FULL TRANSCRIPT: Trump talks About Economy, Inflation at New Jersey

It’s what caused the inflation. Their Inflation Reduction Act was a con job. They actually admitted that it wasn’t really for inflation, that they did it. They don’t know why they did it, but they named it the Inflation Reduction Act, which was a very nice name. Got approved based on that. Unfortunately, people didn’t understand it. I understood it. I said that’s going to cause tremendous inflation. And it did, among other things, like energy.

She’s running on the Maduro plan. We call it the Maduro plan, like something straight out of Venezuela or the Soviet Union. This announcement is an admission that her economic policies have totally failed and caused really a catastrophe for our country. And beyond that, a catastrophe in the world.

A little bit unrelated, but not totally unrelated. We have wars breaking out in the Middle East. We have the horrible war going on with Ukraine and Russia. All these things would have never happened if I was president. Would have never, ever happened. And they didn’t happen.

Insurance and Energy Costs

DONALD TRUMP: Since Harris took office, car insurance is up 55 percent. And they just announced it’s going to be substantially higher than that within the next week. They expect big increases in car insurance. It’s out of control and insurance generally.

Thanks to Kamala’s war on American energy, electricity prices are up 32 percent. Gasoline prices are up 50 percent and going higher. Meanwhile, real incomes are down by over $2000 a year. So the incomes for people are down two thousand on average a year. Government numbers.

Economic Decline

DONALD TRUMP: The typical American has seen a 4 percent pay cut under Kamala and Biden. Crooked Joe, crooked Joe Biden. Credit card debt has exploded by 50 percent under Harris to a record high. It’s now at a record high. Never been anywhere close since March. And by the way, people are going to have to start paying that. And it’s not going to be a pretty sight for the next period of time. It could be a substantial time.

Since March of 2022, the average middle class household has lost 33,000 dollars in wealth. How about that? Thirty three thousand dollars. That’s average. In July alone, 350,000 people were added to the unemployment rolls. It’s a lot of people. Three hundred and fifty thousand people added to the unemployment rolls. And think of that. That’s in one month. That’s in July.

Job Market and Immigration

DONALD TRUMP: Virtually 100 percent of the net job creation in the last year has gone to migrants. You know that? Most of the job creation has gone to migrants. In fact, I’ve heard that substantially more than beyond — actually beyond a number of 100 percent. It’s a much higher number than that. But the government hasn’t caught up with that yet. But virtually right now, as of the time they did this, virtually 100 percent of the net job creation in the last year has gone to migrants.

Harris gave work permits and Social Security numbers to more than three million illegal immigrants to steal jobs from Americans. So think of that. And, you know, they’re having a lot of problems with Social Security. I’m going to be the one to save Social Security. But they’re having a lot of problems with Social Security because under their system of putting all of these people into it, it’s going to blow up and fail.

Social Security Concerns

DONALD TRUMP: If she’s elected, Social Security will fail. It’ll be a blow up like you’ve never seen before. It’ll be a bankruptcy of the entire system, probably the nation itself. You don’t have to imagine what a Kamala Harris presidency would be because you’re living through that nightmare right now. And it is a nightmare. It’s a nightmare. And you’re going to stop inflation, but we’re going to have a crash and we’re going to have a crash like a 1929 crash if she gets in.

You saw a gentleman yesterday who got up, one of the top analysts in the world, frankly, and said that if Trump isn’t elected, he predicts that he’s predicting you have a stock market crash like 1929. He also said the only time and the only reason the stock market has gone up, even though it had some bad moments recently. But I think we’ll take — I think we’ll take a substantial lead. You saw the polls come out today. We’re leading in most of the polls. But you’ll have to have a lot of friends over this. I don’t think they’re reporters, however, are they? This was supposed to be for reporters.

Economic Comparison

DONALD TRUMP: Thank you very much. Thank you very much. When I left office, I handed Kamala and crooked Joe Biden a surging economy with no inflation. The 30 year mortgage rate was around 2 percent. Gasoline had reached $1.87 a gallon. We actually had many months where it was lower than that. But we hit $1.87, which was a perfect place, an absolutely beautiful number. Real income surged by more than 4200 dollars a year when I was president. Harris and Biden blew it all up.

If Kamala wins the election, the worst is yet to come. You’ll have a real problem in the future because people don’t respect her in the world. People don’t respect her in the economy. Economists are laughing. They can’t even believe this is happening to our country. And she wants to change a free enterprise type country into a communist type country. That’s what she knows.

Criticism of Political Opponents

DONALD TRUMP: She’s considered far more radical than Bernie Sanders. That’s all you have to know. Far more radical. And she picked somebody that’s far more radical than Bernie Sanders. He approved a bill recently, tampons in boys bathrooms. He wants tampons in boys bathrooms. It’s terrible. It’s terrible. But that’s the person that she picked. Surprising pick to me. I was shocked. He’s also got one of the worst run states. Many people are leaving the state. Six months. And from her state.

This goes, she destroyed as the attorney general, she destroyed California, along with Gavin Newsom. And San Francisco, you know, was a great city 15 years ago. Now it’s considered almost unlivable. You can’t live there. And what they’ve done to that great state with the beautiful weather like this, where they have this weather all the time and they have the ocean, they have the sun, they have everything good. But what they’ve done to it is is a shame. And she’s going to do the same thing to our country.

California Policies

DONALD TRUMP: It was the policies. They had a recent article, and I didn’t know this, but you’re allowed to rob a store as long as it’s not more than nine hundred and fifty dollars. Has everyone ever heard of that? You can rob a store and you have these going into stores with calculators calculating how much it is, because if it’s less than nine hundred and fifty dollars, they can rob it and not get charged. That was her that did that.

Tax Policies

DONALD TRUMP: Harris is campaigning on the largest tax increase in American history, including ending the Trump tax cuts, one of the largest tax cuts ever in our country’s history. And working with families, a gigantic capital gains tax hike they want and a new wealth confiscation tax. It’s called wealth confiscation tax, which isn’t going to make all of her supporters. You know, she’s got some supporters that are wealthy people because they’re stupid people, but they’re wealthy people. She said that a 70 to 80 percent tax rate is, quote, “a bold idea that should be discussed and studied” 70 to 80 percent.

Healthcare Policies

DONALD TRUMP: She co-sponsored legislation to abolish very popular private health insurance, which one hundred and fifty Americans rely on dumping everyone onto inferior socialist government run health care systems with rationing and deadly wait times while massively raising your taxes. She wants to take away your private health care.

There are many people in this country who spend a lot of money on private health care. It’s the best health care in the world, by the way, but they want to do it. They work hard to make money and they want to do it. Under her you’re not going to have private health care plans anymore.

And you can be a wealthy person or a middle income person and you want to spend on a really good plan, better than a government plan could be far better. And you’re not going to be allowed. You’re all going to be thrown into a communist system. It’s a communist system. You’re going to be thrown into a system where everybody gets health care. And you wait for your doctor like 10 months, 12 months, 11 months. You’re going to see some of these plans, how they work in other countries. It’s disgraceful. So private health care is gone. She wants it out now.

Policy Changes

DONALD TRUMP: She could change on that and she might change on that. She’s changed on everything. But I said, why are you changing? I actually was asking somebody that knows her. Why is she changing? She had these policies and ideas for years and years and years and very solid on. All you have to do is go back and look at your tapes, which many have been discarded because they don’t want — discarded by the fake news, because they don’t want people to see what she said just a year ago and two years ago. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Even my statement on waiters, waitresses, caddies, a lot of great people, people that drive cars, no tax on tips. All of a sudden out of the blue, she comes out. That was months ago. I said that. And she came out and she said, no tax on tips. She could have at least said, you know, President Trump had some great ideas. But one of the ideas was no tax on tips. I think it would have been nice and people would have accepted that. But she just came out like it was hers and she never had. In fact, just the opposite.

IRS Policies

DONALD TRUMP: The IRS is all set up to really go after people that make tips and they pass legislation and signed executive orders, making it really hard on waiters, waitresses. And that was very recently. That was just before I made the proposal. They were really going after people. So they’re lying when they say that, you know, this is what they want to do because their legislation, which everyone knows, and their executive orders were extremely tough. They also put eighty eight thousand new IRS agents in that can go and harass everybody.

Energy Policy

DONALD TRUMP: She wants to close dozens of existing power plants, causing rollbacks of power in our country. You have brownouts, blackouts, the likes of which you’ve never seen, and plunging millions and millions of people into poverty. That’s going to put them into poverty and they’re not going to have heat. They’re not going to have air conditioning. She wants to close dozens of existing power plants. So maybe she’ll change that, too. But she’s got a lot to change. Almost everything she’s ever said she’s got to change.

Nobody’s ever seen. And that’s why we’re here. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it. She wants to abolish coal, oil and natural gas. Eighty four percent of U.S. energy supply. And it’s the coal and the natural gas, clean coal, I call it, and oil, natural gas that create electricity. And by the way, I’m a big fan of electricity.

Artificial Intelligence and Energy

DONALD TRUMP: If we’re going to go with the A.I., if we’re going to do that, I don’t know if you know, but we need twice the amount of electricity currently supplied for everything to the entire United States of America. So to be competitive on A.I., I was talking to Elon Musk. We had a great discussion the other night. I agree. And he said a big problem is getting the approvals to create all of that energy, all of that electricity, specifically electricity. And you’re going to need that for other forms of modern business, too. And I’ll get it done. But other people aren’t going to be getting done.

Border Policy

DONALD TRUMP: You’re going to — they’re not going to be able to get it done. As border czar — and she was the border czar. I don’t know if she was proudly called border czar, but that’s what crooked Joe Biden called her. She’s the border czar. Everybody said it. And then about two weeks ago, she didn’t want to be called the border czar anymore. She said, oh, I was never the border czar. It doesn’t matter. She was the person responsible for the border. And she never went there. She went to a certain location once, but I would have gone there and taken my family to dinner there.

That was not a place that is going to the border — place with no problem. As border czar she allowed 20 million people. And I believe it’s higher than that. People say 13, 14, 12, 10. But now they’re all up to around 12, 13, 14. They have no idea because you have millions and millions of what they call gotaways, the gotaways, gotaways of people that pour into our country. We have no idea who they are. That’s the worst of all.

Immigration and Social Programs

DONALD TRUMP: But she allowed at least 20 million people to invade our country. And she wants to give them all citizenship and free government health care and let them raid Medicare and Social Security, which will again she will destroy Medicare. She will destroy Social Security. And frankly, there’s nothing she can do about it. Once this happens, there’s nothing she can do about it. She called for abolishing ICE. These are great patriots who are tough, tougher than anybody. This audience, some of those people, I know over there.

Some of those men and a couple of the women, to be honest, they’re tough as hell. But they don’t want to fight MS-13. I’ve seen it. They go into Long Island, has a lot of had a lot. We got up. We got them out. But now they’re coming back because of weak policy and because of things that she wants to do, like defund the police. You know, she wants to defund the police now.

Law Enforcement and Gang Violence

DONALD TRUMP: She has since said, no, no, I don’t want to do that anymore. The one thing I see with politicians, they always go back to where they were. She wanted to defund the police and she wanted to abolish. So I was going to say that these ICE people are incredible patriots. They’re tough as hell. And they go into a pack of MS-13 gang members, the toughest in the world, probably the toughest gangs in the world. They come from — they come from different parts of South America and they want to come in. And in Long Island, not too recently, but recently, they carved up with a knife two beautiful 16 year old girls who are walking to school.

And the reason they used a knife instead of shooting them was very simple, because it’s more painful. They wanted to watch them agonize. And these are animals. And we have to get them out of our country or we have to put them in jail because we don’t want to back. Sometimes you have to put them in jail because their country doesn’t want to back. They’ll send them back the way they do.

Foreign Relations and Immigration

DONALD TRUMP: Just so you know, I know all of the people that we’re dealing with as the heads of countries. And they’re very smart. They’re very street wise. And what they’re doing is they’re taking all of their criminals and they haven’t brought all of them yet. They brought a lot of them now, but they’ll bring all of them. I’m shocked it’s taken so long. If I were in their country, it would have got a lot faster. I will tell you that I would have gotten that, too. And they’re bringing them into the United States. They’re taking their drug dealers and their rapists, murderers and every criminal, bringing them into the United States and their crime rates are way down.

They’re bringing people from mental institutions and insane asylums into the United States and their population for the mentally ill is way down. They’re in the United States. They’re dumping them in the United States. They’re driving them through a border that’s totally open. We stopped them. We didn’t let it happen. And when I first came into office, you know, this story that President Obama at the time had no way of getting them back. And I said, I want to get all of the MS-13 in particular out of our country, bring them back to where they came from.

Deportation Challenges

DONALD TRUMP: A general said, sir, that won’t be possible. Why? Because they blocked the airports. They blocked the roads. They blocked everything. You can’t do it. I said, so they’re making a concerted effort. Yes, sir. They’re making a concerted effort. We can’t do it. They put planes on the runway so we can’t land the plane, sir. And the same thing with the roads. They block up the roads. So if we have buses coming in, they block up the roads. They’re totally blocked and they’re terrible. It’s been that way for years, sir, all the way back to Bush.

It’s been that way for years. And I said, well, how much do we pay them in terms of economic development and aid? Sir, we pay them 750 million dollars. I said, that’s OK. Call them immediately and tell them we’re not paying them anymore. And the following morning, I got a call from the three main culprits. Sir, I’d like to speak to you because I don’t understand what the problem is. I said, well, you’ve sent us gang members and they send them.

Negotiating with Foreign Countries

DONALD TRUMP: Remember that they send them. They said you send us gang members. You send us killers and you send us drug dealers and you send us horrible people. And when we want to bring them back to your country, you won’t accept them. And that’s under President Obama and all the way through. And therefore, you’re in default. You are in total default of the money that we send you. And we’re not going to send you the money anymore. You’re not getting any of the seven hundred and fifty million dollars and more. We’re not giving you any. You are delinquent. You are delinquent in what you’ve done.

And you’re not getting a… sir, please, please. Can we talk? I said, yeah, we could talk. What? We would absolutely love to have MS-13 sent back to our country. We think they’re wonderful people. They’re not wonderful people. They’re wonderful killers. But they change their tune totally. When I said they weren’t going to get the money. I don’t know why these people don’t do it.

Foreign Aid and Immigration

DONALD TRUMP: And the seven hundred and fifty million dollars now is billions of dollars because Biden increased it very substantially. He thinks by sending them money, they’re going to send fewer people into our country. How stupid is that? So they’re giving him two and a half, three billion dollars. The seven hundred and fifty. Not only did he give it. I didn’t even pay after they made the call because I said, you know, you’ve treated us badly for so many years. We’re not going to pay you anyway. But now they’ve given them.

They’re giving them billions of dollars, billions, much more than when I took over. It was seven hundred and fifty. Now they’re giving them billions. But they said there must be an understanding, sir. We would love to take them back. And I said, well, you’re going to get them back. And we started bringing them back by the thousands out of Long Island, out of Michigan, out of Ohio, by the thousands. And she compared ICE agencies, brave people to the KKK.

ICE and Law Enforcement

DONALD TRUMP: She said the ICE people, the ICE agents, I compare them to the KKK. Well, they don’t really because, you know, when you see — when you go into like Long Island, like Ohio, like Michigan, we had a lot of them. And you see these men, most cases, men, the agents get out of a van and walk into — they call it a pack. It’s a pack, not like a political pact, slightly different, even nastier, even nastier. Hard to believe. But they would go into a pack of these killers. And all you do, I’ve seen it so many times. All you do is see fists and feet and hands fighting.

Two minutes later, they stand up and they walk out. They have them by the feet. They walk them out or they drag them out, mostly drag them out, put them in paddy wagons and they bring them back to their country. They take them back to the country and the country is open arms now, open arms. And it’s an amazing thing for her to say KKK is very unfair, but she doesn’t know. She doesn’t want to know. She’s a very strong communist lean.

Criticisms of Harris’s Policies

DONALD TRUMP: She wants to end detention of illegal alien migrants, releasing vicious monsters into our communities to rape, maim and murder our population. She endorsed defunding the police and no cash bailed nationwide. She was the original no funder. And the only thing Kamala Harris can deliver is horrific inflation, massive crime and the death of the American dream. She is in favor of the death of the American dream because everything she does really stops. Any one of these items stops the American dream. We want our youth to go back and dream of being successful someday, being really successful and employing lots of people.

Personal Sacrifice for Politics

DONALD TRUMP: And you can’t get up early enough. I gave up that life for a life of politics. I gave up this — all of this, these beautiful places that I have all over the world for a life of being abused by the fake news media. And yet I would do it again. Somebody asked me the other day, would you do it again? I said, absolutely. Why would you do it? Why would you put yourself through? They go after you. They weaponize government. You have to deal with crooked judges that are after you and crooked prosecutors.

And these New York, the New York court system is vicious and totally biased and frankly, totally crooked. Why would you put yourself through it? Because we’re going to make America great again. That’s what we’re going to do. And it’s very important.

Energy Policy Promises

DONALD TRUMP: So when I win, I will immediately bring prices down. Starting on day one, we will end Kamala’s war on American energy and we will drill baby drill. We’re going to drill baby drill. That’s going to bring down prices of everything because energy brought it up when they went away from my policy. They quickly went back to it. But by that time it was too late. They lost control. But they’ve gone back to it. And if they win the day after the victory, they’ll stop with all the drilling. But they went back to it because prices were going through the roof.

They were going really bad. And that’s what caused our inflation. And that’s what destroyed the lives of many Americans. But a reduced energy and electricity prices. I will by at least half within a 12 month period. We’ll be able to reduce prices between regulation and having a tremendous supply, which we have. I always say we have more liquid gold under our feet, more than any other nation anywhere in the world, including Saudi Arabia and including Russia.

Green New Deal Criticism

DONALD TRUMP: We’re going to terminate the Green New Scam. It’s called the Green New Deal. It’s a scam and rescind all unspent funds. We’re going to rescind that and pay off debt. And we’re going to reduce debt. We took almost $10 trillion for nonsense, for absolute nonsense. We’ll do bridges. We’ll do roads. We’ll do things that we need. But we’re not going to be spending it and wasting it stupidly and have China laugh at us.

Foreign Policy and Energy

DONALD TRUMP: I remember when just a short while ago, Kerry goes, you know, hops in his private plane, flies to China to talk about the energy prices and the energy situation in China. And with President Xi, who I know very well, had a very good relationship until Covid came in. But that was a that was a fence too far. But we had a great relationship. And Kerry would go up there and he’d leave so happy. But they didn’t — they don’t do anything. They just talk. They said, oh, yeah, we’re going to do that. Oh, as soon as we get to it.

In the meantime, they’re building a coal plant every week. But now I hear it’s two coal plants a week and we’re dying for energy. We don’t have energy and they’re getting set for the A.I. because they’re going to create so much electricity and we’re not going to be able to do it. But you’ll get do it if I have it, because that’s an emergency. We have to be able to compete with China and other countries that are able to create new energy if they want to.

Energy Policy and International Comparisons

DONALD TRUMP: And they’re going to want to and they do want to. But they’re building at least one coal plant a week. Germany, as you know, went a little bit like us and that was the end of Angola because their whole economy crashed and their new government is building coal plants all over the place. They’re building brand new coal plants, nuclear plants and other things because Germany was going to fail. So why are we following these countries that tried it and failed? And they’re smart countries. They tried it. They failed.

Why are we doing this? Why aren’t we creating great energy plants, great sources of energy instead of playing this game with wind that is ruining everything, killing all your birds, destroying the fields, all these gorgeous fields? You got windmills all over the place and you have birds. You want to see a bird cemetery. Just go under a windmill. You see thousands of birds dead. The bald eagle, if you kill an eagle, they put you in jail for years. And yet these windmills knock them out like nothing and nothing happens to the people.

Criticism of Green Energy

DONALD TRUMP: Now it’s a green scam. It’s a it’s a shame. Look, I’m all for clean energy. I want clean water. I want clean air. But you can’t destroy your country over it. You just can’t do that. We want to stop wasteful spending and big government special interest giveaways. You have giveaways. You have some of these people that are giving. Look, they’re not giving millions and millions of dollars to politicians because they like their policy. They’re giving them because they made deals.

They’re going to take over lots of different things in our country. They’re going to build windmills as an example. They’re going to build big solar fields that take up half the desert. Massive solar fields. And I’m a big fan of solar, but it’s it can’t fire our plants. It’s not going to fire our plants, fire up those plants. We’ve got to get them going. And the only thing that can do that is fossil fuel right now. And the only thing that can make electricity, which we all want, is right now, fossil fuel and nuclear. And nuclear has its place, a very big place in our country. Very big place.

Electric Vehicle Mandate

DONALD TRUMP: China is going with nuclear. France has been going with nuclear for many years. We want to end the Biden-Harris electrical vehicle mandate. We have to get rid of the electric vehicle mandate. And look, Elon endorsed me strongly, most powerful endorsement. He said it three or four times the other night during our little chat. But a chat that was very well listened to and attended. We know that, right? Broke every single record, I think, in history.

And he’s a great guy. But I told him, I said, you know, I have one problem. I’m all for the electric car, but it’s a very small percentage. I think the electric car is incredible. I think what you’ve done is incredible. But people are going to want — some people are going to want gasoline propelled cars. They’re going to want hybrids. They’re going to want other types of cars. And Elon, you know, they’re going to have to do that. And he understands it fully. And I think he was amazed by this electric vehicle mandate.

Concerns About Electric Trucks

DONALD TRUMP: They want it for trucks, too. If you do it for trucks, you’re not going to have any. You talk about a supply chain problem, a truck going from New York to Los Angeles. If it’s electric, we’ll have to stop six times for long periods of time. If you have diesel fuel, it goes all the way. And you can even come a piece of the way back before you have to reload. And with diesel, the truck gets lighter because you’re using up the fuel with the electric. It stays at a heavy weight. An electric truck is two and a half times heavier than what we would call our traditional trucks.

And a man from a company said to me, you know, sir, I’ve been buying trucks for 50 years. I’ve been buying them. And every single year they got better and bigger and stronger and more powerful and more efficient, more, more fuel efficient. And now we build apartments in the truck, sir. And you would be proud to stay in those apartments. And then I say, I don’t know if I would, but I know exactly what I meant. Those big. He said, it’s incredible.

Trucking Industry Concerns

DONALD TRUMP: The trucks, I said, who builds the best truck? He didn’t tell me. He said they all do. You have four companies, five companies. They all do, sir. They build great ones. But for 50 years, they got better every year. I started off with one truck. I said, how many trucks do you have now? Twenty seven thousand. I said twenty seven thousand. And all big ones. He’s the biggest. This is the biggest. He said for 50 years I’ve been buying and every single year they got better, more efficient, stronger. He said if they make us buy electric trucks, we will go back 70 years because the truck is worse than the one we had 50 years ago.

And he said, I won’t be I won’t partake in it. They want people. They want the truckers, the trucking industry to do that. One other thing, the truck is heavier and the battery is much larger than the tanks and the battery would take up about half of the payload. Think of that. But just as importantly, the battery and all that goes into electric is much heavier. The truck is it weighs two and a half times more than a normal truck fired up by diesel.

Infrastructure Concerns

DONALD TRUMP: And he said, if that’s the case, sir, you would have to rebuild every single bridge and road in America because the weight is so enormous. It wouldn’t be able to go on the bridges and all of the different weight bearing roads in America. I said, did you explain this to the people? I mean, you know, a five year old child, if he was hearing these things, it doesn’t go far. It takes too much room. You don’t have any room left for anything. It’s almost the whole thing would be carrying a battery. Does anybody explain this to these people? We do explain it.

They know it very well. At the end of the meeting, they say we don’t care. Just start making your electric truck. We’re not going to do it. We’re not going to do it, he said. So we’re going to repeal all that. We’re going to repeal Kamala’s regulatory onslaught, saving households an estimated five thousand dollars a year at a minimum.

Tax Policy

DONALD TRUMP: The massive tax cuts and no tax on tips. We’re going to make sure it gets done. She’s not going to get it done. She didn’t hear about it until I said it. And then she went out and she went and did it. And the other thing, no tax on Social Security. We’re not going to have seniors who have been decimated by inflation pay tax on Social Security. And we’ll get through it through growth. We have tremendous growth potential in this country, but not not with these people running it, because all they’re going to do is take away and they want to take away your your growth and your growth potential.

National Decline and Revival

DONALD TRUMP: Again, I say it all the time. We’re a nation in decline. We’re a failing nation right now. We’re a failing nation. And we’re going to soon be a great nation again. That’s going to happen. Another thing we’re going to do, having to do with a lot of reasons, a lot of things in the economy in particular, we’re going to seal the border. We’re going to stop the invasion. We’re going to send the illegal aliens back home. We’re going to bring down the cost of health care and housing.

Social Security and Medicare

DONALD TRUMP: We’re going to make sure that Social Security is not going to be increased in terms of years where people have to wait much longer. I mean, they have we have an obligation to take care of these people. And just so you know, I didn’t do it in four years. I never even thought about doing it in four years. And they probably don’t want to do it, but they’re going to have no chance. They’re going to have no choice because a lot of the people that are coming in are being signed into Medicare. They’re being signed into Social Security. And it’s just going to explode. And it’s going to happen very fast. And it’s going to be very ugly.

Housing and Regulations

DONALD TRUMP: We’re not going to happen with us. We’re going to open up tracts of federal land for housing construction. We desperately need housing for people who can’t afford what’s going on now. And when we open it up and we take off some of the restrictions and regulations, you know, in California, 50 percent the cost of a house is regulations. They have to adhere to regulations that bring the cost of the house up by 50 percent.

Supply Chain Issues

DONALD TRUMP: We’re going to bring back our supply chains to stop costly supply chain disruptions. We have tremendous disruptions. I have it all the time. And I think you do, too. We order things and I keep saying, well, when’s it getting here? I say, sir, there’s a supply chain disruption. And I mean, you end up getting stuff like three months late now. Every I don’t know, all these geniuses over here, I think we can say that. I’m not sure that you’re necessarily as much into it, but they are. And I will say that often, very often we have problems with supply chains where I’m waiting for things for weeks and weeks. And I say, by the way, whatever happened to a supply chain, sir, it’s not coming in.

And it’s a terrible thing. Nobody nobody ever thought a thing like that would happen to our country.

Foreign Policy and Global Stability

DONALD TRUMP: We’re going to restore peace and stability all throughout the world. And you all know Viktor Orbán is the prime minister of Hungary and a very tough man. He’s a good man, but he’s a tough man. And they asked him, what do we need to stop all of the wars with Israel? What do we need to stop the wars in Russia and Ukraine and all the other wars that are starting? He said when President Trump was here, we had no wars. We didn’t have Russia lining up at the borders to go and attack Ukraine. We would have never had Hamas because Hamas had no money because Iran had no money.

I said to China and everybody else, if you buy from Iran, you can’t do business in the United States. And I’m not looking to be bad to Iran. We’re going to be friendly, I hope, with Iran. Maybe, but maybe not. But we’re going to be friendly. I hope we’re going to be friendly. But they can’t have a nuclear weapon. They can’t have a nuclear weapon. And we were all set to make sure that they don’t have a nuclear weapon because once they do, it’s a whole different world. It’s a whole different negotiation.

Global Perception of Leadership

DONALD TRUMP: But Viktor Orbán said, if you put Trump in, nothing’s going to happen. Everyone’s going to be peaceful because they were afraid of Trump. Now, I don’t like saying that, I said that. I would say maybe they respected Trump. But he said they were afraid of Trump. They didn’t know where he was coming from. And they were really afraid of him. They’re not afraid of these people. And being afraid isn’t so bad. But I would say, more importantly, they respected me. But he didn’t use that word.

He said they were afraid of Trump. And we would have not had any problems with China and Taiwan. We wouldn’t have had any problems with Ukraine and Russia. We wouldn’t have any problems with anything. But we will stop inflation. We will make America affordable again. And we’re going to bring back the American dream.

Future of American Youth

DONALD TRUMP: We have all these young people. They’re coming out of schools, colleges, everything else. And they’re not going to have the American dream. They don’t even think about the American dream. Right now, they just think about survival. And I just want to end by saying we have tremendous potential in this country. We can do amazing things, and we can do them fast.

Law Enforcement and Crime

DONALD TRUMP: We have to get the criminals out. We have to get them out immediately and fast and tough. We’re going to rely on our local police. Our local police law enforcement has been so incredible. And they know. Somebody said, how will you get them out? How will you know? The local police know the name and serial number and middle name and last name and where they come from of every single bad guy that’s come into our country. And we’re going to rely on local police. And we’re going to make sure that they have immunity from prosecution.

Because, frankly, our police are treated horribly. They’re not allowed to do their job. You know that better than anybody. They’re not allowed to do their job. If they were allowed to do their job, we wouldn’t have cities that have crime rates. You look at Chicago… on the Fourth of July weekend in Chicago. Think of this. 117 people were shot and 17 died. Afghanistan isn’t anything like that.

DONALD TRUMP: And speaking of Afghanistan, the single most embarrassing day in the history of our country. And yesterday I saw the — you know, they gave 85 billion dollars worth of brand new military equipment, equipment that — I rebuilt the military. So this was equipment that to a large extent I bought, but brand new.

Afghanistan Withdrawal and Bagram Air Base

DONALD TRUMP: And they had a parade yesterday, a beautiful parade. We were going to get out with dignity and strength. We were there for twenty one years and we were going to keep Bagram because it’s one hour away. Bagram is this massive Air Force base that I visited. It’s a massive base that we’re going to keep it because it’s one — not because of Afghanistan, but because it’s one hour away from where China makes its nuclear weapons. And they were showing it off yesterday. But the fact is that China now controls Bagram. China. Can you imagine that?

And we left. We were going to stay there. We’re going to keep it. We’re going to get out with dignity, strength. We’re going to take our soldiers out last, not first. We took our soldiers out first. I dealt with Abdul and he’s still the leader. Strong man, smart man. But he understood that if he did anything, because we were losing a lot of people to the snipers and under Obama, it was terrible. It was brutal. They’d be walking around and just get shot. And that was the end of our people and other people too, civilians.

Negotiations with Afghan Leadership

DONALD TRUMP: And I let him know that if you do that, if you do that, we’re going to hit you so hard like you’ve never been hit before. But why? But why? He said, do you send me a picture of my home? Why? Why do you send me a picture of my home? I said, you’ll have to figure that one out later. But I said, we’re going to have to hit you people so hard like we’ve never hit anybody. And he understood. And he said, yes, your excellency. I understand. He called me your excellency.

I wonder if he calls that the Biden. I doubt it. But he understood that and he respected us. And for 18 months, not one American soldier was killed. Not one. And then I left because of an election where I got millions of more votes than we did in 2016. We got millions of more from 10 to 12, 10 to 12 million votes more. Think of that.

2020 Election Results

DONALD TRUMP: No president has ever gone with that kind of an election uptick. Usually a president will get less. President Obama got less, much less his second time. But he won. But he got much less. We got 10 to 12 million votes more. And that’s not including other votes that we could talk about it another day. But this is their votes. 10 to 12 million more. And we left. And that’s when all the problems started. We didn’t have these problems.

We would have never had a problem with Abdul. We would have never had a problem with anybody, frankly. And I have to say, you’re looking at things behind me and they did a nice job. Wow. I haven’t gotten to see. That’s good. I don’t like I don’t like the the tags very much. Look at that.

Food Price Increases

DONALD TRUMP: Up 46 percent eggs. Wow. Up 65 percent. Wow. School lunches up 65 percent. How can a family afford that? But look at this over here. What a nice job. I think I’m going to take some of them back to my cottage and have a lot of fun. Like the Cheerios. I haven’t seen Cheerios in a long time. I’m going to take them back with… bacon is through the roof. They’re all through the roof. The milk. Everything is bad. And we’re going to straighten it out.

We’re going to bring prices way down and we’re going to get it done fast. And with her, it’s just talk. She’s a radical left San Francisco person who destroyed the place. And I don’t know. It’s hard to believe that she could even be in the discussion. They had a group of 12 people that she was considering and they put her name in there and they marked them who were the best and who were the worst. And she was actually rated the worst of the 12. They had 12 plus 13 people and they rated her the worst.

Criticism of Kamala Harris

DONALD TRUMP: Now, six weeks ago, she was considered to be a failed vice president and a failed administration, a disaster. And now all of these people are talking about her like she’s Margaret Thatcher, liberal version. She’s not. She’s not smart. I don’t believe she loves our country. And we cannot have our country destroyed because once that happens, it’ll never be able to come back.

OK, if you’d like, we can ask.

QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION

REPORTER: It’s been reported that you recently spoke with Prime Minister Netanyahu, maybe as recently as yesterday. Can you clarify when the last time was you talked to him and what advice, if any, you’re giving him about a ceasefire, about ending the war?

DONALD TRUMP: The last time I was at Mar-a-Lago and he came with his wife and a large group of people. And we had a very good relationship with him and with Israel. Again, this would never have happened. October 7th would have never happened, would have never, ever happened. And he asked for the meeting. We had the meeting. It was about two hours, two and a half hours long. And I expect I might be talking to him, but I haven’t since then.

REPORTER: Not to take a ceasefire deal, as you give him any advice about ending the war.

DONALD TRUMP: He knows what he’s doing. I did encourage him to get this over with. You want to get it over with. It has to get over with fast. But have victory, get your victory and get it over with. It has to stop. The killing has to stop. Yes, please.

REPORTER: Thank you. Thank you, President Trump. You’ve spoken very passionately about how God saved your life. And I’m wondering, have you put much thought into why God saved your life? As in, for what purpose has he been shielding and protecting you?

DONALD TRUMP: So, I don’t know if you heard the question. You’ve spoken about God saving your life. That I’ve spoken passionately about it. And something happened because that was a miracle. I never looked that way. The audience was massive and it was in front of me. I never have that particular graph. That was a graph on, as you all know now, that it’s very, I think everyone knows it very well, but it showed the great numbers on illegal immigration. It was the lowest point we’ve ever had.

And it was one that I use less than 20 percent of the time. It’s always at the end of the speech, not at the beginning of the speech. And it’s always on the left side, not the right side. And yet, for some reason, I called it. It’s not on a teleprompter. I do things largely without a teleprompter, frankly, because it’s hard to hold an audience. If you’re going to go for an hour and a half or two hours reading, reading a script. And I just talked about it and I moved to my right, turned sharply to my right. Ping!

And if I didn’t do that, I’m not here with you. So, yeah, God had something to do with it. It’s a miracle. And God had something to do with it. And maybe it’s we want to save the world. This world is going down. This world is going down. So it could be. But I believe that.

Assassination Attempt Details

DONALD TRUMP: I believe that my sons are very good shooters. They’re like scratch golfers, better, relatively speaking, which is great shooters. And Eric and Don both tell me from one hundred and thirty yards. I said, well, that’s pretty far away, isn’t it? They said, no, that’s like a one foot putt with weapons like the one being used. Plus, he was a good shooter. This guy was a good shooter. He went to the range and shot a lot. And he was supposed to be a pretty good shooter. They said a bad shooter would hit the target almost 100 percent of the time.

So something happened. And I have to say, the Secret Service sniper did an amazing job. He had five seconds to find the target and hit the target. And he hit the target within, think of this, five seconds. And he was much further away because he was over here and this other person was over there. So you have to give credit. And I have to also say about Secret Service, when I was hit, I knew it because when I touched, there was blood pouring all over my hand. I said, I guess I know what that is.

And I went — I was going down for protection. And they were screaming, get down, get down. There was bullets. And those Secret Service guys were — and person. Kate, they were on top of me in a matter of, I think, three seconds. It was time to and bullets were coming out. I would hear the bullet. I didn’t realize you could hear it. But now I know very well those bullets were going right over my head. They were there and very brave. There was nobody that said, I’m not going to be going there. They just — they were there very quickly and they were very brave.

They were — there were mistakes made. Obviously, he shouldn’t have been up there. The roof should have been taken care of. And there were mistakes made. There’s no question about it. But there was a lot of bravery also. We have to remember that. OK, thank you very much. Thank you.

REPORTER: I want to talk about credit card debt for just a second. You’ve got all the records. It’s a record. Right. Forty eight percent up, and many families using going into debt just to pay for groceries. What’s your message to Americans right now that you can make America affordable again?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I would say my message to them. So he said credit card debt is at the all time high. It’s never been like this. What’s your message to America? How are we going to solve that? And what will they do? You know what I think they should do? They should on November 5th or sooner, if it’s early voting, which largely it is, which is ridiculous. We should have one day voting paper ballots. We should have voter I.D. and we should have proof of citizenship because people are voting and people are going on that without citizenship. But we should do it.

And maybe we’ll be able to get that done, too. It’s one of the things I want to do. But my message to them would be very simple. Vote for Trump and we’re going to fix the problem. We’re going to get it fixed.

REPORTER: We’ll get a follow up question. Kamala’s been promising on day one, I’ll do this. And for basically four years, she’s promised this day one. What will you do on day one to turn this country around?

DONALD TRUMP: So she is saying when she gets in, she’s in now. And especially with Biden, because, I mean, he’s not in the best of shape. But you know what? She’s in there now. She can do anything she wants. And she’s still saying, if you elect me, I’ll do this. Why didn’t she do it? Here’s my one question. It’s the easiest question because she complains about everything, everything, everything. Why didn’t she do it? That’s all I ask.

On day one, we’re going to drill, baby drill, and we’re going to close the border and we’ll let people come in. But they’re going to come in legally. They’re going to come into our country legally. But on day one, we’re going to do many things. And I can do a lot of things at one time. But the question is often is what’s the first thing you’re going to do? I would say we have a tie. We’re going to close the border. We’re not going to let — we’re going to stop the millions of people coming in. And we’re going to take all of the criminals that have come in.

Law Enforcement Support

DONALD TRUMP: And we know every one of them. I know. And the local police know better than anybody else. They’re going to work with us. I’ve spoken to a lot of the sheriffs, every police, virtually every law enforcement group in America has endorsed Trump. I don’t think anybody’s endorsed Kamala, not one. I don’t think anybody’s endorsed them. And you know that better than anybody in Florida, in all over California, they’ve endorsed me.

We have the relationship I have with law enforcement. And these are great people and people that we have to really cherish and respect and let them do their job and protect them. And you’ll always have a bad apple and everything. You have bad apples as reporters that I can tell you many, I’d say about 80 percent.

But you’re always going to have bad apples. But you’re going to have very, very few when you look at it. Very, very few. You have to let them do their job. You have to protect them. But basically, we’re going to drill, baby, drill. We’re going to get the energy prices down almost immediately. And we’re going to close the border and we’re going to get the crooked ones out, the bad ones out.

And we’re going to let a lot of people come in because we need more people, especially with A.I. coming and all of the different things. And the farmers need everybody needs. But we’re going to make sure that they’re not murderers, killers, drug dealers and the kind of people that we have largely coming in right now.

REPORTER: Many of your allies who want you to win in November say your current strategy isn’t working, that you need to stop with the personal attacks on Kamala Harris and deliver a more disciplined message. Do you agree? And also, you added more people to your campaign today. Is that a sign of a shifting strategy?

DONALD TRUMP: No, I think it’s a sign of we want to close it out. We had — we have great people. Susie’s fantastic, as you know, and Chris is fantastic. They’re leading it. Corey Lewandowski is coming in. He’ll be, you know, a personal envoy or he’ll be at some level. They’re going to be you know, they’re they’re doing a great job. Look, we’ve taken with — all of the abuse we’ve taken from the fake news media, all of this horrific abuse we take.

And all I want to do is make the country good. All I want to do is have strong borders and good education. We want to have choice for education. So many different things you would think would be the other way. We rebuilt the military. We did so many great things. But that’s the way it’s been for Republicans. And I guess more so for me than anybody in history.

And that’s OK, because we’re leading in the polls for the most part. We’re leading in the polls. We were leading Biden by a lot. We’re leading now. But I think when she’s exposed, I think we’re going to beat her by a lot more than we would have beaten Biden by. Because he had a little group of people that have been voting for him for a long time. She doesn’t have that. People don’t know who she is.

As far as the personal attacks. Because of what she’s done to the country, I’m very angry at her that she’d weaponized the justice system against me and other people, very angry at her. I think I’m entitled to personal attacks. I don’t have a lot of respect for her. I don’t have a lot of respect for her intelligence. And I think she’ll be a terrible president. And I think it’s very important that we win. And whether the personal attacks are good, bad.

I mean, she certainly attacked me personally. She actually called me weird. He’s weird. It was just a soundbite. And she called J.D. and I weird. He’s not weird. He was a great student at Yale. He went to Ohio State, graduated in two years at the top of his class. And all of these different things. And we have this guy that’s running a failed, really a very failed state who’s had a terrible career. I mean, you have him saying they’re weird. No, he’s a weird guy. And she’s weird in her policy. Who wouldn’t want to have strong borders? Who doesn’t want to have lower taxes?

You know, all my life I’ve watched as politicians campaigned. And I’ve always been on, you know, for the most part, on the other side, on the side that these people are on. And they always talk about we’re going to reduce taxes. This is the only campaign I’ve ever heard where they’re saying we’re going to increase your taxes. And then people say they’re going to vote for him. I don’t know. So I don’t think so. I don’t think people know who she is yet.

When people — because really, people didn’t know. You can ask the man on the street. I saw it on one of the shows today. They asked the ministry, what’s the last name of Kamala? Nobody knew it’s Harris. Nobody knew the last name. I don’t even use it because nobody knows who I’m talking about. People don’t know who she is. She’s a radical left socialist. But beyond that, I mean, she’s way beyond socialism. Who’s going to destroy our country? And when they find out, I think you’re going to see something.

But right now, even not knowing her and with all of the like the cover of Time magazine, they didn’t put a picture. They got a great artist to do it. What was that all about? You know, what was that all about? The whole thing is crazy. I just want to win for the country. Some people say, oh, why don’t you be nice? But they’re not nice to me. They want to put me in prison, you know, just so you understand. You know, they tell me I should be nice. They want to put me in prison. It’s never happened before in the history of our country.

I did nothing wrong. I have crooked judges. I have crooked prosecutors. And they’re all Democrats, all Democrat areas other than in Florida, where you had a brilliant judge who ruled in my favor. I won the case, the documents case, won it in its entirety. And Jack Smith, deranged Jack Smith, suffered a defeat. But in New York City, everything’s clubhouse. Everything. I know it very well. I grew up there. I know it very well. And we have a very crooked system.

And it’s one of the reasons that New York is dying. Nobody wants to come in. No companies want to come in because the courtroom system is so corrupt, both at a federal level and at a state level and a city level. And they put you into an area where you have three percent Republican vote. It’s all a rigged deal, just like Fani, F-A-N-I, Fani, with her boyfriend. And I think that’s been discredited, too. They’ve been discredited. But think of it.

They don’t want me to be a little bit nasty. They want to put me in prison. Me. They want to put. It’s never happened before in the history of our country. It’s happened in third world countries, but it’s never happened here. And they’re in danger because you create a precedent for doing that. And once that happens, that’s a really bad thing.

You know, when the years before and I’ve said this a few times, not too much, but with Hillary, she was subpoenaed by Congress to give everything she’s got. And she burned it. She acid washed it. Bleach bit, they call it. She totally scrubbed it. And then they broke everything with hammers, with fire. They burned it. And then she said, I don’t have anything. What turned out that she had a lot to give. And everybody said, lock her up, lock her up. And I used to go easy, just easy, easy. Then we won.

And I said, wouldn’t it be terrible? And, you know, I lose — some people are upset when I did this. But you have to look at it maybe differently now. I say, wouldn’t it be terrible to put the wife of the president, former president of the United States, into a prison? Think of that. Hillary Clinton, she was secretary of state. She was the wife of a president of the United States who used to be a friend of mine before I ran for, you know, for politics. He was a friend of mine. He used to play my golf course all the time. I have a great golf course right next to their home in Westchester.

He used to be there all the time. It was his favorite course. But you know what? I could have done that very easily. She was so guilty. And I said to my people, wouldn’t it be terrible to put, I don’t know, wouldn’t it be terrible to take, and we won the election. Wouldn’t it be terrible to take a former secretary of state who was the wife of the president of the United States and put her into a prison? But that’s what they want to do with me.

And I did nothing wrong. It’s all crooked politics and really crooked judges. You know, I have a gag order. Do you know I can’t even talk about it right now? Do you know that I have a judge who has a gag order? He doesn’t want me to talk. And the reason he doesn’t want me to talk is because what I say is so devastating and so horrible for him. And but think of it.

I have a gag order. There’s never been a politician in history, I mean, probably for any politician for a city council office. I’m the leading candidate to be president. I won virtually unanimously and I beat everybody the quickest. It was the quickest primary in history. There’s never been one that was done so early. I had people that were very talented people and I beat them by 45, 50, 60, 70, 80 points. There was never a close race. Nobody was even close. Good talent. They weren’t close. And I’m running against the Democrats.

So it’s a two party system, whether we like it or not. Republican. I’m the Republican and I’m leading. But let’s say I’m tied, but I’m leading. I believe I’m leading by a lot more than people think. And I believe we’ll be leading by a lot more. And I have a judge who put a gag order. So when you ask me a question or when you ask me a question, I can’t give you an answer because if I give the answer, they want to put you in jail.

He said, we’ll put him in jail if he talks beyond the gag order. And this is in a state where unfortunately the laws have been very bad and they haven’t been upheld by the appellate divisions generally. Although I have one case where we judge a certain judge, I won’t use names, but the attorney general case where we won five appeals on the same case. The most ever was a ridiculous, horrible decision where you have a very, very biased voting population and a judge that whose hatred of Donald Trump was beyond belief.

And we won the case, but he ruled a ridiculous amount of money, civil case, ruled ridiculous. Now, this is a what they’re doing is interference with an election. They want to interfere. Look at the one thing they want to sentence right before the election takes place. Let’s sentence him because who’s going to vote for him if we said let’s sentence him right before. This is interference with a presidential election at a state level. And it’s a state that always goes Democrat. It’s interference.

And as you know, the Supreme Court ruled recently on immunity. And I’m immune from all of this stuff that they charged me with. But isn’t it a terrible thing? And yet Hillary Clinton, when it came time to make a decision, I said, I don’t want to put the wife of the president of the United States in prison. I want the country to come together and to be unified. And here it is a few years later. And these people say, let’s put him why? Because I challenge an election because I want to challenge an election or some other reason.

It’s a really disgraceful thing. It’s a shame. It’s a very dangerous thing for both parties, because once they start that ball rolling, once they started rolling, that’s a that’s a nasty ball. Yes, please. Please.

REPORTER: Two quick questions here. Nikki Haley told our Bret Baier that Republicans need to stop whining about Kamala Harris. Focus on courting those independents, the suburban women, the moderates out there. What do you think of that strategy? And would you consider having Nikki Haley on the campaign trail with you?

DONALD TRUMP: Sure. I think that we’ve done very well. I think that we’re hitting a nerve. I think this is a different kind of a race. All we have to do is define our opponent as being a communist or a socialist or somebody that’s going to destroy our country. You know, I fought Nikki very hard. I beat her in her own state by legendary numbers. And I get along with her fine. I appreciate that she endorsed me and all of that. No, I think that I think relatively to what they’re doing and how radical they are and how in many ways how sick they are.

I think I’m doing a very calm campaign. I mean, we’re here. There’s no shouting. Now, you’ll say he ranted and raved and not you, but some of you will say he ranted and raved. I didn’t rant and rave. I’m a very calm person. Believe it or not, if I wasn’t, I probably wouldn’t be around anymore. You know, probably wouldn’t be around.

But no, I think I appreciate her advice. I have to do it my way. You know, I ran against her and I did it my way. People said I should maybe do it a different way. I won in South Carolina by numbers that nobody’s ever seen before. You know, it wasn’t even close. And I think she’s a good woman. I’d love to have her support. Yeah, she gave me support. But I’d love to have her go around and campaign.

REPORTER: Quick follow up on the economy. You mentioned this in your remarks, Vice President Kamala Harris wants to put a ban on price gouging. Do you think that the federal government should be responsible for determining food prices?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, not only responsible, they probably can’t do it legally. And that will drive up prices. She wants no fracking. Now, she may go and change that. I think she’s already changed it. But she wants to have no fracking. I want no fracking. But for her whole life, she said that no fracking. Then about I don’t know when, a couple of months ago, all of a sudden when she started looking at polls, remember this, she all of a sudden says fracking. I don’t think any. I won Pennsylvania and I did much better the second time, I won it in 2016, did much better the second time.

I know Pennsylvania very well. I don’t think there’s any way in hell that somebody that’s intelligent living in Pennsylvania is going to vote for somebody that basically will eventually end fracking and fossil fuel. So whether it’s Oklahoma or Texas or Pennsylvania, the big energy state, people don’t realize that 350,000 people work in that industry. But maybe more importantly, they don’t want to pay nine dollars a gallon for gasoline.

So no, I think that she’s made statements. I don’t know how you get out of it. I don’t know how you can say for 10 years there’ll be no fracking. I mean, we have tapes of her laughing at the stupidity of the question. Of course, I’m not going to allow fracking. And then all of a sudden, a few months ago, she comes out in favor of, oh, yes, I’d allow fracking. I don’t think anybody in Pennsylvania will be. I think she’s going to do very badly in Pennsylvania.

You have to frack. We need the energy. And Pennsylvania needs jobs. But Pennsylvania needs the energy also. That energy is going to support our new system for A.I. and all of the other modern things that that need massive amounts of electricity and energy massive. So it’s a very good question, actually. But we have to — we have to unify as a country.

We have to come together. And I think we can. You know, I get that question oftentimes. And I used to think maybe there’s no way because, you know, some people want to border or some people don’t want to border. Most people do want to border. But there’s such a difference in people. But just before Covid coming out. So three years, we went a long period of time and we had an economy going, the likes of which no country had ever seen before.

I think you would agree. There’s never been anything like it. And people were coming together. People were calling me very — I would call them radical left. But I would say very liberal people, very progressive people. They came to me. We would like to get together. In fact, we worked out criminal justice reform.

Criminal Justice Reform

DONALD TRUMP: I was the only one that could have done that. I won criminal justice reform. And I got that for black leaders that came to see me. Criminal justice reform. Obama couldn’t do it. Biden wouldn’t even try. But nobody could do it. I got that done. And I got conservative votes to get it done. They needed at least five very conservative votes. It was very hard to do. I got that done.

Our country was coming together. And you know, I can tell you the story of criminal justice reform. When you do that, that means that’s a big step. But I was seeing people that were not seeable that that I wouldn’t want to see them and they wouldn’t want to see me. And all of a sudden, we were having I was having lunch with people that if I told you who they were, you wouldn’t even believe it. Our country was coming together. Success was bringing our country together and it could be done. Success will bring our country together again.

It can be done. It was an amazing phenomena. And I used to say, I don’t know, it’s awfully tough to get it together. I’ve never seen anything like it. Like, for instance, me getting criminal justice reform done. And I did that with Democrats and some very conservative Republicans who said it’s very unfair where people are staying in jail for 35, 40 years. And today they wouldn’t even be charged with a crime for what they did. And we got it done.

Economic Success and Unity

DONALD TRUMP: And I was very proud of it. But our country was coming together. The black population had the best numbers they’ve ever had on jobs, on income, on everything. The Hispanic population had the best numbers, Asian population, men, women, young people with diplomas from the best schools, Harvard, MIT, the Wharton School of Finance. They’re all coming together. And everybody was happy, every and young people without a high school diploma. The best MIT students and people without a diploma were all working. They were getting — they were making more money than they’ve ever made.

Every single there wasn’t one group that wasn’t doing doing better than it was the year before, two years before or 10 years before. It was the best our country had ever do. And we were leapfrogging China. China didn’t have a chance. I took in hundreds of billions of dollars in tariffs from China, hundreds of billions of dollars. No president ever took in 10 cents. And what happened was an amazing thing. We had a great, successful country.

And our country was unifying. It was the first time anyone’s seen it. But our country was unifying.

REPORTER: I know you’re saying that you’re leading in some polling, but there is other polling out there. A Fox News poll out just yesterday has you up by just one point. How do you break one point?

DONALD TRUMP: And Fox News has always been my worst poll, believe it or not. And even Fox News had me up by one or two points yesterday came out, I think two points, one point. I also think, you know, I tend to poll low, in some cases really low. You know, in 2016, I was polling low because people didn’t want to say who they’re voting for. I don’t know if that’s supposed to be a good thing or a bad thing, but it is what it is. And we did very well in 2016.

And we did much better in 2020, much better. But bad things happened through COVID, bad, very bad things happened. So we’re not happy about that. Yes, I’ve seen you around a little bit. So go ahead, please.

REPORTER: Mr. President, thank you. Thank you. So you talked about how COVID from China was a fence too far. What’s your plan for holding China accountable if you get reelected?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, I want to get along with China. I had a great relationship with President Xi. We made a fantastic trade deal, $50 billion of farm products and manufacturing products they had to buy here and they were adhering to it. They don’t adhere to it anymore because they don’t respect Harris or Biden. But as you know, we signed a trade deal with China. And it was actually better than even the USMCA. It was a great trade deal. China had to buy 50 billion, not 15 billion, not anything else, $50 billion. And it was a great trade deal. I think that that’s one of the underrated things.

I think we’ll have a great relationship with China. I hope we’re going to have a great relationship, but it’s got to be a fair relationship. China was taking advantage of the country for years, but so was every other country in all fairness to China. Every single country was taking advantage of the United States.

International Trade Deals

DONALD TRUMP: I can’t think of one country where we were doing better than them. Japan was taking, Abe was my dear friend, one of the great men, great leader. But all of these countries were, I used to say, who signs these agreements? Every it’s — actually it’s amazing that we economically survived because we had such bad negotiators or people were getting paid off. I actually looked at some deals. I’d say nobody could be so stupid to sign a deal that’s one so one sided. Whoever made this deal has been paid off.

And then I’d look into it a little bit. Yeah. And all of a sudden he’s working as an agent for that country. Three years later, five years later. Now we change a lot of those deals. South Korea, we changed the South Korea deal. We made it from a horrible deal to a good deal. I changed the Japan deal, but I made a great deal with China. They had to buy 50 billion dollars worth. They never bought anything like that. In fact, it was a misunderstanding. When I said the people are negotiating, what number are we talking about? They said 15. I thought they said 50. So when they came back to me, they said, sir, we’re all set to get it going. I said, good. What’s the number? 15.

I said, you told me 50. Why are we going down to 15? They said, no, we said 15. I said, you told me 50. I heard them wrong. They said 15, but I heard them wrong. So I said, go back and get 50. And we got 50 instead of 15. And it was great. You know, I really think that we can have a great relationship with China. We can have a great relationship with a lot of countries that right now.

One of the things with China, I know as much as any country, but all of the countries, the one thing is they have to respect you if they don’t respect you. And, you know, I was very tough in countries like Japan. And yet, Abe, who was a great man, assassinated, horribly assassinated. He was a great man. It was a great leader. But I believe and I was very tough on him. I was very tough on Russia. Russia, I was probably the toughest.

Russia and Nord Stream 2

DONALD TRUMP: I ended Nord Stream 2. I ended — the biggest deal they’ve ever done, the biggest pipeline in the world, the biggest all of Europe was going to be supplied by Russia. And I ended the deal. It was dead. And then Biden comes in and approves it. And they say, oh, I was nice to Russia. Now, Putin actually said to me one time, you know, if you’re supposed to be like friendly with me, I would hate like hell for you to be angry at me because you are brutal. Think of it.

Not only that, the sanctions, but forget the sanctions. I ended Nord Stream 2. The pipeline was dead. And then Biden comes in and he got three and a half million dollars, in all fairness, from the mayor of Moscow’s wife. Remember that during the debate? We brought it up. And Chris Wallace is not the father. He is not. There is no resemblance between him and Mike Wallace that I can tell you. He said you shouldn’t be talking about that. I said, why not? They got three and a half the family, three and a half million dollars from the mayor of Moscow’s wife.

Why wouldn’t I talk about that? He wouldn’t let me talk. I said, what do I I’m negotiating against two people, not one. I turned out to be right, because a year later, that was a big scandal. Why did he get three and a half million dollars? But Biden approved immediately the pipeline in Russia, Nord Stream, and he killed the Keystone XL pipeline, 48000 jobs. He killed it. He did the exact opposite of what he should have done.

Yes, please. I know you had your hand up. Nice to see you.

REPORTER: Thank you, Mr. President. Thanks for taking my question. You know, you referenced your conversation with Elon Musk earlier this week. I want to ask you about that.

You praised how he treats workers, saying they go on strike and you say that’s OK, you’re all gone, you’re all gone. So every one of you is gone. Are you really comfortable with companies threatening to fire workers who go on strike?

DONALD TRUMP: Well, no, I want companies to get workers that are going to love them and work for a wage. It lets the company make a profit so they can go and expand. In that case, they moved, as you know, they moved the company from California, Elon, from California to Texas because they were able to get things that California wouldn’t give. And I did ask him one question. You’re moving a very big company out of California that’s been there for years into Texas.

Did the governor ever call you and say, like, let’s work it out because we don’t want to lose you? And he said he never called Governor Newsom. He never called. And you would have thought if I were governor of California and if Elon or anybody else they have oil companies leaving, I would be calling. But no, Elon wants to run an efficient company. And if he has to get — he got rid of a lot of people on X or former Twitter, a lot of people gone. And it still works. It still works.

So you’ve got to run the company productively. And there are going to be a lot of jobs around. I want it so that a person doesn’t have to get lucky and find a job. I want a person that can look for 10 jobs and all 10 companies want them. And you negotiate a great much more than you’d get by doing what you just suggested. So you know, he’s a strong man. He’s a strong guy. He’s a brilliant guy. And he wants to get the best he can. And he wants to get the best workers. He pays a lot of money to a lot of his workers. It’s to a certain extent supply and demand. But ultimately, that’s what’s going to lead to a great country.

REPORTER: So to follow up on that really quickly, because some people took it that as you saying that you would be comfortable with companies threatening to fire workers, Sean O’Brien, who spoke at the Republican National Convention saying that firing workers who are wanting to organize or striking is economic terrorism. So just to be clear, that’s something that you are.

DONALD TRUMP: They weren’t organizing against Elon. He let them go because he was having a lot of problems in California. He was making — they were making it impossible for him in California. What they were doing with the taxes and everything were making it impossible for him. And Sean O’Brien is a great guy from the teamsters. You’re talking. Yeah. And Sean is great. I think Sean would understand it better than anybody.

Don’t forget the unions are really threatened by what’s coming in by these millions and millions of people coming in. Sean O’Brien understands that. The black population is absolutely threatened. The Hispanic population is absolutely threatened because these people are coming in. They’re going to take their jobs. They’re going to make it very, very hard. What’s happened in our country is very dangerous, very bad thing.

REPORTER: Because Governor Tim Walz is out on the campaign trail today, and he’s been saying that he believes that you want things to get worse so that you can campaign on it, that you’re rooting for failure. What’s your response to that?

DONALD TRUMP: I wish I didn’t have to do this. If our country were run by Democrats and it was run beautifully, where we were really being productive and everything else, I would have never done this. I wouldn’t have done it if I thought I couldn’t have won. I think I can win. I think I can win easily once they’re exposed for what they are, which is, you know, radical left lunatics. And that’s what they are. They’re going to ruin. She’s going to ruin our country, going to ruin our country.

And I just hope the people of our country and I believe they are because I see it already happening. And I hope they are able to think for themselves, because if they think for themselves, if they look at the destruction that’s going to be caused by Kamala and this person from out of nowhere, he came out of nowhere, a state that I love that state, but a state that’s doing so poorly, where he’s the one that signed in tampons in boys’ bathrooms. He signed a bill that boys’ bathrooms, all boys’ bathrooms in Minnesota will have tampons in. What’s going on? What’s wrong with us? What’s wrong with us as a country?

So no, I would — if we had somebody doing a phenomenal job, I would be extremely happy. What I want to do is I want to see — even the last few months. I hope the country does really well, even though it would make it probably a little bit harder to win. I hope the country does really well. It’s country first. I want our country to do great. If they were great leaders, I would be the first to say they’re doing a fantastic job. Thank you all very much. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you very much.

REPORTER: Do you regret debating Biden so early on in this race?

DONALD TRUMP: What?

REPORTER: Do you regret debating President Biden so early on in the race?

DONALD TRUMP: Do I regret debating Biden so early? It was his request. He said we should get the debates on early. And I was willing. Don’t forget, I got CNN. I got Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. They’re not Trump people. They wanted to have a debate where their mics are turned off when the other person’s answering. They gave me every single thing that I couldn’t approve. And I said, yeah, I’ll do it.

So they got the debate on their terms. They got the network that they dreamt of. But that was really his decision. I had to decide whether or not — I felt I had. I wanted to debate him. And I think they didn’t want to debate. But I agreed to every single thing. It was a debate where they said we’ll give him something that it’ll be impossible for him to accept. And I accepted all the terms other than when they had a sitting down at a desk. And I said, I think that makes us look bad. I don’t want to sit down. Let’s stand up.

And they agreed to that. Other than that, we gave them CNN. We gave them Dana and we give him Jake. And by the way, I have to say, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash were unbelievably straight and honest. And I give them a lot of credit for that. A lot of people were saying you couldn’t have a fair debate. I think we have that with ABC. I have some people at ABC that don’t like me too much. I find it to be about the worst. George Slopadopolus, I have a lot of I have a lot of people at ABC that I find it to be actually the most unfair of all the networks. And they want to do it on ABC, whatever.

You know, I don’t mind. The question that you’re asking, though, about whether or not the debate should have happened would have been a better question to ask of Joe Biden, because had he not done the debate, he would still be running for president and people would be hiding him, just like they’re hiding her right now. You know, they’re hiding her no different than him, because I believe she’s grossly incompetent. And I don’t think that when people hear what she has to say, they’re going to buy it. Thank you all very much. Thank you.

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