Replies

+++PART 2

WALLACE: A federal judge who you appointed has just ruled that you must give CNN reporter Jim Acosta his press pass back. Your reaction to the ruling, sir.

TRUMP: It’s fine, I mean it’s not a big deal. What they said, though, is that we have to create rules and regulations for conduct et cetera, et cetera, we’re doing that. We’re going to write them up right now, it’s not a big deal. And if he misbehaves, we’ll throw him out or we’ll stop the news conference. Actually –

WALLACE: What are your rules going to be? What what is it that you’re saying this is over the line and you lose your press pass —

TRUMP: Yeah, they’re doing them now. I mean, we’ll have rules of decorum, you know, you can’t keep asking questions, you have – we had a lot of reporters in that room, many, many reporters in that room and they were unable to ask questions because this guy gets up and starts, you know, doing what he’s supposed to be doing for him and for CNN and, you know, just shouting out questions.

But but I will say this, look, nobody believes in the First Amendment more than I do and if I think somebody’s acting out of sorts, I will leave, I’ll say thank you very much everybody, I appreciate you coming and I will leave. And those reporters will not be too friendly to whoever it is that’s acting up.

WALLACE: Why did you call on Acosta in the first place? I mean, it seems to me there’s a simple solution here, just don’t call on him.

TRUMP: Actually I like to do it, but in many cases I don’t. He’ll stand up, he’s unbelievably rude to Sarah Huckabee, who’s a wonderful woman, unbelievably rude and I see that and I actually ask her the same. Why do you call on these people that are so nasty?

I think one of the things we’ll do is maybe turn the camera off that faces them because then they don’t have any air time, although I’ll probably be sued for that and maybe, you know, win or lose it, who knows. I mean, with with this stuff you never know what’s going to happen.

WALLACE: Let’s get to the bigger issue. In 2017, last year, you tweeted this, and I want to quote it accurately, “The fake news media is not my enemy, it is the enemy of the American people.”

TRUMP: That’s true, 100 percent. Not the media.

WALLACE: I —

TRUMP: I’m glad you’re finally quoting it correctly because they like to leave the fake news out

—

WALLACE: OK, but that’s what you said.

TRUMP: The fake news – so –

WALLACE: But here’s here’s –

TRUMP: The people that are supporting me in particular, they’re very smart people. They’re hard working, brilliant, great people. They know when the news is fake and they get angry when they see all of the fakeness —

WALLACE: But but —

TRUMP: At, frankly, the networks –

WALLACE: But there have been people who have been critical of other presidents, they’re they’re — no president has liked his press coverage. John Kennedy, in your Oval Office, canceled the subscription to the New York Herald-Tribune. Nobody called it the enemy of the American people.

TRUMP: Chris, I’m calling the fake news is the enemy — it’s fake, it’s phony.

WALLACE: But a lot of times, sir, it’s just news you don’t like –

TRUMP: No it’s not, no. No. I don’t mind getting bad news if I’m wrong. If I do something wrong – like, for instance, the cemetery. I was not allowed to go because of the Secret Service. Because they expected to take a helicopter –

WALLACE: OK.

TRUMP: They had zero visibility. They said, “Sir, we are totally unequipped for you to go.” In addition to that, the cemetery was far too far away from Air Force One, which is sort of like a control center, where you had to be near.

Not one paper that I saw wrote it that way. They said I stayed out of it because of the rain. And yet, the following day, I made a speech at the American cemetery —

WALLACE: I understand.

TRUMP: It was pouring. It wasn’t even really raining the first day but the fog was tremendous. OK?

WALLACE: But, sir leaders in authoritarian countries like Russia, China, Venezuela, now repress the media using your words.

TRUMP: I can’t talk for other people, I can only talk for me. I will tell you —

WALLACE: But you’re — but you’re seen around the world as a beacon for repression, not for —

TRUMP: The news — Chris — Chris, I’m not talking about you, but you sometimes maybe. But I’m not talking about you.

The news about me is largely phony. It’s false. Even sometimes they’ll say, uh, “Sources say.” There is no source, in many cases – in many cases there is —

WALLACE: But — I understand you don’t like your coverage —

TRUMP: No, no, no. It’s not a question —

WALLACE: Can I just bring the — can I just bring the bigger issue –

TRUMP: Ninety-four percent negative.

WALLACE: Can I bring the — the bigger issue up —

TRUMP: Yeah.

WALLACE: Bill McRaven, Retired Admiral, Navy Seal, 37 years, former head of U.S. Special Operations —

TRUMP: Hillary Clinton fan.

WALLACE: Special Operations —

TRUMP: Excuse me, Hillary Clinton fan.

WALLACE: Who led the operations, commanded the operations that took down Saddam Hussein and that killed Osama bin Laden says that your sentiment is the greatest threat to democracy in his lifetime.

TRUMP: OK, he’s a Hilary Clinton, uh, backer and an Obama-backer and frankly —

WALLACE: He was a Navy Seal 37 years —

TRUMP: Wouldn’t it have been nice if we got Osama Bin Laden a lot sooner than that, wouldn’t it have been nice? You know, living – think of this – living in Pakistan, beautifully in Pakistan in what I guess they considered a nice mansion, I don’t know, I’ve seen nicer. But living in Pakistan right next to the military academy, everybody in Pakistan knew he was there. And we give Pakistan $1.3 billion a year and they don’t tell him, they don’t tell him —

WALLACE: You’re not even going to give them credit —

TRUMP: For years —

WALLACE: for taking down Bin Laden?

TRUMP: They took him down but – look, look, there’s news right there, he lived in Pakistan, we’re supporting Pakistan, we’re giving them $1.3 billion a year, which we don’t give them anymore, by the way, I ended it because they don’t do anything for us, they don’t do a damn thing for us.

TRUMP: I’m totally in favor of the media, I’m totally in favor of free press, got to be fair press. When it’s fake —

WALLACE: But but the President [doesn’t] get to decide what’s fair and what’s not.

TRUMP: I can tell what’s fair and not and so can my people and so can a lot of other people.

WALLACE: I understand that but but —

TRUMP: When you do something very good and they write it badly and this is consistently when you – as an example, rarely do they talk about —

WALLACE: Barack Obama whined about Fox News all the time but he never said we were the enemy of the people.

TRUMP: Well, no, he didn’t talk about the news, he didn’t talk about anything, I’m only saying it very differently than anyone’s ever said it before, I’m saying fake news, false reporting, dishonest reporting, of which there is a lot, and I know it. See, I know it because I’m a subject of it. A lot of people don’t know it. But when I explain it to them, they understand it.

And, Chris, you know that better, you don’t have to sit here and act like a perfect little, wonderful, innocent angel, I know you too well, I knew your father too well, that’s not your gene. But let me tell you —

WALLACE: I – look – I think –

TRUMP: Fake news —

WALLACE: I think some of the coverage of you, sir – and I’ve said it on the record – is bias, but I don’t think that there is –

TRUMP: Most of it is bias, most of it is bias.

WALLACE: I don’t know, but the idea that you call us the enemy of the people.

TRUMP: I’m not calling you that.

WALLACE: I’m talking about, we’re all together.

TRUMP: I’m not calling you – you don’t understand it.

WALLACE: We’re all together.

TRUMP: No, no, no, I’m not calling you —

WALLACE: It doesn’t matter whether you call, but when you call CNN and the New York Times and – we, we’re in solidarity, sir.

TRUMP: I am calling fake news, fake reporting, is what’s tearing this country apart because people know, people like things that are happening and they’re not hearing about it.

WALLACE: Where do you rank yourself in the pantheon of great Presidents? There’s Lincoln and Washington, there’s FDR and Reagan, do you make the top 10?

TRUMP: I think I’m doing a great job. We have the best economy we’ve ever had.

WALLACE: So where do you rank yourself?

TRUMP: We’re doing really well. We would have been at war with North Korea if, let’s say, that administration continued forward.

TRUMP: I would give myself, I would – look, I hate to do it, but I will do it, I would give myself an A+, is that enough? Can I go higher than that?

WALLACE: Can you envision a situation, you talk about six more years. Can you envision a situation well into your second term where you think that you’re so good for the country and so essential for the progress of the country that you would try to amend the Constitution so you could serve a third term?

TRUMP: No, no.

WALLACE: Why not?

TRUMP: Just won’t happen, it’s not – I think the eight year limit is a good thing, not a bad thing.

WALLACE: You’ve talked a lot already about the cemetery and the fact that you didn’t go because it was a security concern and you did go the next day. Here’s the thing –

TRUMP: No, excuse me. Not security concern – they wouldn’t allow me to go –

WALLACE: I understand.

TRUMP: They said, “Sir,” Secret Service said, “Sir, you cannot go. We are not prepared. You cannot go.” Because it was supposed to be helicopter, but the helicopter couldn’t fly because of zero visibility. So —

WALLACE: OK. But, let me —

TRUMP: They said, “Sir, you cannot go.”

WALLACE: But here’s the question, you’re back in Washington on Monday, Veterans Day, why don’t you go across the river to Arlington for that ceremony? Barack Obama went every year he was here in D.C.

TRUMP: I should have done that. I was extremely busy on calls for the country, we did a lot of calling, as you know –

WALLACE: But this is Veterans Day –

TRUMP: I probably, you know, in retrospect I should have and I did last year and I will virtually every year. But we had come in very late at night and I had just left, literally, the American cemetery in Paris and I really probably assumed that was fine and I was extremely busy because of affairs of state doing other things.

WALLACE: Why haven’t –

TRUMP: But I would have — I would have done it.

WALLACE: Why haven’t you visited our troops serving in war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan in the two years you’ve been in office as Commander-in-Chief?

TRUMP: Well, I think you will see that happen. There are things that are being planned. We don’t want to talk about it because of — obviously because of security reasons and everything else.

But there are things that are planned. As you know, I was very much opposed to the war in Iraq. I think it was a tremendous mistake, should have never happened —

WALLACE: But this is about the soldiers, sir.

TRUMP: You’re right.

I don’t think anybody’s been more with the military than I have, as a president. In terms of funding, in terms of all of the things I’ve been able to get them, including the vets. I don’t think anybody’s done more than me.

I’ve had an unbelievable busy schedule and I will be doing it. On top of which you have these phony witch hunts. On top of which — I mean, we’ve just been very busy. But I will be doing that.

WALLACE: Just before the midterms you said your biggest regret is that perhaps you should have had a softer tone in your two years as president. But since then, some could argue, you’ve been on a tear.

At the press conference the day after the election you mocked some of the Republican congressmen who lost not embracing you.

[TAPE: President Trump: “Mia Love gave me no love and she lost. Too bad. Sorry about that Mia.”]

You went after two African-American reporters and basically said that they were dumb.

[TAPE: President Trump: “The same thing with April Ryan. I watch her get up. I mean, you talk about somebody that’s a loser, she doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing.”

QUESTION: “Do you want him to rein in Robert Mueller?”

President Trump: “What a stupid question that is. What a stupid question. But I watch you a lot. You ask a lot of stupid questions.”]

WALLACE: Question. I was in Saint Joe’s, Missouri this last week and I was talking to a lot of loyal Republicans. They love what you’ve done to the economy. They love the fact that you have basically put ISIS out of business. The one thing they say is, why do you have to be so divisive? Why don’t you do more to bring the country together?

TRUMP: I think that if I was very different I wouldn’t have gotten what we had to get. We got the biggest tax cuts in history, we got ANWR approved, we have — we got rid of the individual mandate, which was the most unpopular thing you can imagine — health care — I got rid of it, everybody said it would be impossible to get rid of it.

And many many — you know, the regulations. I think if I was a more modified, more moderate, in that sense, I don’t think I would have done half of the things that I was able to get completed.

With that being said, other than you have to have a certain ability to fight back and, as you know, people have — you know, they take strong stands on me both ways, you know, love and hate. I’d like to see it a little bit, maybe, more right down the middle.

But tone is something that is important to me. But a lot of times you can’t practice tone because you have people coming at you so hard that if you don’t fight back in a somewhat vigorous way you’re not going to win. And we have to win. This country has to win.

We have a lot of victories coming and I think if I — if I go too low-key we’re not going to have those victories.

WALLACE: Mr. President, thank you.

TRUMP: Thank you. Thank you very much, Chris.

WALLACE: Very much appreciate it, sir.