if you build a plant in China, you can do that. Elon did that. By the way, Elon is great. That guy is such a great guy.

The Starlink Story

I think you’re a fan of Elon. He is from a different planet. He’s the greatest guy. That rocket coming in. I told the story once or twice, so you may have heard it because his speeches have been good. Did you see the one last night?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

DONALD TRUMP: 29,000 people. That was it. And the one the night before was the same thing. We are rocking and rolling. But Elon, and I’m talking to this very important guy, I said, “Wait a minute, I’m looking at something.” The television’s unmuted.

And I see this rocket. It’s all brown from the heat, you know, 10,000 degrees pouring down at thousands of miles an hour. And I see this thing. You know, it’s like a 20 story building. And it cuts. And I say to this guy, this important guy, “Wait a minute. Let me just put you down. Hold on. I got to see this.” And I see this and it’s going to crash.

I said, “It’s going to crash into the gantry.” They call it a gantry. I said, “Oh man, that’s going to be a disaster” because it’s starting to get very close. And then all of a sudden you see the flames and about a rear and it boom. And then you see the two arms grab it.

JOE ROGAN: Crazy.

DONALD TRUMP: And I forgot the guy. I had him on the phone. No, I said, no, I called Elon. I said, “Was that you?” He said, “That was me.” And I said, “Who else can do that?” He said, “Nobody. Russia can’t do it. The United States. Nobody can do it.”

You know, I set up Space Force. That was me. And that’s the first time in 82 years that we opened another branch since the Air Force. And that’s going to be one of our most important things. But think of what Elon does. And he did one other thing that I never heard of it. It’s Starlink. I went down to North Carolina, Georgia, the different places, right?

I followed it right down. And they had no communication. The poles were all knocked down. And one of the guys in North Carolina said, “Could you do me a favor? Do you know Elon Musk?” “Yes. He endorsed me.” By the way, he gave me the nicest endorsement to the tough.

Voting for Khabib, Not Kamala

DONALD TRUMP: He said, “The country is going to fail. We should do the same thing, Joe, because you cannot be voting for Kamala.” Kamala. You’re not a Kamala person. I know you. I’ve watched you. I know him better than he is. You know what? Without speaking to you, I think I know you maybe almost as well as your wife. I have watched you for so many years. You’re not a Kamala person. You’re a Khabib person, but you’re not a Kamala person. Nobody’s going to know who Khabib is, but he was not bad, right?

JOE ROGAN: Oh, he was phenomenal.

DONALD TRUMP: But that’s your kind of person.

JOE ROGAN: Your weave is getting wide.

DONALD TRUMP: We’re getting wide with this weave.

JOE ROGAN: No, no. My weave. I want to bring it back to tariffs.

DONALD TRUMP: But wait. One second. Before we finish with tariffs. So they said, “Could you get him? We need Starlink.” And I called Elon. He got it for him so fast, saved so many lives. And I said, “How was it?” They said, “Better than the wires.” You know, they couldn’t put them in. They were all gone. So get him back to tariffs.

Rogan’s Experience with Starlink

JOE ROGAN: I used it recently in Utah in the mountains. It’s good.

DONALD TRUMP: Did you find it good?

JOE ROGAN: Oh, it’s phenomenal. It’s the size of an iPad. You just set it down on the ground, you get high speed internet. It’s incredible. It’s outstanding.

DONALD TRUMP: Just to show you. We’re spending a trillion dollars to get cables all over the country, right? Up to upstate areas where you have, like, two farms and they’re spending millions of dollars to advocate.

JOE ROGAN: Well, talk about the $42 billion that was wasted on this internet access program. They didn’t get anybody. They haven’t hooked up. Not one person. They spent $42 billion. They could have gotten Starlinks to everybody with that kind of money.

DONALD TRUMP: For almost nothing. For a monthly charge.

JOE ROGAN: And it would have been incredible. And it’s high speed internet everywhere you want to go.

DONALD TRUMP: And he wanted to do that.

Government Waste and Abuse

DONALD TRUMP: And he wanted to do it. How about this? They built the charger stations, right? In the Midwest. They built eight of them. They cost $9 billion. That’s like a gas pump, right? They built nine gas pumps, except electricity comes out. They spent $9 billion. Three of them don’t work. The whole thing. There’s so much waste. I could sit here and tell you about things that there’s so much waste, abuse, and fraud.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, yeah. I’m sure. I mean, I think everybody’s aware of that now.

The Impact of Tax Cuts and Tariffs on the Deficit

JOE ROGAN: When you’re talking about… One of the criticisms of your administration was with tax cuts and with tariffs, you increased the deficit. So what was the strategy behind that? And did you think it was going to increase the deficit by a substantial amount?

DONALD TRUMP: We were ready to rock. It was all… You know, I had a bad system. We had horrible tax policy. I made it great. With a much lower tax rate. So I took it from almost 40% down to 21%. Now I’m bringing it from 21% down to 15%. But only if you make your product in the United States, which is great. People call me. They said, “What a great idea.” Nobody ever heard of that before. I don’t care if they make the product in Japan. Why should I give up? So it’s a 21%.

At 21, in the first year, we took in much more revenue than we did at almost 40. Think of that. It inspired… Now we had other things, too. We were able to get people to bring back their money. You couldn’t bring back your money. If you had money in Europe, like Apple, Apple had many billions of dollars outside. They couldn’t bring it. There was no way to bring it back in. The bureaucracy, the documents, the whole thing. And also the tax was too high. They wanted like half of it or something.

Nobody’s going to do that. So they leave their money in Japan and they spend their money there. That was part of what I did. The money came pouring back in. Apple took in hundreds of billions of dollars. They brought it back from overseas. They brought it in.

JOE ROGAN: So how does the deficit increase because of that?

DONALD TRUMP: So what happened is this. We were ready to rock and roll. And then we had the COVID thing and we had to focus on that. And if we didn’t give some businesses a hand, they would have all… You would have had a depression like in 1929. But we were ready to start. We were going to… We would have very shortly been paying off debt.

You know, we have $35 trillion in debt. And I’ll never forget it. We were… It was talking about from, you know, the standpoint of being in office. I’m in the Oval Office and I have John McLaughlin and Fabrizio, the two very good pollsters probably. I don’t know. I would say the two best. Who knows? But very good pollsters. And they think about running for a second term. And we had the greatest economy in history. Never has there been an economy like that.

JOE ROGAN: And you attribute that to lowering taxes and tariffs.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah. A lot of… Two things. And also, I cut regulations more than anybody else. And if… I asked many of the businessmen, you know, from the big companies, you know, the guys running the big companies, I’d say, “So if you had your choice, you’ve had it now for a long time. What’s more important to you? The tax cuts, you paid less tax, or the regulation cuts?” Every one of them said the regulation cuts meant more.

Who would think that? Right? Because you don’t equate it to dollars, but it actually is more dollars. We had it going and then we just had to focus on something else. But they were sitting…

JOE ROGAN: So you think…

DONALD TRUMP: These two pollsters were sitting there and they said, “Sir, if George Washington came back and Abraham Lincoln was his VP, as opposed to Walz,” how bad is he, by the way? But if Abraham Lincoln was his VP, they couldn’t beat you. You have a…

And I’ll never forget it. The following day, they said, “Something’s happening in China, sir. Could we meet?” I said, “What’s happening?” “People are dying.” And it was all around the Wuhan lab, by the way. There are pictures with little lines, their body bags, all around the Wuhan lab. And I always said that from the beginning, Joe, was, you know, they tried to say, first they said it was France and they blamed everybody. But then they say it was Batchelor and McCabe, 2000 miles away.

So we got hit with that. And despite that, we had the best economy. And when I gave it over, the stock market was higher than it was pre-COVID. I mean, nobody could even believe it. But we saved it. And we were helping businesses. They were dying. You know, they were dying.

JOE ROGAN: So it’s your belief that if you had a second term, given the policies in place, the way the economy was booming, that you would have been able to pay off a lot of the debt. And that was the strategy.

DONALD TRUMP: If we didn’t have COVID, we would have been paying off debt. And we would have had… And don’t forget, by growth, the word growth is actually more important in a way, because you could have the same debt. But if you doubled your growth, all of a sudden you’re under levered. But still, we should pay off debt. You know, if you viewed this $35 trillion right now, it’s a lot.

But if you look at the asset value, if you looked at it purely as an asset value, we have oil underground, we have water, we have mountains, we have… I mean, the assets are so enormous. But regardless of that, we’ve got $35 trillion in debt, we should pay it off. And we would have started paying off debt and probably even giving further tax reductions.

I want to get it down to 15%. We’re going to do more business. But when you get hit with a COVID, everything stops, and you have to keep these businesses alive. The businesses were dying. I mean, they were just dying. This whole place, this country was going to die.

The Environmental Influence on Drilling and Fracking

JOE ROGAN: Are there influences outside of environmental that keep people from wanting to drill for oil and frack and do those sort of things? Outside of the environmental concerns, which are legitimate, of course, but are there other influences that maybe over-accentuate or over-exaggerate these environmental effects? Are people being influenced in a way where they’re trying to keep us from producing American oil?

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah. Yeah. So the environmental is the biggest tool for stopping growth, the biggest tool. The other is regulation. And if you speak to Elon, he said the regulation now to send a rocket up to anywhere, even if you do everything, it’s almost, it’s becoming impossible. But they use environmental in order to get people not to do anything. And sometimes I say, you know, I look at some of the, I know the environmental stuff better because I had to build buildings in New York.

I had to build, I had to do environmental impact studies. And I would see some of these guys that I’d hire for a lot of money, environmentalists that would get you through the process. And they’d be up in Albany, that’s the capital of New York, and they’re up there trying to make it tougher for guys like me that were builders because they’d get paid more money. In other words, I had one guy, highly recommended, you know, I was good at getting permits.

I was one of the kings of, I was always very good. But the environmental stuff was always horrible. Anybody could slow a project down 10 years, 15 years. I had a project in Louisiana, built a big LNG plant. It was for 14 years, it was going to cost $18 billion, one of the biggest, like the Empire State Building, laying down on its side times four, massive, on the coast, on the Gulf Coast. And they said, “Sir, they’re going to give it up.” I said, “They shouldn’t give it up. What’s the problem?”

“They can’t get their environmental.” They had environmental permits that would fill this whole room up to the ceiling. And they said there was one mistake on one little line, they wanted to do it all over again. It’s not going to happen. And I got them their permit instantly. And they built the plant, it’s massive.

Environmental Consultants Profit from Dragging out the Process

JOE ROGAN: So when you’re saying that, so there’s people that are making money by making it difficult. Are you talking about lawyers?

DONALD TRUMP: No, I’m talking about environmental consultants and lawyers.

JOE ROGAN: Environmental consultants profit off of dragging out the process.

DONALD TRUMP: Absolutely.

JOE ROGAN: And how do they profit? How do they profit off of it?

DONALD TRUMP: And I’d probably do the same thing if I were them, to be honest with you, you know, I want to be honest with you.

JOE ROGAN: How do they do that? How do they make it?

DONALD TRUMP: They go, let’s say New York, they go to Albany, and they convince people that if you have a certain type of plant on the ground that’s this big, and in theory valueless, that it’s a rare plant, and you cannot even touch it, you can’t go near it, you can’t put a building on it, you can’t do anything. Or there’s a little puddle, and they call it a lake, and you have to go by the standards of a lake. I said, “No, no, that’s a puddle.” Oh, you have no idea.

Guys are filling a little puddle, you have no idea what they do, and they use it as a way to stop you.

JOE ROGAN: They use it as a way to stop you and also as a way to generate money. It’s a weapon. I’m curious, how are they generating money that way, though?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, they get fees. They get fees. Massive fees. And you pay these guys.

JOE ROGAN: Do you rely on them as experts, because they’re the people they go to when they have to run these studies in the first place?

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, but some of them are just bad guys, and they’re trying to make it more and more difficult.

JOE ROGAN: And they have a lot of power.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, I think they maybe had more. They didn’t have as much with me, because I would get through them, and I understood it. Look, I’ve done so many, they call it environmental impact study. I did so much. To build a building.

To build a building in New York is very tough. You’ve got to deal with, think of it, financing, unions, all the municipal stuff, environmental. Of all of it, to me, the toughest thing was the environmental, because they could stop you cold with the environmental impact study stuff. And you hire a so-called expert, and they say, “Sir, he’s the one guy who can get you through the morass.” It’s a morass. It’s horrible. They use it as a weapon. They use it all over the country.

JOE ROGAN: But there are legitimate concerns about environmental impact, correct?

DONALD TRUMP: There are.

Legitimate Environmental Concerns vs Weaponized Environmentalism

JOE ROGAN: Like, look about the BP oil spill. There’s a lot of things that do happen that are environmentally devastating. And you want to mitigate that as much as possible.

DONALD TRUMP: You do. Look, I had, during our four years, we had the cleanest air and the cleanest water. I view it differently. I say air and water. Remember this. It costs much more to do things environmentally clean. China doesn’t do anything.

When Kerry goes to see President Xi at China, which he probably doesn’t even get to see him, but they look at him, “Oh, yes, yes, we will do, oh, yes, yes, we’re going to do that. No more coal, no more coal.” And then they approve 58 coal plants for the next, you know, every, they build a coal plant a week.

JOE ROGAN: Okay. They build a lot of coal plants.

DONALD TRUMP: But let me just tell you, though, so here we are cleaning and scrubbing everything and everything’s got to, and the air’s got to be pure. But in 3.8 days, that stuff floating over China is right over the top of us.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

DONALD TRUMP: Same thing with the oceans. They dump their garbage into the Pacific Ocean. If you take a little cork and put it there, in about a week and a half, it’ll be in front of Los Angeles. We’re picking up their garbage. So nobody ever talks about that. But in a way, the bigger one is even the air. It’s the currents. It’s an amazing thing.

It’s been flowing that way for a million years, or long before. We share air with the whole world.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah. No.

JOE ROGAN: If we’re cleaning… We get the Sahara dust clouds over here. Absolutely. We get dust clouds in Austin from the Sahara Desert.

DONALD TRUMP: But we get the China, you know, they call it the China curse. We get the China curse, they’re better, and their air is dirty. You know, when I went there, I had a great relationship with President Xi. We got along very well. And they treated me better than anybody’s ever been treated. Same thing with Saudi Arabia, a number of them. But they laid it out. And I said, “This air is good.” Do you know, they closed every factory one week before I got there, from within 200 miles.

JOE ROGAN: That’s like what Gavin Newsom did when Xi Jinping came to San Francisco. He cleaned it up. He cleaned it up. He got rid of all the homeless people.

DONALD TRUMP: Isn’t that terrible in a way? To think, you know, he cleaned it up, and then it became a pigsty.

JOE ROGAN: Well, the dumbest thing is, he said, “When your friends come by, when you have visitors, you clean up your house.” Like, how about just keep your fucking house clean?

DONALD TRUMP: Can you imagine?

JOE ROGAN: That’s the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard anybody say, ever, as a governor, as to excuse to why you finally cleaned up your homeless problem.

DONALD TRUMP: And the day he left, it went right back. But in a way, that was a bad thing that he did. Because he showed what a disgrace that was. What a disgrace.

JOE ROGAN: Well, this is the thing that, like, shows you how foolish a lot of these people that are running these cities think, and a lot of these people that are running these states think. It’s foolish. You’re insulting the intelligence of the people that live in that city that are impacted by these people just camping, and needles, and human feces. There’s an app that you can buy. There’s an app that you can get, rather, that will show you where the human feces has been documented in San Francisco.

It’s a poo app. And it’s just everywhere. It’s just bum crap. Everywhere.

Water Shortages in Los Angeles

DONALD TRUMP: But let me give you one that you may not know, which I think you know everything, actually. I was a student of yours. But water. You know, in Los Angeles, you can’t get proper amounts of water.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

DONALD TRUMP: And it’s unbelievably expensive. And you might have a house in Beverly Hills and they’re actually thinking about rationing water. Can you believe it?

JOE ROGAN: I can believe it.

DONALD TRUMP: I was in the farm court country with some of the congressmen. We’re driving up a highway and I say, “How come all this land is so barren?”

This farmland, and it looked terrible, it was just brown and bad. I said, “But there’s always that little corner that’s so green and beautiful.” They said, “We have no water.” I said, “Do you have a drought?”

“No, we don’t have a drought.” I said, “Why don’t you have no water?” “Because the water isn’t allowed to flow down. It’s got a natural flow from Canada all the way up north of water.

More water than they could ever use. And in order to protect a tiny little fish, uh, the water up north gets routed into the Pacific Ocean. Millions and millions of gallons of water gets poured. You got to see this.

We’re driving up and I had never seen it before. It’s the most, it’s like Iowa. It’s the most fertile land. I was blessed with great land, Idaho for a potato, right?”

But these, they’re just, by the way, you know, some land is good for a potato. Some land is good for corn. It’s the craziest thing. I love the farmers.

They’re great. They’re the greatest. And by the way, they’re getting killed right now.

JOE ROGAN: They are.

DONALD TRUMP: They’re getting killed because of this stupid administration. But so I see this and I said, “You got to be kidding.” I said, “You mean you have water?” And I looked at it.

It’s like a valve in your sink, except it’s massive. The thing’s five times taller than your ceiling.

California’s Drained Tulare Lake

JOE ROGAN: Did you know the center of California was a giant lake? They have so much water.

You ever see what it looks like before they rerouted it? The center of California, like what is it, 200 years ago? How long ago did they do that, Jamie? The center of California had a fucking enormous lake in the middle of California.

They dumped it into the Pacific. Who knows what they did, but whatever foolishness that they did led to the situation they’re in now. Think of those dry forests that burned down all over. You know, the head of Austria said, you know, Tulare Lake or Tachi Lake.

It’s a freshwater lake in the southern San Joaquin Valley, United States. Tulare Lake was one of the largest freshwater lakes west of Mississippi. Show a photo of what it looked like back then. It’s a great system.

So that’s what it looked like.

DONALD TRUMP: Look at that image. Go to the one on the third from the right. Yeah.

Yeah. That was an enormous lake in the middle of California.

JOE ROGAN: Imagine that. That’d be much more valuable property.

DONALD TRUMP: How crazy is that? How crazy is that? That’s what it used to look like. And human beings screwed that up.

JOE ROGAN: No, they let it go into the Pacific and then they… I don’t know what they did. What did they do that… How did it go missing?

They said they drained it in 1983.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah. They drained it. 19?

JOE ROGAN: 1983.

DONALD TRUMP: Oh, my God.

JOE ROGAN: It went dry a handful of times.

DONALD TRUMP: Oh, it went dry a handful of times.

Well, you know, lakes do go dry, but that’s a big one.

JOE ROGAN: But think of it. It’s a big one to go dry. You could have all of the water you need.

All of that land would have more water. The whole thing could be like that little patch.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah. Literally, I’d say, as with Devin Noonan as a congressman and other congressmen who were going up, I was visiting that because, they asked me to go up and visit their territory and I did.

But I kept saying, “Look at this land. It’s beautiful, but it’s so dry.” And I thought they were going through like a desert, like a drought. They said, “No, we have water, but it gets…” So, I looked into it. And I got it done. I got it done. I could have water for all of that land. Water for your forests. You know, your forests are dry as a bone.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Dangerous.

DONALD TRUMP: That water could be routed. You know, you could have everything.

The Cost of Forest Fires and Misguided Environmental Policies

Not only dangerous, billions of dollars a year they spend on forest fires. And you know, there’s a case with the environment. They’re not allowed to rake their forests because you’re not allowed to touch it. When a tree falls down, after 18 months, it becomes very dry. It’s like, you know, like real firewood. It’s bad.

You know, a tree that’s up… These are all things I learned the hard way, the easy way. But when a tree is up, it sucks water. It’s wet. I went to that… They had a couple of horrible forest fires in California. And I went. I said, “You know, you had a lot of trees standing.” “Yes, they were healthy trees.” I said, “With this intense heat, you could see they were charred a little bit on the bottom, but they were going to be all right because they’re soaking wet because they suck up the water.”

But when they fall, they’re like, you know, it’s like lighting a match. And you’ve got to be able to clean. They call it maintain your forest. So I was with the head of Austria. He said, “You know, it’s a shame. I see all those forest fires in California. And all they have to do is clean their forest, meaning rake it up, get rid of the leaves, get rid of, you know, leaves that are sitting there for five years.

JOE ROGAN: And they’ll certainly get rid of the dead fall.

DONALD TRUMP: And get rid of the trees that have fallen, you know, or like so many things.

JOE ROGAN: By the way, could you rake the whole forest, though? I don’t think you could rake the whole forest. I think you can get rid of the dead fall. But raking all the leaves.

DONALD TRUMP: You could certainly get rid of the dead, OK?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, I think that’s the real issue.

DONALD TRUMP: You know, environmentally, they don’t want to do that. They don’t. They said, “You know, it’s got to be nature and all this stuff.” But in the meantime, this is exactly. But you could have. So it was the Department of Commerce that needed the approvals. But Gavin Newsom had to sign them. I got it all done. Nobody could believe it. It was all done. I said, “I got it. You got so much water, all you have to do is sign.” And that guy didn’t want to sign.

JOE ROGAN: Did he not want to sign because that would be a political victory for you?

DONALD TRUMP: I think no. He didn’t. No, I don’t think so. You know, he used to say he’s a great president that we got along. We did. We actually got along at that point. But I think somebody said “You just can’t continue to call him a great president.” You know, they do say that.

But we had it all done. He didn’t sign. And then we got on to other things. Every time I go to California, they say, “You have so much water.” They don’t know it. I’m telling you, people living in Beverly Hills, they turn off the water. Same thing with the electric. They want to go to all electric cars, but they have brownouts every weekend, you know.

JOE ROGAN: Well, right after they made the announcement that as of 2035, you’re not going to be able to buy an internal combustion engine in California. Like within a month, they had some announcement asking people to not charge their Teslas. Because the grid couldn’t handle it.

DONALD TRUMP: I will terminate the mandate immediately. That will be done, I would say, in my first day, maybe two days, because, you know.

The Potential of Nuclear Power

JOE ROGAN: Let me ask you about nuclear. One of the things that when I’ve talked to people that have a real understanding of nuclear power, what their position is, it’s probably the cleanest, safest form of electricity that we could generate. And that the fears of nuclear power are really about a few disasters. The Fukushima, Three Mile Island, these are old systems, and they’re much more capable now, and they’re capable of making even better systems. But it’s a difficult political issue, because you think nuclear power, you think Chernobyl. That’s what everybody does. They have this connection, they have the potential for disaster, or Fukushima.

DONALD TRUMP: Where you’re not supposed to enter the land for 3,000 years or something.

JOE ROGAN: I think it’s worse than that. I think that area is going to be radioactive for probably longer than you can imagine. But the point is, they’re better at it now. And that they can do it now, and you can generate power in a way that you don’t have to worry about these… One of the most ridiculous things is electric cars being powered by coal-fired plants. It’s a ridiculous thing.

DONALD TRUMP: It’s what’s happening.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, it is what’s happening. And people want to think they’re being green, you know, but it’s…

DONALD TRUMP: Well, you look at the way the batteries are made. But here’s the other thing. We don’t have… Well, we do, actually. It’s being held. You know, we have certain areas where we have great raw earth material, and we’re not allowed to use it because of the environment. And we have areas in California that have incredible raw earth, and they’re not allowing… And I’m going to open it up. I’m going to let them use it.

JOE ROGAN: But how do you do that?

China’s Control of Rare Earth Materials

DONALD TRUMP: China.

JOE ROGAN: How do you do that and protect the environment?

DONALD TRUMP: Because the environment’s going to be protected. You can do it. You can make a lake out of it. Okay, we’ll put back a lake. I mean, something nice about lakes. You can do things magnificently.

JOE ROGAN: You just have to do it carefully and responsibly.

DONALD TRUMP: Absolutely. You have to do it carefully. But the problem…

You know, China has all of those areas, most of those areas. And yet, when they say, “Go electric with the cars,” China’s going to be the one that gives us the cars. All of those guys in Detroit are going to be out of business. You’re going to make your electric cars over there. We have a thing called gasoline. And we have more oil and gas under our feet than any other nation. You know, I had… In Alaska, there’s a find. It’s called ANWR. I got it approved. Reagan couldn’t get it. Nobody could get it. I got it all done. It was amazing. They were getting ready to start drilling. The equivalent, they think, of Saudi Arabia.

One of the biggest finds in the world. It was all set to go. And Biden comes in. One of his first orders were, “We’re not going to use it.” It would have been so good for the… We could have supplied all of Asia with oil and gas.

JOE ROGAN: What was the negative?

DONALD TRUMP: When you talk about money? The negative was, politically, they didn’t think it was good for them. That’s all.

JOE ROGAN: That’s all it was. So you don’t think that it’s environmentally dangerous?

DONALD TRUMP: No. Taking it from way down deep in the earth, environmentally, it would have been fine.

JOE ROGAN: So it can be done responsibly to the point where it protects the environment.

The Drawbacks of Wind Power

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I think windmills… Okay. So they talk about windmills. I think windmills are really disruptive. When you talk about the environment, they killed the birds. You want to see a bird cemetery? Go under a windmill someday that hasn’t been cleaned out with all the bird carcasses. It’s like massive amounts of birds.

JOE ROGAN: Well, they’re also a massive eyesore. I went to a ranch in South Texas. We had to drive past this enormous windmill farm. It’s gross. It’s dystopian. You’re looking in the left and the right, and all you see is these big spinning machines that aren’t even that effective at generating electricity.

DONALD TRUMP: Correct. Most expensive form of electricity is a windmill. And then they start to rust and rot, and then they get abandoned by the people that built them.

JOE ROGAN: Well, you have to get rid of all that material, too. When you replace those blades, now you have a problem because you have to dispose. Right. You have to dispose these enormous windmills.

DONALD TRUMP: By the way, they say you can’t bury them. So I even questioned that, but I’m not going to get into it. But they say you can’t bury them. So you have the blades, and you can’t bury the blades. You can bury the blades. It’s not going to matter. You can bury them. You’ll find areas you can bury. But they come up…

This is what I mean. But the environmentalist’s dream is windmills. You know what happens to them? After five years, they start to rot. After ten years, you have to replace them. Did you ever look at certain parts of California where they have heavy windmills, and they’ve been abandoned? And they’re all different manufacturers and all different companies, and they all…

JOE ROGAN: I haven’t seen that.

DONALD TRUMP: It is the ugliest thing. It looks like a graveyard, almost, a graveyard of windmills. It’s pollution. It’s so bad.

JOE ROGAN: It’s no different than leaving garbage on the ground.

DONALD TRUMP: How about in New Jersey? Off the coast of New Jersey, they want to build… The people are going crazy not to build them. But when you have them, the whales are washing up on shore. So in 50 years, they had one whale come ashore. Now they had like 18 come in the last year.

JOE ROGAN: What is happening with the whales? I’ve read about this.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, they say that the wind drives them crazy. You know, it’s a vibration. Because you have those… You know, those things are 50-story buildings, some of them.

JOE ROGAN: Right. And they’re super sensitive to vibration.

DONALD TRUMP: You know, the wind is rushing. The things are blowing. It’s a vibration. And it makes noise. You know what it is? I want to be a whale psychiatrist. It drives the whales freaking crazy. Something happens with them. But for whatever reason, they’re getting washed up on shore. And yet, the environment…

JOE ROGAN: Immediately ignored by the environmental people.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, but the environmentalists, they don’t talk about it. I think there’s nothing uglier. I see it in Scotland. I see it all over the world. You have this beautiful valley. It’s been there for, you know, in civilization, thousands of years, but millions of years. And all of a sudden, you have these ugly windmills up.

JOE ROGAN: Would your plan to replace that with nuclear? What would you do?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, nuclear is better. I mean, I think there’s a little danger of nuclear. But you know, we had some really bad nuclear… They did one in Alabama. They did one in, I think, South Carolina. They do them wrong. They build these massive things. Then the environmentalists get in. I don’t want to go into a long story, because it’s too long for the show.

This show is too valuable to talk about concrete. But they have hardened concrete. It’s number 12 concrete. It’s as hard as… It’s harder than steel. It’s incredible. They put up a wall, and an inspector comes along and goes, like, “Nope, nope. You’re a quarter of an inch…” The wall might be eight feet wide, and you’re a quarter of an inch too short. “I’m sorry. You’ve got to rip down the wall. You’ve got to…”

Because it’s got to be poured contiguously, right? “You’re one quarter of an inch… I’m sorry. Rip down…” You can’t rip it down. This stuff, you can’t put a hammer through it. It’s incredible. Concrete technology is unbelievable, you know, what’s happened. You think of concrete…

JOE ROGAN: So you think that’s an example of over-regulation, pointless over-regulation.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah. Well, you have an inspector that comes along, and he says, “Take down a $25 zillion wall.” These things ended up costing $25 billion. And one of them never got opened. But here’s the story. So France does it. France is largely nuclear. And they build small, little, compact plants. And if they need more, they build the same thing, and they hook it up, and they hook it up, because they get too big, and too complex, and too expensive. And it is very clean.

They say it’s absolutely… You know, my uncle… I had a great uncle who was a great genius, just like other members of my family. But he was a professor at MIT for, I think, 41 years. He was the longest… When I was in the White House, the head of MIT, Princeton, and Harvard came down to meet me. And the MIT person said, “I have a book on your uncle, Dr. John Trump. He was our longest-serving professor. He was a great genius, sir. Do you know how…” And he had…

He knew everything about nuclear, from math to chemistry to nuclear. He knew it. And he said, “Someday it’s going to be the way to go, but the problem is it’s so dangerous in terms of war.” He said, “Donald, someday…” This was a long time… Uncle John, Dr. John Trump, he said, “Someday you’ll have a little satchel at your side, and you’ll go into a building, and you’ll be able to blow up New York City.” I said, “Uncle John, that’ll never happen.”

He’s right. You know, he’s right. The power is so crazy.

JOE ROGAN: Well, that was part of the problem with giving nuclear power to other countries, right? Like, that was the problem that happened with India and Pakistan. They got nuclear power, and then they were able to weaponize it.

DONALD TRUMP: The biggest problem in the world today is not global warming. It’s nuclear warming. And we have idiots that are negotiating for us. We have a guy that doesn’t make it past 4 o’clock, and it’s not because of age. You know, they ought to… I know so many guys in their late 80s, and they’re better than…

I said to one guy the other day, “I think you’re smarter than you were 25 years ago.” I’ve known him a long time. He’s 89 years old. He’s sharp. I mean, he’s great. Biden gives people a bad name, because that’s not an old… That’s not an age… I think they say it because I’m three or four years younger. You know, I think that’s why they say it. They say, his age. It’s not his age. He’s got a problem.

JOE ROGAN: He’s had two major brain surgeries.

DONALD TRUMP: He did. He did. He had… Those are not good operations.

JOE ROGAN: And do you see what he did today? He went running towards the camera and made some apology to Native Americans, and he said that’s why he’s headed out west. Like, he’s off the reservation, so to speak, for lack of a better term.

DONALD TRUMP: You know, it’s interesting, because during the debate, I was looking over, and I’m saying, “Hmm, this is strange.” I just thought that, like, strange things were happening.

Biden’s Debate Performance and Theories About the Early Debate

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Well, he couldn’t keep it together, but do you think they knew he couldn’t keep it together?

DONALD TRUMP: I think so.

JOE ROGAN: Do you think that they wanted… Is that why… Like, historically, that debate was earlier than they’ve been in the past, right?

DONALD TRUMP: I think they wanted to get… Well, there’s a lot of theories. A lot of people said, “Do the debate now, and we’ll get him out.”

JOE ROGAN: Right.

DONALD TRUMP: I think that maybe could be.

JOE ROGAN: Well, that is what happened.

DONALD TRUMP: I think they also said, “Do the debate now and get it over with.” I don’t think anybody thought he was going to get out, really.

JOE ROGAN: I don’t think so. It didn’t make any sense.

DONALD TRUMP: The debate got him out, but I think it’s very unfair. Look, you have a bad debate. His numbers went down, but I think she’s not doing very well right now, and I think she looks…

The Inaccuracy and Potential Fraud of Polls

JOE ROGAN: Well, I want to get to that, too, because it’s hard to know. Like, the whole poll thing is very bizarre for most people, because most people don’t answer polls. So, they read the polls…

DONALD TRUMP: Well, you have a poll. I never put a poll. If I did, I’d hang up. I was never called by a pollster.

JOE ROGAN: If I did, I wouldn’t answer. I’m busy. You know how polls are done.

DONALD TRUMP: Oh, I’m going to get myself in trouble. So, I really don’t believe too much in them. So…

JOE ROGAN: Well, 2016 taught a lot of people about the ineffective use of polls.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, they were very ineffective, because I thought I was doing well. I’d go to a place, and I’d have 30,000, 40,000 people. Hillary would go. They’d have 500 people, and they’d tell me, I’m going to lose. I said, “Why am I going to lose? I had 40,000 people. She had 200 people.” But, you know, I have a theory.

These pollsters, they charge you a lot of money, too. You know, they charge you half a million bucks to do something stupid, Paul. And they interview, like, 251 people. I don’t think they interview, in many cases. I don’t want to get myself in too much trouble.

JOE ROGAN: You think it’s bullshit?

DONALD TRUMP: No, I think they sit there. They make a deal. They get a half a million bucks, and they say, “Trump’s leading 51 to 49.” They announce it, and everybody says, “Oh.”

JOE ROGAN: Do you understand?

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: So, you think…

DONALD TRUMP: I don’t think they… I think, in a lot… Look, I’m a very common sense person. I’m a very common sense person. I’m a very common sense person. What’s the difference between 49 to 51, and 47 and a half?

JOE ROGAN: Well, it’s also a tiny percentage of the population. I don’t think it’s representative of the overall population. I just don’t think it is.

DONALD TRUMP: I don’t know of one person in my whole life that ever got called by a pollster.

JOE ROGAN: Exactly. That’s my point. So, here’s my question.

DONALD TRUMP: But I shouldn’t say that because I’m doing really well in the polls now. But I think that’s… So this week I happen to believe in a very… I only believe… No. I like them this month. But no, I honestly believe that there’s probably a lot of fraud. I had a poll, Washington Post, ABC, in the Hillary thing on Wisconsin. They had me down 17 points the day before the election. I knew it was wrong because I had a rally.

I had 29,000 people at a racetrack, and it was like zero to Wisconsin, and they had me down 17 points. In other words, you had no chance, and I won. And I called up my pollsters, good guy, good guy, and I believe he’s legitimate, and some of them are. Some of them aren’t.

I said, “Tell me, why did they have me down so much? I mean, nobody’s going to believe them the next time.” They said they don’t care. When you’re down 17 points, people are going to stay home. They’re not going to vote. Because they’re going to say, “I love Trump, but I’m not going to waste my time. It’s cold out.”

I said, “But why don’t they make it four or five?” He said, “At four or five, they’re going to go and vote. At 17, they’re not going to go and vote.” So think of it. I was seven. This is the Washington Post, ABC, Paul. I was down 17 points in Wisconsin, and I won. It’s crooked stuff.

JOE ROGAN: There’s a lot of crooked stuff, and I wanted to talk about that, too, because one of the things that people talk about with you is the denial of the results.

J.D. Vance’s Response to Trump’s Election Loss

JOE ROGAN: I think J. D. Vance did a brilliant job the other day when he was being interviewed, and they asked him, “Did Trump lose the 2020 election?” And he turned it around and said, “Was there legitimate election interference in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story on social media? And was that a concerted effort?”

DONALD TRUMP: Well, they say it’s a ten point difference, and I lost by one tenth of a point. They say it was 22,000 votes, but look, it was much more than that, and I appreciate J. D. Vance saying that. And by the way, I think he was a great pick. Do you like J. D. as a pick?

JOE ROGAN: I like him a lot.

DONALD TRUMP: You’re allowed to say that.

JOE ROGAN: No, I do. I like him a lot. I think he’s a brilliant guy, and I think his ability to talk like a normal human being. You did my friend Theo Vaughn’s podcast, and he just did it.

DONALD TRUMP: How did he do?

JOE ROGAN: He did great. He just talks like a normal human being.

DONALD TRUMP: Is that why you called me to do this?

JOE ROGAN: No. No. I was… Once they shot you, I was like, “He’s got to come in here.”

Trump’s Ear Injury from the Shooting

JOE ROGAN: It’s all about timing. It’s all about the timing. Timing’s good. I think our timing’s perfect. Do you even have a scar on your ear? You got anything on there?

DONALD TRUMP: I do.

JOE ROGAN: Let me see. Let me see. What do you got there?

DONALD TRUMP: So, right over here.

JOE ROGAN: On the tiny little mark. See?

DONALD TRUMP: It zicked right there.

JOE ROGAN: It healed up pretty fucking good.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, it’s pretty good. It’s not like some of the wrestlers, some of the UFC fighters. No. It was sort of like a top shot. The point of the bullet was over the edge. But you see, the thing’s taken off a little bit, but it makes me a tougher guy. You know, the fighters love their…

Bo Nickel’s Upcoming Fight

JOE ROGAN: You know, Bo Nickel, he’s a great fighter.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, I love Bo Nickel.

JOE ROGAN: How’s he going to do?

DONALD TRUMP: I think he’s terrific. He’s great.

JOE ROGAN: He’s a fantastic fighter.

DONALD TRUMP: He was almost like undefeated in college. Yeah, he’s a fantastic wrestler and one of the best mixed martial artists. When is he fighting again?

JOE ROGAN: He’s fighting in Madison Square Garden in November.

DONALD TRUMP: Oh, that’s going to be after the election?

JOE ROGAN: Yep.

DONALD TRUMP: So, I’ll either go as president or I’ll be depressed and I won’t bother to go. I think they’re having a fight right now.

Democrats Denying Election Results

JOE ROGAN: One of the things that was fascinating also was the denial of the election results is a pretty common thing. Hillary Clinton famously denied that she called you an illegitimate president and she said that Russia put you in place.

DONALD TRUMP: Even though she conceded?

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

DONALD TRUMP: Even though she conceded the night of the election because she was beaten.

JOE ROGAN: Yes, and it was a thing that was pretty common for people, especially Democrats, to deny the elections. There’s been many of them. The Bush administration, the dangling chads, all that stuff.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, look at these guys in Congress. All these sleazebags in Congress that are Democrats, they’re still denying 2016. But now they don’t so much because, you know, they try and pin it on me.

You don’t hear them say it. But here’s my point. But they denied it right up until the end.

JOE ROGAN: My point is, this idea of election fraud is a forbidden topic and you get labeled an election denier.

The Forbidden Topic of Election Fraud

JOE ROGAN: It’s like being labeled an anti-vaxxer if you question some of the health consequences that people have from the COVID-19 shots. “Oh my God, you’re an anti-vaxxer.” If you say, and what I say publicly, and I’ve said this a lot, it’s not zero percent. So if you ask me, what is the amount of election fraud in this country?

Is it zero percent? No one thinks it’s zero percent. I’ve never met one person, not a super liberal, progressive, far left person or a right wing conservative. Not one person thinks it’s zero percent. They think when you have human beings and also you have a lot of weirdness that was going on during the 2020 elections, particularly with mail-in ballots.

DONALD TRUMP: And you had legislatures that had to approve and they didn’t approve and they went out and did it anyway. And you had ballot, you had old fashioned ballot screwing. I mean, you had, you have people going up and dropping in phony votes. You had unsigned ballots, et cetera, et cetera.

JOE ROGAN: There’s certain people that think that they have, and the rhetoric is also that you’re Hitler and that in order to stop Hitler, you have to do whatever it takes.

DONALD TRUMP: That was okay, yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. And this is, I mean, you’re hearing this now. Kamala compared you to, said your love of Hitler yesterday.

DONALD TRUMP: You know, You know, Kamala is a very low IQ person. She’s a very low IQ. You know, I’m for taking tests too. I think anybody that runs for president should take, they should give them tests. And it’s not an age thing. It’s not based.

If you look back on history, seventies and eighties, your greatest, some of your greatest leaders in the world, world history, long time world history, they were in their seventies and their eighties. But I think you should take cognitive tests. I think everybody, they say it’s unconstitutional, but I think Kamala should have a test because there’s something missing. There’s something wrong with her.

JOE ROGAN: Well, I think it’s pressure. I think the pressure and the scrutiny, you’ve been a celebrity for a long time and you understand what this is like, but for someone who’s in her late forties, who becomes the vice president, who runs for president, becomes the vice president. And then all of a sudden the weight of the world is on your shoulders and there’s all these people paying attention. A lot of people clam up.

DONALD TRUMP: But you either have it or you don’t.

JOE ROGAN: Correct. Look, this is an interview. You’ve, we’ve covered a lot of territory, right? And, and you know, it’s fine. I don’t care. I want to. But this is much more interesting.

She — to do an interview with Anderson Cooper, a softball, crazy softball interview. She took two days off and she studied and studied all day long. And then she comes out with a result that was a real embarrassment. That was a really bad interview. She couldn’t answer a question. And every question is not answered. I mean, like, what would you do your first day in office? Okay, I’ll build a wall. I won’t build a wall. There’s a hundred things you can say, just say anything, right? There’s something off with her.

Dealing with Foreign Leaders as President

Well, we’re dealing, we’re dealing with the smartest people. They hate when I say, you know, when the press, when I call President Xi, they said, “He called President Xi brilliant.” Well, he’s a brilliant guy. He controls 1.4 billion people with an iron fist. I mean, he’s a brilliant guy, whether you like it or not. And they go crazy.

JOE ROGAN: Right. It doesn’t mean he’s not evil, or it doesn’t mean he’s not dangerous.

DONALD TRUMP: Actually, we have evil people in our country. If you have a smart president, he can deal with Russia. He can deal with all of it. I had a, I, Russia would have never gone into Ukraine if I were president.

JOE ROGAN: How would you have stopped it?

DONALD TRUMP: Automatic. Two things. I told him. I said, “Vladimir, you’re not going in.” I used to talk to him all the time. “You’re not going in.” I can’t tell you what I told him because I think it would be inappropriate.

But someday he’ll tell you. But he would have never gone in. But you know why else he wouldn’t have gone in? Because the oil prices at $40 a barrel wouldn’t have allowed him, wouldn’t have given him the money to prosecute that war, wouldn’t have given him the money.

I said it with President, I was with President Xi, I said, it was almost the same conversation. With Vladimir, it was Moscow. With President Xi, it was Beijing. It was almost the exact same conversation. I said, “Don’t do it.” He would have never done it. The day I left, they flew 28 bombers over the middle of Taiwan, 28 bombers. And it’s the apple of his eye.

And the same thing with Russia. It’s the apple. Ukraine is the apple of his eye. I used to talk to him. I had a very good relationship with him. He wouldn’t have done it. He would have never done it. But he also wouldn’t have done it because of the oil.

Biden’s Afghanistan Withdrawal and Milley’s Mistakes

DONALD TRUMP: You know, one of the reasons that what happened is, number one, he doesn’t respect Biden at all. Not even a little bit. And who the hell would? But he doesn’t respect him. When he saw what happened in Afghanistan, how horribly that was handled. Number one, you take the soldiers out last, not first. OK, that was a big mistake. And we had that thing charted out and they weren’t obeying us.

They weren’t. Abdul is the head of the Taliban. Boom, boom. He had to do all these things. Some he didn’t do. I said, “Nope, you’re not doing — you got to do them all.” This guy took he immediately took all. He left the equipment behind 13 soldiers dead, but he took everybody out. He took his soldiers out before a child would know. That’s where Milley was so stupid. He was such a stupid guy. Milley.

OK, those generals should have all been fired. The Afghan, the people that were involved with Afghanistan should have all been fired. Then they’d be writing books about him, how stupid he was, how bad he was. But you take your soldiers out last. I had a big rally and I saw a child in the front row about a year and a half ago. And I called the child up. I said, “Do you mind if I borrow your child?” “Oh, yes, please.”

And they came up. Kids five years. I gave him a quick details. You know, I said, “We want to get out of this place and we have this and we have this and we have the equipment.” I gave him a little thing. I said, “Do you take your soldiers out first or last after everything’s done?” “You take them out last, sir.” A child would know that we took our soldiers out first.

JOE ROGAN: What was your plan?

DONALD TRUMP: And we left a bag room.

JOE ROGAN: Well, not only that, we left billions of dollars worth of equipment and military vehicles that are used for parades now.

DONALD TRUMP: The best equipment yet to embarrass us, the best equipment in the world —

JOE ROGAN: The Taliban parade where they’ve got tanks rolling down the streets and Blackhawks flying is the craziest thing I’ve ever seen. The fact that we left all that stuff there.

DONALD TRUMP: We left the best equipment in the world behind.

JOE ROGAN: What would you have done differently?

Trump’s Conversations with the Taliban Leader

DONALD TRUMP: Well, number one, we would have taken it out. Just so you go back a little bit further. I had a couple of conversations with Abdul. And from the time I had those conversations, because they were shooting our soldiers, you know, with the sniper stuff. They were shooting.

They were shooting a lot of them. They were shooting a lot with Obama, much less with me. But they were shooting him. And I said, “Get this guy on the phone.” The press went nuts when they heard this. I had a great conversation with him. It was a tough conversation. Eighteen months later, there wasn’t one soldier that was ever shot at.

And even Biden admitted it in a moment of stupidity because he shouldn’t admit it. His people went nuts. He said, “Yeah, well, I will admit no soldier. We didn’t have a soldier killed in 18 months in Afghanistan.” Not one soldier was killed because he understood what was going to happen if that happened. I didn’t have one. So then when I left, after having gotten more votes than any sitting president in the history of the country and much more votes than he got in 2016, when I left, they started shooting our soldiers. But more importantly, what they did is they did that whole thing with, you know, leaving.

He shouldn’t have left. Number one, should have left from Bagram, because Bagram is this massive base. It’s got tremendous acreage around it. Tremendous. It’s a very big it was built many years ago. And part of the reason you wouldn’t have taken that is because it goes to China. One hour from where China makes its nuclear missiles, you should have never left Bagram. Number one, they should have left from Bagram.

They should have left last. They should have got, you know, we have Americans that are still there. They should have taken all their equipment out. Everything, every plane, every screw should have been taken out, every tent. And I said that. That’s when I realized that Milley was a dummy. I said, “We’re leaving, but I want to get everything out, search cheaper to leave it.” I said, “What do you mean cheaper to leave?”

He said it’s cheaper to leave it. That was cheaper, cheaper. He said it’s cheap, not more dangerous. He just said cheaper. I said, “I want every plane. I want every tank. I want the goggles. They have night goggles. They have all this stuff that these guys now have.” He said, “Sir, it’s cheaper to get out and leave it.” I said, “So you think it’s cheaper to leave one hundred and fifty million dollar brand new airplane in there than it is to fly it out with a tank of jet fuel and put it in Pakistan or just fly it directly back?” It’s cheaper to leave.

I said, this guy’s nuts. I’m telling you, he was so stupid. He was so unwise. He was like an unwise man. And there were a number of them. But I defeated ISIS with the greatest generals. I had a guy who was so great. I flew to Iraq and I met the real generals, not these idiots that we deal with. And we knocked out, you know, I defeated one hundred percent of the ISIS caliphate. They said it would take five years. I did it in a matter of a few, literally a few weeks. And we hit them hard.

Trump’s Unannounced Visit to Iraq

DONALD TRUMP: And he said, “So we’re going to hit him here. We’re going to hit him there. We’re going to hit him here. There.” And I said, “This guy’s great. I like this guy.” I was told it would take five years. That’s why I went. I said, “How could it take five years? We have brand new fighters. We have the best planes, the best weapons, the best guns, the best bombs. How could it possibly take that long?”

And I flew to, I flew and left at three o’clock in the morning. Nobody knew I was going. I got on Air Force One and we started flying. And when we reached about half an hour away from Iraq, that was where the airport was, big airport, about a half an hour away, they said, “Sir, I’m sorry, you’ll have to turn off all your lights.”

“Why?” “We’re getting close to our site, our land.” I said, “I mean, we spent eight trillion dollars and we can’t leave the lights on.” Think of this. Twenty years, eight trillion dollars and we can’t leave the lights on in a plane. I said, “That’s OK. Turn the lights on. I’m not going to fight him.“

That’s what this is because it’s too dangerous, too dangerous, because they see the light up in the air. They’ll shoot at you. So I said, “Turn the lights off.” Then they said, “So we’re going to also pull your shades if that’s OK.” So that’s the plane was pitch black. All the lights outside, you know, the blinking, the blinking reds. They were all turned off. And I like to sit with pilots a lot of times.

And these guys are specimens. I would say they’re better looking than Tom Cruise. OK. And they’re even taller, like perfect specimens. These guys like for a fighter, you know, you have some guys that are perfect specimens. And, you know, they pick they pick the best pilots in the Air Force, United States Air Force to fly Air Force One.

DONALD TRUMP: And I get up there and I’m sitting and I’m feeling my way up. You know, it’s up on the 747 as you go through the stairs. But I sort of knew my way up. There wasn’t a light in the plane. I’m saying, “Can you imagine?” We spent trillions of dollars and we’re trying to fly in blind. But I got into the plane, the cockpit is dark black, little tiny light. You could see the pilot, a perfect looking human being, his co-pilot. Everybody was perfect.

They were all like movie stars. It’s like I could have cast a movie with these guys and nobody would believe it because they were too good looking. So I said, “How are we doing?” “Sir, we’ll be landing in 10 minutes.” And I look outside. There’s not a light. And I’m saying, you know, I’ve landed a lot of planes. And you see like little lights at least.

There’s nothing. It’s just pure desert. And I said, “OK, Captain, good,” but I’m looking now where you’ve been in many planes where it has the computer sign saying 1,000 feet, it goes 900, 800. It’s a computer voice, but it sounds like, but it’s an incredible voice. 700. I said, “Captain, are we OK?” I’m looking. “Are we OK, Captain?” 700. There’s no lights. And I’m looking. You know, normally when you land a plane, because I sit with pilots a lot, I think it’s great. I think it’s a great profession, everything.

It’s incredible. They’re incredible. These machines are incredible. He said, “Sir, we’re fine. No problem, sir.” I said, “You know, I don’t see the lights up there, Captain.” “Sure, we’re OK.” You know, so I mean, I’m exaggerating a little bit, you know, probably exaggerating to tell the story.

They say Trump was a coward. So I’m sitting with him, you know, 500 foot, and I’m telling you, there wasn’t a light on the runway, nothing. And we’re going in. “You OK, Captain? Everything good?” “Yes, sir. No problem.” And I’m telling you, Joe, you know, there’s always a light. There’s not a little pin. And all of a sudden, and you hear, bwah, bwah, perfect landing like glass. That’s how good I mean, these guys, between the equipment and it’s genius, it’s pure. It was so dark, you couldn’t see a thing.

There was no runway. You wouldn’t know where the hell you’re in the middle of a desert. And then I got out of the plane. I said, “Thank you, Captain. It’s a great job.” And then I get out of the plane, and I’m going down, and I see a general and another general. And I see a staff sergeant, a drill sergeant, and various guys, all central casting, central casting. They said, “Sir, would you like to rest?”

I said, “I don’t want to rest. I want to figure out what the hell are we doing with ISIS. I’m hearing we can’t. It’s going to take years.” “No, sir, we can do it very quickly, sir.” Anyway, we go into the room. I mean, Biden would have taken a nap for four days and then left without a meeting. So we go into the room, and they have these guys.

I say, “How long can you do it? How long?” “We can do it in a couple of weeks, sir.” He said, “Wait a minute, they told me five years.” “We can do it in, I don’t know,” he gave me a number, like in no time. I said, “Why haven’t you done it?” “Because the orders came in from Washington, sir, and they would come here and tell us what to do.” “Don’t you challenge us?” “We’re not allowed to do that, sir. That’s not the military way. They tell us what to do, and we have to respect them.”

JOE ROGAN: So do you think that it was incompetence why they didn’t go after ISIS?

DONALD TRUMP: I think it’s a bad system. You know, when Mattis goes there or when Milley goes there, who’s stupid, and they tell these guys that are actually smart what to do, and the guys that are smart are saying we don’t like what they’re doing, but they’re not allowed to sort of counteract. Plus the guys that went there are arrogant. You know, they’re arrogant fools.

They’re like stupid fools. The way they pulled out of, you know, the way they, as an example, the way they pulled out of Afghanistan with the people falling off the planes, it was so, it was worse than Vietnam with the helicopters falling. It was so bad, there was no reason for it. Anyway, so we knocked them out. And I mean, we have great military. We have great people, but not the television guys. And I rebuilt the military, and then they gave a chunk of it. I have to tell you, as much as it is, it’s a tiny little piece, believe it or not.

We have an unbelievable, I rebuilt the military. I rebuilt our nuclear. And in a way, I hated to redo it, but I got to realize how powerful that nuclear is, Joe. One bomb, Israel is gone, but forget. One bomb could take out the entire East Coast. It’s so bad. And I watched these poor fools talking about, “Our oceans will rise one-eighth of an inch over the next 500 years.” I mean, we have people, we have countries, right now you have five countries.

Trump’s Relationship with Kim Jong Un and Defusing Tensions with North Korea

DONALD TRUMP: And don’t underestimate, North, North, if you take a look at North Korea, their nuke, I was there. I mean, I was with Kim Jong, I had a great, I got along great with him. You know, the president, he got along great. That’s a good thing.

It’s not a bad thing. It’s a great thing. Obama thought we were going to go to war with North Korea. When I met with Obama just prior to the takeoff, you know, you meet, you have sort of a ceremonial meeting. But it lasted a long time, a lot longer than it was supposed to last. I said, “What’s the biggest problem,” he said, “North Korea.” By the time I finished, I was, we had no problem with North Korea. We were really, it was a little tough at the beginning, remember?

He said, “I have a red button on my desk.” I said, “I have a red button also, but mine’s bigger than yours and mine works.”

JOE ROGAN: I like how you call them little rocket man.

DONALD TRUMP: I said, I said, “Yeah, a little rocket.” I said, “Little rocket man, you’re going to burn in hell.” And it was a rough, oh, so rough that people were worried. “This is crazy.” And then one day I got a call, sort of like a fight. I got a call. You know, you have to see where they’re pounding from, then all of a sudden, but I got a call and it was from him, meaning his people. They wanted to meet. They wouldn’t meet Obama.

He tried to meet. They wouldn’t even talk to him about it. And I think he expected to go to war. I actually do. I believe he expected to go. And we checked their nuclear stockpile. It is substantial. I mean, it’s, that’s, I said, “Do you do anything?” I got to know him very well. I got to know him better than anybody, anybody. And I said, “Do you ever do anything else? Why don’t you go take it easy and relax, go to the beach, your beautiful beach, nice beach front property,” you know, kiddingly.

He said, “You’re always building nuclear. Just relax. You don’t have to do it. Let’s build some condos on your shoreline.” They actually have gorgeous stuff. And he said, “I just have to do it because I need it for my safety,” et cetera. I got to know him very well. We had no problem with him.

If you have a smart problem, if you have a smart, really the right president, the smart president, you’re not going to have a problem. And I say it to people, we have a bigger problem, in my opinion, with the enemy from within. And it drives him crazy when I use that term. But we have an enemy from within.

The Enemy from Within: Criminal Migrants at the Border

DONALD TRUMP: We have people that are really bad people that I really think want to make this country unsuccessful. When you look at what’s happening at our border, Joe, when you have people coming in that, when other countries are allowed to empty their prisons into our country with murderers, we had 13,099 murderers dropped in our country over the last three years.

JOE ROGAN: And 15,000 rapists convicted.

DONALD TRUMP: Rapists? Drug dealers, drug lords, terrorists, people from mental institutions.

JOE ROGAN: What do you think the strategy is?

DONALD TRUMP: Hundreds to hundreds of thousands of major criminals, tougher and worse than anybody we have.

JOE ROGAN: We’re seeing the consequences of it in San Antonio, they’ve taken over apartment buildings in Aurora, Colorado, they’ve taken over apartment buildings, these Venezuelan gangs. What do you think the strategy is? One of the things that they’ve said is that you stopped a bill from being passed. But didn’t that bill also include amnesty for the people that are already here?

DONALD TRUMP: This is years after the fact. The damage was already done.

JOE ROGAN: But what was the bill?

The Failed Immigration Bill and Relocating Migrants to Swing States

DONALD TRUMP: The bill was nothing. It allowed two million people in. They were going to get amnesty. It was a horrible bill. It didn’t protect us at all.

JOE ROGAN: But we should just tell people what the strategy is. So one of the things that’s been very clear is that they’ve moved a large percentage of these migrants that are coming across the border illegally, they’ve moved them to swing states. This is what’s going on with Springfield, Ohio, right? They’re in swing states?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, that’s not a swing state. I’m going to win Ohio by a lot. So that’s not a swing state. It’s called Springfield, Ohio, to be exact. Springfield, Ohio, is this very nice community of 52,000 people that just had 32,000 migrants that don’t speak the language dropped into their community. You can’t get into a hospital. You can’t get into a school. It’s gone from a beautiful little place to a horror show.

And the mayor is a nice guy. And the mayor says, “We’re looking for interpreters.” I said, “No. You’ve got to remove them and bring them back to their country.” Mostly Haitians in this case. But they speak no language. They speak no English. In fact, even the language they do speak, I mean, they can’t get interpreters. They can’t do anything. And the mayor’s trying to be politically correct. They’re all trying to be.

Gangs Taking Over Communities and the Crisis at the Border

DONALD TRUMP: In Aurora, Colorado, you have the worst, probably the worst gang. MS-13 might even be, you know, those two are the worst gangs. These are Venezuela gangs. They have taken over apartment complexes, and they’re going to want to take over the whole thing. And you have a weak governor, a pathetic governor, who’s a radical left Democrat. He doesn’t know what the hell to do. But you have it in many other communities, but they don’t like to talk about it because it’s, you know, it’s bad for the community to talk about it. These people have been let in here by this imbecile. She’s and I mean it. She’s a low IQ person. Low IQ.

JOE ROGAN: Also, it’s obviously not just her. There’s a strategy that’s involved in letting these people in.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, she was in charge of the border.

JOE ROGAN: Well, she’s in charge of the border, but they also, they utilize that app, the app that used to be used. It used to be used, I think, essentially, wasn’t it for shipping? Wasn’t it when people were in this country?

DONALD TRUMP: It was used for shipping, and now it’s used to deal with the cartels. The cartel, heads of the cartel, rich people, by the way, these are loaded. These people have so much money. They would call up. Think of this. They call up the app, and the app tells them where they should take their load of illegal migrants from the Congo. You know, we have a lot from the Congo, prisons in the Congo.

Dana White’s Loyalty and Friendship with Trump

DONALD TRUMP: I made a little bit of a sarcastic joke. A man named Dana White, who you love, who I love, I assume you love.

JOE ROGAN: I love that dude.

JOE ROGAN: I think he’s in a class by him. He’s probably the reason why you’re here.

DONALD TRUMP: I don’t know, maybe. He’s one of the big ones. He is the greatest guy. You know, I always say, nobody’s indispensable, you know, everybody can be replaced. Maybe you can’t be. You might not be. But Dana White, truly, I don’t think, you know, he sold it for $4 billion. I said, “Who the hell is going to pay $4 billion?” And they made like a great deal, because of him. Take him out. I think it’s a whole different matter.

JOE ROGAN: No, he’s the best promoter of all time.

DONALD TRUMP: He’s also the greatest guy. He spoke at the whole thing with, you know, I had just been shot, and he got up and he spoke so better than anybody. I mean, who would be better to introduce you?

I asked of all the people, and I know there’s biggest people in the world, and they all would have loved to have done it, and I said, “Dana, would you do it?” You know, it was interesting. He was away. And he said to the people that, you know, one of my guys called, said, “I won’t be able to do it. I’m just left with my wife and family.” I said, he said, “No, yeah,” I was a little surprised. Even though I knew he was very far away, he was in some place, you know, and he deserved it with his family, you know, the whole thing. And then I said, “All right, let’s,” and I said, “We’ll look at who we’re going to get.”

And all of a sudden, she comes in, “Dana White just said he’s going to do it, and he’s coming back in tonight. He’s taking the,” you know, the guy is just an incredible guy, and he’s like a tough champion, but loyal. Yeah, he’s got to be one of your favorite people.

JOE ROGAN: He’s one of my favorite people. I love him to death. I’ve been friends with him for 23 years. I love him to death.

DONALD TRUMP: So would you have, because you’re, what you’re doing here is incredible. I mean, everybody tells me, all I know is today I’m going, you know, you’re on Joe Rogan take. People are telling me, like, I said, I say, “How the hell do you know that?” But it’s sort of, what you’ve done here is amazing. Where would you be if you didn’t do the UFC stuff? Would you have this show, do you think?

Rogan’s Involvement in the UFC and the Growth of the Sport

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, I would still be doing it, for sure.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah. Would it be at the same, would it be at the same level?

JOE ROGAN: I don’t know. It’s hard to know. I think, you know, one of the things that works for this show, I guess, is that I’m involved in so many different things. You know, stand-up comedy, UFC, and all the interests that I have that lead to the podcast.

DONALD TRUMP: Will you always want to do, first of all, you love UFC.

JOE ROGAN: I love it, yeah. You love the fights.

DONALD TRUMP: I mean, I watch you. You are loving it. They could pay you nothing. You’d be very…

JOE ROGAN: They didn’t pay me anything for the first, like, 13 shows. I did it for free, because they were hemorrhaging money. And I became friends with Dana, and my position was, “You’re going to give me the best seat in the house. I get to sit cage-side for the fights.”

I was like, “I’ll do it.” And I wanted to help. I was like, “I think these are the guys that we had always hoped for. These are the amazing guys.” In the early days of the sport, I started working for the company in 1997. I was the… Before the UFC was purchased by Zufo, which Dana worked for.

DONALD TRUMP: Oh, wow, wow.

JOE ROGAN: So I was a part of the previous owners. And I only did it for a couple of years. It was just too much, and I was losing money. And it was banned from cable because of Budweiser and John McCain, and you could only get it on DirecTV. And so… And then I came along, and I gave him the site.

DONALD TRUMP: And then I came along, and I gave him the site.

JOE ROGAN: And he loves you for that. He talks about it all the time.

DONALD TRUMP: You know, just to interrupt you for one second. So they couldn’t get a site because it was too dangerous, and everybody was against it, and they couldn’t get licensed. And I gave him the first two or three sites, and they were great. And by the way, I went to the first fight, I said, “I never saw anything like this.” It was crazy. It was so good.

Take the best fight you’ve ever… It was like that fight, right? It was so good that I gave it to him again and again. And all of a sudden, he caught on. And he said, “You know, when I wasn’t in Vogue,” you know, I’ve had time. You probably never had a time, but I had times when I wasn’t exactly in Vogue. Dana, they called him, he said, “He’s the greatest guy. There’s nobody like…” He said, “I’ll never say anything bad about that guy, because when I needed…” Because they were having a hard time at the beginning. They almost pulled the plug a couple of times, right?

He said, “He stood up, and he gave us stuff that nobody else gave us, and nobody wanted anything to do.” And he said, “I will never…” And there was a time where it would have been very popular for him to say bad stuff about me. He said the greatest stuff about me. He said, “You’re going to try and get me to say bad stuff about Trump? I’m never doing it.”

JOE ROGAN: No, he’s a very, very, very loyal guy. He’s an unusual guy. Very unusual guy.

DONALD TRUMP: He’s a fantastic guy. A perfect guy to be at the helm of something so controversial as the UFC.

DONALD TRUMP: Less controversial now.

JOE ROGAN: Well, now it’s huge.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah.

Rogan’s Early Hopes for the UFC and Boxing’s Potential Resurgence

JOE ROGAN: Well, this was always the thing that I would hope that it would be. I always knew that it was unbelievably entertaining, but I just didn’t know if maybe I was crazy. Maybe I loved it because I’ve had this long history of being involved in martial arts, and maybe other people just think it’s too violent.

DONALD TRUMP: Can boxing make it?

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. Boxing’s still a great sport. I love boxing.

DONALD TRUMP: But it seems to be so unimportant now by comparison to UFC, don’t you think?

JOE ROGAN: I think… Well, you know, Dana is working with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. They’re going to start promoting boxing now. And with Dana at the helm of it, I think boxing could return because the thing is, they want to make fights that maybe promoters don’t want to make because they want to protect their fighter. Controversial fights where it’s dangerous, like you don’t know this guy could lose. And so the Saudis, they’re smart. They just offer a tremendous amount of money, and they’re putting together fights that no one else can put together. They’re doing that in boxing.

DONALD TRUMP: If Dana’s involved, he’ll probably make it good. You know the amazing thing, though, in fighting? No UFC fighter, they say, has ever died, and it looks to me much more violent than boxing. Many boxers have died. Isn’t that interesting? And Dana tells me because they take so many shots to the face.

JOE ROGAN: Yes. And there’s also no other options to preserve yourself, to protect yourself. So if you get hit in a UFC fight, you can clinch, you can try to take the fight to the ground. You have options.

Also, you don’t get allowed to get knocked down and then get back up. When you get knocked down, you’re concussed. And generally, you know, if a guy’s really hurt, they can be finished on the ground and the fight’s over. But if it’s boxing, you have 10 seconds to get up. You get up, your head kind of clears, but you’re still in real bad trouble. And you can kind of run away and survive until the bell rings. They’re only three-minute rounds. And then you start again.

So you’re getting repeated punishment to the head. And then there’s also the issue of guys’ weight cutting, you know, which is a problem with the UFC as well. But weight cutting in boxing has led to, if you look at deaths in boxing, there’s very few of them in the heavyweight division. Most of the deaths in boxing are the lighterweight divisions, because when guys dehydrate themselves to lose weight, to make weight, their brain is the last thing that gets rehydrated.

Like it’s very difficult to completely rehydrate your brain quickly. And you only have 24 hours between the weigh-in and the fight. And it used to be the weigh-ins were the day of the fight. Like when Bumble Mancini had a fight with Dukku Kim and killed him in the ring, which is one of the last ones on television that we’ve seen, that was a crazy event for people. And heartbreaking. And it led to a bunch of different changes. And one of them is day before weigh-ins to allow people to rehydrate better. And the other one is they dropped it from 15 rounds down to 12.

DONALD TRUMP: Which, look, they should do that again. You know, I’m not the fighter, but those 15-round fights were unbelievable.

JOE ROGAN: They were unbelievable. Unbelievable. Yeah, you go back to the golden age.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah. In terms of entertainment. Those were the championship rounds. Those were the greatest fights ever. Those last three rounds were crazy.

DONALD TRUMP: That was brutal.

JOE ROGAN: I mean, it’s such a war of attrition. You know, a lot of people think even like a five-round UFC fight. UFC is five-minute rounds. It’s so much energy you’re burning out. And those last couple of rounds, those five-round fights, the fourth and the fifth round, unbelievably brutal.

Who is the Greatest UFC Fighter of All Time?

DONALD TRUMP: Who’s the greatest UFC fighter, are you allowed to say? In your opinion, it’s tough for you to say because you do this, but who do you think is the greatest of the fighters?

JOE ROGAN: There’s a lot of arguments for who’s the greatest of all time. You know, John Jones, most people would say he’s the greatest of all time, never lost. There’s certainly a really good argument for that. There’s another argument for George St. Pierre.

I always leave in BJ Penn in his prime, Anderson Silva in his prime. You know, Mighty Mouse. People forget about Mighty Mouse because unfortunately he’s a smaller guy, he’s 125 pounds, flyweight champion. He’s one of the greatest expressions of mixed martial arts I’ve ever seen. I think to this day.

DONALD TRUMP: And Khabib?

JOE ROGAN: Khabib’s fantastic. But if you looked at accomplishments in terms of championship fights, Khabib retired 29-0, but he didn’t have as many world championship fights.

DONALD TRUMP: And probably never lost a round.

JOE ROGAN: He might have lost to Gleason Tebow, he might have lost to him, he might have lost a round. And that was a controversial fight where people think that Gleason Tebow could have even gotten the decision in that fight. I’d have to go back and watch it again to make a decision.

But…

DONALD TRUMP: They’re great athletes.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, the best athletes in the world. The most dangerous sport in terms of, I always call it high-level problem solving with dire physical consequences.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, it’s just brutal. That’s what fighting is.

James Toney vs Randy Couture

DONALD TRUMP: You know, I’ll never forget, so there was a fighter named James Toney.

JOE ROGAN: Oh yeah, I love James Toney, lights out.

DONALD TRUMP: And he fought as a very light fighter and he ended up as a heavyweight. This guy went through everything, he was almost like a lightweight. He went from middleweight all the way up to heavyweight, yeah. And beat Evander Holyfield as a heavyweight. And he was a real fighter.

Oh yeah. James Toney, and I think it was, say, George…

JOE ROGAN: George St. Pierre?

DONALD TRUMP: St. Pierre. I think it was him. Who did he fight? James Toney.

JOE ROGAN: No, James Toney didn’t fight George St. Pierre.

DONALD TRUMP: He fought a UFC fighter.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, Randy Couture fought James Toney. That was a very easy fight. Randy Couture just took him down and strangled him. It was the most…

DONALD TRUMP: And he’s half the size. And he just, once he got to the ankles and back down, he just said, “It’s over.”

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, he took him down, mounted him, strangled him.

DONALD TRUMP: And James Toney, he was nice, but he was talking big, because he was much bigger. He was a pretty big guy.

JOE ROGAN: I think James just wanted to make some money in that fight.

DONALD TRUMP: But I never forgot it. I don’t think he knew what he was doing. It was over very quickly.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. And he was lying, sleeping on the mat. And he was talking, you know, he was doing the Muhammad Ali stuff, but it didn’t work out. But I remember…

DONALD TRUMP: He sold the fight.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, that was Couture probably. Yeah, it was Couture. George never fought a boxer in an MMA fight. If he did, he would kill them.

DONALD TRUMP: Was he one of the greatest?

JOE ROGAN: Yes, unquestionably. The argument, there’s like a handful of guys who can make the argument that he’s the greatest of all time. People forget about Anderson Silva. In his prime, he was unstoppable. But that’s the thing is, and then there’s Fedor Emelianenko, who fought in pride. In his prime, he was unstoppable.

DONALD TRUMP: And you have a couple now that are pretty good.

JOE ROGAN: Yes. Oh, we’ve got so many now. Alex Pereira. There’s an argument that he’s the top pound-for-pound fighter in the world right now. He’s unbelievable. But it’s like, fighters can only compete at that level for so many years. And so, my opinion, you have to judge them at their very peak. You can’t judge them when they’re hanging on and still fighting. You can’t judge them when they’re coming up.

You got to judge them in that championship peak. And that championship peak, there’s a handful of guys that you would consider at the very top.

DONALD TRUMP: If they stopped a little bit sooner, some of them would have had, you know, I mean, there are a couple of, that you just mentioned without mentioning names, and they stopped, they had the perfect, they were unbelievable. And then at a certain age, they start getting knocked out, right?

JOE ROGAN: Yes. It’s unfortunate, but the thing is, that same belief in themselves that left them become a champion makes them think that they can do it long past the time that they actually can.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, Anderson Silva was essentially unbeatable. And then he lost a close one, and then all of a sudden he had to go.

JOE ROGAN: No, he got knocked out. He got knocked out by Chris Weidman. He was kind of clowning in that fight, famously, and Chris Weidman had a vicious left hook, knocked him out. And then they fought a second time, and he broke his leg on Chris Weidman.

And after that fight, he was kind of never the same, because that leg break injury, which Conor McGregor had, there’s quite a few fighters, Weidman actually wound up having the same injury, ironically. There’s only been like four of those. You’re never the same, because you can’t kick.

DONALD TRUMP: Never the same.

JOE ROGAN: Well, you can. Weidman is still kicking with that leg. You can, but psychologically, when you throw a kick and your leg snaps in half, and you’re in agony for a year, right? You have to get surgery, you have to get bolts and plates to keep your leg together, and then it takes forever for it to heal.

DONALD TRUMP: It always amazes me how the kicker, I mean, you have those cases, but the kicker will do tremendous damage to somebody’s leg, but their leg doesn’t seem to get damaged. Isn’t it sort of amazing?

JOE ROGAN: It does get damaged. It hurts. Yeah, but your shin gets very numb after a while, and guys that are really good kickers, they’re kicking the thigh, and they’re kicking the calf, they’re kicking soft areas, and they’re slamming this hard, numb shin. Their shin gets all these micro-fractures all over the shin, and it calcifies. These guys can kick baseball bats. Have you ever seen them break baseball bats with their shins?

DONALD TRUMP: It’s crazy.

JOE ROGAN: Some guys can do two baseball bats. Someone will hold the baseball bat, and they’ll just kick right through them.

DONALD TRUMP: And it’s like, that’s why you’re good at … Nobody does this better. Without the enthusiasm, forget it.

JOE ROGAN: Well, it has to be authentic. The only reason why I do MMA commentary is because I’m very interested in it, for real. I don’t have to manufacture it. I’m very interested.

DONALD TRUMP: And you love going in there after the fight, and they’re sweating all over you. They’re slopping all over you, and you’re beautiful.

JOE ROGAN: They bleed on me.

DONALD TRUMP: They’re bleeding on you. Sometimes their nose is bleeding. Does that bother you a little bit?

JOE ROGAN: No. Camille Roundstreet, yeah. More stuff came out of his nose? Yes. It was pretty nasty, but no, I’m very used to it. I just wanted him to be able to express himself.

DONALD TRUMP: You’ve done a great job.

JOE ROGAN: Thank you. Thank you.

DONALD TRUMP: You’ve done a great job.

Teaming Up with RFK Jr. and Making America Healthy Again

JOE ROGAN: So, back to you, and back to, what are you … First of all, I love this idea of you teaming up with Robert Kennedy, and I love this Make America Healthy Again idea, because there are chemicals and ingredients that are in our food that are illegal in other countries, because they’ve been shown to be toxic. There’s pesticides and herbicides, and there’s a lot of shit that’s been sprayed on our food that really is unnecessary, and there’s a lot of health consequences that people are suffering from a lot of these things.

DONALD TRUMP: I brought this chart for you, because I had a feeling you’d be asking me. Thank you. Look at this chart. These are healthier countries. Look where the United States is. I’m going to send this to RFK, Jr. Look at this.

JOE ROGAN: Well, something along the lines … I was actually talking to RFK today, and he told me that more than 70% of young men are ineligible for the military because of their health. That’s crazy. Here’s the life expectancy versus health expenditure.

He’s very good. He’s the best. No, but look at that. Look where the USA is. Not good. That’s our food. That’s our diet. That’s sedentary lifestyle.

JOE ROGAN: That’s our diet. That’s the chemicals we ingest. That’s what that is. But RFK is going to be very … I think he’s a great guy. I think he’s great. I want to see you guys teamed up.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah.

JOE ROGAN: Are you guys … Are you completely committed to have him a part of your administration?

DONALD TRUMP: Oh, I am. But the only thing I want to be a little careful about with him is the environmental, because he doesn’t like oil. I love oil and gas. I think it’s-

JOE ROGAN: Just keep him out of that. It’s a fire.

DONALD TRUMP: So I’m going to sort of keep him out of it. I said, “Focus on health. You can do whatever you want, but I’ve got to be a little bit careful with the liquid gold.”

JOE ROGAN: I understand. But listen, there’s plenty of good work that could be done if you focus on health.

Pressures Against Working with RFK Jr.

DONALD TRUMP: Here’s the one that is the one that’s my all-time favorite, though. See the arrow right here? That’s the one I left.

JOE ROGAN: Do you have anyone that is pressuring you to not work with him? Have there been-

DONALD TRUMP: To not work with who?

JOE ROGAN: RFK Jr.?

DONALD TRUMP: Yes.

JOE ROGAN: Yes. I would imagine. Because financially, he could put a dent-

DONALD TRUMP: I would say that … I think in many ways they’ve done a good job. In many ways they’ve done a bad job. But I would say that the big pharma wasn’t thrilled when they heard that … I’ve actually always gotten along very well with him. I’ve known him a long time.

He’s a different kind of a guy. He’s a very smart, great guy. And he’s very sincere about this. I mean, he really is … He thinks we spend a fortune on pesticides and all this stuff, and then you end up … That chart is a terrible chart, the one previous. It’s such a bad chart when you look at where we are compared to other countries that don’t spend 10 cents.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

DONALD TRUMP: And you save a lot of money. But, yeah, I’ve had some people that aren’t exactly thrilled. You can imagine, right?

JOE ROGAN: Sure. That’s a good question, actually. Well, certainly if there have been-

DONALD TRUMP: It doesn’t affect me.

JOE ROGAN: Some pharmaceutical drugs that have been prescribed that have negative consequences that these people have been profiting off of, and then you have a guy like RFK Jr. who spends an enormous amount of time highlighting those things, you could say how they’ve been very reluctant to have you support him.

DONALD TRUMP: I would say that’s an understatement.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah. So what do you do to stop that from getting in the way?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, look, they’ve come up with some amazing things. I mean, I don’t know how you feel. I know you’re against certain vaccines, but like the polio vaccine, people had polio. It was like a disaster. And they came up, Dr. Salk, and he came up with a vaccine, and there’s no polio. Now, very interesting, there hasn’t been polio, but now in the Gaza Strip, can you believe that? There’s been a big strain of polio coming out in the Gaza Strip.

JOE ROGAN: Is it vaccine-derived polio? Because, you know, there’s a strain of polio that comes directly from the vaccine, because unfortunately, sometimes you vaccinate people for polio, and you give them polio.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah. I mean, all I can do is I sit down, and I listen to him, and I’ll give it a total- I would love him to be right, because if he’s right, it’s a lot less expensive, generally.

The Dangers of Pharmaceutical Drug Advertising

JOE ROGAN: There’s two things that people point to when they point to the dangers of the pharmaceutical drug industry. One thing is when pharmaceutical drugs were allowed to advertise on television. We’re only one of two countries in the world that allow pharmaceutical drugs to advertise on TV. The other one’s New Zealand, but they’re more restrictive than we are.

People are worried-

DONALD TRUMP: But those ads, those ads, when you hear, like, you know, take a certain drug-

JOE ROGAN: And then you hear all the conflicts.

DONALD TRUMP: And then you say, it causes cancer, and baldness, we don’t like baldness.

JOE ROGAN: Suicidal ideation. And you can lose your vision.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah. And, you know, I actually asked one of these guys, I would never take- I mean, the cost is things that are so bad. They go through a whole list. I guess they save some liability, but, man, I said, “Does that affect the purchase?” And they say, “It really does.” When there’s something you have, and you read, and then they go through the list of-

JOE ROGAN: Side effects. The potential side-

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah. The potential side effects.

JOE ROGAN: Right. I mean, a lot of people are just-

DONALD TRUMP: I asked that question. A lot of people hear that. When I hear it, I’m going to take a pass that says, “May affect your vision, may cause blindness, may this-“

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

The Link Between Poor Metabolic Health and Pharmaceutical Drugs

JOE ROGAN: Well, I know you’re aware of Cal and KC Means, right?

DONALD TRUMP: Yes.

JOE ROGAN: Well, one of the things that they pointed out, and this is a very important thing for people to understand, is what a lot of these drugs do is they act to somehow or another mitigate the effects of poor metabolic health. Most of these problems that these people are suffering from wouldn’t exist if we put an emphasis on metabolic health.

If people got healthier, they started eating nutritious food and taking vitamins, a whole host of these problems that people are having would go away. The problem with that, from the pharmaceutical drug standpoint, is they wouldn’t be able to sell drugs to these people. This is a fear that a lot of people have.

DONALD TRUMP: And the pesticides and things like that on the plants, and what do you think of that?

JOE ROGAN: Terrible. I think regenerative agriculture, unfortunately, is very difficult to scale to a point where you’ve got a jack-in-the-box on every corner.

DONALD TRUMP: Right, that’s right.

JOE ROGAN: If everybody wants food, and we have food deserts, and we have places like Los Angeles where no one’s growing anything, and everything has to be shipped in, it’s very difficult to feed that many people. We’ve created this incredible society where we have these enormous cities, but it’s very difficult to get food to these people. And then, for a lot of these people in low-income areas, the only food that’s available is cheap, unhealthy food.

And we could fix that. If we could send $175 billion to Ukraine, we could do something to fix a lot of the health problems that the United States has. And I think it would help us as a nation, overall. If you just put it out there, that, hey, as a nation, we’re going to make a concerted effort to get people healthier. Just put it out there, and people start making better choices.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, when you look at that chart, I was… It’s crazy. They just gave me that chart because they said, “You may want to discuss this topic,” which I know is a big topic for you. And when I looked at that chart, and I looked at how unhealthy we are as a nation, that’s a pretty big thing.

Trump’s Approach to Staying Healthy

JOE ROGAN: How are you so healthy? Is it golf?

DONALD TRUMP: No, it’s genetics, I believe. You know, I’m a big believer.

JOE ROGAN: Genetics is a big factor.

DONALD TRUMP: I really am. I mean, my father was…

JOE ROGAN: Unfortunately, it is a big factor for health. Some people are just way more robust. But you do play golf a lot. And that is exercise.

DONALD TRUMP: Both of my parents. For me, it’s good. Fresh air, exercise. It really is. Especially when you’re outside. Even mentally, you’re focused on that three-footer for a couple of hours, you know. And I go quick. I play fast, real fast, and I’m in, I’m out. But you know, it gives me…

I was never one that could, like, run on a treadmill. And I can do it. You know, when passing a physical, they ask me to run on a treadmill, and then they make it steeper and steeper and steeper. And the doctors said, it was at Walter Reed, they said, “It’s unbelievable.”

I could have gone… I’m telling you, I felt I could have gone all day. But I said, “Doc, I can do this all day long. I’m not… I have no problem.” But it’s boring to me. Do you understand? It’s just boring. But I did it for so long. They couldn’t believe it that I did it. And I never…

You know, I don’t do it. I don’t do it. You know, I have friends, they run on this stuff all day long. But I had no problem doing it, but it’s really boring. So with golf or something, you know, or tennis or whatever, golf, as you get older, there’s something really good about it. And you have competition with your friends.

JOE ROGAN: Competition, concentration.

DONALD TRUMP: And it’s a great handicap sport.

JOE ROGAN: And it’s also a thing, I think, that’s a… It cleans your mind, because when you’re looking at a shot, that’s all you can think of when you’re executing.

DONALD TRUMP: It gives you a couple of… You know, it’s interesting. Like with tennis, if you’re much better than somebody, you can’t really play with somebody. You know, it doesn’t work. You can give them sort of the equivalent of strokes, right? But it’s not the same.

With golf, you can play with a lousy guy and give him a stroke a hole or two strokes a hole or something. You know, it’s a good handicapping sport. But it gives me a little exercise. But I haven’t played in a long time. I won a lot of… I won 32 club championships.

JOE ROGAN: Didn’t you play right after you got shot?

DONALD TRUMP: No. What I did is I played with Bryson DeChambeau. Do you know Bryson?

JOE ROGAN: Yes. The pro.

DONALD TRUMP: He’s a great player. The first thing we played, it was a certain thing that we played, I guess, called breaking 50 or something. 50, we play from a certain key and if you can break 50. And it got tremendous ratings. Sort of like a crazy thing. It got… He’s a great guy.

JOE ROGAN: But wasn’t that like a couple of days after you got shot?

DONALD TRUMP: I don’t know. I know I haven’t…

JOE ROGAN: That was one of the funniest things. You were on the golf course.

DONALD TRUMP: I think I did. Yeah. Maybe I did. But I… You know, I view it very interestingly. I’m running for president of the United States. To me, it’s such a big deal. It’s so important.

The Importance of the Presidency and Trump’s Commitment

DONALD TRUMP: So, I’ve done now…

JOE ROGAN: What’s the biggest deal in the free world?

DONALD TRUMP: It’s a hundred times bigger than the Super Bowl and it’s one person.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah.

DONALD TRUMP: So, you’re down to two people and we start off at 9 billion because you have 9 billion, they say, in the world. Who knows what that number is? But you get down to 350 million. Sadly, we have no idea what we have in this country, but let’s assume it’s 325, 350.

And you’re down to two people. It’s the biggest thing in the world. And when I heard she took off yesterday and she took off the day before, she’s going to take off tomorrow or the next day. I haven’t taken a day off in 56 days.

That’s a long time. I haven’t taken one day off. I don’t… I didn’t… I don’t want to plug up. This is too exciting. Golf is great, but this is too exciting. This is more exciting than anything you can do.

JOE ROGAN: Also, it’s the homestretch.

DONALD TRUMP: It’s the homestretch. Who would take a day off? So, we have 11 days left now.

And think of it, so I think I’ve gone 54, 55 days in a row, no days off. And I make speeches oftentimes, you know, sometimes not, but I make speeches. And when you make a speech, and my speeches last a long time because of the weave, you know, I mean, I weave stories into it. If you don’t…

If you just read a teleprompter, nobody’s going to be very excited. You’ve got to weave it out. So you… But you always have to… As you say, you always have to get right back to work. Otherwise, it’s no good. But the weave is very, very important. Very few weavers around. But it’s a big strain on your… You know, it’s a big… It’s a lot of work. It’s a lot of work.

You’ve got to be careful of the voice. You can lose that voice. The voice wasn’t designed. I said today, so I made a big one last night. I was in Las Vegas. Big one the night before in Arizona. Big one… I mean, they’re all big. We have the… There’s never been anything like it in terms of crowd. Never been close. Never been close. They say… He talks about… The crowd says, you know, it’s very interesting. So we get crowds that are really big.

The Media’s Negative Coverage of Trump

DONALD TRUMP: And I say, you know, I’ve never had a story… Because I don’t get good press. I don’t think I’ve had a good story in years. I really don’t. I swear. You were talking about it a little bit with Oprah. Everybody loved me. I don’t think…

I became President of the United States. I did great the second time. I did much better. I don’t want to get you in any disputes, but I won that second election so easy. And not just because… But here’s the thing. I did that. And now I’ve gotten the nomination again. And don’t forget, to get these nominations, you go against very smart people. Ron DeSantis was hot. You had to go through him. Nikki Haley was hot. You had to go through her. I went through everybody.

Record time, right? Record time. I got three nominations in a row. Won the first time. Did much better the second time. You know, I get millions of votes more the second time. And now I’m doing it a third time. And it’s an incredible thing. I never get a good story. I only get bad press. Now, I will say this. It’s a lot easier if you’re a Democrat. If I were a Democrat…

JOE ROGAN: You’d get a lot of positive press.

DONALD TRUMP: I would get a lot of positive press.

JOE ROGAN: No, it’s a creepy, corrupt business. And the media, to a large extent, acts as a propaganda arm for the Democratic Party.

DONALD TRUMP: It’s not even believable.

JOE ROGAN: It’s bizarre to watch. And most young people, I think, are aware of it. I think most boomers still, unfortunately, read the newspapers and believe in CNN.

DONALD TRUMP: But it’s getting younger. Let me tell you. It’s getting… Yes.

JOE ROGAN: And you know… But you know why that is? It’s the Internet. It’s because the Internet is giving people information that they’re not getting from anywhere else.

Media Hoaxes and Distortions

JOE ROGAN: And the very fine people hoax, the Russiagate hoax, all these different things they’ve done that try to pin on you. It’s a clear distortion of what you actually said. The bloodbath hoax.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah. I was talking about the auto industry. It’s a bloodbath because Japan and China are taking our auto… And I said, “It’s a bloodbath.” They said, “Oh, he used the word bloodbath.

JOE ROGAN: He said, ‘If you don’t win, it’s going to be a bloodbath.'”

DONALD TRUMP: That’s right. That’s right.

JOE ROGAN: That’s exactly what you said. It’s a terrible thing they do. But that’s the problem with propagandists, because they take things out of context, and ultimately what they do is they diminish their own credibility, because people don’t want to listen to them anymore, because they see that they’ve done that, and they recognize what’s going on, and they feel insulted. Their intelligence is getting insulted.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, look at the ratings.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

DONALD TRUMP: You know, shows like yours.

The Changing Media Landscape and Trump’s Success on TikTok

DONALD TRUMP: So I have a son who’s very smart and tall, Barron, right? And he knows all about you. He knows about guys I never heard of. He said, “Dad, you don’t know how big they are. They’re big.” You know, he told me how big. I said, “Who the hell is he?” Like Ross. I did. He said, “Dad, he’s a great guy.” I mean, guys that are doing… It’s a whole new world out there. And I think… You know, I’m on TikTok now.

JOE ROGAN: Congratulations.

DONALD TRUMP: And I’ve done really well. No, but you know the crazy… Have you seen the numbers? I’ve had billions, like billions of hits. It’s crazy.

JOE ROGAN: I’m sure. TikTok’s a wild application.

DONALD TRUMP: It’s up 30 points. A Republican is always down 30 with young people. I’m plus 30. And I’m on TikTok. I think young people… It’s had a huge impact.

Young People Rejecting Woke Culture and Becoming Conservative Rebels

JOE ROGAN: Young people are rejecting a lot of this woke bullshit. Young people are tired of being yelled at and scolded. They’re tired of these people that they think are mentally ill telling them what the moral standards of society should be today. People are upset.

DONALD TRUMP: It’s a big… There’s a big difference now. In just a couple of years, I was shaking hands with people that are young people.

JOE ROGAN: The rebels are Republicans now. You want to be a rebel? You want to be punk rock? You want to buck the system? You’re a conservative now. That’s how crazy… And then the liberals are now pro-silencing criticism. They’re pro-censorship online. They’re talking about regulating free speech, and they’re regulating the First Amendment. It’s bananas to watch.

DONALD TRUMP: Sure, they come after their political opponent. I’ve got more guys… I always say, you know, I kid, but I’m not kidding. I’ve been investigated more than Alphonse Capone. He was the meanest of them all. He’d kill you in two seconds if he didn’t like you, right? I’ve been under investigation more than Alphonse Capone, only because it’s political opponent stuff.

And I’ve won. I won the big case in Florida. I’m winning the other stuff. You win. But you know what they did? They did something that’s only done in third-world countries. They came after their political opponent. I could have put Crooked Hillary in jail.

JOE ROGAN: Well, not only that, but they’re now weaponizing it by saying that that’s what you’re going to do once you get in office, by ignoring what they’re doing right now. It’s crazy.

DONALD TRUMP: I heard it. Somebody was defending me today. They said, “No, that’s…” They said, “That’s what you’re doing to him.” They’re going, “He’s going to put us in jail. He’s going to invest…” That’s what you’re doing. They said, “That’s what you’re doing to him.” A lot of people say, “Will you do that? Will you do that to him, to them, if you win?”

You know, the presidency has tremendous power. I could have put Crooked Hillary in jail.

JOE ROGAN: I respected that you didn’t, because what you said was it would be bad for the country.

DONALD TRUMP: No, I couldn’t even imagine you have, first of all, Secretary of State, but more importantly, the wife of the President of the United States of America going into jail. And if you ever saw, when I’d say something about her, they’d all say… I didn’t say it. I never said it. They’d say, “Lock her up, lock her…”

And I’d always go, “Take it easy, just relax. We’re going to win this thing. Take it easy. Take it easy.” And I’m telling you, I kept it down. Just the opposite. Now they say, “Oh, Trump wanted to put her in jail.” No, I saved her from going to jail.

They had more stuff on her. And Comey had it, because when Comey got up, and he stupidly, because he’s a stupid guy too, he goes, he’s a stupid son of a bitch. He got up, Joe, he got up, and instead of saying she’s innocent of all charges, he went over each charge, and each charge was a killer. And he’d go, “And as far as her doing this, she’s innocent, and this,” and then she’s only an unfair prosecutor.

But every time you heard these charges, they sounded so bad. They were bad. And all it was is he wanted more airtime. If he would have gone up and said, “I’ve thoroughly investigated Hillary Clinton, and she’s done nothing that we feel is wrong,” it would have ended. Instead, he wanted to be up there, because he’s a PR hound. He’s a hog. And he starts going through, and you know what he had? They had a huge problem, because FBI is great.

The people there, not the top people, the people, the real people, the people that work there. It’s like the real generals that I told you about that defeated ISIS in record time. The FBI guys are great. I’ll bet you I’d be at 95% in the FBI.

JOE ROGAN: I bet that’s right. Underneath.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah. And so here’s the thing. So he goes with Hillary, and instead of just saying, he goes through each charge, and even I was saying, “Man, those are bad charges.” It sounds terrible, because it’s associating her with those charges. Don’t forget, this is before I got there. Now he was trying to protect her, but he did her a great disservice.

The 2020 Election and Allegations of Fraud

JOE ROGAN: Because he wanted attention. He was stupid. I want to talk about 2020, because you’ve said over and over again that you were robbed in 2020.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, totally.

JOE ROGAN: How do you think you were robbed? Everybody always cuts you off. I’m going to allow it.

DONALD TRUMP: They do. Well, they not only cut you off. Well, what I’d rather do is, we’ll do it another time, and I would bring in papers that you would not believe. So many different papers. That election was so crooked. It was the most crooked election.

JOE ROGAN: Okay, but give me some examples of how.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, let’s start. Let’s start from the top, and the easy ones. They were supposed to get legislative approval to do the things they did, and they didn’t get it. In many cases, they didn’t get it.

JOE ROGAN: What things?

DONALD TRUMP: Anything.

JOE ROGAN: Legislative approval of?

DONALD TRUMP: Like for extensions of the voting, for voting earlier, for this, for all different things. By law, they had to get legislative approvals. You don’t have to go any further than that.

If you take a look at Wisconsin, they virtually admitted that the election was rigged, robbed, and stolen. They wouldn’t give access, in certain areas, to the ballots, because the ballots weren’t signed. They weren’t originals. We could go into this stuff. We could go into the ballots, or we could go into the overall. I’ll give you another one.

JOE ROGAN: Are you going to present this ever? Like do you think?

The Hunter Biden Laptop Story and Its Impact

DONALD TRUMP: Let me just give you one more before. Fifty-one intelligence agents come up that the laptop was from Russia. It turned out to be totally false. Fifty-one former intelligence agents, right?

They say that made, I don’t believe it’s this much, but it doesn’t have to. I won by like, I lost by like, I didn’t lose, but they say I lost, Joe, they say I lost by 22,000 votes. That’s like one-tenth of one percent less than that. It’s a tiny little thing. 22,000 votes spread over, that’s spread over this period. So 51 intelligence agents lied. They lied. They lied. They knew it was. It was Hunter’s. It was from his bed. It was Hunter’s laptop. They said it was created by Russia. Russia, Russia, Russia. It was the Russia hoax. The Russia hoax was a big hoax. It was all a big hoax.

JOE ROGAN: Well, that’s clear. That’s one example.

DONALD TRUMP: That is a good example.

JOE ROGAN: But that’s a big example.

DONALD TRUMP: They say it made a 17-point difference. That’s a big example. But that’s only one. And you could go into the ballots where they wouldn’t give you access to the ballots. You could go into the ballot harvesting. You could go into $500 million for the lockboxes.

The Russia Collusion Narrative and Its Impact

JOE ROGAN: But just in terms of narrative, so there’s two things, right? There’s the Russia hoax. There’s the collusion with Russia. That was never proven, right?

DONALD TRUMP: No, it was proven it didn’t happen.

JOE ROGAN: Right, right. But they talked about it on television. But it took two and a half years to prove. Not only that, but it was a constant narrative on television. That’s a constant narrative that gets into people’s minds, especially low-information people that just watch the news, that you’re in collusion with Russia. So that’s one. So that changes the narrative.

And then you have the 51 former intelligence agents that work with the original Twitter and get them to remove links. You can’t share it on DMs. You cannot share that story. They swept that story because they said it was Russian disinformation, even though they knew it was not.

So that’s two examples that are real examples. Now anyone who considers himself a legitimate, objective observer of American politics, if you really want the best person to win, you would want people to not lie. And the only reason why they got away with this lie was because they continually labeled you as this horrible threat to democracy and Hitler. They kept saying you’re going to be a dictator, ignoring the fact that you weren’t a dictator for the four years where you were actually the president.

DONALD TRUMP: I was actually the opposite of a dictator. I was a very straight guy. But look, those three things, you take those three things, each one of them by themselves causes the result to be different.

JOE ROGAN: It does.

DONALD TRUMP: And then you can go into a hundred other things. There’s so many. We can’t have corrupt elections and we can’t have open borders. We need a, we need, you need to have a country. You need borders. You need fair elections. And I’ll tell you the other thing you need is you need a free and fair press.

The Importance of Long-Form Conversations vs. Debates

One of the things I like about doing a show like this, can you imagine Kamala doing this show?

JOE ROGAN: I could imagine her doing this show.

DONALD TRUMP: She’d be laying, she’d be laying on the floor.

JOE ROGAN: She was supposed to do it and then she might still do it and I hope she does. I will talk to her like a human being. I would try to have a conversation with her.

DONALD TRUMP: If she did this kind of an interview with you, I hope she does because it would be a mess. She’d be laying on the floor comatose. You’d be saying, “Call in the medics.”

JOE ROGAN: I think we’d have a fine conversation. I think I’d be able to talk to her. I wouldn’t try to interview her. I’d just try to have a conversation with her and hopefully get to know her as a human being.

That was my goal, having her on, trying to get her to express herself just as a, I don’t know if these, I don’t think these formats are good. I don’t think that two people, first of all, I hate the idea of the presidential debates because I hate the idea of a time limitation on complex ideas.

Also you have to break-

DONALD TRUMP: I think you have to have the debates too.

JOE ROGAN: Right, but the way they do the debates I think is the wrong way to do it. I think they should have a conversation. I think you and Kamala, you sit across the table with no one in the room but the two of you. Of course you’re not going to shout each other. Of course you’re not going to insult each other.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, you may. I mean, it may get-

JOE ROGAN: They used to do it that way.

DONALD TRUMP: Hopefully it wouldn’t, but that would be the way to do it. They used to do it that way.

The Problems with Presidential Debates

JOE ROGAN: And just to put cameras on you with no one interfering with checking whether or not it’s factual, especially when it’s biased because they checked you all those times and they didn’t check her with clearly things that were inaccurate, right? So have two people just have a conversation with you without a time constraint. And also this idea that they cut off the microphone-

DONALD TRUMP: And no crowd. No crowd.

JOE ROGAN: Crazy too because you’re good at working in a crowd.

DONALD TRUMP: I would rather have a crowd.

JOE ROGAN: Of course you would. You’re good at crowds.

DONALD TRUMP: But I had no- So they gave me an alternative. I don’t think you want to debate.

JOE ROGAN: Why did they want no crowd? What was the argument?

DONALD TRUMP: Because I think they thought I wasn’t going to accept it. So I believe what they wanted to do is have me not accept. So they gave me a deal I couldn’t refuse. And I said, “I’ll do it.” Okay. It’s like the mob.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

DONALD TRUMP: I’ll take it. So they came to me. They said, “We’ll debate Joe Biden. You know, that thing got tremendous ratings, too.” That was crazy. But we’ll debate Joe Biden. But you can’t have a crowd. They also wanted sitting down.

I said, “That’s the only thing.” I said, “Look, you got to you got to stand up. You can’t really sit down. In the old days, they did sit down a little bit.” But he gets tired. You got to stand up. And they agreed to it. It was a very tough thing. It almost killed it. They wanted to they wanted to have like desks where we sit. I said, “I think we should stand up.” And that was the only thing I asked for.

I said, “We got to stand up.” I thought it looked bad for like the public. But they said no crowd and cut off the mic. And I said, “I can live with it.” I mean, I can live with it. And they thought I was going to reject it. And then they would say he didn’t want to debate Sleepy Joe.

JOE ROGAN: Right. Well, they tried to say that with you and Kamala as well. They tried to say that you didn’t want to debate her as well.

DONALD TRUMP: But by the way, with her, number one, I’m leading. Number two, you know, I didn’t. They also said it with the primary. So I had like 10, 12 guys, right, in the primary. No stupid guys. I mean, they’re governors and they’re senators. They’re not stupid people. Some are stupid, but not all of them. And all my guys said, “You have to be in the debate.”

I said, “Why? I’m leading by 74 points. The closest guy to me, I’m like 60 points, 70 points higher. Why would I stand there like an idiot for two hours and let every one of them scream at me?”

Trump’s Approach to Primary Debates

I’m going to be the focus. And I said, “I’m not debating.” And it was a very smart thing because, you know, they just killed themselves.

JOE ROGAN: The Republican primaries.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, the Republican primaries. I like debating. I think you have to debate. But I like debating like the Rosie O’Donnell debate. I like debating when you have a great, remember the Rosie O’Donnell crazy thing, Megan? That was a hell of a question, man. If I didn’t come up with that answer.

JOE ROGAN: It was a great line.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, what it was is, you know, that was, we had 28,000 people. That was the Cleveland arena where the Cavaliers played.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

DONALD TRUMP: LeBron James. I’m not a big fan of LeBron James, but he is a good basketball player. But, you know, that was the, and when I said that, the place went crazy. And she kept talking. No, she had like 10 other.

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, well, Megan said, “You said it to other people and you admitted you did.” But it was funny. It was a comedic timing moment. It was fine. That’s what they wanted to avoid.

DONALD TRUMP: It was lucky I did it, because she was, oh, she wasn’t finished. That question, but she kept talking. To this day, they don’t know what she said, but it wasn’t buzzed. So anyway, but we had a good time.

JOE ROGAN: It’s comedic timing, and that’s the reason why to have a debate in front of a large audience.

Trump’s Performance at the Al Smith Dinner

DONALD TRUMP: Well, how did I do with the Al Smith dinner? I got very good reviews on that.

JOE ROGAN: That was great. The Tim Walz stuff was very funny.

DONALD TRUMP: Tim Walz, yeah. It’s funny. That’s a real beauty.

JOE ROGAN: That’s a crazy one. She said that she had picked him, and this is one of the questions I want to ask her, when she was sleep deprived. She said she was suffering from sleep deprivation when she picked him, which is just like, hey, maybe take a nap.

JOE ROGAN: So I was,

DONALD TRUMP: So I was, okay, look, let’s see how it all turns out. I think we’re going to win. I think we’re way ahead now. I think we’re way ahead. But if they lose, I think they’re going to look at two things. They’re going to say they should have had a primary, even if it was a short primary.

JOE ROGAN: Yes.

DONALD TRUMP: They shouldn’t have picked him. And then she’s going to say “I shouldn’t have picked this guy.”

JOE ROGAN: She shouldn’t have picked that guy. That guy’s a disaster. The lying about Tiananmen Square. Yeah, the military record, assistant coach versus head coach.

DONALD TRUMP: She lied, too. Little things.

Trump’s McDonald’s Visit and its Online Impact

DONALD TRUMP: So I did McDonald’s last week.

JOE ROGAN: I saw that.

DONALD TRUMP: And I actually got a call from your friends at Google, from Sundar. That’s pretty good, right? He said, “This is the biggest thing we’ve had in years.”

JOE ROGAN: At McDonald’s?

DONALD TRUMP: At McDonald’s. Did you know that? It was one of the.

JOE ROGAN: It was funny.

DONALD TRUMP: Who’s a great guy, by the way. But he said, “This McDonald’s thing, I want to tell you, it’s one of the biggest things we’ve ever had on Google. It just hit.”

But the reason I did, and I actually, you know, you never know about this stuff. I thought it was a throwaway. I didn’t think our conversation was a throwaway. But I thought that was, I thought I’d walk in. And that was only to highlight the fact. And I have a friend. He owns like 56 of these McDonald’s. And he said, “Do you want to use one?”

I said, “Yeah, I love it.” So we went there. And the crowd was crazy. You know, they had 28,000 people around. The whole thing. Did you see the outside? It was crazy. The cars couldn’t get through. Secret Service was not exactly thrilled. We had no idea what the hell. But I went into the place. And I did the French fry thing.

And it just hit. But that’s like in life. Sometimes you do. I thought it was like a quick throwaway. We’re going to be there for 15 minutes. Then I said, “I’ve worked here for 15 minutes, which is 15 minutes more than she worked here.” She lied about McDonald’s. And, you know.

Kamala Harris’ Alleged Lie About Working at McDonald’s

JOE ROGAN: Is that proven? That she never worked there herself?

DONALD TRUMP: 100%. Well, McDonald’s has no information. She has no information. There’s nobody. The manager said she never worked there. You know, it was a certain place. And he said they never. No, she lied. She’s a liar. You know what they do? They’ll say like on any one of their questions. Take any. They’ll say it’s the exact opposite of what I say.

Election Policies and Public Perception

IVF. He’s against IVF. Fertilization. And it’s the exact opposite. I was. I came out immediately strongly in favor. And they do ads. I’m against it. It’s wrong on every single topic. And, you know, she changed policies on 15. I’ve never seen a guy change, anybody change on more than one. You know, you can maybe get away with one. Her whole life.

Fracking. Every single thing that she was for. The confiscation of guns. She wants to confiscate. She wants to confiscate. Now she’s saying everybody should have a gun. In fact, we’re going to get her a MAGA cap. I’m going to send her a MAGA cap. But she’s changed. And I don’t think people are buying it. I don’t think people are buying it.

JOE ROGAN: Well, some people are buying it because they want to buy it. Because it’s blue no matter who. There’s a certain percentage of our population that’s going to vote Democrat no matter what.

DONALD TRUMP: That’s true.

JOE ROGAN:  They’re pressured. There’s their community, their ideology. It’s, you know, left is good. Right is evil.

Border Security and National Identity

DONALD TRUMP: I don’t understand why. You know, I built five hundred and seventy miles of wall. Everyone said I built a lot of wall. Exactly the stuff. But you have a border. What I don’t understand is who would want people to come into our country from places unknown, like sometimes they’ll say about a fighter, “from parts unknown.” Remember Haystack’s childhood?

The oldest. Those are the oldest. That’s even before you. But who would want people to come in pouring into our country? We don’t know anything about it.

JOE ROGAN: I want to ask you this. Why do you think they’re doing that? I think because. Do you think they’re trying to buy votes? Do you think they just want cheap labor? Like, what is it? What’s the idea?

DONALD TRUMP: OK. There’s a couple of theories. They hate our country. They’re stupid. Or they want to buy votes. It’s one of those three things. They want it. Now, they are trying to get people registered who, you know, don’t even know what the country is.

JOE ROGAN:  And they’re trying to give people amnesty. People that live here. They’re trying to give them amnesty. They want to give them citizenship.

The Financial Burden on American Citizens

DONALD TRUMP: And they want to. Well, how about what happened?

JOE ROGAN: And if you think about the amount of money that they’ve given them when they’ve come here. The food stamps. The benefits that even our poor people aren’t getting.

DONALD TRUMP:  Two hundred billion dollars. And that’s a way low number. That’s a way low. You know, it’s interesting. New York has always been like, you know, sort of like always looking for money. They’ve spent a hundred billion dollars on this stuff. I don’t know where they.

And they’re not getting the money from the federal government. It’s crazy. And because the mayor came out and said, we can’t live like this. He gets it. By the way, I called it. I said he just got himself indicted. This group is stupid, but they’re vicious. They’re stupid people, but they’re vicious people.

Concerns Over Election Integrity

JOE ROGAN: The 2020 elections. You say you have all this evidence that it was rigged. Why haven’t you put this evidence in a consumable form?

DONALD TRUMP: I did.

JOE ROGAN: In what?

DONALD TRUMP: Oh, I did. I wrote books on it. And by the way, books have been written on it. We have an author named Hemingway who is a great writer. She wrote a book on it. But many books have been written on it. There are books that are. What’s happened is judges don’t want to touch it. They would say you don’t have standing. They didn’t rule on the merits.

The merits never got there. The judges didn’t have what it took to turn over an election.

Voting Systems and Potential Vulnerabilities

JOE ROGAN: Let’s talk about the potential vulnerabilities for elections and election fraud. One of them is mail-in ballots. The other one is if someone can break into voting machines. If someone can hack voting machines. Those are two huge ones.

DONALD TRUMP: So Elon Musk. Elon Musk. I think he said it publicly. I hope he did because I wouldn’t want to be the winner. He’s a really smart guy. And he’s a very good guy with computers. He’s one of the smartest people alive. Anybody that can land that 20-story building.

JOE ROGAN: While he’s doing Starlink. While he owns Twitter. And then he agrees to Starlink. And he tweets 100 times a day.

He’s an amazing guy. He said to me that unless you have paper ballots, it can never be an honest election. That’s a big statement. We should go to paper ballots.

DONALD TRUMP: You know France did. They went to mail-in voting, and it was all messed up. You know the amazing thing with the machines? So we have the machines. They cost 10 times more. Paper ballot would cost 8%. And they make paper ballots. They’re all watermarked and everything else. Very sophisticated.

Proposed Solutions for Election Security

DONALD TRUMP: But if you take a look. Paper ballots. 8% the cost. And you’re done by 9 o’clock in the evening. Now we have these sophisticated machines. And it goes all over the place. And down and around. And they say we’ll need two weeks to figure out who the hell won the election.

JOE ROGAN: Do you think that’s by design?

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, I do. I think it’s very crooked. That’s my opinion.

JOE ROGAN: You’re allowed to have an opinion. Let’s say you win in November. What can be done to mitigate these problems? What could be done at the level that the president has power?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, if I win, this will be my last election. But I think I owe it to the country. Yeah. But I think I owe it to the country. We have to have fair elections.

The Importance of Election Integrity

JOE ROGAN: So how can you fix that?

DONALD TRUMP: You know, Jimmy Carter was in charge of a commission. You know, many years ago. And they put him and Scoop Jackson and various senators, you know, distinguished people that were retired. And they came up with a report. And the report’s primary finding was you cannot have mail-in ballots. Because if it’s a mail-in ballot… you know, I went to the voting booth the last time, whatever it was. And I walked in Palm Beach. And I walk in. And they know me. They said, “Mr. President, could I see your identity?”

JOE ROGAN: Right.

DONALD TRUMP: I said, boom, here’s this, here’s that, everything. And then you sit. And they watch you sign. There’s not a lot you can do. I mean, if you wanted to be dishonest, it’s sort of beautiful. If instead of that, I’m going to send them a ballot… right. It has to go through the postal services. It has to go through a lot of people. They mail you houses that, you know, the house was demolished. And the people have left. It’s so bad.

The one thing with Jimmy Carter, he had a very strong commission. No mail-in ballots. And we’re the only one that does elections this way anymore. They’ve gotten away from us.

The Impact of COVID-19 on Voting Practices

JOE ROGAN: And this has ticked up in a big way after COVID. It used to be like soldiers serving overseas. Yeah. But they used COVID to cheat. But here’s another one.

DONALD TRUMP: And the last election was a little bit of a… you couldn’t even get security guys. Big, strong guys to watch. You know what? You’d call them. They’d call them. They were afraid to go out.

JOE ROGAN: Right.

DONALD TRUMP: You know, we were in the middle of COVID. Right smack in the middle. And they didn’t want to die. You know, they didn’t want to catch it. It was like, in a way, it was like a ghost town. And the whole thing, mail-in ballots are a bad thing.

JOE ROGAN: That certainly is a problem. Mail-in ballots are a problem.

Voter ID: A Controversial Debate

JOE ROGAN: Another problem is voter ID. Voter ID is the most bizarre argument that I’ve never seen anybody articulate in a way that’s convincing, why you don’t need a voter ID. Well, it doesn’t make sense any other way. I’ve tried to strawman it, or I’ve tried to steelman it, rather. I’ve tried to look at it from a position like, how would you not want people to have ID? And a lot of the ideas are just ridiculous. You need an ID to get a driver’s license.

DONALD TRUMP: Okay, but here’s now the next step. Gavin Newsom, one of the worst governors in the world, and I used to, frankly, I used to get along, but I don’t get along with him now, because he’s just too, you know, it’s just a whole conjun. But Gavin Newsom, the other day signed a bill that you are not allowed to ask a person…

JOE ROGAN: What could be a charitable reason why anybody would want that? That would be the only thing that makes sense.

DONALD TRUMP: But that’s taking it to the next level. Now, you know, you have ID. The Democrat National Convention, when they had it the last time I saw, they had a sign, like a billboard, on the name of the person, where they live, how they live, who the hell their boyfriends are, every single, and a big picture, that’s for their, they have an ID, a big ID.

It was hanging like you were a prisoner. They had these massive cards, everything. And yet, when it comes to the vote, in theory, the most important thing we do, okay, when you go to a grocery store, you give ID. But for a vote, it’s supposed to be a sacred thing, and it should be a sacred thing. No voter ID, because they want to cheat.

Public Opinion on Voter ID Requirements

JOE ROGAN: Well, it doesn’t make sense in any other way. I’ve tried to look at it. There’s no other way.

DONALD TRUMP: You know the funny thing, Joe? The Democrats, the people, they all think you should have it. In other words, you should have it. If you go to the people, Mrs. Schwartz, Mrs. Smith, Mr. and Mrs. Jones, they say, of course, yeah. Democrats, they say yes. It’s the politicians that don’t want it. Like Schumer and these guys, they don’t want it. Because they want to be able to cheat.

Because you know what? Who’s going to vote for somebody that wants to have men playing in women’s sports? You know, I have never had one person come up to me and say, “President, you’ve got to do something to allow men to play in women’s sports.” Have you ever? It’s like I’ve never been called by a pollster. I told you my little theory on pollsters, okay?

I’m getting myself in trouble with some of these things, but I don’t really care. Nobody’s ever come up to me and said, we want to have men play in women’s sports.

Social Policies and Public Sentiment

DONALD TRUMP: And you know, I had a funny thing at a property I own in California. I have a woman who’s a very good athlete, and she works there as a manager. And Brian Urlacher, the big Chicago Bears, great player, you know, 10-time All-Star, I guess, Hall of Famer, great guy, big, strong guy. And she said, “Oh, he’s one of my favorite athletes. Can I have a picture?” And I took a picture and I sent it. And I noticed she was the size of his leg. His leg was bigger than she was. And I put it out. Should men play in women’s sports? It was just so ridiculous.

JOE ROGAN: What’s one of the most bizarre and polarizing ideas that’s promoted by the left?

DONALD TRUMP: But who wants it? Now, unless you’re going to cheat in elections, you’re never going to get it. Nobody wants it. I don’t think anybody wants it. I’ve been told everything. Some people want this. I don’t know of anybody that wants open borders.

The Issue of Open Borders and Security Concerns

DONALD TRUMP: I’ve never had anyone come up to me and say, “President, you’ve got to let the world come into our country.” Now, if they won, so they have 21 million. I think it’s much higher than that because you have gotaways. You know, gotaways where they just walk in. And the other thing you have is human traffickers. You have traffickers, and they’re trafficking women. And they’re going wild. Now, we used to… you know, we have to look at the trunk of cars. Can you believe it? They put women in trunks. They’ll put three women in a trunk. These people are savages. They’re horrible.

These people, and they’re making the kind of money they make on drugs, they’re almost making on trafficking now. And the thing that’s made it hot is the internet. You think of it almost as an ancient thing, but it’s the internet. But who would want to have these things?

Controversial Social Policies

DONALD TRUMP: Who would want to have… there’s so many, the transgender operations where they’re allowed to take your child when he goes to school and turn him into a male, to a female without parental consent. Who wants this? Does anybody want this? I’ve never heard of anyone, and I can go into ten different things.

The only way they get them is by no voter ID. You can’t have voter ID. They want to cheat. There’s only one reason, because the voter ID is so basic. It’s the most basic thing there is. Who would want this? They want it so they can cheat because their policies are no good. I’ll tell you, they’re very smart when it comes to that. Although they’re not smart in terms of politics in a way because what do they have that people want? They give away a lot of health care, a lot of stuff. But for the most part, their policies are terrible.

Tax Hikes and Economic Policies

DONALD TRUMP: She’s running on a tax hike. She’s going to raise your taxes. You’ve got to hear this. We are going to raise your taxes. And the people clap. All my life I grew up where politicians lower taxes. She’s politicking that we are going to raise your taxes.

JOE ROGAN: The idea is to raise taxes on the highest earners. Millionaires and billionaires are not paying their fair share. It’s a narrative. It’s a narrative that appeals to people that are not doing well. Our problems are these rich people are not paying taxes.

DONALD TRUMP: They’re going to close up their companies, and other people aren’t going to have jobs. That’s what happens.

Election Integrity and Judicial Systems

You brought it up. I’ll tell you what. He’s doing a very good job in Virginia. Glenn Youngkin. I don’t know if you like him or not, but he’s the governor of Virginia. We have a case where they found thousands of illegal ballots. A judge just ruled that they have to be able to vote. That’s what happened today. Just before I walked in here, I heard. A judge just ruled that you have to keep those people in. They’re illegal. They’re illegal votes. Now, I think they’ll be overturned at the next court.

One thing I found, because I had a couple of things that got overturned a little bit. The system… you have to hope that the appellate judges are honest. Otherwise, we don’t have a country anymore. Very important.

Voter ID and JFK Files Discussion

DONALD TRUMP: It’s got to be looked at. You have to have voter ID. You have to have additional ID. You have to have an ID that shows that you’re a citizen of the country. They don’t want that either.

JOE ROGAN: One of the things that I want to talk to you about is the JFK files. One of the things that you said was that if they showed you what they showed me, this is your quote, you wouldn’t want people to know it either.

DONALD TRUMP: So I opened them up partially. I was met with, from good people. I mean, you know, look, I mean good people. People that were well-meaning. Mike Pompeo was one of them. He’s a good person. They called me. They said, sir, would rather have you not. After, and I did open them, but I was asked by some people not to open them.

MLK Files and Government Secrecy

DONALD TRUMP: There’s a Martin Luther King file too, by the way, that they’d like to see. I don’t know if you know, but there is that. But JFK in particular. So they called me. A lot of good people called me. People that you would find reasonable people. And they asked me not to do it. So I said, well, we’ll close it for another time.

But if I win, I’m going to open them up. I’m just going to open it.

JOE ROGAN: Why didn’t you open it up the first time?

DONALD TRUMP: Because a lot of times, there’s people that are still living. There are people that are affected. And there could be some national security reason that I don’t necessarily have to know about. But some very good, talented people asked me not to do it. I opened it up, and then they said, would it be possible for us to do that a different day?

JOE ROGAN: How much of it did you read into?

DONALD TRUMP: I think it’s going to be just fine to open it. I think it’s fine. It’s going to be time. It’s really a cleansing. So I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it immediately, almost immediately upon entering office.

UFO and Space Discussion

JOE ROGAN: Well, the thing, when people look at it from the outside, and you sort of imagine what could be a reason why they would not release those files, it would be, there’s people that were implicated in the assassination.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, when there are living people, you generally tend not to want to do it. People are still living.

JOE ROGAN: Living people that formerly worked for the government.

DONALD TRUMP: For the government, and living people that were somehow involved in it. And you tend not to do that. But it’s time to open them. I can’t tell you whether or not they’re going to find anything of interest. And I did partially open it. I think I’ve opened 50%. But I was asked not to do it, and I thought that was a reasonable ask. But now I’m going to do it. I’m going to do it very soon. There’s a lot of interest in it. There’s a lot of interest in the people coming from space, you know. And I know you’re interested in that.

JOE ROGAN: Oh, I’m very interested in that. How much do they tell you about that?

DONALD TRUMP: A lot.

JOE ROGAN: How much can you tell? How does that work? Is it like super top secret?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, based on Hunter Biden, I can say whatever the hell I want. But I interviewed a few people. It’s never been my thing, I have to be honest. I have never been a believer. Area 51 or whatever it is. I think it’s the number one tourist attraction in the whole country or something. Area 51, do you know that, right?

JOE ROGAN: Sure, I know what it is.

Military Pilots and UFO Sightings

DONALD TRUMP: But it’s a big tourist site. So I interviewed jet pilots that say they saw something. If you saw them, you’d love to have them.

JOE ROGAN: I’ve had a couple in here. Commander David Fravor, I had him in, who had that sighting in 2004. Very, very compelling with visual, radio evidence, radar evidence. Brian Graves.

DONALD TRUMP: I don’t believe his name, but I interviewed jet pilots that were solid people. Perfect. I mean, great pilots, great everything. And they said, ‘We saw things, sir, that were very strange. Like a round ball, but it wasn’t a comet or a meteor. It was something. And it was going four times faster than an F22, which is a very fast plane. And it was round.’ Which is, in theory, a great shape.

JOE ROGAN: So when you were talking to these people, was this something that you were compelled to have conversations about?

DONALD TRUMP: No.

JOE ROGAN: Was this your personal interest?

DONALD TRUMP: A little bit. It’s not a great interest for me, but it’s a little interest. I get that question as much as almost any question. Do you think that we have aliens?

JOE ROGAN: What do you think?

Discussion on Extraterrestrial Life

DONALD TRUMP: There’s no reason not to. I mean, there’s no reason not to think that Mars and all these planets don’t have life.

JOE ROGAN: Well, Mars, we’ve had probes there and rovers. I don’t think there’s any life there.

DONALD TRUMP: Well, maybe it’s life that we don’t know.

JOE ROGAN: Well, maybe there was life there at one point in time. This is a speculation about Mars. Mars had an atmosphere at one point in time a long time ago that could support life. It also had large bodies of water. But we’ve had no evidence of even bacterial life that exists on Mars. But the universe is pretty vast.

Chinese Surveillance and Military Technology

DONALD TRUMP: It’s not been a big thing for me. When I looked at what China did to this, they would have never done it with me where they put the balloon up. And a lot of people thought for a little while that that was one of these things.

JOE ROGAN: Well, that’s a lot of the speculation too that some of these drones that hover over battleships that these are Chinese drones and that they’re not UFOs.

DONALD TRUMP: They could be also. It would be of tremendous interest if you had them, as I said, you’d love to have them as your children. Solid, beautiful people. They said, ‘Sir, there’s something there. There’s something there.’

Military Encounters and Technology

JOE ROGAN: Yeah, I’ve talked to quite a few of them. They’re not conspiracy guys. Well, just the Commander David Fravor thing in 2004 off the coast of San Diego, they clocked that thing going from 50,000 feet above sea level to 50 in a second. They don’t know what it is.

They saw something in the water. It was hovering over that something that was making a disturbance in the water. They got video evidence of this thing. Two different fighter jets with pilots in them saw it. There’s visual evidence, photographic evidence, video evidence, radar evidence. Whatever the hell it is, it moves in a way that would turn a human being into Jell-O if they were inside of it. The G-Force, no one would survive. It doesn’t have a heat signature. I don’t know what their propulsion system was.

DONALD TRUMP: When you fly in some of these jets, these pilots have to be in great shape.

JOE ROGAN: Oh yeah, I flew with the Blue Angels once.

DONALD TRUMP: Yeah, as an example. And those are older machines. And they’re crazy. When you fly in some of these things, it’s amazing.

Military Leadership and Global Conflicts

JOE ROGAN: But these things that these people are encountering are far superior to what we know of. Is it possible that there’s some military or government program that they didn’t tell you about?

DONALD TRUMP: I think I had a great relationship with the military, basically. But I didn’t like certain people. I would have gotten them out if I thought if the election was different, I would have fired all of them quickly. Most of them I did fire. Biden should have fired every military person involved with Afghanistan.

He should have had a lot of firings. If you look at him, he told Israel not to do anything. At least Israel is not going to look at a bomb the way they would have been. Think if they listened to Biden. They’d be waiting for a bomb to drop on their head right now. He’s been wrong about so much. I guess you’d have to say that she’s been wrong too. She always said they made the decision together. But Israel didn’t follow his advice.

Nuclear Weapons and Global Threats

DONALD TRUMP: And I think it was a very… The Middle East is rapidly changing. There are prophets that say the world will come to an end in the Middle East. You know that, right? And we have weapons today that are so scary. I rebuilt them all. And when you look at the weapons we have today, the biggest threat we have in the world today is nuclear weapons. And we have other weapons too that are devastating.

But the nuclear weapons, the biggest threat we have in the world today, and that’s what… I was talking about de-escalation with both China and Russia. I’m telling you, we were going to de-escalate. They were going to de-escalate.

You’ve got to be careful. It’s a little tricky playing with them. Because they say we’re going to do it and they don’t do it, maybe. But they understood the curse too. It’s a curse. China’s way behind us, but they’ll catch us within five years.

Addressing Global Conflicts

JOE ROGAN: So let’s imagine, let’s say you win in November. How do you change this course that it seems we are on for World War III? How do you get us out of Ukraine? How do you stop what’s going on in the Middle East? How do you put a stop to this?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, it’s a very… To me it’s an easy question because I think I can do it easily, but it’s a complex question in the sense that the times change. Every day changes. Who’s winning? Who’s not winning? I mean, Russia’s a war machine. Whether you like it or not, it just grinds along, grinds along. You speak to people like Viktor Orban, he’ll tell you. It’s just a big, fat war machine. And that’s what’s happening. You look at what’s happened to Ukraine. If I were there, it would have never happened.

JOE ROGAN: But what could you do now?

DONALD TRUMP: Right now, you would get both of them. I know both very well. And again, I cannot, I do not want to tell you, for the purpose of looking smart to five people that say, oh, he was great.

Negotiation Tactics and International Relations

DONALD TRUMP: Because if I told you exactly what I’d do, I could never make the deal. All I can tell you is that I would meet with Putin and I would meet with him, and I know exactly what I’d say to each one of them. And I believe that as president-elect, I would get that war stopped and stopped fast. You know, we have tremendous power in the United States if you know how to use the power.

I stopped other wars just by the use of tariffs. I got Macron of France. Good guy. He’s like a friend of mine. But he’s a wise guy. And he’s a person that likes France. And he was going to tax our companies. And I sent all the smartest guys. I sent Mnuchin. They all failed me. And I said, I’ll do it myself.

When I called him, I said, ‘Emmanuel, you’re taxing American companies. We’re not going to allow you to do that.’ ‘Oh, Donald, I cannot do it.’ I said, ‘Emmanuel, if you do that, I’m going to put a 100% tariff when your wines and champagnes are coming to the United States, and you’re going to regret that you ever did it.’ He said, ‘Donald, please, that’s not fair.’ Anyway, within about two minutes, he dropped the whole thing. And it was massive amounts of money against American companies. I have to protect American companies.

Current Administration Criticism

JOE ROGAN: So why doesn’t the Biden administration do that?

DONALD TRUMP: Because they’re incompetent. They don’t know how to talk. They met in Alaska with the Chinese. And the Chinese lectured them about how badly we treat people. Right? Okay? I mean, think of it. You remember that?

They didn’t talk to me that way. They respected me. They respected our country. They don’t respect our country. They don’t respect Biden. They don’t respect her. They’re dreaming about her as a smart person. Look, she can’t put two sentences together.

She talks… I watched her last night, too. It was the same thing. She’s not a smart person. These guys are very smart, and they’re very streetwise, and they’re very tricky and evil and dangerous. And if she becomes the president of the United States, which I can’t believe can happen, I don’t think this country is going to make it. I don’t think we’ll ever be… I think just really bad things will happen to our country.

Economic Strategy and Manufacturing

DONALD TRUMP: And you know what? I look at the outside forces, and I say, they can all be handled because we have a pot of gold. But we’re not going to have that pot of gold to play with anymore. You know, it’s a great negotiating thing. I told you, I knocked out this massive car company that’s going to take all of our car business from Detroit. I knocked it out just by my rhetoric. Rhetorically, I said, they’ll never sell a car in here. I don’t care if they are 2000%.

JOE ROGAN: Is it possible to apply that same thing to the electronics that we use? One of the things that disturbs me greatly is that all of our phones are made overseas.

DONALD TRUMP: And the chips.

JOE ROGAN: And some of our phones are made in places like Foxconn, where they have nets around the building to keep people from jumping off the roof because they have so many suicides.

They have health insurance. They’re taken care of. They can live a good life. Where you’re not buying a piece of electronics that’s cheaper because someone has to suffer in a horrible way that’s not even legal in the United States. It’s not even legal to have them work that way in the United States, so they get these people to build them overseas.

Manufacturing and Tariffs Strategy

DONALD TRUMP: You do it, but let me just say, that chip deal is so bad. We put up billions of dollars for rich companies to come and give us the good companies anyway. All you had to do was charge them tariffs.

If you would have put a tariff on the chips coming in, you would have been able to… Just like the auto companies, no different. More sophisticated, but no different. You know, Taiwan, they stole our chip business. Okay? They want us to protect, and they want protection. They don’t pay us money for the protection, you know? The mob makes you pay money, right?

NATO and International Relations

DONALD TRUMP: But with these countries that we protect, I got hundreds of billions of dollars from NATO countries that were never paying us. And my biggest fan is Stoltenberg, who just left as the, you know, Director General, as the Secretary General. Good guy. He said Bush came, he made a speech. Obama came, he made a speech. Trump came, he said, ‘you guys aren’t paying, you got to pay.’ And they said, ‘will you protect us from Russia if we don’t?’ I said, ‘no, you got to pay if you don’t pay.'”

Semiconductor Industry Discussion

DONALD TRUMP: To NATO. When I see us paying a lot of money to have people build chips, that’s not the way. You didn’t have to put up 10 cents. You could have done it with a series of tariffs. In other words, you tariff it so high that they will come and build their chip companies for nothing. In other words, Joe, you put a big tariff on the chips coming in. I say, you don’t have to pay the tariff. All you have to do is build your plant in the United States.

We didn’t have to give them the money to build a plant. Besides that, they’re very rich companies. These chip companies, they stole 95% of our business. It’s in Taiwan right now. They do a great job. But that’s only because we have stupid politicians. We lost the chip business. And now we think we’re going to pay.

You can’t build it that way. You have to make them spend their money in the United States. And those plants would open up all over. And they’ll fund them.

Conclusion of Interview

DONALD TRUMP: We’re in the process of making a huge speech in about a little while. How long have we been talking?

JOE ROGAN: A long time. Probably like three hours.

DONALD TRUMP: I’ve got to make a speech. But we’ll do it again. I want to do it again with you. You are something. I said, how long will this last? Anywhere from an hour to three or four hours.

JOE ROGAN: How long did we do, Jamie? Three hours.

DONALD TRUMP: Good. Well, we’ll do it again.

JOE ROGAN: I thought it was great.

DONALD TRUMP: You are a fascinating guy. You have done a great job. Thank you very much. It’s been an honor.

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