IBM Vice Chair @Gary_D_Cohn says consumers' frustrations with inflation are "completely right."
"We, at least finally, have gotten to the position where wage growth is faster than inflation." pic.twitter.com/qgEKP1iSLQâ Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) March 10, 2024
And ...
When asked about the presidential election, IBM Vice Chair @Gary_D_Cohn says, "the business community, at this point, is still open-minded" and support for either candidate will depend on policies.
But, "there has to be outreach" from the Biden administration, he adds. pic.twitter.com/yb4P59zwwZâ Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) March 10, 2024
Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
How can Fani Willis possibly oversee a case which is completely compromised and fraudulently brought by her and her highly paid lover? She NEVER paid cash as a reimbursement to him. If she did, where did she get the cash, an even bigger problem? She lied in order to get out of a problem. Very easy to prove! Everything should be immediately dropped and let the American Patriots âgo home.â Absolve them all from this terrible, and totally disproven, Witch Hunt! ELECTION INTERFERENCE in conjunction with the Crooked Joe Biden DOJ and White House!
Mar 10, 2024, 8:15 PM
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/112074878422458680
Good morning, Jane,
I missed RPOTUS on CNBC and am searching for a full video.
However, I did find the following 2 links including the full transcript.
JOE KERNEN: I believe on the âSquawkâ news line, we are joined by former President Donald J. Trump, DJ T45 It is good to welcome you. Itâs been a while, Mr. President.
FORMER PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Good morning. Nice to be with you.
KERNEN: The this is the first interview Iâve been told since you became the presumptive nominee. Iâm not Iâm not sure that that prior to last week, you werenât already the presumptive nominee. But I think this is your first interview since the State of the Union as well. So can we just start with with your your vision for this country after watching the State of the Union. How does it differ from what you heard from President Biden, President Trump?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, I heard a very angry man whoâs losing badly in the polls, whoâs willing to weaponize government like has never taken place in this country. It has taken place in third world countries, quite often actually and they will use the Justice Department to sue opponents like me, because Iâm his only opponent other than life, life itself. And frankly, you know, I saw a very angry and confused man. I assume heâs going to be the candidate. I think it probably maybe it was a terrible performance, but I think it was probably good enough to get him over the heap, to get him over the, you know, the barrier as to whether or not heâs going to be their, their nominee. I was saying thatâs been it for a long time. I find it hard to believe, but I think he probably will and weâll see what happens. But it was really a speech on division and hate more than anything else. Starts off by talking about stickers, you donât want to really talk about stickers even though itâs true that they put a little bit less than a bag but you have you have more interesting examples of inflation and other things that he was trying to point out than that. You could you have a lot of you have a lot of big league things you can be talking at, like energy, prices through the roof and food prices through the roof. But no, it was probably the worst State of the Union ever made. According to many thatâs not according to be although according to me, it was also but I havenât heard too many of them.
KERNEN: There are stark policy differences obviously Mr. President, but one thing that I think that at least the perception is that thereâs not a whole lot of difference between what you think we should do with entitlements or non-discretionary spending and what President Biden is proposing. Itâs almost a third rail of politics. And weâve got to what a $33, $34 trillion total debt built up and very little we can do in terms of cutting spending. Discretionary is not going to help. Have you changed your, your outlook on how to handle entitlements Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Mr. President? Seems like something has to be done, or else weâre going to be stuck at 120% of debt to GDP forever.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: So first of all, there is a lot you can do in terms of entitlements in terms of cutting and in terms of also the theft and the bad management of entitlements, tremendous bad management of entitlements. Thereâs tremendous amounts of things and numbers of things you can do. So I donât necessarily agree with the statement. I know that theyâre going to end up weakening social security because the country is weak. And letâs take a look at outside of the stock market, are, weâre going through hell. People are going through hell. If they have and I believe the number is 50%. They say 32 and 33%. I believe we have a cumulative inflation of over 50%, that means people are, you know, they have to make more than 50% more over a fairly short period of time to stay up. Theyâve gotten routed. The middle class in our country has been routed and the middle class largely built our country and they have been treated very, very badly with policy. When I was president, I was doing a job, weâre going to start to pay off debt. We were drill baby drill. We were producing oil but we were going at a much higher level oil and gas. We were doing, you know, we were third when I started and when they ended we were one by a longshot and we were very close, weâre energy independence, weâre very close to becoming energy dominant Joe, weâre gonna be dominant so dominant, like double what Saudi Arabia and Russia were doing. And we were on that path. We were gonna be paying down debt. We were doing, we were doing a lot of things and then we got hit with Covid. We did a fantastic job with Covid. But nobody, nobody wins with Covid. I guess China found that out because they also really got hit very hard also, but nobody wins with Covid. And so we had to get to we had to do other things. We had to help. You know, if I didnât do the expenditures that we didnât do the kinds of things we did for the economy, we would add in 1929 type depression. And I had to say out in front of it, and we did we did a great job on that and we did with all of the things weâre coming up with Regeneron doing so much else, getting all because you know we had empty when I came in, we had empty, I call them empty cupboards. We had empty shelves, we didnât have equipment, we didnât have the gowns, we didnât have the ventilators. We didnât have anything. This country wasnât prepared for a thing like that. And Iâm not even blaming anybody in that. Because, you know, when when it came, nobody thought the pandemic would ever happen again. It sounds like an ancientâs problem, not a problem that youâd have you know at that time, you know, in modern, very modern age. It was like an ancient thing. We you know, who, who would ever show Iâm not blaming anybody, but we had empty cupboards, and I got them stocked and I got them stocked fast. And we did a great job with it. Never got credit. I got credit for the greatest economy. I got credit for foreign policy. I got credit for knocking out ISIS and not going into wars. But we beat ISIS, but I never got the credit for having done a great job with that.
KERNEN: Mr. Presidentâ
PRESIDENT TRUMP: But I think history will give us the credit. Iâm sorry to interrupt, weâve got Jay Clayton here, is here. I know your work with with Jay was at the SEC we want to I want to get Jay to talk to you about regulation, etc. But before I turn it over to Jay, I just wanted to ask you about something very specific for regulation and that is Bitcoin and I have in the past I donât know if you recall, but I said you gotta get you got to look at this closely, Mr. President, and you know, the current SEC commissioner Gary Gensler finally allowed for these spot ETFs and now we see Bitcoin at almost 72,000. But itâs almost as if itâs in spite of some of the efforts over regulation of maybe the Biden administration. You have any thoughts now on on crypto?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, itâs taken his own life. You know I do little things sometimes for fun and you know, make money with it and but I have fun with it too.
KERNEN: You mean you bought Bitcoin?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: No, no but sometimes weâll let people pay through Bitcoin, or weâll let people get involved in a new, you know, if you think of it itâs an additional form of currency and I used to say, you know, I want one currency I want the dollar. I donât want people leaving the dollar and I feel that way, but I will tell you, it has taken on a life. I did a thing that people smile at but it was wild. We did a thousand sneakers so limited-edition sneaker run the last one, and you could go through, you know, our crazy new currencies because thatâs what I call them. Theyâre crazy, whether itâs Bitcoin or others, and so many people were buying these things when ultimately, the last pair of sneakers sold for approximately I hear $450,000 was a limited edition or run they were gold. They were, you know, nice, cute. And we thought it was just a very small thing. It was a branding thing and it was, had a good time with it. The last pair sold for $450,000, people were going crazy for these sneakers you probably were too. Everybody was â every friend I have was calling me for a pair of sneakers. So it just took off. And I noticed that so many of them were paid for with the new currency, itâs a new cryptocurrency and I couldnât believe the amount and Iâm saying you know this thing is really and other things I do, people are using it. And you know, I would be â Iâm very much a traditionalist, I like staying with the dollar you know â make the dollar the choice. I hate when countries go off the dollar. I would not allow countries to go off the dollar because when we lose that standard, that will be like losing a revolutionary war, that will be that will be a hit to our country just like losing a war and we canât let that happen and too many countries now are fighting to get off the dollar and frankly and I know Jay feels strongly about this and Jay did a fantastic job by the way in a group when thereâs always scandal and problems Jay went through for years. There wasnât one scandal. I donât know, Jay, maybe you can tell me but there wasnât one scandal that is most scandalous position because it involves massive amounts of money with Jay Clayton we had no scandals, zero nothing whatsoever. So I thought it was great. But I have seen there has been a lot of use of that. And Iâm not sure that Iâd want to take it away at this point.
JAY CLAYTON: Hey, Mr. President, thank you for that, that was nice. Before you came on, I was saying to Joe, look, your regulatory agenda in a second term would be one of pro-growth not anti-consumer, not anti-competition, but pro-growth. Mostly because, you know, we donât have a lot of fiscal tools left. Do you want to talk about the pro-growth agenda that you had in the last term?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Yeah. Number one, we donât have a choice. It has to be that â we donât have a choice. Itâd be nice to say letâs get nice and nice and conservative and letâs not grow, if we donât grow you know, we have $35 trillion out there. We have to grow our way out of it more than anything else but we also have to cut spending and we can cut spending massive amounts of waste. Look, we give foreign countries trillions and trillions of dollars a year and when you want to cut them you met with levels itâs crazy. When you want to cut some of these foreign countries, many of whom donât like us, many of whom almost all of them take advantage of â everybody takes advantage of the United States and I had that very much stopped but they very much take advantage of the United States. I mean China until I came along, China was killing us, China was taken out 300 â just in terms of numbers you know, weâre just itâs $507 billion a year. Now under Biden itâs worse. Itâs gotten much worse. No country can sustain when, we canât sustain that. When a country just rips us off like China then what I did is that the tariffs and the tariffs were forcing companies back to the United States. We want those companies that go to China and many other countries, not only China, the European Union rips us almost as bad as China, but they do it with a smile. Nobody thinks that the European Union that way, you know, they say oh, theyâre wonderful, but they really take advantage of us and until I came along, they took advantage of us militarily, as you know. NATO was a total disaster for us, we were paying almost â so think of it, European Union we were paying almost all for their military we were paying close to 100% until I came along. I said Iâm not doing it. Youâre gonna have to pay, weâre not doing it anymore. They said would you protect us if we donât, I said if youâre delinquent, they said yes. I said if youâre delinquent, youâre not going to be protected. And $400 billion came in like clockwork, Obama, Bush, everybody else. They did absolutely nothing.
SORKIN: Mr. President, I just wanted to ask you, though, youâve also talked about proposing a 10% tariff, if you will. I wanted to ask you about that because the center right American Action Forum, which is a think tank, said that they thought the plan would quote distort global trade discourage economic activity and have broad negative consequences for the U.S. economy.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, theyâre wrong. It would distort international trade. It would bring it back to the United States. We have companies, if you look at India, you look at China, you look at so many different countries, theyâre smart, much smarter than our country. We were getting ready to do this and I had it just about set â
SORKIN: But you donât think it would result in higher prices for American families? By some estimates, it could be the equivalent of $2,000 a family according to the economist.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: No, I think taxes could be cut, I think other things could happen to more than just that. But Iâm a big believer in tariffs for two reasons. Number one, I fully believe in them economically when youâre being taken advantage of by other countries. For instance, China was taking advantage of us on the steel they were destroying our entire steel industry, which was never doing very well over the last 25 years anyway, but you know, because itâs been eaten alive by foreign competition, and they were dumping steel. I put a 50% tax on Chinaâs steel coming in and every person in the steel industry when they see me they started crying. They were to hug me, they would kiss me, sir you saved our industry. I put a very strong 50% tariff on dumping steel, on their dumped steel. And by the way it nothing was perfect. Frankly, the tariffs should have been higher. I was getting ready to do that by the way but the tariffs should have been higher. This saved a whole industry but one thing let me just say beyond the economics, it gives you power in dealing with other countries because China would come in and said no, no, no more tax. They were absolutely fine for me to deal with because they were so petrified of me putting on additional tariffs. And we donât use that, China is right now our boss. They are the boss of the United States, almost like weâre a subsidiary of China and thatâs because the Biden administration has been so weak.
MELISSA LEE: Mr. President is there no concern that China could impose retaliatory tariffs or retaliatory actions that would make doing business in China difficult for American companies, which are dependent on China for growth?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thatâs ok, yeah sure they might do that.
LEE: So tell Starbucks, tell McDonalds that is going to be all of a sudden maybe more difficult to do business there.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Sure but they didnât do it with me. You know, we went through years and they didnât do it with me. And they never pulled that trigger. Thatâs a big trigger for them to pull. But even if they do, let American companies come back to America. If you want to sell a car in China, you canât okay, you pay a massive tax or massive tariff. If we make our cars, we canât sell in China, they charge tremendous tariffs. Well, theyâre very smart. Theyâre saying, come over to this country. Look at Apple. Iâve had a great relationship with Apple and everybody over there was fine. But I said you got to build your plants here. They built a big plant in Texas. I was working on that very, very hard with various companies that they build in China because if they build in China, they have no tax on it so they make it in China. I said we want you to make it here. They were coming back, they did. They came back with a very big plant here said Iâm not doing this unless you â the whole topic of tariffs to me is so simple. Number one, itâs great economically for us and it brings our companies back because if you charge tariffs to China, theyâre going to build their car plans here and theyâre going to employ our people. Theyâre right now building big plants because of Biden. Theyâre building big plants in Mexico. So they build a big giant of plants in Mexico then they sell it across the border with very little tax. Itâs ridiculous. We want them to build their plans in the United States. We donât want to get cars from China. We want to get cars made by China in the United States using our workers but it also gives us a big political power. Tariffs are tremendously powerful in terms of stopping wars, because they donât want tariffs. And frankly, I made them sing, I made other countries sing with the threat of tariffs. And if you donât have tariffs, we have nothing whatsoever on them. We have lost such an opportunity when Iâve seen if you want to build a Harley Davidson as an example. I said, How are you doing in India? They were in the White House. How are you doing an Indian no good, why they have a 100% tariff, but more than that even and therefore we basically get it because you have to double and triple the price in India. Itâs just so what are you going to do? Well, they want us to build a plant in India that way we donât have so they go they go and they build a big plant in India. We started under me we started doing the same thing here. And we have the pot of gold. We have the best pot of gold, but eventually we wonât have that because our country is going down and weâre not going to have it. Weâre losing our economic power.
SORKIN: Mr. President, weâre talking about China. I want to ask you about perhaps one of the biggest business stories and policy stories of the moment and that is TikTok. You have called TikTok a national security threat. At one point you said that they are quote, âdata collection threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party access to Americans personal and proprietary information.â And yet it appears that youâve now reversed your view on banning TikTok. Why is that?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: So I had it done. And then Congress said well they never they ultimately usually fail. They are a good like, extremely political and theyâre extremely subject to people called lobbyists who happen to be very talented, very good and very rich. I could have banned TikTok I had his banned just about I could have gotten it done. But I said you know what, but Iâll leave it up to you. I didnât push him too hard because you know, let them do their own research and development. And they decided not to do it. But as you know, I was at a point where I could have gotten it done if I wanted to. I sort of said, You guys decide you make that decision because itâs a tough decision to make. Frankly, there are a lot of people on Tik Tok that love it. There are a lot of young kids on TikTok who will go crazy without it. There are a lot of users. Thereâs a lot of good and thereâs a lot of bad with TikTok. But the thing I donât like is that without TikTok, you can make Facebook bigger and I consider Facebook to be an enemy of the people along with a lot of the media. what Facebook did was lockboxes with a $500 million Zucker bucks lockboxes that he put in, I mean I consider illegal but you know they, you know they put people in jail when they spend. They put people in jail when they spend more than $5,600 in a campaign. They to jail if theyâre $200 Look at Dinesh DâSouza they put him in jail over a couple of 100 bucks. And yet hereâs the guy spends $500 million and he doesnât go to jail.
SORKIN: But do you believe that TikTok is a national security threat or not? Because if it is, and I believe that your emergency powers order that you had put in place at the time suggested that it was was that not true?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: I do believe that I do believe it and we have to very much go into privacy and make sure that we are protecting the American peopleâs privacy and data rights. And I agree but you know, we also have that problem with other you have that problem with Facebook and lots of other companies too. I mean, they get the information, they get plenty of information and they deal with China, and theyâll do whatever China wants. You know, if you look at some of our American companies, when you talk about high highly sophisticated companies that you think are American they are not so American they deal in China and China if China wants anything from them, they will give it so thatâs a national security risk also, but when I look at it, Iâm not looking to make Facebook, double the size. And if you if you ban TikTok Facebook and others, but mostly Facebook will be a big beneficiary. And I think Facebook has been very dishonest. I think Facebook has been very bad for our country, especially when it comes to elections.
SORKIN: Mr. President, you met recently with Jeff Yass he is s a hedge fund manager has a stake in TikTok. Heâs a huge GOP donor Steve Bannon has suggested that youâve been paid off to switch your view. How did you your view change? How did that come about? And did you have a conversation with Jeff Yass about it?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: No, I didnât I met with him very briefly I made a speech and I said hello to him and his wife was lovely. And actually, her primary thing was on education. She wants choice, as I do. And she mentioned to me more than anything. You know, we talked about education. It was a meeting that lasted for a few minutes. Now the only one I met was I met them both and I never I donât think I ever met him before. But he never mentioned TikTok. She did mention her school choice and thatâs what her whole in fact she said my whole life is based around school choice was a very important thing to her and I agree with it.
KERNEN: Mr. President I think you also had a meeting with Elon Musk recently, I saw a piece written that Silicon Valley, uncharacteristically, Iâm not saying itâs you know, 100% behind your candidacy, but certainly, there seems to be a sea change to some extent this time around. What did you what an Elon Musk tell you? You think you eventually get his support in some way whether itâs just verbal or monetary?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: I donât know. Look, Iâve been friendly with him over the years. Iâve helped him when I was President. I helped him Iâve liked him. We obviously have opposing views on a minor subject called electric cars. Iâm all for electric cars, but you have to have all of the alternatives. Also, you canât just go to electric. I mean, you have a grid system in this country thatâs obsolete. And a disaster is one of the things we worked on a lot. Is our grid system that canât produce the electricity it doesnât get distribute the electricity and you know the electric cars are not even a possibility to go all electric is Biden. All electric mandate is by very, very stupid people. First of all, they donât go far. They cost too much and theyâre all going to be made in China. And the auto workers are going to vote for Trump. I donât know about their top union people because theyâre just riveted into Democrats they have no idea why theyâre like blind sheep. But the auto workers are gonna vote for Trump because they understand look at my numbers in Michigan, Iâm leading him by 12 or 14 points. Itâs always hard for a Republican but not now. Weâre leading in a lot of places that Republicans donât lead and including with African Americans. We are we have numbers with the African American population. The black population, the Asian population, Hispanics, we have numbers like nobodyâs ever seen before. So I think weâre gonna have a very good election and I think thatâs probably why Silicon Valley is but I think theyâre also with me because, you know, I want to help businesses. They saw what happened. We had and you know, that just prior to this horrible scores coming in and the gift of China, we had the greatest economy in the history of the world. There was never an economy. Blacks were doing the best theyâve ever done. Hispanics, women, Asian men, with a diploma from MIT without a diploma at all, from a high school, every single group, every single group was doing great. And thatâs the way it is. And we had the greatest economy ever and we were getting ready to pay off debt. We were drilling. We were doing this think of it. I got Anwar approved. Itâs bigger, perhaps close, but probably bigger than Saudi Arabia in Alaska. And one of the first things Biden did is end iy. Reagan tried to get it he couldnât get it done. Nobody got it done but me and nobody else could have gotten it done. Anwar is the biggest probably the biggest site J if you look remember, we celebrated that when nobody could believe I got it done. And they were getting ready to start drilling and they were doing it itâs going to be great for Alaska. Tremendous economic development for Alaska, but I got it done. And they ended it. We were going to pay off debt. We were going to do things that were incredible. And then we had an election that I will be very nice on this show it didnât go too well.
CLAYTON: Let me ask you about that. Mr. President. Something that I want you to comment on that I that Iâve said on this program is that we have this tendency to want to import European regulation to the US thinking that European style regulation, whether itâs around the environment, whether itâs around how we deal with national security, financial matters, and like, can you comment on that because I think the U.S. is different. Ad you know, we have to play to our strengths can you give us your thoughts on that?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well the last thing we should be copying â yeah, I think youâre right I think, you know, they â we have a tendency to follow them a little bit amazingly in regulations because theyâre doing so badly. They do so badly. Theyâve become a socialist state. And, you know, theyâre not doing great. And you look at what happened, Iâm gonna â believe it or not, I was very friendly with, but I disagreed with her in allowing 2 million illegal aliens we would say or migrants or you call them anywhere you want. Thereâs about 19 different names now and everyone becomes obsolete within about two weeks. But Sheila allowed 2 million people coming from â now they like to call them neighbors, you know, the new name by the Democrats is weâd like to call them neighbors. So they want to call the people that are flowing into our country and in many cases, killing people, neighbors. But, you know, Europe, what they did â what Germany has done to itself between that and their energy policies has been a disaster for Germany, nobody talks about it. And they totally reverse course, amazingly, they totally reverse course. So we shouldnât be following them. We have to go by our own. We need guys like Jay Clayton and others. Jay did a fantastic job in deregulating so much at the SEC and so much of you know, of what he did. It was a big deregulator. And again, he did it with â it was a beautiful thing to watch. That agency ran so â you know, I had a lot of great people. We never talk about those people and I think thatâs natural. We talked about some of the ones I didnât like and some of the ones I had in there I didnât like, but mostly I had fantastic people because, you know, we got â and you can check every record and nobody was even close â I did the biggest cut in regulations. We gave the biggest tax cut in history, and we gave the biggest regulation cut in history. We gave a tax cut, which by the way is coming up. Itâs going to be very bad, I think for the Democrats, but itâll be very bad for this country if thatâs not extended â the Trump tax cuts. But they are the biggest tax cuts in history. The other one is we gave the biggest regulation cuts in history. Jay was a part of that from what he was doing. But we gave them on the environment. We gave them on so many different things. We had plants built in Louisiana, that were refineries that were absolutely dead for 14 years. And I got them approved in one day. Iâve got two plants in Louisiana, massive plants â
LEE: Mr. President â
PRESIDENT TRUMP: —like three Empire State Buildings laying on their side. These were the biggest plants. I got them done and literally got them done in one day. They were waiting for 14 years for permits. I got them done in one day.
LEE: Mr. President, you mentioned earlier about the country losing economic power, and some might cite the downgrade of the United States credit rating as one example of how we are losing some of our economic power. When Fitch downgraded the U.S. to a double A over the summer they specifically cited the increasing polarization, declining governance over the past 20 years. But more specifically, they cited the January 6 insurrection. Under your presidency, if you are reelected, what can you tell us about how stable the U.S. will be? Especially as it appears that youâre stoking some political divide. You held a rally in Waco, Texas, and youâre sort of playing to this polarization of groups here.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, when I had the rally in Waco, we had 100,000 people show up, and thatâs where they wanted the rally. You know, Iâm like the businessman politician. You go where the people are, and I go to places â we had a tremendous rally this weekend. Weâre having rallies in Michigan, the rallies are bigger than theyâve ever been. We have â as soon as the season gets a little bit warmer when we can do the outdoors â right now thereâs no arena that can hold the number of people â
LEE: Does it matter to you, though, that we are downgraded, that weâve been downgraded, and that our credit rating could be at further risk? Should there be further political polarization?
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Sure, but it is not because of January 6. We get downgraded because of incompetent people, very incompetent people doing incompetent things. And as far as the dollar is concerned, weâre losing countries. We lose Iran, we lose this one. We have Russia, thatâs out. We have many, many countries that we throw out of the system, and we canât lose that system. That system is veryâ the dollar. That system is a very important system to the vitality and strength of our country. If we ever do lose that, they take out Russia, China would love to be, you know, the leader of the pack is Janet. Because theyâd love to take it over. And it will be possible to take it over if weâre not strong. We have to hold countries in and if countries want to get out, weâre gonna have to say, Well, if you want to get out of our system, and go to letâs say, a Russian version or your own version, then weâre not going to do any trade with you. And theyâll be back in about two seconds. But it depends on whoâs posing that statement to whoever it is the leader â like youâre dealing with Macron or youâre dealing with the leaders. You have to be able to talk to them properly. Our people donât know how to talk to him. Our people are like we go there hat in hand like beggars. Our country is no longer respected. The people representing us are not respected. I just had Viktor Orban, a tough man from Hungary. He was at my place in Florida and I get along with him very well, friendly, but I have respect for him. He made this statement. I thought it was a wonderful statement, he said we will solve the problems of the world if Donald Trump comes back. He said Russia was afraid of him, China was afraid of him. We had no problems whatsoever under Trump, and now we have Israel being attacked, which by the way would have never happened. We have Ukraine and Russia fighting. That would have never happened. All of those dead people in blown up cities because Ukraine is now just like a demolition site, what theyâve done to Ukraine. None of that would have happened. All of those people would be alive today if the election results were, letâs say correct.
SORKIN: Mr. President, given how a country â given how divided it feels this country is, I want to play you just a piece of tape from Ken Langone, who I believe supported you in the last election, who was on âSquawk Boxâ earlier. About a month, month and a half ago now. And I want to show you what he had to say because I think it represents a lot of voters out there and Iâm just curious if you would react to it, and explain sort of how you feel about it to the voters. Look at this if you could for a second.
Sound from Ken Langone: I worry if Trump wins, that itâs going to be four years of getting even. And thatâs scary, because weâve got serious issues coming up that need to be addressed.
SORKIN: What do you think of that, Mr. President? Because I think that there is a feeling that there is still an anger and a frustration that you have about certain issues.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well look, Iâve never been a fan of Ken. I never â I donât know if he supported me. Maybe he supported me because I was the only one that he could support because that is the reason. But Iâve never been a fan. Iâve been a fan of Bernie Marcus. A big fan, Bernie Marcus is a big fan of mine. And that was the side that I chose. And, frankly, you know, heâs right in one sense. People think that thereâs going to be revenge and I say no, the revenge is going to be success. Thereâs not going to be revenge in a revenge stance. Itâs really going to be success. Weâre going to turn our country around. Weâre going to bring sense and â common sense, you know, people say youâre conservative. Iâm not conservative. You know what I am? Iâm a man of common sense. And a lot of conservative policies are common sense. Weâre not gonna have open borders. Youâre gonna have to come in legally. Weâre going to close up the borders. I had the best border â I had the safest border in the history of our country. And it was â all he had to do is he could have gone to the beach like he likes doing, looks good in a bathing suit. If he wouldâve left everything in place, including the people that were doing it, I had the best border in history. We built 571 miles of wall. I got Mexico to give us massive numbers of free soldiers. Now there is a case of tariffs. I said, if you donât give us the soldiers, weâre gonna put a 25% tariff on your cars. They laughed at me when I said I want 28,000 soldiers. And I like, you know, the President of Mexico. I think is a very good guy. He happens to be a socialist, but you canât have everything. But they laughed at me. I said, I want you to give us 25, 28,000 soldiers on our borders to stop the people that are coming in with the caravans. And they laughed at me. I say thatâs okay. You donât want to do it, right? Yeah. Iâm going to put a 25% tariff on all of your products including all of the cars that youâre selling. You know, they stole, they took like we were babies, 32% of our car manufacturing business over the last 30 years. 32% is now being made in Mexico and getting bigger all the time. And now as I told you before, with China going in building plants there specifically to sell into the United States, I would say to China, if youâre building a plant on our border, to build cars in Mexico and to sell them into the United States, Iâm putting a 50% tariff on all those cars. And you know what, they would stop building their plants in about two â but we donât do that. We have stupid people running our government, to be honest.
KERNEN: Mr. President, we will see. I know youâve got a lot going on. Youâve got the campaign, youâve got the legal issues, people sometimes wonder you know how to prioritize and you just keep charging â
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Well, the legal issues arenât legal issues. They are Biden issues. Biden put Fani, beautiful Fani, whoâs turned out to be now a corrupt District Attorney, but in my opinion, theyâre almost all corrupt. All of the stuff that you see, is weaponized government. And the DA in New York is being run by the DOJ. They put their top person into the DAâs office. All of this stuff and frankly, I get a lot of credit for it. I think Iâm much more popular now because they did it and it backfired on them. Theyâve weaponized our government. Think of it. They put Colangelo, one of their top people â like the top person â into the DAâs office to go get Trump. They deal with Letitia James a real lowlife. They put people with her, theyâre dealing with her all the time to go get Trump. These are the Democrats. The prosecutors and judges in New York â our country could fall because of it, thatâs how bad it is. And companies are moving out of New York, because of what theyâve done to me. And Iâm gonna end up winning on appeal. And if I didnât win on appeal on these ridiculous decisions, if I didnât win on appeal is the most ridiculous decisions and putting the Miss Bergdorf Goodman, a person I never â I never met, I have no idea who she is. Except one thing. I got sued. From that point on I said, Wow, thatâs crazy. What this is. I got charged. I was given a false accusation and had a post a $91 million bond on a false accusation. People arenât moving into New York, because of the kind of crap theyâre pulling on me. I feel like Iâm a pioneer. Whatâs happening is we have to be very careful. You know, we have a very fragile country. People are rejecting it and they are watching. Normally somebody would be out of office if stuff like that happens. My numbers are much higher than they would have been had this not happened. But you have to be able to speak about it. Itâs a very dangerous thing. Very, very dangerous thing for our country, what theyâre doing. Itâs the weaponization of the DOJ, the FBI, etc.
KERNEN: Well, we appreciate all the time youâve given us this morning, Mr. President. I look forward to another conversation in the not too distant future.
PRESIDENT TRUMP: Thank you very much, Joe. Thank you, everybody.