Meet the Press interview

Thank you.

Well, they’ve been largely decapitated. And I call it a military exercise because people would rather have it called that. It’s not a big war for us. It’s not. We have the most powerful military in the world. I built it, frankly. I built it in my first four years. And I’m using it a little bit in my second four years. Their navy is gone. Their air force is gone. Their anti-aircraft is gone. They might’ve built it up a little bit over the last four weeks during this little ceasefire that we did at the request of some very good people, very, very fine people from — actually from numerous places, as you know. You know, there are a lot of people involved. But from Pakistan in particular, the field marshal and the prime minister. And we’re very close to having a deal. And if we don’t have a deal, we’ll do it one way or the other. Either way, we win.

Sure.

Yeah.

Well, we have a blockade. It’s been extremely effective. And the reason we have it is they tried a blockade, and now we blockaded them. And, as you know, they’re losing $400-500 million a day. It’s not sustainable for them. They have an economy that’s shot, in addition to everything else. Their leaders are gone. Their generals are gone. Their first tier and second tier are gone. Much of their third tier is gone. But they put up a blockade and so we blockaded them. And we have the ultimate blockade. I don’t consider that a war, but if you want to define it as such, I guess you can.

I don’t define it at all. I don’t think about it. I just do what I have to do.

You mean boots on the ground? Are you talking about –

We don’t need as many troops. I think it’s just like it’s on the — to err on the side of caution. We have a lot of people there. They’re very safe. You know, if you think, we beat Venezuela. We lost nobody. Took over the whole country. We lost nobody. We have a great relationship, by the way, with Venezuela. Venezuela’s doing very well. But we lost nobody. We’ve lost 13 people here and that’s a lot. Thirteen people, too many. But, if you look at Vietnam, where hundreds of thousands of people were killed, if you look at any one of the last seven or eight wars where many, many people were killed, we lost 13. And again, 13 is too many. I don’t want to lose any. But 13 is less than anybody’s ever even envisioned. I think we’re doing a great job.

I would say this. It costs us very little to keep them there. I don’t consider them in danger. We have the best defense anyone’s ever seen. We have the best offense anyone’s ever seen. So I don’t consider it danger. I would say it would be foolhardy to do that because maybe we may use them. It’s unlikely. But I think we’ll keep them there until such time as we have a completion. And when we have a completion, you will see things like you’ve never seen. The oil will go down. The stock market already, as you know, it’s at an all-time high. Even in the midst of it, it hit all-time highs. We had 73 all-time highs in the short period of time that I’ve been in office, which is a record, by the way. And, you know, we’re doing very well. But the main thing is we cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon, can’t do it.

And we won’t do it.

Yeah.

Well, certainly, that would be something that I would think about very seriously. But my red line would be if I think I wasn’t going to make a deal, or if I wasn’t going to make a deal fast enough. So we’re having very good negotiations with the people that are leading the country now. It’s the third group that we’ve been dealing with. And they are different. And you could say it’s regime change actually because these are very different people. I find them to be more rational, very smart.

Well, I don’t want to go into names. But you know who they are. They’re leaders. They’re respected, respected by the people that have to respect them. They are calling the shots. We know that because we see it through various tests that we’ve given. It’s a little bit strange because you have leaders that have been there for a long time, and they get wiped out. Then you have leaders that you also know, the second tier, and they get wiped out. All of a sudden, we’re dealing with different people. But no, I think that we’ll either have something done fairly quickly, or we’ll finish it out militarily.

Well, he’s a part of it. Yes.

No. But I do believe --

– I do believe they have great respect for him. I see it. I mean, they want to get his concurrence. They’ve said to me, they’ve said to others, that they’re looking for approval. And he is part of the approval process. Absolutely.

I have not.

No, I have not. I would if he’d like to, but I have not spoken to him directly.

I will tell you, they do --

Yeah. They do pay homage to him. I would tell you if they didn’t. They seem to — based on what I see, they seem to respect him a great deal.

I don’t want to say whether or not I know where he is. But there’s a good probability that I do.

I’d rather not say that.

Yeah.

Younger. I think more rational. Injured. He’s pretty badly injured. So there’s a certain bravery there. A lot of people, if they were injured that badly, they wouldn’t be talking about, you know, “How are we doing with the United States?” They’d have other things on their mind. So there’s a certain bravery there. But he is very seriously injured. Yeah.

I mean, I think we’re very close. We have a couple of points. They don’t even seem like big points. They’ve conceded the fact that they will not have nuclear weapons. We had a clause in there that we will not develop nuclear weapons. And everybody was very happy with it except me. And I said, “Well, what happens if they, not develop, but they go out and purchase, they acquire?” I want to put the word, if they buy, or purchase, or acquire. You know, you’ve got to have that in there too because that’s not developing. So they don’t have the right to develop or purchase, acquire, or buy.

A little bit. And then they didn’t.

True.

Because they — it’s a very hard thing for them. They’ve had great independence. They’ve dealt with very weak and ineffective leadership on behalf of the United States and other countries, frankly, that were — that allowed them to get away with murder. And I don’t — I think they can’t believe they’re in the situation where they’ve been virtually decapitated.

Because they’re strong. They’re proud. There are things they never thought they’d be doing that they’re going to have to do. They’ve got no choice. And it takes a little while. You know, you’re talking about 47 years of getting away with whatever they wanted. I mean, we should — this should’ve been done long ago. This should’ve been done by other presidents, or other countries. Doesn’t have to be us. Other countries. But they were very close to having a nuclear weapon twice. That was when I terminated the Iran nuclear deal, which was a path -- that deal, the JCPOA, that deal was tantamount to giving them a nuclear weapon. It was a horrible deal, given by Barack Obama. And really penned by him. It was a horrible deal. It was — you know, it expired long ago. Had I not — I terminated it. But had I not terminated it, it expired long ago. It was a short term deal. It was a road to a nuclear weapon. They would’ve had a nuclear weapon five years ago.

I did.

That’s what I’m doing.

It doesn’t go that fast.

Excuse me. Excuse me.

Excuse me. It takes years to do these things. These people have been fighting for 47 years. They’ve been killing Americans, they’ve been taking off their legs and their arm, and their faces have been hurt so badly and so horribly. I’m moving very fast. I’m into three months. You know, Vietnam lasted 19 years. I’m into my third month, and all I do is say, whoa, when are you going to end? If I were a Democrat, nobody would be talking that way. But it doesn’t matter to me. I’ve gotten so used to it. Look, we have totally destroyed their military. They have some missiles left. They have some drones left.

They have — Yes, exactly.

I don’t want to tell you.

But they have some left. No. But they have — I know almost to the number. And we know where they are too. And we know where their drones are. And we know where their drone factories are. Most of the drone factories have been knocked out, most of the launching pads have been knocked out and most of the missile manufacturing areas have been knocked out. But they still have capacity. They have some missiles. They have some drones. I would say, percentage-wise, maybe 21, 22 percent of their missiles. It’s a lot of missiles. But it’s not what it was when we first attacked.

Correct. Yes.

Well, you know, depending on when you say “immediately.” Look, it is buried under mountains because our B2s were incredible. The pilots of our B2s were unbelievable. And it’s buried. They can’t get it. The only two countries that could take it, that have the equipment to take — you have to understand three mountains have fallen in on them, right? So you understand that, because the fake news was going around saying, “Oh, maybe they didn’t hit their target.” One o’clock in the morning, pitch black, no moon, no nothing, and every one of those bombs went right down those chutes, blew up. They can’t get it no matter what. I mean, they can get it I guess with years of work. But the only two countries that can get it are us and China because we’re the only two with the equipment that’s capable of doing that kind of work. And it would take weeks, weeks of digging. So, the answer is yeah, we’re going to do it immediately. We’re going to start looking very quickly. And we’ll do it with them. If we make a deal, we’ll do it with them.

No, no. We’re going to do it with the Iranians. So if we make a deal, that means we’ll be friendly, we’ll do it with the Iranians. If we don’t make a deal, we may do it, or we may just watch it. You know, we have cameras on it, all over it. If anybody walked there, if you walked over there, I would be able to read your first name on your lapel. And these are cameras up in space. It’s pretty amazing technology. Space Force. We have cameras all over the site. We know if anybody goes there. If anybody went there, any digging mechanism, any truck, any tractors, anything, anybody went there, we would know. We will take care of it. Is that wind or what?

What is that?

No, a lot of rain.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. So the official name is highly enriched uranium. And I call it nuclear dust because it seemed to be nice, and everyone understands it better, and it’s sort of cute, and people picked it up. But the way you do it is if we make a deal, if we make a deal now we’re friendly, we’ll all go together. It’ll be our equipment. We’ll take it out and destroy it, whether it’s onsite or whether we take it offsite.

Well, that will require — we will have a deal. We’ll be friendly. In other words, we will have made a deal. And we will be at peace. And we will go with them, or without them. But we won’t have people shooting at us, okay? Now, if we don’t make a deal, then we’re going to take them out militarily very harshly. And we’ll wait till we do that before we go, in which case we’ll have safety either way.

Well, I wouldn’t say —

Well I wouldn’t say — well, you really haven’t — again, you were in Vietnam for 19 years. You were in Iraq for many years. You were in Korea for many, many years. You were in all — I won’t even talk about World War II, because that was the big one. And we don’t want to ever have that. But you were in all these different wars for many years with thousands and thousands of people killed. We’ve had 13 people killed, which I hate. We’ve had 13 people killed. And that includes two wars. That’s Venezuela, and that’s Iran.

No, but you keep talking about speed. Kristen, you were in Vietnam for 19 years, and you’re telling me about three months. And in three months, I’ve demolished the navy, the air force, anti-aircraft. They have no radar. They have no nothing. I demolished their leaders. Their leaders are gone.

Yes. Yes.

No.

Comes after. Yeah. If they behave, if they do a good job, we start talking. Yeah.

Unlike Obama. Obama flew a Boeing 757, a plane I know very well. They took the seats out, and they loaded it up with $1.7 billion in cash from the banks in Maryland and Virginia and D.C. They emptied out the banks, and they gave them 1.7 in green. And they gave them tens of billions of dollars. Just kept giving them money. And it didn’t work.

That never works, by the way.

I have.

No. They weren’t ready. No, this is much better. This is much better.

If I would’ve done it in my first term, Israel wouldn’t have been ready. Hear that sound? That sound of thunder, lightning, rain.

No.

People will understand. We’re in a farm.

Well, we talk about it. And we’ll see. Nobody really has an accurate list of who they are, what they are, or if they’re being held. But if they’re — We’ve been talking about it. Nobody really has a list. You know that, right? You know, you’re asking me about — nobody has a list.

No.

You’re supposed to give me the list. I mean, do you know people that we’re talking about? If you give me their names, I’ll do my best to get them home.

Huh?

All I’m saying is this. If you have a list of names, give them to me and I will get them out.

We talk about people if they have them, but nobody knows who they are, just like you don’t know who they are.

Yeah, we are. We get along very well. We’ve been great comrades. We did a very, very big number on a certain country that was nothing but trouble for 47 years. I disagree with him on a couple of things.

I’d like to see — I’d like to see Lebanon have a better life. I’d like to see a more surgical attack on Hezbollah. I think it should be more surgical. And we can help them with that, or we can recommend Syria. Syria’s doing a very good job of cleaning up their act. They have a very good leader. They have a leader that’s really done a good job in a short period of time. And he would love to help.

No. No.

I’m not at all. I’m not demanding. I think they’d like to see it, but I’m not demanding.

No.

No. I had to stop a country, very powerful, very dangerous country, from having a nuclear weapon because they’d use it. They’d blow up the world. They’d blow up the Middle East. They’d blow up Israel. They’d come here. They’d blow up Europe. They’re nuts, okay? They’re crazy people. I deal with them. And very high-strung people. Little crazy. And — I get along with them. I like them. But you don’t want to let them have a nuclear weapon. And I’m doing the world a service, but I’m doing our country a service. You know, it’s America first. I’m doing our country a service. Nice rain.

But the answer is good. Let’s just keep going. Let’s power through it, right?

Well, well. First of all, I didn’t guarantee no war. Why would I have built the strongest military in the world? I built our military. I inherited a terrible military. We had no equipment. We had nothing. I built a tremendous military. Biden gave a lot of it away, but it’s still a relatively small portion compared to what I built.

Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Why would I build a military — Now, I didn’t want to use this, but I’m doing you and everybody else a big favor. In the midst of the greatest stock market in history, in the midst of the most successful country because, as you know, in the last term, we were a dead country, Kristen. I know you, you’re a big liberal, a big progressive.

But we were —

We were a dead country. A year ago, couple of years ago, we were a dead country. Now we have the hottest country anywhere in the world. And at the all-time hottest point, which is probably now, believe it or not-- we’ve just had all brand new stock market records today. But at the hottest point in the history of our country, I took Scott, Howard, I took Pete, I took everybody into a room. I said, “I have to do this country, this world, the Middle East, Israel, everybody a favor. You have Iran. They’re going to have a nuclear weapon. Barack Hussein Obama signed the JCPOA. It was a horrible deal. Horrible deal. Listen to me. It was a horrible deal. It was a path to them getting a nuclear weapon. They were very close to having a nuclear weapon. I terminated the deal. Wait. Then I sent the B2 bombers in about nine, ten months ago. And they obliterated, totally obliterated, the site. And I saved it. We had a choice. We could let them have a nuclear weapon, or we could go along and have some beautiful days. But they would have, you know, it’s a judgment. They would’ve used a nuclear weapon. And you know what? When people hear that whole scenario, when they hear me say, “Iran’s going to have a nuclear weapon, and they’re crazy,” they say, “You’re doing the right thing.” I don’t think it’s an unpo — I mean, you’ll do polls because they’re all fake polls anyway, especially yours. But you do polls. I just won a big election. And the reason I won an election is people have confidence in me. I have good judgment. I had to make a judgment. Do I want to go along and have a country that’s doing really well, but somebody is going to try and kill us? Or do I want to put out that horrible threat? And I did. It put it out. I put it out for many, many years. Now, I’m going to put it out permanently. I’m going to do it either through negotiation, where we’re very close to a deal, or I’m going to blow the hell out of them, to be honest with you. And it’s going to be very easy for me to do that. That’s actually the easier path. So when you say I promised, I didn’t promise anything. I don’t like these endless wars. This is not an endless war. We’ve been doing this for three months. Much of it has been under the form — a pretty good form of ceasefire. The blockade has been amazing. Our Navy is amazing. Our military’s the best in the world. Hey, we took over a very powerful country, Venezuela. Lot of soldiers. Big, strong military. We took over Venezuela in a matter of minutes. We destroyed the capability of Iran in a matter of days. Nobody’s ever seen anything like it. Now I’m going to finish it. But remember, you were in Vietnam 19 years because of stupid people. You were in so many different countries. Every war, you were in for years. Look at Iraq. You were there for years. Listen. Kristen. We’re there for a few months. And the threat is largely over. Soon, it will be over. But you cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon, or they will blow you up. There will be no Kristen. There will be no NBC. There will be no Meet the Press. You will end the Meet the Press string.

It is.

We’re not going to be there.

It’s not a quagmire. Just wiped out the military of a very dangerous country. And I wiped out the nuclear threat. Let me tell you, if we left tomorrow, we just said, “All right, let’s get out,” it’ll take them 15 or 20 years to rebuild back. But I’m not going to give them even that chance. Not going to give them that chance. They cannot have a nuclear weapon. And if there was even a 1% chance that they’d have it, I wouldn’t leave. We’re almost finished. We’re going to either have a deal, a strong deal, a meaningful deal, not like the Obama thing. Obama was a path to a nuclear weapon. Mine is the exact opposite. Mine is a wall. It’s a wall, just like I built 1,000 miles of wall on our southern border. And, by the way, I took the worst border in history, and I made it the best border in history in a matter of weeks.

Excuse me. They were developing it during the nuclear deal. You don’t know that? Iran, when Obama signed that stupid deal where he paid them billions, and billions of dollars. He thought he could bribe them. Listen to me. They were developing a nuclear weapon. That’s how they got there. They got all of this uranium during Obama. You know that, don’t you? Well, that’s how they got there. Don’t say this. They got there. They developed it during the Obama, Barack Hussein Obama, during his administration.

They didn’t escalate anything.

Let me just tell you something.

If I didn’t go in there with the B2 bombers, they would right now have a nuclear weapon, and it could be that half of the world would be eradicated already.

Not strong. Not strong. Really strong.

By how much? Triple.

Triple.

It’s all coming down as soon as the war’s over.

The farmers are doing very well.

All of them support me.

Because there’s nobody been better to farmers. You know what I gave farmers last term? $28 billion because China took advantage and other people. And you know who paid for it? China, last term. You know, I had a great first term. I had the greatest economy ever. And you know what? This one’s blowing it away.

Are you ready? Are you ready? Am I allowed to talk? You keep asking questions, and you don’t listen to the answers. I love the farmers, and the farmers love me. The farmers trust me. In the first term, I had something very similar. China and others were — and Canada, which was brutal, they were taking advantage of our farmers. They don’t take advantage of them anymore. I gave them $28 billion, split up. They never had a pay day like that. And the farmers love me. And they came back, and they voted for me in record numbers. You know that. Nobody’s ever even come close. Now, because of the fact that we had a choice-- I had a choice to make. I could keep it going. The farmers were doing great. Fertilizer was very cheap. Everything was cheap. Gasoline was very low. Everything was very low. I could’ve kept it that way. But I said, I have to take a little bit of a turn. The farmers are going to understand it better than anybody. We’re going to have higher gasoline. We’re going to have a little higher fertilizer, et cetera, et cetera. But I’m going to get rid of a nuclear weapon in the hands of very dangerous people. Excuse me. Wait. It should’ve been done for 47 years. No president had the guts to do it. I did it, and I’ve done it. It’s almost complete. As soon as that’s complete, gasoline prices are going to drop like a rock. You know, I was in Iowa speaking about farms. And it was before we attacked Iran. And I was in Iowa, and the prices were $1.85 a gallon. $1.91 a gallon — What?

They’re going to come low, very low. They’re going to go lower than they were before.

As soon — Well, it depends. I mean, it depends where the war goes. It could be, I’ll have to give them a shot, and it could be we’ll sign an agreement. If we sign an agreement, it’ll go down now. Otherwise, it’ll go down after we’re finished.

Yeah.

So, I’m of a different feeling. I think Kevin is — Kevin is fantastic, and I want him to do whatever he wants. I don’t want to have a big influence on him. But we had a great report. We’re doing great, and it’s unfair that whenever you do great, they want to raise interest rates. It should be the opposite way. You know, if you go back 15 or 20 years, when you had good reports, the market went up. Nowadays when you have good reports, the market goes down because they think they’re going to raise interest rates. There’s no reason to raise interest rates. The country becomes great. We built the country by doing great and having rates low. What they do is when they raise interest rates, they try and kill success. I don’t want to kill success. We should actually lower interest rates. Now, if inflation comes, and, you know, people live with inflation, but if inflation comes what happens is you stamp it out. But success can kill inflation just like higher interest rates. What they do now is, like, we had great job numbers. You agree, right?

Not expectations. Like, three times, okay. But you ready? What do they do? They say, “Oh, let’s raise interest rates.” It’s the wrong thing to do. I would like to see rates get lower because we could build this into the greatest machine that the world has ever seen, but you can’t do that when everybody immediately raises interest rates. So we had great job numbers. We’re doing great. You know, we’re building more factories. We have more money coming into our country right now from other countries and people than ever before. Wait a minute. What happens? I don’t want to just kill it with high interest rates. Growth is the greatest thing you can have, and growth does not cause inflation.

I’m-- I’m-- living with Kevin. I have a lot of respect for him, but my feeling is that when a country is doing well, they shouldn’t be penalized by immediately raising interest rates. They should actually be incentivized. You know, we have debt, we have other things. We have things we want to take care of. I want to go bigger on the military. I really do. If we do what I’m saying, this will be a beautiful, well-oiled machine like you’ve never seen before.

And Democrats.

Most, excuse me, mostly Democrats.

Some. Very few Republicans.

So let — let me explain what the fund is. People have been hurt so badly by radical left lunatics that worked for the Biden administration and Sleepy Joe. They’re vicious. They’re violent, what they did to people. And of course they went after me more than anybody else. They raided Mar-a-Lago and all the other things. But people have been badly hurt. They’ve committed suicide. They’ve lost their jobs. They’re lost their families. They’ve lost their wives. They’ve lost everything. They’ve lost everything over a fake weaponization of government. Now, let me just tell you –

Well, look. If it was up to me, I’d pay them the kind of money that they deserve. People have been destroyed. Lives have been destroyed. Many suicides, think of it. People have committed suicide because a bunch of thugs went after them.

So me, personally, I think the weaponization fund is a great idea, and so do many other Republicans. You have to get it approved. If they get it approved, that’s great. If they don’t get it approved, I’d be disappointed.

But you have to understand, people have — have been destroyed by crooked politicians, and they should be reimbursed for that.

I wouldn’t be inclined to say so, but I have to see it. I can tell you this: 97% of those people, you look at them, the FBI or whoever it was, cause you had a lot of crooked cops, you had dirty cops. Comey was a dirty cop.

A guy like Bolton was a dirty cop –

Wait a minute, wait a minute. Oh, you think Comey was a straight cop?

Comey was a dirty cop.

They had FBI — listen to me. They had FBI agents ushering them into the building. They had FBI “Go into the building.” Those people are walking around, they’re looking, “Oh, isn’t this nice?” They weren’t in-- they were being ushered into the building.

You had a bunch of dirty cops, and frankly, what they did was weaponization of our government.

No, well, yeah, no, there’s none. You know what they do?

Try looking at the tapes one time.

Look at the tapes one time.

You know why they pled guilty?

Because they told they were going to jail for 15 years –

– if they didn’t.

They pled guilty because they were frightened. They went down. They were ushered into a building. Many of them were arrested without even going into the building.

The people were destroyed by dirty cops and by weaponization. Many of those people should be compensated. Now, with that being said, the, as I understand it, the weaponization fund was going to set up a group of people, people that could be picked by anybody, fair people, smart people, and they will go on an individual case basis.

Now, I don’t know what’s going to happen with the weaponization fund. I love the idea, because people like you, the fake dirty press, the crooked press, people like stupid Biden, he’s not smart enough to know what’s going on, but people that surrounded him, surrounded his beautiful Resolute Desk in the Oval Office, what they did to the lives of people, they destroyed people. They sent people to jail who did nothing wrong.

There’s a lot of evidence.

Listen — listen to me — listen to me.

There’s tremendous evidence. There’s nothing but evidence.

The election was rigged. It was a dirty election.

And it’s happening again right now in California.

It’s happening right now in California

Right now, it’s look at what’s happening in California.

It’s four days –

In California, it’s, no they’re not. They’re dropping fast because it’s a rigged election. Let me tell you, it’s four days and they aren’t even close to coming up with the –

Do you know why they’re doing that? Because they’re cheating on the election.

It’s-- all I have to do is look. All I have to do is look.

And I listen. And I listen to people. And let’s see what happens.

Do you think it’s appropriate that they have an election and five days later, they’re nowhere close to picking a winner?

No, they’re crooked.

They’re crooked just like you’re crooked, your press is crooked. And Meet the Press is crooked.

Really? Well, you play right into their hands then.

You’re either crooked or you’re stupid.

You play right into their hands with this stuff. You know that these elections are rigged. Your network knows that they’re rigged. Do you know that I won an election in a landslide and I got 94% bad press.

You know why I got that?

Because you have no credibility.

You have more evidence, there’s more evidence than ever presented.

Your elections in this country –

We’re like a third world country.

Your elections are crooked and you’re crooked, and Meet the Press is crooked.

And so is ABC and CBS and CNN.

You’re a one-sided crooked network. Sorry. Let’s call it quits because I’ve had enough. Thank you, darling. Have a good time.

I’ve sat in the rain with you--

I sat in the rain with you for an hour.

On and off in the rain, and I’ve given you enough time. You ought to straighten out your press, because you know what?

A country can never be great with a dishonest press.