Former and future President Donald Trump joined me this morning:

Audio:

01-06hhs-trump

Transcript:

HH: Joined now by the President-Elect. Mr. President, welcome back. Congratulations on the biggest upset win in 2016, and now the greatest political comeback in American history.

DJT: Well, thank you very much. I hope it wasn’t really an upset, but you know, call it what you want. But we had a great campaign. It was a great campaign, and a lot of great people involved. So I see…

HH: It is a big…

DJT: We are going to make America great again.

HH: I know.

DJT: We’ll make America great again.

HH: I’m looking forward to it. I’m so looking forward to it.

DJT: Good.

HH: I want to begin by thanking you, though, for calling Dennis and Sue Prager after Dennis’ injury. It meant a lot to them. It’s not something you have to do. I appreciate it. Everyone who’s a friend of Dennis appreciates that. I was talking to Sue Prager about the call the other day. She forgot to tell you she wants E-Verify made mandatory. She asked me to relay that to you today.

DJT: Oh, okay. Well, I’ll think about that. He’s a fantastic man, and boy, what a terrible fall that is, right? What a fall he’s had.

HH: Yeah, he’s coming back. I’m hopeful. Mr. President, Mike Johnson told the Republicans on Saturday that you favor one big, beautiful bill. I do, too. Tell us about your thinking on that?

DJT: Well, I favor one bill. I also want to get everything passed. And you know, there are some people that don’t necessarily agree with it. So I’m open to that, also. My preference is one big, as I say, one big, beautiful bill. Now to do that takes longer. You know, to submit it takes longer, actually. But, so it’s a longer process. I would say I’d live with that. I believe we’d get, I don’t know, to me, it just is a cleaner, it’s cleaner. It’s nicer. Now with that being said, we’d get some border work done a little bit earlier, et cetera, et cetera. But the border work, you know, we have a lot of money that we’re going to be clawing back from the green new scam and all of the trillions of dollars, billions and trillions. You usually have to use the word trillions nowadays, unfortunately. But from the trillions of dollars that we’re going to be clawing back, and we have money. We don’t need it desperately, immediately. You know, if two months is going to make a difference, so I can just say this. The border is going to be secure. We’re going to start it immediately. Tom Homan is central casting. He’s going to do a great job, and that whole group is going to be fantastic. And I did it before, and we’re going to do it again. We had the best border we’ve ever had, and we’ll have the best border we’ve ever had times two. I would prefer one, but I will do whatever needs to be done to get it passed. And you know, we have a lot of respect for Senator Thune, as you know. He may have a little bit of a different view of it. I heard other senators yesterday, including Lindsey, talking about it. They’d prefer it the other way. So I’m open to either way as long as we get something passed as quickly as possible.

HH: The reason I want one bill is because tax certainty matters to small business people like me and like everyone listening to this show. They’ve got to know what the rules are going to be in 2026. You’ve got a great Trump tax cuts, but they’re expiring at the end of the year.

DJT: Right.

HH: The sooner we know, you’re a businessman, you know the better off we are.

DJT: Well, it would be awfully hard to imagine. You know, in the old days, politicians would get up and talk about tax cuts, right? We will cut your taxes. We will cut your taxes. That was like a sure way to get elected. Because the Democrat Party is so loused up, it’s so terrible and so, they’ve lost their confidence. They’ve lost a lot of confidence. But they get up, and they’re the only party I’ve ever heard that say we’re going to raise your taxes. With that being said, I can’t imagine that they would not approve. This would be the largest tax increase in the history of the world, okay, let alone in this country. And I can’t imagine the Democrats would do that to this country, and do that to the people just because they happen to dislike Republicans or me.

HH: Yeah, I can’t, either, but they are Democrats, so we don’t know.

DJT: You never know.

HH: Mr. President, you’ve got four big things coming up in this term. You’ve got our 250th birthday on July 4th next year, 2026. But we actually have the 250th birthday of Lexington and Concord in April. That’s a big deal. That’s the shot heard around the world. Are you going to go up there for a speech on the 250th anniversary of that?

DJT: I think so. I like the idea. I think so. People have talked about it. I would do it.

HH: Then, you’ve got the Olympics. You’ve got the World Cup. You have the very sad 25th anniversary of 9/11 coming up. Which of these do you think is going to be the most fun in terms of, obviously not 9/11, but is Olympics, World Cup, the 250th birthday, what are you looking forward to the most?

DJT: Well, I got them, and it was very interesting. They called me. The World Cup, I did that with Gianni and the people at the World Cup, and I got them. They wanted it here. They really fought very hard, and I was the one that got it when I was president. And so I said to myself the sad part is this was before the election, before a certain election that took place that we won’t talk about. But I said the sad part is I got the Olympics, and I got the World Cup for our country. And I will not be there as president. And look what happened? I’m going to be there as president. So it’s sort of very nice. And obviously, the 25th anniversary, it’s hard to use the word anniversary, but that 25th anniversary is also very important.

HH: It’s going to be very, very somber.

DJT: Yup.

HH: And I’m looking forward to your speech that day.

DJT: It will be in a very different way.

HH: But I’m really looking forward, the bicentennial, not the bicentennial, the 250th birthday will be quite a big day. Mr. President, the Powerline guys posted your testimony about the U.N. from 2005 over the weekend, so a lot of people got to see that. I have told everyone I’ve ever known watch that testimony. That’s Donald Trump, the developer, talking about getting things done. Is that the same momentum you’re bringing in this time? You just want to get things done?

DJT: Got to get things done. We don’t get them done, I see it just came over that Biden has banned all oil and gas drilling across 625 million acres of U.S. coastal territory. It’s ridiculous. I’ll unban it immediately. I will unban it. I have the right to unban it immediately. What’s he doing? Why is he doing it? You know, we have something that nobody else has. I mean, nobody has to the extent we have it, and it’ll be more by the time we’re finished, because I’ll be able to expand. You know, we’re going to expand our country. And it’ll be more. We have oil and gas. And whether you manufacture widgets or gidgets, or whatever you happen to be doing, some countries have to work very hard to do that. We do, too, and we will, but we have oil and gas at a level that nobody else has. And we’re going to take advantage of it. And when I see somebody saying he’s going to ban 625 million acres, he doesn’t know what that is. He doesn’t even know what 625 million acres would look like, and we can’t let that happen to our country. It’s our greatest, it’s really our greatest economic asset. And we’re not going to let that happen to our country. We’re going to be great again.

HH: I saw that. I don’t believe he’s making any of these decisions. He might be signing, someone might be guiding his hand, but do you think he’s competent for the last two weeks, Mr. President?

DJT: Well, the things he’s doing with Soros and other elements, giving very, very important and distinguished awards, medals and certifying that they are wonderful people for our nation, these are people that have done tremendous harm, in cases. I don’t know, I really don’t believe that this is the same man that I used to watch 25 years ago. He was sort of semi-conservative. I wouldn’t call him conservative, but he was a little bit in the middle, at least. And now, he’s gone radical left, and they just lost an election because they were radical left, and they’re going to lose another one. They’re going to lose a lot of elections if they keep this going. But you’re giving up the biggest assets that we have. I mean, all of that, if you ever look at it on a map, what 625 million acres is, he’s giving this all up? What is he doing?

HH: It’s extraordinary, and I think it’s an abuse of that statute, and I do think you can reverse it, if not.

DJT: Well, the good news is I can change it immediately.

HH: Yeah.

DJT: It’ll be changed on Day One. I can change it immediately. Now, they’ll do everything they can to make it as difficult as possible. You know, they talk about a transition. They’re always saying oh, no, we want to have a smooth transition from party to party, for, you know, of government. Well, they’re making it really difficult. They’re throwing everything they can in the way. They’re giving out trillions of dollars in nonsense and green new deal crap that isn’t worth a damn thing. In fact, it’s a negative for the country, not a positive. And they’re giving out money at levels that nobody’s ever seen just to get the money. They’re throwing it at people. They’re throwing it at people that don’t even want it.

HH: They’re throwing it at Syria this morning. The State Department announced this morning they’re sending humanitarian aid to Syria. We don’t know who’s running Syria. I don’t know who’s running the State Department, but it’s kind of crazy.

DJT: It’s what they’re doing. They’re just taking money and throwing it hand over fist. It’s money that should have never been given to them anyway. It should have been blocked. And I mean, it’s so sad that they got it, but they’re throwing it, and they’re throwing it any direction. They just want to get rid of it. It’s the worst abuse of power I’ve ever seen.

HH: So Mr. President…

DJT: Other than what they did, other than what they did to me, of course.

HH: Yeah, yes. Let’s go to Israel. We’ll get to Jack Smith in a moment. I hope to get to the Archivist in a moment. Will Israel have a friend in the White House again, because Joe Biden’s been a yo-yo with Israel. Will you continue military aid uninterrupted, and depart from the Biden policy of micromanaging? We’ve got about a minute to the down the line folks. Go ahead.

DJT: Well, I’m the best friend that Israel ever had. You look at what happened with all of the things that I’ve gotten, including Jerusalem being the capital, the embassy getting built. I got it built. I not only said we’re going to, I said, you know, we got it built. We have a beautiful embassy. All of the different things, the magnificent mount on high, you know what I’m talking about there, everyone said that couldn’t be done, and I got it done. It was, what we’ve done, and of course, the Abraham Accords, you look at the Abraham Accords, every single thing that, every major event that’s happened to Israel over the last fairly short period of time has been given through me. So I’m with Israel. I think that’s pretty obvious to everybody.

HH: It is. I’m going to continue talking now with the President…

DJT: I’m also for this. I’m also for this. I do have to add I’m also for peace. It’s time. This fight’s been going on for a long time, longer than people would understand, longer than people will know.

HH: 15 months.

DJT: And I want peace.

HH: And what do you mean, and by the way, to our audience, we’ll be continuing to talk to the President and come right back to us on the Salem News Channel. Mr. President, when you said there’ll be hell to pay if the Americans are still being held hostage, what did you mean?

DJT: Exactly what it says. If those hostages aren’t released by the time I get to office, there will be hell to pay. I don’t think I have to go into it anymore. This, it won’t be the word don’t. You know, I heard the word don’t. You can add that into it, but that would just be a small part of it. No, there will be hell to pay. Those hostages have to get out. They have to get out now.

HH: All right, Mr. President, let’s turn to your legacy. You already have a legacy on the Supreme Court. I was talking about it when you joined me. And you’ll add more judges, and you might get another justice. You’ve had the most important impact on the Court of any president in my lifetime. It will get bigger. I want to talk to you about the Navy. The greatest presidents of the 20th Century – Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, and Reagan, all built the Navy. Do you intend to rebuild the Navy?

DJT: I do. We have a great gentleman, you know, as you know. Perhaps you should get him on your show.

HH: John Phelan. Yeah.

DJT: He’s fantastic. John is fantastic, very, very successful business person. Very successful. Top. And he’s in charge of it, and we’re going to do something with ships. We need ships. And we may have to go a different route than you would normally go. That’s, you know, starting to build. We haven’t, we don’t build ships anymore. We used to build a ship a day. We don’t build ships anymore. We want to get that started. And maybe we’ll use allies, also, in terms of building ships. We might have to. We need ships. China’s building, from what I’m hearing, every four days, they’re knocking out a ship. And we’re sitting back watching. And we’ve suffered tremendously. During the Biden administration, all he knew about was the green new deal building nonsense, giving money away, putting windmills all over the place and destroying every beautiful plain and field and mountain. Oh, it’s so sad when you fly over the country and you see all these horrible looking structures. Half of them are closed down, rusted and rotted. Their life is over. You know, they last a very limited period of time, and then everybody just leaves them. They go to the next rip-off, and all the subsidy they get. You know, the subsidies are ridiculous. But what they’ve done to this, I mean, they’re just destroying the beauty of our country. I’ve, it’s hard to believe environmentalist like windmills, okay? It’s the most expensive energy you can have.

HH: They are, they are not my favorite thing. But I want to say on ships for a moment. Up in Maine at the Bath Iron Works during World War II, they turned out a destroyer every 17 days. Now, they do one and a half a year. Can you change that? Can you bring the developer’s point of view to shipbuilding and get new docks, graving docks built, new ship lines open…

DJT: Yes.

HH: Production?

DJT: Well, that’s what you need. You know, in Wisconsin, I gave out a great contract for essentially destroyers. Beautiful, they were beautiful. I even had something to do. I’m a person that believes in the beauty of a ship. It doesn’t cost any more to have the right angles, and it was really beautiful. And they were going and really doing a good job, and the generals, you know, the Biden admirals and generals and all of the people that are involved, they started playing around and tinkering and changing the design, and this, you know, that costs. That costs a lot of money, because now they say oh, it’s going to cost more money for something that’s not as good. But they started playing around with the design. I heard about that a year later. They took what I had. It was perfect. And what it is, is you build it. No changes, no change orders, no extra money, no nothing. You build it. They were doing a great job. But the generals or the admirals went in and they said oh, why don’t we make it a little bit wider? Why don’t we do this? Why don’t we do that? And it was designed specifically for speed and other things. When you start making it wider, you start making it slower. And it was also designed on a ship that was unbelievably successful in that same class, you know, design-wise.

HH: Yeah, Finkanteri designed it, and you bought it.

DJT: And we had it down, and they made changes. They always have to make changes. You know, these guys get in there, and they think they’re smart, and in many cases, unfortunately, they’re not smart, and they take something and they make it worse for a lot more money. That’s what they do. I mean, they spend more money to make it worse.

HH: To get a Navy up to even 330 ships, much less more, you would have to say every day what have we done for the Navy today. Is that the kind of focus you’re bringing in like call Phelan every day? What have you done today, Mr. Secretary of the Navy? Because that’s the focus.

DJT: Well, I’ll be doing that. Yeah, I’ll be doing that. But we’re going to be announcing some things that are going to be very good having to do with the Navy. We need ships. We have to get ships. And you know, everybody said oh, we’ll build them. We may have to go to others, bid them out, and it’s okay to do that. We’ll bid them out until we get ourselves ready. We’re not prepared for ships. We don’t have docks. You know, Biden is closing everything. It’s almost like they have a death wish for this country. He wants to close docks. He doesn’t want anybody building anything. All they talk about is green new deal. That’s the only thing they really talk about. And you know what? It doesn’t work. People don’t care about it. They’re so tired of it. You know, we had the cleanest air and water that any, that we’ve ever had during the Trump administration. And all you hear about it what they want to do. They want to destroy our country, and that’s what’s happened, and that’s why the election was such a tremendous success from the Republican standpoint. Hey, look, we had seven swing states. You and I would talk about it. Seven swing states.

HH: Yup.

DJT: Well, if you can win three or four, it would be great. We won all seven, and we won them by a lot. You know, they weren’t close.

HH: Yeah, you’ve got a mandate. That’s why I want you to put everything into one big, beautiful bill, because I don’t think they can say no. I want to know, though, would you put regularization of the DREAMers into that bill to attract some Democrats?

DJT: I don’t think it has to be in that bill, but I’m okay with talking about the DREAMers. It’s been a long time. You know, everybody’s been talking about the DREAMers, right? These are people that have been here since, in many cases, birth. They’ve been here for many years. They were very young, and now they’re middle-aged people. In some cases, they’re old people. It’s been talked about, and I’m certainly open to talking about it.

HH: Yeah, I think they could put it in the one big, beautiful bill. Let me move onto the Archives. You know, all of your problems in Florida at Mar-A-Lago started because the Archivist complained to the DOJ, because he hated you. Now the Archivist who’s there now is not the one who screwed you over, but it’s a new Archivist.

DJT: Correct.

HH: Are you going to replace this Archivist and get someone who actually protects the legacy of the United States and doesn’t persecute political appointments?

DJT: Well, the one who was there was a disaster, and he turned out to be wrong. And then you saw the Biden stuff come out where Biden had years, 50 years of documents. And what he had was just outrageous. And he didn’t have the right to have them. You know, I have the Presidential Records Act. He had nothing, because he wasn’t president at the time, so he wasn’t covered by it. But I was. And we also had a very brilliant and very fair judge on the case. And as you know, we won that case, and we won it convincingly. And Jack Smith was sent, I assume he’s heading back to the Hague where he can execute people.

HH: (laughing)

DJT: He shouldn’t be allowed to execute anybody. His judgment is so bad and so evil. But he’s a bad person. I call him Deranged Jack Smith. But we won that case. That was the big case, and we won those cases, you know, the one in Washington, also. But the judge in Florida was really a brilliant woman.

HH: She is smart. She handled it well. I just want a new Archivist so we don’t have to do this again when you leave office again.

DJT: Well, I think I can tell you that we will get somebody, yes, I’ll have, let me just put it, yeah, we will have a new Archivist.

HH: Now Xi Jinping, he is actually your rival. He’s the only guy that is remotely as strong as the United States. He’s a tough guy. Are you going to be able to deal with him?

DJT: I believe we will. You know, their economy is not doing very well right now…

HH: Right.

DJT: And they need us very badly. I believe we will, you know, I had a great relationship until COVID. That was a bridge too far. But I had a great relationship with President Xi. It was, you know, very solid, very strong, very friendly. He’s a strong man, powerful man. You know, he’s certainly revered in China. But they are having problems, and I think we will probably get along very well, I predict. But you know, it’s got to be a two-way street. China is ripping off the United States for a trillion dollars a year. Would you say that’s a lot of money, a trillion? One trillion.

HH: Yup.

DJT: With a T. We’re no longer in the billions. We’re in the trillions. And you know, when they build all these ships that you’re talking about, that money comes from the United States, believe it or not. And we had it way down. It was moving, and then we had to fix the COVID stuff. That was really, you know, obviously, that was a gift from China. We had to fix that. And so we sort of, it was a different, you had to be in a different mode. You couldn’t do both. It would be inappropriate to have done both. But no, I had a good relationship with him until COVID. After that, it was, you know, it was a very different thing. Look, what happened, what came out of China from the Wuhan labs caused $60 trillion dollars’ worth of worldwide damage. $60 trillion. That’s more than China, America, it’s more than all of us put together could afford. $60 trillion dollars and millions and millions of lives all over the world. So that was a real, as I said, that was a bridge too far. But I think we will have a very good, and we’ve already been talking.

HH: It’s going to be an interesting first meeting when you sit down with him.

DJT: We’ve been talking through their representatives, and talking.

HH: All right. Mr. President, are you going to name an envoy for Ukraine pretty soon?

DJT: I will be, and we’ll have some great people. One thing we have, we have unbelievable people wanting to serve. I don’t think they felt the same way. You know, in my first term, people were fighting me all the way. They were just fighting me. In this term, it’s so different. I think, I don’t want to say people have given up, because that’s not nice. But they recognize that we really do have that mandate. You know, getting the popular vote by millions and millions of votes, something a Republican doesn’t do that often, to be honest, okay?

HH: It’s been a while.

DJT: Getting, it’s been a while. But getting the popular vote, I used to hate it when they said well, he won the election, but he didn’t win the popular vote. You know, they’d always say that. And now, they can’t say that. Now, they can say that we won the election in a landslide. We have a great mandate to do things. And I just find, like even if you take, talk to the tech companies. Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg and the people, you know, they’ve all been here. The people from Google have been here, Sundar, Sergei. They’ve all been to Mar-A-Lago.

HH: Well, they need the tax bill.

DJT: And I consider that, yeah, but I consider that paying respect to the country, not paying respect to me, paying respect to the country. Tim has been, from, we have from every company, you have no idea how many I’m seeing. So I’m seeing a combination of leaders. You have Tim Cook, I see the leaders coming from business, and I see also the leaders coming from other countries. As you know, I had the prime minister of Italy…

HH: The prime minister of Italy, yeah.

DJT: She was great. She flew over, we had dinner, and she flew back. So that’s a sign of respect for our country.

HH: Well, that is, the G7 is not exactly strong. I think Trudeau might resign today. Are you looking forward to working with Pierre Poilievre, the new guy?

DJT: I am. I am, if that’s what happens. Certainly, it will be very good. Our views would be more aligned, certainly. But you know, we have a situation with Canada that’s very interesting. People at first smiled when I mentioned the concept. We lose $200 billion dollars a year. We subsidize Canada by $200 billion dollars a year. Why are we doing that? There’s no reason. We don’t need their cars. We can make the cars here. In fact, it would be much better if we made the cars here. We should be making the cars here. We shouldn’t be having cars made in Canada. You know, we’re the United States. We’re not Canada. We have all the lumber in the world. All we have to do is free it up a little bit. And we have more lumber than they do. We have everything. We have all of the gas and oil and everything you need in terms of energy. We have more than they do. We have everything. We don’t need anything from Canada. Why are we subsidizing them to $200 billion dollars. It’s actually much more than that.

HH: I think you got their attention. Last question, Mr. President. You got a $15 million dollar settlement from ABC and George Stephanopoulos. I hope that goes to build the fake news wing in the Trump library. Bigger question. Do you think legacy media is bleeding out in real time before us?

DJT: I do. I think they’re disrespected. I think they’re not taken so seriously. Look at me. They were totally opposed to me for four years, but many years before that. But let’s say from the time I started campaigning three years ago, three and a half years ago, because I sort of started maybe when I got out. But they were opposed to me at levels never seen before where Biden would get good stories, and the guy couldn’t walk down a hallway. And I did something great, and they try to make it as bad as possible. So every, almost every one of them, I mean, we had some support, but for the most part, every one of them. And I won. It’s almost impossible. You know, I was told you need Google, you need Facebook, you cannot win without then. You cannot with without the Times, without the Washington Post, you know the various…and how about ABC and CBS and NBC and CNN. And you know, Fox gives me a little trouble, too, even, I must say. And then you have MSNBC. I was opposed at levels never seen before, and I won in a landslide. Well, what does that tell you about the media?

HH: That they’re out of touch. I think they’re bleeding out. I don’t think they’re going to last your term, because I hope you don’t deal with them too much. But obviously…

DJT: Well, I hope we do. I hope they do last. I hope they turn it around. All we want is a fair, I think it’s important to have a fair media, actually. I don’t want them to, you know, when you say bleeding out, that’s a tough expression. But that’s, only you could do that. But the fact is that I want them to do well, but I want them to be fair. They’re very unfair. And only somebody like me would know, because I know the facts.

HH: But Mr. President, they’re, they can’t reform themselves. They’re full of left-wing Trump haters. How are they going to change?

DJT: Yeah, well, they go out of business, and they come back in a different form, is probably the way.

HH: Well, that’s our New Year wish. Congratulations again. Biggest comeback in American political history. I am so pleased by that, and looking forward to it. Good luck in this amazing four years ahead, and in having a Trump boom 2.0. I hope it’s one big, beautiful bill, and it’s in a hurry, Mr. President.

DJT: Thank you very much, Hugh. Thank you.

HH: Thank you, sir.

DJT: Great job.

End of interview.