Former President Donald Trump joined me this morning:

Audio:

02-02hhs-trump

Transcript:

HH: Former President Donald Trump, welcome back to the Hugh Hewitt Show. Great to have you on again, sir.

DJT: Good morning. Hi.

HH: You’re always the best interview in America, because you always make news, so I want to start with a national security question. If President Xi Jinping sends ships to invade Taiwan, should United States submarines sink them, Mr. President?

DJT: Well, I wouldn’t get into that, and it’s not a good thing to, because those things, you just don’t tell to the world’s favorite radio host. You can’t do that. And you have to keep some things to yourself in terms of strategy, because we’re working hard, and we think we’re doing really well, and we could get very, back there very soon. So I don’t think you want to be broadcasting that. I can tell you this. I could tell you this. Ukraine-Russia would have never happened if I was there. And Taiwan, which is a possibility, a strong possibility, would never, ever have happened if I were there. That I can tell you.

HH: Let’s go to Ukraine. They want F-16s from the United States. Should the United States send F-16s to Ukraine?

DJT: I think the United States should negotiate peace between these two countries, and I don’t think they should be sending very much. They should be negotiating peace. And the other thing is Europe has to do much more, because Europe is doing probably just a small fraction of what we’re doing. Not probably, they’re doing a very small fraction of what we’re doing. We’re going to be in there, I believe, for $107 billion dollars, and Europe is in there for a tiny fraction of that amount. And obviously, it’s bad for everybody, but it affects Europe more than it affects our country. And that’s the way it has to be. You know when I took over, NATO was delinquent on most of the NATO countries. There were eight that were paid. There were 20 of them that were delinquent, and they were very delinquent. Some hadn’t paid at all. Some were very low. Germany had paid less than half. France was down. Many countries were very, very delinquent, had not paid. And I said fellas, you’ve got to pay, and you’ve got to pay now. And if you don’t pay, we’re not going to protect you. That’s right. And…

HH: Do you want to cut off aid to Ukraine right now, Mr. President?

DJT: I want to make it so that Ukraine and Russia have to fight, and fight for the last time. And we’ve got to make peace. If we don’t, if we don’t make peace, if we just keep sending everything, you know, we’re sending everything over. They’ve got to fight for the last day, for the last two days. This thing has to stop, and it’s got to stop now. And it’s not going to stop if we continue to just load something up. Now I will say this. If Russia was not a willing participant, I would have a different mindset. But right now, there’s no reason for them or anybody else to sit down. We don’t have the leadership to get them to sit down. And look, Hugh, I think you believe it. Zero chance this would have happened. I went in with Russia early on. I ended their pipeline. I did everything. NordStream, nobody ever heard of NordStream2 until I came along. I ended everything, and Putin will tell you the worse he’s ever had is Trump. You know, they talk about Trump, he loved Putin. I get along well with Putin, but nobody was tougher on Russia than I was. If you look at it, I’m the one who gave the Javelin…

HH: Have you read, Mr. President, the Columbia Journalism Review expose on Russia Russia Russia? It came out in the last four days, and it devastates the New York Times and others for their coverage of the Russia Russia Russia-Steele dossier. Have you read that, yet?

DJT: I have seen it in summary. I’m going to read it tonight. I hear it was incredible. By the way, before, just to get back, I’m the one that gave them the Javelins to knock out the tanks. I did things that Russia could not be happy about. You know, Obama was sending them pillows, if you remember, and sheets.

HH: Yes.

DJT: And I sent Javelins. And you know, so nobody was, and they, we sent them a lot of Javelins, and they used those Javelins to start the war very successfully, knocking out all the tanks. So, but we have to get that negotiated. We need peace. We have to have peace. And it’s got to happen now. It should have never happened. Hugh, that was a war that would have never happened. It should have never happened.

HH: You know, Mr. President, Margo told me I have a hard out, so I’ve got to ask you a lot of questions in a hurry unless you tell Margo that you want more time with me. First hard question – some worry that if you are reelected president, you will use your powers to seek revenge on the people that have been after you since 2016 and 2015. What do you say to those people who say you’d abuse the office if you’re reelected?

DJT: Well, when you look at that Columbia report, which was very devastating to the New York Times and to really everything, to our country because of what they did, you know, I was a victim, and everyone knows it. And now, they really know it. That was a well-crafted report by a rather liberal, I’m being nice, group of people. That was…

HH: Oh, the Columbia Journalism Review is very left-wing, yes.

DJT: Okay, yeah. I’m trying to be nice, but that was a devastating report, and I think probably more so than anybody else. Well, the people that participated, but the New York Times was truly made into either a smart and evil group, or a stupid group. And by the way, I’m suing Pulitzer, and this should be almost the end of that, because if a judge and jury see this report, to give back the Pulitzer Prizes, because the New York Times and the Washington Compost got, and they got it, and they got it strongly, they got, they had all of the different things. They knew everything that was going on. They reported so badly. You know, the Pulitzer Prize is supposed to be for great reporting, for accurate reporting. Congratulations, you’ve done…well, they got it exactly wrong. They accused me…

HH: Well, they did get it wrong, but my question is…

DJT: …to get involved with Russia.

HH: If you’re back in the Oval, will you use the powers of the presidency to punish people who punished you?

DJT: No, I wouldn’t do that…

HH: All right.

DJT: …because I want to bring our country forward. No, I wouldn’t do that. Some people think I will. Some people think that’s words, but I wouldn’t.

HH: One of the best things you did when you ran the first time…

DJT: I would be entitled to a revenge tour, if you want to know the truth, but I wouldn’t do that. I would want to straighten out our border. I would want to get inflation down, build our economy up, which is actually doing very poorly. You do have a potential disaster on your hands with the war. You also have a disaster with Kim Jung Un of North Korea. I get along with him great. He always liked me. You saw that, and he doesn’t like Biden at all, and he’s arming up, and Iran is arming up and we’ve got to do something about it.

HH: One of the people who’s going to declare for president this month, according to reports this morning, is Nikki Haley. If she runs for president, what’s your response, Mr. President?

DJT: Well, she called me and she asked me about it, and I told her she should follow her heart. You know, she said numerous times, I put it up, actually, that I would never run if our president runs. He was a great president, et cetera, et cetera. She said that numerous times. But she’s a very ambitious person. She just couldn’t stay in her seat. And I said you know what? Nikki, if you want to run, you go ahead and run. She’s, you know, she’s polling around…

HH: Earlier today, Larry Hogan, who’s going to run, told me that if you are the nominee, he will support you. My question to you, Mr. President, if you’re not the nominee, will you support whoever the GOP nominee is?

DJT: It would depend. I would give you the same answer I gave in 2016 during the debates. The first question I was asked by Bret Baier.

HH: Bret Baier.

DJT: I was asked two rather, I was asked two rather interesting questions. It would have to depend on who the nominee was.

HH: Are you still mad at me for the triad question, by the way?

DJT: No, but it was the only question that I answered not terribly, but I didn’t answer it, you know, I think I had a good excuse. I was just in the game and you asked me about the triad, the nuclear triad.

HH: I think it’s fine. I just want to know if you’re going to do a lot of debates this time.

DJT: No, I wasn’t, but I did say, I did say, you’ve always got a trick up your sleeves, but no, I wasn’t upset about that at all. I think I gave a half-assed answer, but it wasn’t as good as some.

HH: Well, I do have a trick up my sleeve. You named the Supreme Court list before you got elected. Are you going to do that again? And will you tell us who your Attorney General, your Secretary of Defense and your Secretary of State will be before you get elected if you’re nominated again?

DJT: Well, I won’t tell you now, but I will do a list. I already have a list very much in mind. You know, I was in a position where I put in three, and that was pretty good, because some presidents have never had the opportunity to do one. You know that. And there could be some pretty big opportunities within, you know, after two years, because you look at the age factor. It just works that way. But no, I’m going to do a list, and I very well might name some of the people. We have great names that want to be with us. We have great support, tremendous names. We got J.D. Vance yesterday. He endorsed.

HH: On this show.

DJT: We have Jim Banks…

HH: On this show, he endorsed. Yes.

DJT: Yes.

HH: Let me close before Margo calls up…

DJT: Okay.

HH: …by asking you about Governor Youngkin, Governor Abbott, Governor DeSantis, you know, you’ve got like eight people who might run. Will they all get a nickname? I know Pompeo’s nickname is My Mike, but will they all get a nickname if Mike Pompeo runs or Youngkin runs or Abbott runs? Will they all get nicknames?

DJT: Well, first of all, that’s not Pompeo’s nickname. Believe me. That’s not it.

HH: Oh, I thought in his book, he says it’s My Mike.

DJT: No, no, look, well, no, I haven’t seen the book, yet. I haven’t read it, although I heard he was generally nice.

HH: Oh, very good to you.

DJT: Yeah, he took a little bit more credit than he should, but that’s okay with me. It’s all, you know, going to the same, because we did, we did a great job. I got along very well with Mike. But we did a great job. This country has never been run so well. This country, despite the COVID and all of the things, and all of what you read yesterday in that report. Don’t forget, these guys, before I even got in, they were spying on my campaign, long before I got in. This didn’t just happen. And if I didn’t fire Comey, and if I didn’t fire McCabe and Strzok and Page and all of that scum that was in there, you would have had, they were trying to do an overthrow. And they, just think of it. They spied on my campaign from the time I came down the escalator. And here I am, innocently running to do something great, and I have this garbage that’s in there headed up by Comey and the group. They spied on my campaign, and I got rid of them all. I got rid of them all. But it was more than them. It was more than them, and you know that. And you know that’s coming again.

HH: I do that. But I know Margo’s calling. So you’ve got to tell me, though.

DJT: It’s okay. Don’t worry about Margo. Margo’s great, but we’ll keep going.

HH: Okay, then we’ll go.

DJT: Just don’t, Hugh, let’s do this. Let me finish up…

HH: Tell me about the nicknames for Youngkin and Abbott and Pompeo.

DJT: Hugh, let me just say this. They spied on my campaign. We had an amazingly solid group of people, and a tremendously solid, what I did with tax cuts, regulation cuts. I rebuilt the military that they gave so much of it to Afghanistan. Think of it – $85 billion dollars to Afghanistan. All the different things. What they did, they were trying to subvert. What they did was incredible. But Hugh, it started off. Remember when I said very innocently, I think Obama spied on my campaign. And that thing turned out to be, that was one of the, that shook everybody, because they knew they did it. And the place went wild, and I’ll never forget. I get a call from, I guess you’d call them coms. This is long before I got into office. Oh, yeah, this all took place long before I got into office, but I get some call from the effectively coms person. Sir, did you say that President Obama spied on your campaign? I said yes, I did. And I didn’t know. It’s a big statement. It’s a hard statement to make, but I didn’t know it was going to be picked up. Probably the biggest, and I’ve had some big Twitter at the time, now it’s true. And by the way, Truth Social is the hottest thing and it’s doing great. I hope all your listeners get on Truth Social, because that’s where it’s at. It’s doing unbelievable.

HH: Are you going back to Twitter? Are you going to do anything on Twitter?

DJT: Well, here’s the thing. Here’s the thing. I mean, I appreciate being put back on there. I’m sitting there with like 90 million people. By the way, I should have had 200-250. I think I had way over 200 million when you include, I had, according to Zuckerberg, another beauty, I was number one on Facebook. He came to the White House, and he said in front of a large group, congratulations, you’re number one on Facebook. Think of it. They took me down from Facebook. They took me out of Instagram. They took me off of Twitter. So I went from having maybe 250 million total to nothing. And I had to dig my way out of that, because I have a lot of things to say, and I did. And I did with a thing called a press release. You’re one of the few people. You’re at an age where you remember the word press release.

HH: Yup.

DJT: And those, it was Save America press releases, and it took me about a month to say how do I get my word out, because so many people wanted to hear them, and I did them, and they exploded. And we opened up an incredible platform, and it takes a while, and it’s very expensive. It’s called Truth, and Truth Social is the hottest thing there is. It’s been unbelievable, and you know, I got the word out. So I could go back to Twitter whenever I want, and you know, I have some ideas planned. But you know, it’s just not necessary. Truth is so hot, and I’ll always have Truth. Truth Social.

HH: All right, so I want to go back to the nicknames, because people want to know. What’s Nikki Haley going to be? What’s Greg Abbott going to be? Is Glenn Youngkin going to get a nickname?

DJT: Well, I’ve never, well, people said I gave Youngkin a little bit of a…you know what disappoints me about Youngkin? He ran, nice guy. I endorsed him, which helped him greatly. But then he ran, and he was not doing very well, but he was inching up. And he ran against a sleazebag who I knew very well, Terry. I know him very well, but Terry’s a sleazebag. Everybody who knows him would know that. I’m sure he’d be thrilled to hear it. But he ran, and he ran hard and he worked hard, and my endorsement meant a lot. But at the end, he needed me to do something, and I made a call. It’s called a tele-town call, tele-townhall, they call it. And it goes to every home. It goes to vast homes in the state of Virginia, in this case. And I gave a 15-minute thing, and we had thousands and thousands of people on that call, and there wasn’t any person that wasn’t on that call that didn’t go and vote. And he won by, you know, a fairly tight number. But I had, you know, far, far, far more than that number. Somebody said 440,000 people were on that call. And he was really nice to me, gracious to me in writing. He wrote me the most beautiful letter you’ve ever seen thanking me and everything else. But then, they decided, because his campaign manager is a smart guy, Jeff…

HH: Very smart guy.

DJT: Yeah, Jeff Roe said he did it without Trump. He did it without Trump. He did it with me, and I didn’t like that. So he wrote me this beautiful letter and called me and thanked me, and I said listen, perhaps you’ll thank me publicly as opposed to thanking me behind the press’ back. And oh, yes, I’ll do it, but he never really did. I did a lot for him, and he got elected because of me, just like Ron DeSantis even more so, but even more so, but Ron DeSantis got elected because of me. You remember he had nothing. He was dead. He was leaving the race. He came over and he begged me, begged me for an endorsement. He was getting ready to drop out. I gave him an endorsement, and as soon as I gave that endorsement, in fact, I said you’re going to have a hard time. He was running against Adam Putnam, the commissioner of agriculture, who had a massive lead. He was running for eight years while he was commissioner. He had $40 million dollars in cash. I believe it was forty, and he was up in the poll massively by, you know, tremendous, but not catchable, not even catchable. He said if you endorse me, I’ll win. And there were tears coming down from his eyes. He said if you endorse me, I’ll win. I said you know what, Ron, Ron was one of 150 people that was on television. I mean, Jim Jordan was the best, and others were great. But he was one of 150, Hugh, that was on television, and he was supporting me on the impeachment hoax number one, and a little bit on the impeachment hoax number two. And I said I don’t know Adam Putnam, so we’ll do it. So I end up doing it, and he wins. They say it was like a bomb went off, just a bomb just totally went off. From the moment I endorsed him, he went from losing by numbers that are not catchable to winning easily. And then I got him…

HH: Is it your position, Mr. Trump, that if you…

DJT: Wait, wait, wait. Then, I got him past, then I got him past the crackhead who was the hottest person in the entire Democrat Party at the time. You know, he slightly took a different position afterwards, but that’s all right. Him and Stacey Abrams were the two hottest politicians that, they were going to be the party of the future, the Democrats of the future. And I got, I did two rallies, two or three rallies, average size like massive. They were massive. I said you’re going to win, Ron, and he said I don’t think so. Nobody thought he could win. First of all, I got him the nomination, and purely got it. And people who know the campaign of Adam Putnam will tell you, because they say everything collapsed the moment I pressed that trigger. And then I got him into the general, and then they say will you run against the president like two years later. Will you run against the president, and he says I don’t want to talk about that. This is not something we’re talking about now. I said that’s not a very good answer. Now in the case of Nikki Haley, she’s gone around publicly. You saw this all over the place.

HH: Correct.

DJT: And she said I’ll never run against my president. He’s a great president. He’s been our greatest president. I’ll never run. I’ll never run. But Nikki suffers from something that’s a very tough thing to suffer from. She’s overly-ambitious.

HH: You know, Mike Pompeo says in his book that she asked you to become the Vice President in place of Mike Pence in the 2020 election. Is that true?

DJT: It’s absolutely false. That who asked me? Nikki Haley asked me to be Vice President?

HH: Yeah, that’s in, according to John Kelly. That didn’t happen?

DJT: Can you imagine? That I would run as Vice President to Nikki Haley?

HH: No, no, Nikki Haley asked you if she could be your vice presidential nominee in 2020.

DJT: Oh, I thought you said that she asked me if I’d be her vice president. That would be, that would be a big story.

HH: No, no. Did she…

DJT: If anybody would say yes, I did, you should immediately take that person off your list as ridiculous. Okay, no, I did not ask her at all to be vice president. Nope, never mentioned it to her.

HH: And she didn’t bring it up to you?

DJT: I don’t want to say that. I’m not going to embarrass her, but I have never asked her to be vice president.

HH: Ah. So Mr. President…

DJT: And so a lot of people would like to be, no, no, I think a lot of the people running, look, I’m way ahead in the polls. Ron DeSantis is way behind me. Every once in a while, Fox will put up a phony poll, because Fox is not Fox of old. That, I can tell you. I’m sure you know that, too. But Fox will put up a fake poll, but I’m way ahead in New Hampshire. I’m way ahead in South Carolina. I’m way ahead in Iowa, and I’m way ahead in the country.

HH: Are you looking forward to the debates, the Republican debates?

DJT: Yeah, I always look forward to the debates. Debates will be good. I guess I’m talking to you because of debates. If debates weren’t good for me, I wouldn’t have been there. I mean, Mike Bloomberg, Mike Bloomberg spent $2 billion dollars…

HH: I tell people you will do every debate. You skipped one debate in 2016. It was a Fox debate, but then you came back. But you’re not going to skip any of them this time?

DJT: Well, I have to see. I mean, no, I skipped the Fox debate, and you know why, because they were not treating me fairly.

HH: Yes. Yes.

DJT: And I said listen, you’re getting all your ratings because of me. I’m the one, you know, those debates were very highly-rated. The one I skipped, nobody watched, okay? And I said you’re getting all your ratings, and I mean, you’ve got to treat me better. And I said it loud and clear to Roger Ailes, who I really liked. You know, he was good, but he was a player. He was a wise guy. No question about it. And we, I did very well in those debates. I mean, I mean, supposedly legendarily well. And then nobody wants to write that.

HH: So I’ve got to wrap this up or your team’s never going to talk to me again. I want to know about if you have the position, if you’ve done someone well, if you’ve helped Youngkin or DeSantis or Nikki Haley or Mike Pompeo, is it your position they should not run against you if you’ve helped them?

DJT: Yeah, I would say that, but I know how life works. And I know how politics works. And politics is a microcosm, but even more vicious of life. So you know, I’ve helped all those people. I took Mike out of nothing and you know, I’m supposed, because Mike said I believe the same thing. I believe he always said he’d never run against the president. And you know, time goes by and then they want to run, because they’re ambitious people. But you know, they’re polling very poorly. But I heard Mike said some very good things in the book. Look, we did a great job. We did a great job. That was an amazing job, Hugh. Again, you wouldn’t be in Ukraine, and you’ll never, you would have never been in Taiwan, and Putin knew that better than anybody. Nobody was tougher on Russia than me, but I did it with a smile. I got along with Putin. He used to say they say you’re easy on Russia. You’re the worst that we’ve ever had. I stopped his NordStream2 pipeline. Biden comes along and gives him the NordStream2 that was totally dead.

HH: Yeah.

DJT: And he gives it, and then they say, and that’s the biggest thing they’ve ever done. There’s never been a thing that you can…

HH: So let me close with Joe Biden and Hunter Biden. First of all, have you received a target letter from any grand jury?

DJT: No, I have not.

HH: Okay. Do you think Hunter Biden’s grand jury…

DJT: I didn’t do anything wrong. Just so you know, very nice, I didn’t do anything wrong. President of the United States. I have the power to declassify. They didn’t. I didn’t take anything from being a senator. He’s got to hire, here’s an interesting one. He’s got, I guess he’s got 1,800 or 1,850 boxes at the University of Delaware. And that’s where, it’s going to be very interesting to see what’s into that. That’s a lot of boxes, but he’s got 1,850 boxes, I guess I read, at the University of Delaware.

HH: Do you think that the searches at his house…

DJT: And one other thing, by the way, I had a locked, I had a locked premises. They looked at it. They saw it. I was talking, you know, we have a thing called the Presidential Records Act, and it’s very precise, and it’s exactly for this. And it says you will talk, it’s not a criminal act at all. And we were talking to them, doing it very nicely. And then all of a sudden, they raided the house, and they shouldn’t have done that. But I mean, they definitely shouldn’t have done that, and I think it backfired. Now the raid on Biden, he knew about it. He was in the house for two weeks before they went in. They were there for a short period of time. It wasn’t a raid. They knew he was coming, as I understand it. And you know, you really have two standards and two sets of justice in this country. And it’s, and the people of the country are not happy about it.

HH: So…

DJT: I have a guy who’s a, I have a guy as a special prosecutor who’s got, who’s just hates Trump. His wife hates Trump. His sister-in-law, I believe, hates Trump. He’s a Weismann guy. He’s a Comey guy. He’s an Obama guy. And it’s a disgrace what he does to people. It’s a disgrace and he should be ashamed of himself, Jack Smith. And I don’t, I have no idea what his name was. Perhaps he changed it. But let me tell you, Jack Smith sounds so innocent. And what he does is a disgrace. It’s a disgrace to this country what he does.

HH: Has he been in touch with you already, Special Counsel Smith?

DJT: I’ve never spoken to him. No, I’ve never spoken to him.

HH: So I’ve got to close by asking you about the double standard. Do you think the American people recognize a double standard and that it will be a political issue in 2024?

DJT: Yes. I do, because they’re smart. You don’t have to be smart to recognize it. No, the Republicans, me in particular, because, and the other thing is you know, they are a party of, if you look at the Democrats or the Marxists or the Communists, whatever you want to call them, because they didn’t stop. You know, the train never stopped at socialism, okay? It was supposed to stop at socialism. It just passed that. So we’re into Communism, Marxism and other things. The fact is that if you look at the way they behaved, it’s unbelievable. They’re destroying our country. The border, millions and millions, I believe the number of 15 million, not three or four million. And they’re emptying their prisons, and they’re emptying their mental institutions, and they’re taking all of their people that aren’t very productive, and they’re sending them over to us, and we’re taking them like a bunch of fools. Our country is a dumping ground, and we’re not talking about the three countries or the four countries that we always talk about. We’re talking about something much different than that. We’re talking about yesterday was 129 countries were represented sending people into our country. We have no idea who these people are. They’re terrorists. They’re rapists. They’re killers, murderers. And we’re going to lose this country.

HH: President Trump, breaking news. Nancy Pelosi says she will endorse Adam Schiff for Dianne Feinstein’s Senate seat if Feinstein doesn’t run. What do you make of that? Those are some of your favorite people, right, Nancy Pelosi and Adam Schiff?

DJT: Oh, these people are horrible. They are so bad for this country. Adam Shifty-Schiff is a liar. Remember when he lied about my phone call and then I say yeah, keep lying. I said let him lie for a little while. And he lied, and he got up before Congress and he actually copied my phone call and made his speech and said horrible things. And then I said I have good news for you. We have it on tape. And he died, and so did Nancy Pelosi. They didn’t know what to do, because they had already started the impeachment. So they said let’s make the best of it, and they got killed. In fact, 100% of the Republican Congress, 100%, and everybody other than Romney, Mitt Romney, he’s a beauty, but, and he actually voted one of the two votes. It was two votes. He actually voted one in favor. But 100%, like 196 out of 196 voted in my favor. It was a terrible thing they did, but Schiff is a liar. When he made up that speech, and then they said wow, he’s got big liability, no, he’s protected, because he’s in the halls of Congress. He’s in the Capitol, and so therefore he’s allowed to lie as much as he wants. He made up a phone conversation that I had with the president of Ukraine. And it turned out it was, that was where the word quid pro quo came from. There was no quid pro quo. I think he said seven times quid pro quo. Can you imagine asking somebody for the same thing seven times? They’d think you’re a nut job. So this is where it came from, and Adam Schiff, what happened here, Hugh, what he did and he lied, and he’s a sick puppy. Remember, he said we have absolute evidence. It will be released later. And you know what the evidence is? Read the Columbia report. Read all of these reports that are now coming out years later, and I’m not only exonerated, I’m hailed, because of what I had done.

HH: Well, the Columbia Journalism Report has got to be read by everyone and passed around. Okay, Margo has called, so I’m, this is absolutely my last question.

DJT: Okay.

HH: Is Jared running your transition in advance of a 2024 win?

DJT: No, not. No, I told my kids, they’re great kids, and they’ve been just brutalized by these corrupt politicians, these corrupt people that spied on my campaign and so many other things. If you can believe it, worse than that. Now I don’t know how you could be worse. Can you imagine if I spied on, let’s say, Obama’s campaign? Can you imagine? They would have reinstituted the death penalty. Nothing happens to these people. No, think of it. If I spied on Obama, it would have been, think of it.

HH: So Mr. President, are you bringing anybody back if you win again? Are you bringing back O’Brien, Pompeo?

DJT: No. I’m not. I have great kids. And I had great kids who were forced to suffer at the hands of scum, real scum, real garbage. And I don’t want to put them through that again. I love my kids. I have a great relationship with the kids. Ivanka is an extraordinary person in every single way. And I want them to have a life. I think it’s just a nasty, a nasty thing for them what they put those kids through, and those kids were straight and honest. When I look at Hunter Biden and all the corruption and what’s on that laptop, my kids were straight, solid kids. They were before grand juries. They had to go before on stuff that these people made up. I mean, it was all made up. Russia was a hoax. It was made up. And…

HH: But, okay, so they’re not coming back.

DJT: So the answer is Jared won’t be involved, and I don’t want them. I want them to go out and have a nice life.

HH: What about the other people like Mnuchin and O’Brien and Pompeo, the successful…

DJT: Well, I have a lot of great people. Look, I rebuilt our military. I got us the largest tax cuts in history, the largest regulation cuts in history, right to try, created Space Force, which by the way was a great thing to do, because we’re getting clobbered by China and Russia. Space Force, first time since 78 years, Air Force was the last one, that this has been done. Space Force is booming now because of me. I created it. And all the things we did, nobody’s done. We had the strongest border in the history of our country, strongest border. And two years later, it’s the worst border in history. And by the way, worse than any third world nation, because no third world nation would allow a thing like this to happen, Hugh. What’s happening to our country is we’re being poisoned. We’re being poisoned. Think of it. They’re emptying their jails and their mental institutions into the United States of America. Think of it. It’s not even possible. We did a great job. We had the greatest border we’ve ever had. We had the greatest economy we’ve ever had. And then I had to do it a second time because of COVID. We did, we did, I handed over where the stock market was higher than it was just before COVID came in. Nobody’s ever seen it like that. And you know, but here’s the good thing. I know so many people. You know, when I went to Washington, I was very much a novice. You know, ran a great campaign, I won. And by the way, my second campaign was better. I got 12 million more votes my second campaign. And by the way, and in Florida in this last thing, as you know, I got 1.2 million more votes than Ron DeSantis. People don’t know that. But I got 1.2 million votes more than Ron DeSantis. So we did a very good job, and I’m very proud of it, and have great people. I know all the people, and we’re going to do, we’re going to do something, I think we’re going to have a great campaign.

HH: Keep coming back, Mr. President. You’re always the best interview in America. I appreciate the time, and tell Margo it’s not my fault.

DJT: I’ll tell her. I’ll try and get you off the hook. I don’t know if it’s possible, but I’ll try.

HH: Okay. Thank you, Mr. President.

DJT: Yes.

HH: Bye, bye.

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

End of interview.