Transcript: President Trump on Tariffs, Elon Musk & The Big, Beautiful Bill

That was a border problem also.

But I think when people see the horror show that we had for four years, an absolute horror show, they tried to kill. It was almost like they tried to kill our country. And the beautiful thing is now we have the hottest country in the world.

You know, I was with the king of Saudi Arabia, the leader of Qatar, the leader of UAE, and many other leaders at NATO separately, a whole group, and every one of them virtually said, “You have the hottest country in the world right now.” And six months ago, they also said, “We thought your country was dead.” They actually thought it was dead, and it felt dead.

We had not only no leadership, we had negative leadership. We were going. It was a regressive leadership. So I think that probably makes it look good, too. But we’ve done a lot well.

What Kept Him Going During the Dark Years

LARA TRUMP: You know, throughout the four years while you were not here at this White House, I know that there were some very dark times, some times where people counted you out, thought that you’d never come back, yet you’re here right now. So in those moments, what was it that kept you going? Why is it that you are back here in this White House now, despite so many people saying it wasn’t possible?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, number one, I saw what was happening to the country. They were destroying our country. They were allowing people to come into our country from prisons, from mental institutions. Gang members, the worst gang members in the world. Make our gang members look like nice people. They were coming in at levels that nobody had ever seen before. No check in, no vetting, no anything. Just come into our country and do whatever you want.

And we were letting people coming in from prisons. Prisons were opened in many countries. They talk about Venezuela, but it was far more than Venezuela. All over the world. The Congo, they opened their prisons, they emptied them out into our country.

And I saw what was happening, and it didn’t take long. I saw that they were going to go. I built hundreds of miles of wall. There were little sections that you had to fill in just to close it in. And I saw that they weren’t going to build them. And I even called in, I said, “When are you going to just put those little sections?” Would have taken three weeks. And I said, you know, they want to have open borders. And that’s what it was. Open borders, no vetting.

To me, that’s, you know, inflation. I’ve already taken care of it. So many of the other things, look at energy, look at fuel, look at. There’s so many things we’ve done, but, you know, that’s a big job, getting thousands, hundreds of thousands of criminals out of our country. Murderers. 11,888 murderers. Many of those people have killed more than one person. Think of it. Murderers kill more than one person, more than half of them. And he let them into our country. It’s not even believable.

You know, we love this country. And I guess it wasn’t him so much as people surrounding the beautiful Resolute desk. And I know them all, and they’re not good. They’re smart, but they’re not good. They’re smart in a different way, but evil intention and what. He was the worst president in the history of our country because of them also. But he was the worst president in the history of our country. And nobody’s done such damage to our country. And we’re fixing it. And I think we’re fixing it very fast.

Reflecting on the Butler Rally Assassination Attempt

LARA TRUMP: Well, we are at the anniversary of your Butler rally, where Eric and I, along with Luke and Carolina, watched on live television as so many people across the country, and really the world did when there was the assassination attempt on you. And as we come to this moment, I’m thinking back to what happened right after that. You actually called all of us on the phone. And it was amazing to me that that was what you thought to do that, that you wanted us to know that you were okay. And I know that’s a moment none of us will ever forget. And I’m sure for you, tenfold.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, it was unforgettable. I didn’t know exactly what was going on. I got whacked. There’s no question about that. And fortunately, got down quickly. People were screaming, and I got down quickly from unfortunately, because I think they shot eight bullets, and one got me, and one got another one, and one got another one and one killed. Corey, the firefighter, great guy.

And, you know, we had a tremendous, massive crowd. Tens of thousands of people were there. And our sniper, within less than five seconds, was able to get him from a long distance with one shot. If he didn’t do that, you would have had an even worse situation. It was really bad, but he really did a fantastic. His name is David, and he did a fantastic job. Just went about his business less than just about four seconds, and that’s when it all stopped. And he got him perfectly from a very, very long distance. So we got a little bit lucky in that regard.

LARA TRUMP: There was so much conversation after that, though. You had members of Congress visiting the site there. People really on top of wanting to get answers to that. But I think we still are wondering, do you know, are we going to get answers? Will the American people get answers as to what ultimately happened there that day?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: So they briefed me a few times. The FBI, the Secret Service, sort of everybody DOJ. Pamela’s doing a fantastic. I think she’s doing a fantastic job. But they briefed me, and I’m satisfied with it. I’m satisfied with it.

They should have had somebody in the building. That was a mistake. They should have had communications with the local police. They weren’t tied in, and they should have been tied in. So there were mistakes made and that, you know, shouldn’t have happened. And that building was a prime building in terms of what they were trying to do. So. But I was satisfied in terms of the bigger plot, the larger plot. I was satisfied.

And, you know, I have great confidence in these people. I know the people, and they’re very talented, very capable. They had a bad day, and I think they’ll admit that. I think they had a rough day. They didn’t do a good job. They shouldn’t have had anybody in that building. That building was a prime location for somebody that was disturbed, mentally disturbed.

And we had, you know, a couple of other events. This is a very dangerous job, being president. You know, I say a race car driver, 1% of 1% think of that die. It’s not a lot. A bull rider, I think that’s pretty dangerous. It’s like 1/10 of 1% die. And with the president, it’s like 5%. Why didn’t you tell me this? I could have maybe made a different decision, but I wouldn’t have made a different decision because we’re doing so well.

The country’s back and it’s, as I said, everyone’s saying we’ve got the hottest country in the world and we’ve done it within. When the king of Saudi Arabia told me that, that was four months, four and a half months, and now it’s almost six months. And when you think it was. I would have said it would have taken longer than that. But we have been very active even doing this interview. I feel guilty because I’m supposed to right now be working.

LARA TRUMP: We appreciate it, though.

Trade, NATO, and International Relations

PRESIDENT TRUMP: You know, it’s. No, we’re really busy, really busy and doing a great job. We have other countries wanting to do business with us so badly. They never appreciated it. Now they do. You know, they took advantage of our country on trade, on the military, on NATO. You saw I solved the NATO problem last week, and we had. Every country is now paying substantially more, more money, like from 2% to 5%. And they weren’t paying the two, but they’re paying the five. And it’s over a trillion dollars a year. Think of that. Over a trillion a year. And it’s going to make it something. And we got that done. And we have a big voice in NATO now. We had really not much of a voice with Biden. You had no voice at all. He didn’t know where he was.

And so we’re doing well. The trade thing is going to be very big. And we’re sending out letters as we speak. They literally just started going out, and I signed the letters and it’s basically telling countries that we are going to give you the privilege to shop and work in our country, and I think people are going to respect it. You’ll read the letter later, but it’s a very similar letter, just different amounts, different numbers, different amounts of tariffs. And I think it’s very good. And in some cases, we’ll make deals. You know, we’ll make a direct deal as opposed to a letter. And we’ve already made some of them with various countries.

But it’s a tremendous amount of money to this country. We were taken advantage of on trade, and we were taken advantage of on military. We’d protect a country we got nothing for protecting. We’d spend billions of dollars to protect countries. I don’t want to go into the countries, but pretty obvious which ones. And they’re friendly. Some of them aren’t that friendly. I mean, some of them. We’re protecting countries that don’t even like us. The whole thing is crazy. But if they don’t like us, we’ll let them know very quickly.

But it’s really incredible. The potential of this country is incredible. It’s been run very foolishly. Been run stupidly, stupidly, so stupidly. And some of the countries are very upset now because they’ve been taking advantage of us for 30, 40 years. And I had it stopped. I was stopping in the process. And then we had the COVID in the last part of my administration, but we still. We had the strongest economy in the history of our country. And this is going to be better. I predict this is going to be better.

The money coming in, the tariffs coming in. Hundreds of billions of dollars are coming in. They’re pouring in. And I had started that. China paid us a lot of money. No other president got anything from China. Not 10 cents. And I got hundreds of billions, hundreds of billions of dollars. And who would have thought, right? Who would have thought? But we took in a lot of money. But Covid ended it a little bit sooner, and we did a good job with that. But we helped other countries. We made the ventilators. We, you know, we became the king of ventilators. Right. But we did a good job with it. But it was what it was a vicious, very hard to guard against disease, plague, whatever you want to call it. And I think we saved a lot of lives.

The One Big Beautiful Bill

LARA TRUMP: Well, you know, you talk about all the money coming into the country, how big, you know, the tariffs will be and leveling the playing field. You asked to have the one big beautiful bill on your desk to sign on July 4th. You got it on America’s birthday. And I think it was such a huge success for you, for House Republicans, for the House Senate, I mean, for the Senate. The question I think a lot of people have is when will they actually start to see the positive impact from the one big, beautiful bill in their lives? The tax cuts, all of the big things that we could see from that.

Investment and Economic Growth

PRESIDENT TRUMP: They’re already seeing them. And we are getting investment because of that bill. We are having investment made in this country that nobody’s ever believed. We’re up to close to $15 trillion. Other administrations, they wouldn’t do that in four years. $15 trillion. And we did it in, I mean, that was a number from a couple of months ago, and now it’s substantially higher than that.

We’re having car companies come in and build their plants here, which they wouldn’t have even thought about. They would have never done it. We have AI, which is the big hot thing. And they’re building, they’re spending trillions of dollars, trillions of dollars in this country. They wouldn’t have done that without what we just did last week.

And you know, I tell Republicans, you have to speak positively about it. Like when I have a chance with you and your show is doing so well, your ratings are so good. What’s going on?

LARA TRUMP: Or after this.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, you get good ratings, but your ratings were good without this. I mean, you’re doing fantastically well. And I watch you, I watch Mark Levin. You have some good people. And it’s not easy to watch very, very much television, you know, must see television. But congratulations. That’s really a great success.

Fighting Democratic Soundbites

So I say to people, Republicans or anybody, explain the bill because it’s so big and so good, because the Democrats, they only do one thing good and that’s complain. And they say “it’s going to cause death” and this and that. They don’t mean it’s a sound bite. Somebody gave him a sound bite. “It’s going to cause death,” not going to cause death. It’s going to keep people alive and it’s going to make our country successful and really successful.

So I always say, you have to explain because they have soundbites like “Russia, Russia, Russia” was a sound bite. They made up. The 51 intelligence agents they made up. “It came from Russia.” No, it came from Hunter Biden’s bathroom or bedroom or whoever the hell he wrote it. It did that terrible stuff. But they had, you know, they make up, they make up a sound bite and it send it to the fake news and they send it all over the place.

So we have to fight back and we have to live by our wits. And it’s unbelievable. It’s the most incredible bill, one of the most incredible bills ever passed. And it’s the biggest, it’s the biggest bill of its kind ever passed. And we have to talk about it.

Tax Cuts and Benefits

When you think about no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security, no tax on overtime, a big tax cut on this to that. Plus we’re saving the tax cut that we made years ago, which is big. It expired. In another couple of months, it would have expired, they would have had a 68% tax increase, and now they have a tax cut.

And you have to explain that to people because, you know, the public, they’re doing. They’re driving a cab, they’re working as a lawyer, accountant or a teacher or doing any one of a million different things. They’re not into it like we are. You have to explain it. So every chance you get.

Media Criticism

Because what they do is they set a phony. You know, they’re fake. The Democrats are fake. They’re part of the fake news. And the fake news will take it and they’ll go with it. Because I have learned so much about the news, about how crooked these newspapers are. Like the New York Times is pure crooked. The Washington Post, so much, many of them. It’s so. I so admire honest reporting. There’s not that much of it, though. We really don’t have that much.

And I think to make America great again, you need at least we have to get a bigger percentage that we have. And nobody understands why. Why would somebody make up stories to make Biden look good when the man was grossly incompetent? What good does it do? I mean, other than lose credibility? You know, they’re down at the lowest number for credibility that they’ve ever had. They’re way below Congress, which is very interesting.

Congressional Leadership

And I think Congress came a long way recently because we have people like Mike Johnson. He’s been incredible. John Thune’s been incredible. All of the people under them and, you know, the Senate and the House. I’ve gotten to know him really well and maybe better than ever because of this. This was almost an impossible thing to get approved because, remember, you didn’t have one Democrat vote, even though these are the biggest tax cuts in history, even though all of the things, it’s going to bring jobs, it’s going to bring everything.

We didn’t have one Democrat vote because they said “don’t vote.” And the one thing they do well is they stay together. You’re reading stories now that a lot of them wanted to vote for it, but they couldn’t. They couldn’t do it. I read one this morning about a certain Democrat from a certain location in New York who wanted to vote so badly for it he said, “this is going to kill our career if we don’t vote.” And he really didn’t vote because they really do control that. It’s pretty incredible.

And they stick together. I admire that, the stick to itiveness. But at the same time, I would say there’s got to be something where, when you’re doing something good for the country.

Vote Count and Opposition

So we had to get all. Because we have the majority by just a little bit. We had to get every single vote. And I guess it was 218 to 2. Think of that. 218 to 2. And that was incredible. That was the House vote and the Senate vote was, you know, relatively similar, but there was all. We didn’t get one Democrat vote in the Senate. We didn’t get one Democrat vote in the House.

And I guess we had three votes yet. Rand Paul, right? Terrible. So sad when I watch. Watch him. I watch him and I just. It’s so sad because there’s never any suggestion about what to do, you know, like, “can we do this?” They want to go, “no.” You have a guy named Massie in the House and we call him Rand Paul Jr. He’s just a no vote, automatic no vote. It’s not like, “gee whiz,” you know, you fight for something, there’s no fight, just no vote. I think they think it’s good publicity for them. You know, I think they think that.

But it was very sad. Susan Collins, as you know, in the Senate, voted no and it’s shocking and so good for their areas.

LARA TRUMP: But you got it done.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: We got it done. No, but when you think that out of all those votes, like in the Senate we couldn’t have more than three and we got it done. And in the House we couldn’t have more than three. We had. The house was 218 to 2. It’s pretty amazing when you think of it. You just don’t do that. It’s almost impossible. And we got it done. And the reason we got it done because it’s so good.

And remember this, the Democrats wanted to vote for it. Most of them. Many of them, because it’s all good stuff. I mean, it’s all lower taxes and incentives and this, that so many good things.

EV Mandate and Elon Musk

Great. On energy, stopping the EV mandate, which you know hurts Elon and you know, it’s too bad. But I told him long before he endorsed me, I said, “you’ll never be with me because I’m going to stop the mandate.” Because the mandate said everybody has to have an electric car within a few years. And I said, “that’s not going to happen because who wants, not everybody wants an electric car. They want to have a hybrid or they want to have a gas, gasoline powered car. For whatever reason, they want something else.”

Electric’s like at 7%. And we opened it up to electric, but we open it. We ended the EV mandate. You don’t have to have an electric car now. But I said, “you know, Elon’s never going to love this.” And I told him before he endorsed me, gave me this beautiful endorsement. I said, “you know, I’m against everybody having an electric car.” He said, “you know what? As long as I’m on the same footing as everybody else.” I thought it was a great statement, but it turned out not to be so because he was very upset about it.

Leadership and Team Building

LARA TRUMP: Well, you said, seem to have a knack for putting people around you who are successful and make you even more successful. I think this has been sort of a trait of yours your entire life. If you go back to the Trump Organization, you gave people opportunities that maybe they would never have taken themselves. And I feel like you’ve often seen things in people that they don’t even see in themselves as well, especially women. You did it for me. Well, I would say that for me as well.

But your cabinet is comprised of so many incredible people and people that even a year ago, so many would never have imagined, like RFK Jr. Who a year ago was running for president as a Democrat. Why do you think you have this ability? And I feel like it has really been to your benefit. Look at this incredible Cabinet you’ve put together. They’re all people who are working to make America great again.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: They’ve been incredible, actually, the cabinet’s been incredible. And I had a lot of good people my first term. But again, I came here, I had never done it before. And I’m picking people that I never heard of and I’m taking recommendations of, you know, people that were sort of stupid. People like a John Bolton, he’s a stupid guy. Or Jesper, who was terrible. I mean, he was terrible. But I took some recreation.

But overall, I got it right. I mean, we rebuilt our military. We did so many, so many great things. But I know, I now know the people I know so well. I know better than anybody and I spent four years with. Sometimes you hit and miss and sometimes you don’t. But we had great people the first time. But we have really good people this time. And they get along with each other. They love each other, they love the country. Country. And it’s smoother I think it’s smoother.

First Term Accomplishments

You know, we did. A lot of people thought my first term was phenomenal. I did, I thought, you know, we got the largest tax cut in history. The biggest tax cut in history. The biggest regulation cuts in history by four times. Nobody even came close. We rebuilt our military. They gave some of it away to Afghanistan in one of the most embarrassing moments ever.

But you know, know we, we terminated ISIS. ISIS was 100% gone and terminated. They started making a little bit of a comeback since Biden got in, as you know, but they were gone and we’ll take care of it. But now we’re doing things that maybe are on even a different level now. It’s been, especially this last couple of weeks has been pretty amazing.

Family’s Role

LARA TRUMP: You know, this may be a bit of a self serving question, but how important has family been to you? And I mean, I’m going to say the last 10 years in all of this.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, like your husband is great. I mean he’s great whether he was my son or whether he was an executive. You can’t hire anybody like him. He’s so good and he runs the business and Don helps run the business. And Ivanka is doing a lot of things. She’s an amazing person and she’s a little bit involved, a little bit, you know, when they want words of wisdom or whatever.

She’s, you know, she did a very good job here. She, all she wanted did. She could have had any job. I told her, “I’ll put you at the UN.” She would have blown like somebody like Nikki Haley would have gotten blown away by Ivanka. She can’t, she could never compete with Ivanka. But she did a good, good job at the UN but it wouldn’t be the same ball game.

And I gave Ivanka choices of things that you might have taken and I might have taken and we all, and all she wanted to do is get people jobs. She said, “no, daddy, I really.” And she got hundreds of thousands of jobs. She’d go around, worked hard, never got credit for it, but she’d go out and she’d go to Walmart, she’d go, go to ExxonMobil, she’d go to all these big companies and she’d give people jobs by the thousands.

So I’d get, you know, just added up to, I mean I could tell you what the number is, but I don’t want to say because nobody would believe it. But she worked hard and so competent and she did a great job. Never, if I were a Democrat, they would have, she would have been a legend. You all would have been legends. But I think you’re legends anyway. If you think about it, you. You wouldn’t be doing any better now. Somehow, there’s a different mindset. But the kids have been amazing. I have really, really good kids.

LARA TRUMP: Well, some people have called you the bodyguard of Western civilization.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah.

LARA TRUMP: How do you feel about that title?

The State of America Before Trump’s Return

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, I understand what they mean. It was going bad. We were going bad. This country was going bad. And I don’t know that we would have had… When the king of Saudi Arabia talked to me about… We have the hottest… He said, “Your country was dead. We actually thought it was dead. Dead and gone.”

And they were already starting to talk to China about, you know, getting involved in China, which was unnatural for them. A lot of people were talking to China and others about getting involved because we were a dead country. We were gone. In the minds of many.

I tell you, in my mind, one of the reasons I ran, I saw what was happening very early on when I saw people pouring across our border. I said, “No, put up that little…” It’s a little… It would have taken three weeks to put up little sections of wall that we laid out because of legal reasons, with condemnation reasons, you know, different things. And because we wanted to bring our equipment back in through the wall, because we built hundreds of miles.

And I said, “Why are they filling that in?” It would have just been… That would have been complete. In fact, I added a lot more. I built a lot more than I said I was going to build. I made it much longer.

Realizing the Open Border Crisis

But I said, you know, they want to have open borders. That was the first time I realized it. I didn’t think it would be possible for anybody to want open borders because, you know, who would want open borders where people come in totally unvetted and unchecked. Totally just walk right in, walk right through.

And some of the people… I know, I want to be politically correct, but some of these people, you can look at them and you can say, “These people are in trouble. This is a rough group of people,” and we’re right now getting them out.

Border Security Team Success

And you know what? ICE and Border Patrol, Tom Homan, Kristi… Kristi has been amazing. Tom has been amazing. You know, Tom was one of my first people that I put in. I said, “You got to just do the border.” He didn’t want to do anything else. He just wanted to, because that’s what he wants to do.

But you have a big… You have a big deal with lots of other things there. And I said, “Who’d be the best to head it up? Homeland Security.” And he said, “I’d like Kristi Noem.” And I said, “That’s great.”

Now, I knew her very well, but I didn’t know her that way. She was a great governor. South Dakota, really did a good job, but boy, she’s been great. And every one of my… I can’t think of one who hasn’t been at least very good. You know, they’ve all been terrific, and it’s been really good.

Historic Border Achievement

But I think we get a lot of credit on the border because last month we had zero people come into our country. We had people come in, but they had to come in legally. They came in through a process. We want people to come in. We need people because we have a booming business climate now and the farmers need people and hotels need people, et cetera.

But coming in illegally, we had zero. Now, even I’m not sure that I can believe that number. You know, you’re talking about hundreds of thousands, millions of people came in through Biden and they say zero, but… And the people that do the list tend to be a very liberal group. I will tell you that have been there a long time. And I said, “I’ll accept it,” but it was close to that number. I’ll tell you what, they said zero. And I’m going to take it.

But it’s hard to believe that it’s zero. You’re talking about hundreds of miles of border. We’ve done a great job. And the problem with doing a great job that fast is people forget. You know, last time I did a great job, we had a border problem. Nothing like it was this time. But we had a border problem and I solved it in about four weeks.

And I’d make speeches and talk about the border, and my people would say, “Sir, you shouldn’t even waste your time. Nobody wants to hear about the border.” Now it’s starting to be again, you don’t hear about the border anymore. We have… We did numbers that were unbelievable. And I almost can’t talk about it because nobody wants to hear it, but it was a big problem.

But we do have a different problem. We have to get the people out that came in that are really bad because we have some bad people.

Legacy and Historical Perspective

LARA TRUMP: That came in just to wrap up here. You’re talking about people not remembering. I don’t think anyone will ever forget President Donald J. Trump. But when history looks back on this time in our country, when history looks back on you, how would you like to be remembered?

PRESIDENT TRUMP: A good person, but a person that saved our country. I really believed our country was going down for the fall. I don’t know if it ever could have come back. It was very close to the edge. And I really would like to be known as the man that saved our country.

LARA TRUMP: Well, I think you’ve started off on the right track there so far. Well, Mr. President, thank you for sitting down with us. We appreciate it.

PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you.

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