Transcription
The White House, where we continue our discussion. President Donald J. Trump is with us for the entire hour. Let me go back to this issue of the political future for the people of Venezuela. It's interesting, you mentioned all of the criminals and the people let out of prisons that were sent to our borders. That's Tren de Aragua, cartel members, the worst criminals in the world were led into our country through Biden's open border policy. Anybody could come in.
>> Sean: We will get into the issue of Minneapolis, but back to this one issue, do you foresee a Venezuela that will have free and fair elections?
>> President Trump: I would have little doubt that the opposition would win handily if they were free and fair. I think that's happening, but before we do that, it will take a while. We have to rebuild the country. They would not even know how to have an election right now. The country has become third world. They would not know how to have an election right now. We are going to rebuild the oil, the oil infrastructure. We will be in charge of it. It's going to do great. We will make a lot of money, and we are going to take it from there, but we will rebuild the country, and ultimately, they will have elections.
>> Sean: When you talk about increasing defense spending, and I go back to the campaign and I go back to your first term, foreign policy usually does not get a lot of discussion, and you have dedicated a lot of time, energy, and resources.
>> President Trump: Very important for our country.
>> Sean: How was that and America First interest, because that is what you stand for?
>> President Trump: The Middle East was blowing up when I got in. Everyone was fighting. In all fairness, it's been going on for about 3,000 years in the Middle East. Now we have peace, and nobody thought that was possible. You have some great countries, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, and many other countries that have been around a long time. They are very wealthy. They were, in many ways, put out of business. They were not able to do business. Tremendous wealth for the world. The oil supply was hurt. Everything was first. I mean, you had things happening in the Middle East that were bad. Not only in Gaza with the death and the destruction going on for years. And it's been cleaned up. It's amazing. It's been cleaned up. There will be some remnants right now. We will have to see what happens with Hamas, what happens with Hezbollah in Lebanon, but we have 59 countries that signed on, and they want to go in and help if we should have to do something with Hamas, which is a possibility. I think they are going to do what they said they are going to do. They were going to disarm. They've been armed for a long time.
>> Sean: They've been a little slow to disarm. Will you support Israel? Will you put them on a timetable?
>> President Trump: First, let's see if they will be disarming. I am all for it if they don't. They made the promise. They've made an agreement that they are going to disarm, so we are going to have to assume they are going to put, you know, it's not their nature to disarm. It's not exactly their nature. Hezbollah has been very bad in Lebanon, but overall, I mean, we have an amazing situation compared to what it was. And we really do have peace in the Middle East, and I will say it, Saudi Arabia and Qatar, UAE, and other countries have been amazing. They've been, you know, so helpful in getting it done. But the biggest thing was the attack on Iran. If you had a strong Iran, a respected Iran, powerful Iran, like I guess it was at one point, you know, a year ago, year and a half ago, you would not have been able to make peace because the other countries would not have been able to have that dark cloud hanging over them. And they, by knocking out their nuclear -- they would've had a nuclear weapon within two months. By knocking it -- that's why I had to go in. Every president wanted to go in, and none of them did.
>> Sean: You mean you did not want to send cargo planes of cash and other currency?
>> President Trump: Terrible. Hundreds of millions of dollars were sent in cash on Boeing 757s, beautiful Boeing seven -- the cash was piled up to the ceiling. I never knew a president could do that. What do you do? All the banks? Every bank in Virginia and Maryland was emptied to get that cash, and they sent it over there and gave it to them. We took the opposite approach, exactly the opposite approach.
>> Sean: Are you following the protesting that is taking place all over the country of Iran?
>> President Trump: I'm following it very closely.
>> Sean: Have you read that the Ayatollah now has a plan B to go to Russia?
>> President Trump: He's looking to go someplace.
>> Sean: Do you think the country is on the verge of collapsing?
>> President Trump: It could be. What they have done is they start -- in the past, they have started shooting people, and all of a sudden, people without any weapons whatsoever are standing there, and you have machine guns gunning them down, or they take them to prisons and then hang them and kill them. So they played rough, and I said, if they do that, we will hit them very hard. We are going to hit them hard. We are ready to do it. If they do that, we will hit them hard. And so far, for the most part, there has been some of it, but for the most part, there have been people killed. Some of them, the crowds are so big that some of them have had really, like, were stopped on, literally. It was a terrible -- the crowds are just -- they are massive. The enthusiasm to overturn that regime is incredible. But there's been people killed, but it's more from death by -- it's literally stomping. It's people running in a certain direction. So we will see what happens. They know, though, that it's a stampede, I guess, is the best word. They have, like, a stampede. You talk about a stampede for cattle. What the people are, stampeding, and you are losing a lot of people with a stampede's. There are so many, so many people protesting. Nobody has ever seen anything like what's happening right now. But I have put Iran on notice that if they start shooting at them, these people are totally unarmed people, and they love their country, they want something to happen. Look at their country. They've gone back 150 years. But I told them that if they do anything bad to these people, we are going to hit them very hard.
>> Sean: So if there is mass murder by the Iranian Ayatollahs and their leadership, you are pledging to the people of Iran that you will come to their aid?
>> President Trump: I have said it very loud and very clear, that's what I'm going to do.
>> Sean: I have his hat. I guess you are playing golf with Lindsey Graham.
>> President Trump: I did that for Lindsey Graham.
>> Sean: It says "Make Iran Great Again."
>> President Trump: What he means by that, because this is a tricky hat, what, you want me to sign this hat?
>> Sean: Can I sell this? It's probably worth a lot of money.
>> President Trump: Nobody asked me to sign that. I said there's a lot of definitions for that, and what he's talking about is the people that are, you know, protesting, I guess is the only word you can use. It's really the biggest protest I've ever seen. The people that are protesting, if they take over the country, he wants to see if Iran can be great again. Years ago, a friend of mine was a developer from New York, and I was a young developer, and he went to Iran and built buildings in Iran and made a lot of money and did very well. And it was, like, condos and rentals, and he loved Iran. He thought it was great. And he did a tremendous amount of work. He loved the people. You thought they were so incredible. And then it all stopped when this stuff started happening.
>> Sean: 1979.
>> President Trump: Like magic.
>> Sean: 444 days, Americans held hostage.
>> President Trump: That was not a good time for Jimmy Carter. It was not a good time for --
>> Sean: America.
>> President Trump: His politics.
>> Sean: Did not work out very well for anybody.
>> President Trump: I think about that, though, if I can interrupt, because, you know, when we were going into the middle of Venezuela with helicopters landing in an army fort, thousands of soldiers and people with guns all over the place, I thought so much about that Jimmy Carter catastrophe. We had so many hostages taken, American hostages. We had the helicopters crashing, the sandstorms. If you had sandstorms, you should come back. But they tried to blast through the sandstorm. Nature always wins. Nature always wins. And helicopters don't have that kind of an engine, you know, they have a lot of moving parts, they don't like sand blowing into their gears. But anyway, they decided to go forward. Should have come back. But I was thinking about that because, you know, here we are going into actually a much more dangerous situation, if you think about it, on Venezuela. We are in a fort, a military army fort, and the house was built there for protection, and we are going in with helicopters, with jets, with helicopters. I mean, the jets preceded the helicopters and did an unbelievable -- these are unbelievably talented pilots and people, and very brave people. So I was thinking a lot about the Jimmy Carter thing. I don't know what he would've done or how he would have done if that did not happen, but there are those that say that destroyed his chances of winning election, and, you know, lost that election pretty big. He might have lost it anyway, perhaps, but there was no question after that mess. And I was saying, I hope that does not happen with me. But we have Raising Cain and all of these great people, and they did an unbelievable job.
>> Sean: You know, you started in your first term the Abraham Accords. And I would argue beyond Israel, it's other countries in the region, Egypt, Jordan, the Saudis, and pretty much every country that they probably were breathing a sigh of relief, as well as the Israelis, because they did not want an Iranian hegemony in the region and a nuclear-armed Iran.
>> President Trump: You had to stop that. You had no choice. And it should have been done long before I got there. It should have been done earlier. They just, you look back at Obama, should have done it. They all should have done it. Clinton should have done it. Obama went the other way. I mean, Obama decided to go with the wrong. I mean, he was -- I don't know how Jewish people can vote for Biden and Obama. They were against Jewish people.
>> Sean: Or Mandani.
>> President Trump: Well, we will find out.
>> Sean: Your favorite mayor.
>> President Trump: I have a very nice relationship, but I thought it would take at least maybe a month or two months before he went after me. He hit me on the attack on Venezuela, which is pretty unusual because not too many people -- a perfect attack. Think of what we have done. We have taken over a whole country. We are going to make the country strong and good. We are going to ultimately be able to vote and put somebody in that they like. The oil that we have taken, $4 billion worth of oil in one day, and that will increase. We are going to have it rebuilt. All the big oil companies are coming in. They will make a lot of money, and Venezuela is going to get some of that money, and we are going to get some of that money. And we brought stability to the region. We brought stability and much lower oil prices. You know, we have gasoline now down to, in many cases, $1.99 a gallon. With Biden, it was $4.50, $5. We have it way -- we have brought it way down. We've done a great job. On the word "affordability," prices are way down. They will go lower. Prices, you know, everything follows oil. Oil is so big, everything follows oil. If oil prices are down, everything is down. It affects everything. It affects the truck that delivers donuts. It affects the stove that makes the donuts. It affects everything.
>> Sean: Two more issues on foreign policy and national security, and then I want to do a deep dive into the economy. I want to ask you --
>> President Trump: The economy is unbelievable.
>> Sean: We will get to that.
>> President Trump: I know what it's unbelievable.
>> Sean: Can Cuba survive without Venezuelan oil? I don't see how it can.
>> President Trump: Can he survive?
>> President Trump: Cuba relies on Venezuela for money and oil, and they give Venezuela protection. That was always a deal. They are very tough. They are good soldiers. They got wiped out, as you know, three days ago. Wiped out. I don't want to even say how many, but they got wiped out. But Cuba gives protection to Venezuela, and Venezuela gives Cuba money through oil, and it's been that way for a long time. It doesn't work that way anymore, so I don't know what Cuba is going to do. I think Cuba is going to fail. I don't think there are any alternatives for Cuba.
>> Sean: I don't know how they survive without Venezuela --
>> President Trump: Many people from Cuba. Marco Rubio knows Cuba very well.
>> Sean: Somebody told me today it was Marco's revenge.
>> President Trump: Maybe it was. A lot of great people. A lot of great people. We will see what happens. We want to do something to help Cuba.
>> Sean: Let me -- mentioning Vladimir Putin.
>> President Trump: You know the Cubans I want to help? I want to help the Cubans in the United States. I got treated so badly by Castro. We have a large human population, some of the best people in the country, you've been. I want to help those people. They got treated so badly. They left on rafts, and they just got thrown out.
>> Sean: Broken down.
>> President Trump: Those people will be taken care of.
>> Sean: Broken down, dilapidated, rickety boats, shark-infested water, inner tubes.
>> President Trump: They came in in the worst floating vessels that there have ever been and circled by sharks and everything else, and many of them, as you know, many of them did not make it.
>> Sean: You talked about peace and your involvement around the globe and the success you have had. You said many times that you thought the easiest conflict to resolve would be the European conflict, Russia and Ukraine, and now you've pointed out many times that it became the most difficult. The couple of things on that issue. Vladimir Putin. We did pick out this Russian flag tanker along with Great Britain. Tough decision. Number 1. Number 2 --
>> President Trump: I don't think it was a tough decision.
>> Sean: Will you support the sanctions? I think there are 84 or five senators.
>> President Trump: They only do it if it's -- it's subject to me.
>> Sean: Do you support it?
>> President Trump: We have big sanctions on Russia right now. Russia's economy is very bad. But they are much bigger than Ukraine. Much bigger, more powerful country.
>> Sean: Did Vladimir Putin call you after the tanker was seized?
>> President Trump: I don't want to say that, but the fact is that the Russian ships -- there was a submarine and a destroyer, they both le